“Yeah, sure,” I say, rolling up my own sleeve.
“I still say you were holding out on me,” Josie says, pouting.
“Seriously?” I ask, searching my bicep for a good spot. I find one and shoot, the warmth inside now matching the basement, my breath slowing, my heart relaxing.
“Whatever,” Josie says, plunging her syringe. Her head rolls back. “Bitch.” She smiles as she nods out.
It’s the last thing she ever says to me.
Chapter Forty-Nine
panic: sudden, overpowering fright, especially when out of proportion to actual danger
I’m headed home, my mouth in a tight line.
I will not think about the cooling bodies of my friends, even though I keep wiping my hands on the steering wheel, trying to rid them of the feel of Josie’s neck, slick and chilly, with no pulse. I will not think about how Derrick finally escaped his skin, how Josie doesn’t have to compete with Jadine anymore, or that Luther won’t have to patiently smile through yet another basketball story, someone else reenacting his life.
My phone goes off, the screen flashing brightly in the cup holder. I snatch it, hoping I was wrong, hoping it’s Josie and she wants to know where I went. It’s a text from Patrick, from his new number.
Need anything?
Yes, I fucking do. I need every balloon he’s got and I need it right now so that I don’t have to think about what just happened. But I’ve pulled into the garage already and shut the door, the clatter undoubtedly alerting Mom that I’m home. If I leave again I don’t think another old selfie will cover my ass, and I’m sure as shit not inviting Patrick over for a house call when Mom’s there.
I turn off my car but stay inside, tapping my phone to dial Patrick’s new number.
“Whatcha need?” he answers, and he’s so cool and calm, so under control that it’s like I finally have permission to lose it. Everything I clamped down on in Josie’s basement and on the drive home is out, rolling from my mouth and down my face in a mess, loosely strung words and hot tears.
“They’re dead, Patrick. They’re all dead. I left them there. I didn’t know what to do and I just left and I don’t know.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa . . .” His voice is low and soothing. “Where you at?”
I wipe my nose and hiccup. “At home.”
“And what happened? Slowly.”
“We couldn’t get ahold of you, so Josie and I went out and got some from Edith’s guy, but—”
“Out at the truck stop?”
“Yeah.”
“No good. That’s some bad shit they sling out there.”
“You think?” I snap at him, my voice cracking. “So Josie and Derrick and Luther, they all shot it, but I still had some of your stuff so I did that instead so I’m okay, but they’re not. They’re all dead.”
“Uh-huh,” Patrick says, like the reiteration of the fact is mildly boring. Josie would be so pissed if she knew.
“So what do I do?” I ask, sniffing.
“Nobody knows you were there, right?”
“No,” I agree.
“Then you’re fine. Cops’ll just say, look, bunch of kids OD’d. Another Friday.”
And it kind of sounds like that’s how Patrick feels about it too, like “stay safe” was just his catchphrase, not actually a motto.
“But what do I do?” I ask again.
“Shit, I don’t know, Mickey. You’re shooting heroin. People die. That’s it.”
“That’s not it,” I argue, useless words that only make his more powerful.
“Look, do you want anything or not? I missed three calls talking about this.”
“FUCK YOU!” I shout so loudly my spine vibrates. “My friends are fucking dead!”
“Yeah, but you’re not,” Patrick says, calm as ever. “So call me when you need something.”
I throw my phone and it bounces off the windshield into the passenger seat as I hunch over the steering wheel, sobbing. Patrick said to call him if I needed something but he wasn’t talking about comfort. All he wants to do is sell me heroin to get me through this and if I had any cash on me at all right now I would call him back. I’m reaching for the phone anyway, wondering if we can work something out about what I still owe and how far my credit extends when the overhead light in the garage comes on.
“Mickey?” Mom’s standing in the doorway, still wearing her clothes but with a crease in the side of her face from falling asleep on the couch. “What’s going on?”
