Heroine

by Mindy McGinnis

  “Goddammit!” I hear Josie yell as the back door swings. “Fuck them,” she says, coming back into the room. “Just fuck those guys.”

  “Language,” Edith says, sounding bored.

  “And f—” Josie barely catches herself from telling Edith to fuck off as well. Her hands tremor as she brushes her hair off her shoulder, the tears standing in her eyes. I know where she’s at. I didn’t like being there, and I don’t want to be around someone else going through it either. My phone goes off with a text from Luther.

  Come outside

  I glance between Josie and Edith, both pouting. It’s not a hard call.

  Luther is leaning against his car when I go out, Derrick in the passenger seat scrolling through his phone.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “Wanna come with us?” Luther asks.

  “Where?”

  “Party with some Baylor kids. Just drinking, nothing else,” he adds, like he’s afraid I’ll get my hopes up.

  “I don’t drink,” I tell him.

  “Still better than hanging around here,” he says, and while that might be true, there’s no way I’m wandering into a party where I don’t know anyone, everybody has more money than me, and there’s no Oxy in my blood to boost my confidence.

  “Maybe next time,” I tell him, heading back toward the house.

  “Hey,” he calls after me, and I turn. “There’s a basketball game tomorrow night, college tournament. I got tickets, if you wanted to . . .”

  Basketball is not my sport, but I can stand watching it. What I don’t know is if I can hang with Luther without Oxy and be as cool as he seems to think I am. Maybe one evening with regular Mickey Catalan—or worse, a withdrawing one—will be a huge turnoff. In any case, I’ve been debating it too long, and my lack of an answer makes his smile falter.

  “I mean, whatever,” he says. “If you’re not into it, it’s cool.”

  I take a step forward, involuntarily. “No, yeah, let’s,” I say, before I think about it.

  “Yeah?” Luther asks, the smile back.

  “Yeah,” I say, my heart stuttering a little bit.

  “Hey, do you . . .” Luther fumbles in his pocket, pulling out two pills that rest on his hand, small and white in that huge space. My heart takes a full leap, way outdistancing the reaction to Luther’s smile.

  “Do you want these?” Luther asks, holding his palm out to me. I cover the distance between us in a moment.

  “Yeah. You don’t?”

  “Meh.” Luther shrugs. “It’s okay, I guess, but if it’ll get Josie off your ass for tonight, I’d rather you have them.”

  I hug him. It’s spontaneous and a little awkward, since I’m grabbing for the Oxy at the same time. But it works out.

  “Thanks, man,” I tell him as I pull away.

  “I’ll text you tomorrow. About the game,” he adds, when I look confused.

  “Yep, sounds good,” I call over my shoulder.

  Josie is on me the second I walk through the door, and I don’t have time to pop the pills Luther gave me at the kitchen sink, like I was planning on.

  “Hey,” she cries when she spots me. “You holding out on me?”

  “It’s for both of us,” I lie, slipping one pill into my other hand so that I’ve got something to get me through tomorrow. “I got us covered.”

  “You’ve got shit covered, Mickey,” Josie says, leading me into the living room. “That’s one pill, between the both of us. Even if we snort it, all it will do is—”

  “Help,” I say. “It’ll help.”

  “Not much,” Josie mutters, shooting Edith a dark look even as she starts to grind the pill down with the edge of a coaster. Her phone goes off and her grip slips, sending the coaster rolling, a fine edge of white powder trailing it.

  “FUCK,” Josie says.

  Edith turns up the volume on 60 Minutes.

  I grab the coaster, setting it aside in favor of the Precious Moments girl, while Josie answers her phone.

  “What?” she says, as I feel the hard edge of the Oxy give way under pressure, the resistance melting to nothing as I grind.

  “Yeah, I’m at Edith’s. No, you can’t take my—hey! I said no.” She’s quiet for a second, eyebrows furrowed together as she watches me make short work of the pill.

  “Yeah, and Mom will be thrilled to hear that, won’t she?” Josie spits back at whoever she’s talking to.

