Chapter 42
Ver

Addiction leads to a physical change in our genetic material and the way our cells decode it. Not quite a mutation, but close enough that I know Ma cannot function without her fix.

Which does not make it any easier to watch.

As soon as Aryl steps out into the hallway and closes the door, Ma digs into her pocket and takes out a gum-sized piece of plastic. Peels away the wrapper, opens wide, and tacks it onto the blotchy red roof of her mouth, where I can see several open sores.

“Ma . . .” I murmur, but I give up before getting any further. Ma using patches is as inevitable as time. Still, I feel sick inside, and scared. She leaves me alone, even while we are together in the same room.

Come back, Ma. Be with me. Be with me. This may be the last time we see each other.

“My neck is full of needles,” Ma says, massaging her shoulders with her bony fingers.

I know pain, and I hate seeing her in its grip. How can I begrudge her the relief the patches bring? I visualize the dancing hexagons of the chemicals’ fused aromatic rings. They rotate laterally like boomerangs. Invading my mother’s body, changing her from the inside out.

As the endorphins diffuse into the roof of her mouth, her body relaxes. Her eyes take on a faraway gaze, pupils dilating like black holes opening in the sky.

“You know what you should do?” Ma says.

I brace for what she will say.

“Don’t trust that girl. Prove your innocence on your own. The fact that you haven’t managed to show she’s guilty yet is ridiculous, guniang.” Little girl, she calls me. “They had no business accusing you in the first place. Look at you! You can’t even walk. How could you have killed your investigator? That girl’s guilty, don’t you see? She’s using you to set herself free. And you’re letting her play you.”

Her words tighten around my throat like claws. My feelings cannot form into thoughts, let alone words. I shake my head.

“Listen to me, Ver-xin. I’ve survived this moon. I survived your father. Proving you didn’t kill that investigator? It’s easy. Let that Two-er girl fend for herself. Let her rot in the Sandbag. You’re like me. You’ve survived too much to let the rest of your life slip away.”

“No,” I whisper. More loudly, I say, “That might be how you survived, but that is not how I will live. Aryl is innocent.”

“She’s fooled you,” Ma says, her eyes flashing. “Charmed you. You think you like girls now? For shame. You let her hold you like that, in my house.”

She turns from me and reclines in her chair, sucking on the roof of her mouth, eyes closed. Floating away from consequences. She will say anything when she flies. The fallout is below her, on the ground, and she can barely see it. It hurts knowing that she thinks these things while sober too.

“Thank you for the food,” I say, rising. “And the advice. But I will not take it.”

I am seething. I want her to know it, to fear losing my love. So that she will take back what she has said and offer me the affection I long for.

Ma opens her eyes and blinks once, but she is focused on something far away from me.

“I have to do this the way I think is right,” I say. “Goodbye, Ma.”

She does not really hear. Her eyes are closing, her mouth curving into a smile. “I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy,” she drawls. “Happy and free.”

The words catch me off guard. She still loves me. I wish I could take that love and purify it to get rid of the parts that hurt. My chest is swelling with sobs that I trap inside. For what we both have lost, and for the little time we have left. I miss you, Ma.

As the sadness builds, I slip out the door as quietly as my body will let me. Behind me, my mother slips away too, off into the cluttered attic of her mind.