I grab my phone and wipe my eyes before I get out, even though I know I can’t hide the fact that I’ve been crying.
“Honey.” Mom comes to me when she sees, arms open. I collapse into her, smelling her shampoo and her overly sweet wine breath and a little whiff of the pizza from dinner. She pats my back.
“I know it’s hard,” she says. “Senior year. Last game of the season. But think about everything ahead of you. You’ve still got tournaments and you girls are going to go so far this year. Focus on that, honey,” she says, pulling back and pushing a strand of hair out of my face. “Focus on the good things.”
I would love to.
But I don’t have any heroin.
Chapter Fifty
hysterical: feeling or showing loss of control over one’s emotions
I am a fucking mess.
My hands can’t hold on to anything and my bones feel alive under my skin, zinging with an energy that doesn’t extend to my brain. That’s dead, dormant, unable to do anything other than spew out images of Josie with gray lips, Derrick slumped slightly against Luther, the only warm places left on their bodies where their skin touched, holding on to that last sliver of life. It’s all I can think about, and the small measure of comfort that rested in that last syringe has long since lost any potency, overcome by panic—and guilt. My shaken mind keeps producing the word if, followed by an emphatic I, squarely placing blame.
If I hadn’t ruined my last balloon.
If I hadn’t deleted that text with Patrick’s number.
If I hadn’t driven Josie to the truck stop.
If I hadn’t wrecked the car in the first place, shattering my hip and Carolina’s arm.
It’s one in the morning and this line of thinking is not doing me any favors as I pace in my room. I’ve got to be on a bus in five hours, headed to Dandridge. I’ve got to look rested and ready to go, not like a girl who was making time with her friends’ corpses the night before. Nobody even knows Josie and Derrick were my friends, except Edith.
Edith.
Fuck.
My stomach rolls, everything I ate for dinner anxious to make an exit, one way or another. I collapse onto my bed, hugging my middle as if I can coerce it all into settling. My joints ache as I curl into a ball, the pervasive pain back again. My hip feels like it has more nerve endings in it than any other spot on my body, every hole I ever punched through my skin alerting me to its existence.
I can’t play a game like this. My friends are dead and that sucks but like Patrick said—I’m not. I’m alive and if I’m going to get through tomorrow or the next day or the goddamn rest of my life I need something. I voluntarily pissed on my stash, and I’m sure as hell not going back to the truck stop because that shit killed everyone I know that uses.
Except Edith.
Shit, Edith again. I don’t want to think of her right now, dozed off in her chair, the blue light of the TV playing off her face, unaware that Josie is dead. I can’t imagine how she’ll react, what the blow will do to her. But what I can imagine is the hallway leading from the living room, where she’s probably sleeping right now, the bedroom it leads to, and the safe in the closet.
She might have Oxy. It might be enough to get me through the game. Urged on by the thought, my mind comes alive, reeling off scenarios that get me what I need. I can’t get out of the house again tonight, but if I leave early enough in the morning I could stop at her place first. But she said to chill because of the neighbor, so maybe I can talk her into mee
ting up somewhere. All I have on me is the change from the pizza and that’s not even enough to get a 20 off her but maybe she’ll be desperate enough with her cash flow drying up that she’ll go for it.
It’s flimsy, but it’s logic that puts something in my body other than agony. I’m calling her before I think about the time, unconcerned about waking her, or if I sound unhinged. Even Josie and Derrick and Luther are gone from my thoughts, past tense. I’m in the present and all I can think of is myself, and what I need.
“Hello? Mickey?” She’s groggy and off, her tongue thick with sleep and—if I’m not mistaken—a little bit of Oxy.
“Edes, hey,” I say, using Josie’s affectionate name. “You selling?”
I hear her sit up in her chair, the soft sounds of the television in the background barely audible, an ecstatic woman trying to sell me jewelry.
“What time is it?” she asks.
“I don’t need it now,” I tell her, trying to sound reassuring while not answering the question. “I just need to know what you’ve got.”