  I take a subscription card out of one of Edith’s magazines—Prevention—and start making two lines out of the powder. They’re short and thin, not nearly enough to lift Josie out of her funk or keep me in a good place.

  “Yeah, well . . . ,” Josie goes on, back to picking at the piece of enamel on the table. “Not my problem.”

  There’s a knock on the door. Edith jumps in her chair and I come to my feet.

  “Seriously?!” Josie shouts into her phone. “That had better not fucking be you, Jadine, or I swear . . .”

  “Helllooooooo . . . ,” a high-pitched voice sings from the kitchen, wobbly and more than a little grating. “Anybody home?”

  “Oh, shit.” It’s Edith’s turn to swear, as she flips off the TV. Lost, I look at her.

  “Jadine,” Edith repeats the name, as if it should explain itself. “Josie’s older sister.”

  If I had seen her before I heard her, I wouldn’t have had to ask. The girl who saunters into Edith’s living room somewhat unsteadily is like a glance into Josie’s future, a place where all her baby fat is gone, as is any hint of innocence. Jadine is thin, but with curves in the right places. I can see her hip bones where they jut out above her jeans, the edge of her shirt barely grazing the denim. It’d be a trashy look if the clothes weren’t so obviously expensive.

  The hollows in her cheeks could be from hunger or because she’s learned how to suck them in, holding her face perfectly. And something tells me Jadine has studied her reflection in the mirror enough to know exactly how far to drop her shoulder, how high to cock a hip. There’s a calculation to each of her movements as she leans in the doorway, even with only us as her audience.

  “Awww . . . cute,” Jadine says, looking at the table. “You’re snorting.” I flip the copy of Prevention over on top of the lines reflexively, but she only laughs.

  “I’m not giving you my keys,” Josie says indignantly, arms crossed.

  “Yeah, you are. And I need the car that goes with those keys,” Jadine says.

  “You’re so full of shit,” Josie shoots back, but I can see how the tears that had started to subside when the guys left are welling again.

  “No, but I’m going to be in deep shit if anybody sees my car after I took out that mailbox. We stuck it in Brad’s garage and he said he can bang out the dents, but I’ve got to get back to campus and he wasn’t exactly hot on me driving that far.”

  “You shouldn’t be driving at all, sweetheart,” Edith says from her chair, the endearment falling somewhere short of kind. “Mailbox won’t be the last thing you hit tonight if you keep going.”

  “So call the cops on me, Edes,” Jadine says, drawing out her little sister’s nickname for Edith. “Just make sure you clean up those lines on the coffee table first.”

  Edith makes a noise in the back of her throat, but turns away from the conversation.

  “C’mon, let’s go,” Jadine says to Josie, impatient. “It’ll take me two hours to get back and Kappa Sig is doing a toga party tonight.”

  “It’s my car. Mom bought it for me,” Josie insists.

  “She bought me one too, and I fucked it up. So now I need yours,” Jadine says, stepping closer to Josie. Close enough to see the sweat beading along her hairline. Close enough to spot the quiver in her breath.

  I wish I’d done that line before Josie’s phone rang. That silk thread running up my nose and into my brain would have helped me find words to say to Jadine, to this girl who looks the way a girl should, the way I don’t. But the line is on the table, not in my brain, so as usual I do
n’t know what to say or do, how to act or even how to stand. Jadine has sucked all the air out of the room, but I’m not the only one gasping for breath.

  I’ve never seen Josie this way, and I don’t just mean going through withdrawal. She’s smaller than usual, shrunken in the presence of her sister. The first time I saw Josie I thought she was bright and shiny, the best example of femininity I’d ever seen. But next to Jadine I notice that she’s begun to bite her nails, and that her hair has split ends.

  I wonder if this is how Josie sees herself when she’s around Jadine, too.

  I wonder if Jadine knows it.

  I think she does, just by the way she moves around her little sister, a cat messing with a mouse. But a cat will eventually pounce, instinct taking over in the end. Jadine is more interested in playing.

  “It’s my car,” Josie says again.

  “Annnddd . . . these are my pills,” Jadine says, pulling a bottle from her purse. “Wanna trade?”

  Josie perks up. Edith turns in her chair.

  “I don’t have a whole lot left, but I can show you how to make it count,” Jadine says, shaking the bottle like that makes it more attractive, as if Josie is a baby and she has a rattle.

  “Done,” Josie says, handing over her keys and swiping the bottle from Jadine’s hand before she can change her mind. “You can take me home tomorrow, right, Mickey?”

  “Yep. Yes,” I say, suddenly with more words than I need.

  “’Kay,” Jadine says, curling her fingers around the keys. “Grab a bottle of water from the fridge and I’ll show you how adults do drugs.”

  I go, to save Josie what little bit of pride she might have left. I reach past part of a meat loaf wrapped in foil and what looks like leftovers from the potatoes Edith made us almost a month ago, butter and grease heavily congealed on top

  “Got it,” I say, going back to the living room. “Now wh—”

  I stop cold. Jadine is pulling needles out of her purse. They’re on a roll like lottery tickets, and sealed in paper like a Band-Aid. It looks sterile and proper, like we’re playing doctor or something. But this isn’t a hospital, and Jadine is no nurse. Josie has gone white, but she does what her sister says, mixing the Oxy I already crushed with water, then filling a syringe.

  “Okay, so,” Jadine says, as she flicks the syringe. “This is actually really simple. Look at my arm.”

  She holds it out, thin and white, her veins easy to spot when she makes a fist. She tells us how to find a good vein, how to make sure it won’t roll, how to tell if you’re in it or not.

  “Who’s first?” she asks, needle in hand.

  Josie and I look at each other, and Jadine laughs.

  “Look, kids, all the needle does is take out the middleman. The Oxy goes straight into your bloodstream; you don’t have to wait for it to get absorbed.”

  It’s pure logic, not taking into account the wicked edge of the needle, the slant of the tip and the drop of Oxy-infused water glimmering there. Jadine doesn’t mention the tearing of our skin when it goes in, or the hole left behind from where we crossed that line.

  Jadine glances at her phone. “I got to go, guys. Either I help you out or you fumble around poking each other after I leave.”

  That does it for me, as I imagine Josie’s shaky hands or Edith’s soft, unfamiliar ones having a go at the inside of my elbow. At least Jadine knows what she’s doing. I roll up my sleeve and do as she says, making a fist, then watching as she finds a vein. She shows us how to pull back on the syringe so we see the blood flowing into the water, proof that we’ve hit a vein.

  I’m used to waiting for my Oxy, and I almost enjoy those ten minutes or so of anticipation, knowing that relief is on the way and all I have to do is relax and enjoy it. But then Jadine pushes the plunger and I get everything, all at once, pure bliss in a rush that almost lifts me right up off the ground.

  Fuck waiting.

  One glance at my face and Josie is rolling up her own sleeve, though she doesn’t watch as her sister finds a vein and does the same for her, using a new needle. She makes a small noise, something in between either pleasure or pain, and I don’t know if it’s because of the poke or what comes after.

  “Better?” Jadine asks, rubbing the inside of her sister’s arm almost tenderly.

  “Better,” Josie agrees automatically, her voice soft and dreamy.

  “How ’bout it, Edes?” Jadine asks, but at some point our host has dropped off to sleep in her chair. Jadine gets to her feet, tearing off a few more needles from the roll in her purse.

  “I’ll leave you a few, sis,” she says. “Thanks for the car, and let me know when you’re ready to graduate.”

  “Graduate?” Josie looks up from the string of needles tossed across the table.

  “To heroin,” Jadine calls over her shoulder.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  manipulate: to manage artfully or fraudulently, especially in regard to other persons

  Josie is quiet in the morning on the ride to her place, breaking her silence only to give me directions, or to sniffle. Letting Jadine inject us had felt amazing, but what was in the needle had been weak and wore off quick. Neither one of us had the guts to try the needle without Jadine’s help. Instead a fair amount had gone up our noses before Josie thought to check the strength of the bottle she’d traded her car for. They were way weak—only 20s—so we blew through most of it, leaving us with red nostrils and a constant need to clear our throats.