She’s quiet again, and I hear her fumbling for the remote, QVC mercifully muted a few seconds later.
“You can’t come here,” she says. “Mr.—”
“Yeah, I know. Josie told me all about that.” I say it like she’s still alive, like I expect to talk to her again someday. “But I could meet you somewhere in the morning.”
“Hold on,” Edith says, and I hear the foot of her recliner flip down, the springs grinding together. I know the process so well, can picture her rocking back and forth a little to build up momentum to get out of the chair, leaning against the wall for support as her bad knee resists straightening out. She’s out of breath when she brings the phone to her mouth again.
“Done with the needle?”
No. God, no. Not ever.
“Yes,” I say.
“It’s dirty,” Edith says, and I hear the indistinct hum of the police scanner in the kitchen as she passes it. “I told Josie—”
She cuts off, my friend’s name a dead thing in her mouth.
“Edith?” I ask. “Edes?”
She doesn’t answer, but I can hear the scanner clearly now, like Edith either leaned down next to it or turned the volume up.
7300 to 45 . . . Go ahead 7300 . . . report to 2500 Baylor Hill Drive . . .
“Josie?” Edith says.
“No—” I say, the only word I can come up with.
“That’s Josie’s address,” she says. “Mickey . . . Mickey . . .”
She’s saying my name now, like I’m supposed to make it okay. Like I can fix everything.
. . . possible 16, 29 en route . . .
They’re calling the squad, but I can tell them they don’t need to be in a hurry. Because it’s too late and it doesn’t matter anymore and goddammit Edith is falling apart, her breath coming in huge gasps.
“Josie? Is it Josie? What happened? What’s a sixteen?” she asks.
I hear a thump like Edith just hit the ground and I swear to God if she has a heart attack right now I’ve got to get the combination for the safe out of her before she dies.
45 to 7300 . . . Go ahead 45 . . . Call in a 16f . . . three victims . . .
“Three?” The number and the coroner’s code takes what wind she has left right out of her, all of it adding up to one thing. I’m alive. They’re not.
“Mickey!” She screams my name like it’s tearing her throat open, the most painful combination of letters she’s ever spoken.
“Why not you?” She’s screaming. “Why couldn’t it be you? She was going to go to school and get out of here and do something with herself. She was a beautiful girl and a good girl and a smart girl.”
“And a junkie!” I yell back, anger erupting. “She was a fucking junkie.”
“So are you!” Edith screams.
“SO ARE YOU!” I shoot back.
“She never liked the needle,” Edith babbles. “I had to do it for her that first time. She wouldn’t have even tried it if it wasn’t for you.”
“Bullshit, that’s bullshit.” I seethe. “It was Josie’s idea—”
“Josie would never—”
“She did, Edith!” I yell. “She sure as shit did.”
“No,” Edith insists, rearranging the world so that everything is the way she likes it—beautiful, golden Josie the victim, me the blunderer who wandered into her life and ruined it. And maybe she’s not all wrong.
No, fuck that.
“Who gave her pills in the first place? Huh, Edes?”
“Shut your mouth. You shut your ugly mouth, you . . . you . . .”
“She was fucked the moment she met you,” I say, tears running down my face, and I don’t know if I’m talking to Edith or myself.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Edith snaps. “Don’t call me. Don’t talk to me and don’t call me. You’re . . . you’re dead to me.”
“Yeah, just like everybody else you ever knew,” I snap.
There’s a strangled gasp and she hangs up. I throw my phone and it cracks against the wall, screen splintering. I’m on the floor in a second, swiping my finger across the blank face, ignoring the scrape of broken glass. I hold down the power button, plug it in, shake it, beg it, throw it again.
Nothing works. It’s dead and I’m dying and I can’t even call Patrick and beg.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
It’s the middle of the night and I have nothing and I am nothing and every cell I have is exploding and sweat is pouring out of me and I’m shaking and I’m going to puke and shit myself at the same time.