  It lingers into the morning, dripping out of my sinuses and down into my stomach. Not a good feeling, or a good taste. All I want to do is get home and stand in the hot shower.

  “So what’s up with you and Luther?” Josie asks.

  “What? Nothing,” I say, sounding as guilty as I looked last night standing over the sink with the Oxy Josie didn’t know I had.

  “Left here,” Josie says, her voice thick and wet. “Okay, whatever on the Luther thing, but if you need to talk about boy stuff I can . . . I mean, like, maybe you don’t know a lot about . . . that.”

  Josie is blushing as I make the turn, rolling into a neighborhood I’ve never visited and have no reason to go. Baylor Springs has always been the kind of place most people can’t afford to shop in, but I doubt I could even browse at Josie’s yard sales—if they do those in this town.

  “I know enough about that,” I tell her. “What about you and Derrick?”

  “Ha,” Josie says, confirming what I already knew.

  “He doesn’t have a chance, does he?”

  “Nobody does,” Josie says. “Guys have always been after what I’ve got, and that used to feel good. Now . . . I’ve got Oxy.”

  “And?”

  She shrugs. “And it makes me feel better than they ever did. You’ll see. Right now, Luther is a bright, shiny new thing. Everything he says is funny, or charming. But eventually you’ll fight—probably about something stupid like whether to watch basketball or baseball tonight—and then he’ll start to irritate you.”

  I think of the way he looked at me last night by his car. I don’t think it’s something I could ever get tired of.

  “Trust me,” Josie says, following my thoughts. “He will. And as far as that . . . all I can say is most of the guys I’ve been with had no idea what they’re doing. Oxy delivers every time.”

  “Right,” I say, my own blush starting.

  “Three houses down, the brick,” she says, but that’s not terribly helpful because I think everything here is brick. Or stone. I haven’t seen any siding in a mile and a half. I stop in front of the house she points at, putting the car in park.

  “What does your mom do?” I ask her.

  “Divorce,” she mutters, as she gathers her things.

  “She’s a lawyer?”

  “No, like she gets married and then gets divorced and then gets married again. Alimony is a full-time job.”

  “Oh,” I say, unsure of what else fits.

  Josie cracks the door, one foot on the s
idewalk, then hesitates. “Do you wanna come in?”

  “Huh?” The invitation is so unexpected, the idiotic syllable escapes before I can stop it.

  “Hang out,” Josie says, flipping down the visor and grimacing when she sees how red her nose is. “Netflix. Maybe some pizza? Mom’s out of town. Jadine’s gone. I’ve got nothing to—”

  “I can’t,” I say quickly. The idea of going into Josie’s house has me frozen. I could break something when I turn too quickly or tread too hard. In a house like that I doubt it would be as easily replaceable as the plate I shattered at Dad’s.

  “Oh,” Josie says, her face shifting from the placid, detached look she had worn to something more guarded, a look I’ve seen on plenty of girls as they assess one another. “Fine.”

  She tries to get out fast now that she’s been rejected, pulling all her things into her lap and standing up at the same time. The shoulder strap of her purse gets snagged on the gear shift and there’s an awkward moment where I’m trying to unwrap it and she’s stubbornly pulling, like she means to rip the whole stick out of the car along with her purse if that’s what it takes to get out of here.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Josie calls over her shoulder as she makes her escape, not making eye contact.

  The door slams and I close my eyes, pissed at myself. There’s no reason I couldn’t hang out at Josie’s, other than my own stupid self. The truth is that I’m worried the easy closeness between us will be gone without Oxy to bind us, that just like the Bellas or Lydia, when I’m not on the field I won’t quite know what to say.

  I don’t want to find out, but there is one thing I need to know. I roll down the window and call to her before she makes the front door.

  “Hey,” I yell, and she spins on the stone walkway, hair fanning around her.

  “Yeah?”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Elaboration isn’t necessary. She knows what I’m asking. With Betsy gone, Edith hoarding her own stash, and Jadine’s 20s almost blasted through in one night, our options are more than limited.

  They don’t exist.