Like Patrick said—I’m not dead.
I’m alive.
Hoo—fucking—ray.
Chapter Fifty-One
endgame: the final stage of an ongoing process
Every time the bus hits a pothole I think my intestines will slide out and pool around my spikes. No one else seems to notice. We’re all quiet this early in the morning, faces stuck to the windows. We’ll be a team the second the doors slide open, but right now, Coach wants us to think. She made us sit alone, no doubling up, and took our phones away, not commenting when I had none to surrender.
“Focus,” she’d said, standing like a sentinel at the front of the bus. “Focus on winning. Focus on being district champions.”
I’m focusing on not dying, which right now is a form of winning.
It’s a long ride to Dandridge and I’ve got plenty to think about, but misery has an iron grip on my mind and soon I’m not focused on winning or dying or anything other than how shitty I feel. My plan was to rely on Imodium again, but the dollar store wasn’t open that early and the credit card machine at the gas station was down. I had my change from the pizza, but it was barely enough to cover what I put in the tank of my car, let alone something to keep my own tank from emptying.
Sheer willpower has gotten me through many things; it can get me through this. I grit my teeth and grab my bag when the bus parks next to the field, digging deep to pull up my game face. I get through stretches and warm-ups, even though the slow jog to center field and back makes me very conscious of the liquid weight in my belly, last night’s pizza converted into something unrecognizable.
The Dandridge girls are trickling in by twos and threes, the sun shining impossibly bright off their windshields as they pull into the parking lot. I slide my shades on, flinching even at the little bit of pressure as they pinch above my ears. Every inch of skin I have is screaming, letting me know it exists and has nerve endings in it. I think of Derrick.
Then I don’t.
Somehow already the bleachers are full and the umpires are here, talking to each other and the coaches over home plate. Hands are shaken. Gear goes on. The Dandridge girls take the field and Coach still has enough faith in me that I’m batting cleanup. Carolina does her thing, lays down a bunt and beats the throw. I’m on deck, picking at the rubber grip of my bat, when I hear Dad’s voice, and Mom answering, hers pitched a little higher so she can be heard ov
er a baby’s crying. Chad’s crying.
My little half-adopted-something-or-other brother and Devra sit nestled neatly in between Mom and Dad like they actually belong there, and somehow Mom is smiling and Chad’s little hand is wrapped around her finger and it’s like nobody in the bleachers has ever accused me of being an addict and they’re all friends again.
“Batter. Let’s have a batter.”
The ump is looking at me and I’m up without having taken any practice swings. The bat in my hands couldn’t possibly be mine. It’s too heavy. Too shiny. Too much. The first pitch sails past me, impossibly fast. She’s not Carolina but she’s not fresh meat either, and maybe I could’ve hit off her last year but right now I couldn’t hit off a fourth grader in a church league.
The pitch is wide and outside, a small mercy. The next pitch is high, the third in the dirt. Coach is looking at me like why am I just now suddenly listening to her about taking until you get a strike? But then the pitcher throws the fourth ball and I’m in the clear, jogging down to first base like I’m totally fine with the walk, even though I could’ve put a bat on at least two of those pitches, and judging from the polite—but muted—clapping from the bleachers, I’m guessing everybody knows it.
Lydia comes on hard after me, ready to make something happen. She cranks it and it’s on the ground and I don’t even get a second to get ahold of everything inside me from the jog to first when I’ve got to go again, and faster this time. I’ve never been quick and Lydia could outrun me even on my best days, but this is far from one of those and she’s practically on my heels as I round third.
“Get the lead out, Catalan!” Coach screams at me, because she has no way of knowing there’s no lead in my pants but there might be shit in a second if things don’t go well.
Coach tells us to hear only her when we run, but when you’re coming down third baseline the batter on deck is the one telling you whether to slide and Bella Left is telling me to get down, down, down.
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