I hear her, along with the sound of the ball zipping through the air, right past my ear. If it’s a good throw it’s going to beat me to the plate and if it’s a bad one then maybe there is a God. Either way if I don’t get dirty Coach will have my ass, so I sink as I slide, right leg stretched, long and tight, left one folded under me, knee biting into the ground and tearing up the spot on my kneecap that’s been ugly since fifth grade, scars healing over scars.
I might be fucked up right now but I know how to slide.
The catcher is over me, ball in her glove resting on my hip, the ump hovering behind her, arms straight out on either side of him, calling me safe. Everyone goes nuts and I might be safe but anyone near me is in danger of getting puked on in two seconds.
The Dandridge catcher hauls me up, but I don’t even have time to thank her, bolting for the porta-potty beside our dugout, which is mercifully unoccupied. Even if I didn’t have to vomit, the smell in here would make me. I’m guessing it’s been sitting here all season, collecting everyone’s hot dogs and Skittles once their body is done with them. For whatever reason it’s the thought of Skittles that pushes me over the edge.
Carolina is standing outside when I crack the door, a bottle of water in her hand.
“What the shit?” she asks, but I only shake my head.
There aren’t words for this. Even if I’d absorbed that entire dictionary at Edith’s house I wouldn’t know them. They don’t exist. I take the water and go to the dugout, and put on my shin guards. Coach kneels in front of me as the other girls pull on gloves, the infielders adjusting face masks.
“Mickey,” she says. “You look like shit.”
“I’m fine,” I tell her, strapping on my chest protector like if I can just get the gear on she won’t be able to stop me from taking the field.
She reaches out, hand swiping my forehead, cool and dry. It comes back dripping. My own sweat looks sickly to me, heroin leaking out of my pores. Suddenly I want to cry, my mouth pulling down at the corners.
“Let me play, Coach.”
I sound sad and pathetic, a little girl asking for a chance. I don’t sound confident. I don’t sound like a first-string catcher on a team everyone expects to win state. I don’t sound like Mickey Catalan. I yank my helmet on, afraid to let her see me cry. Mattix reaches out again, her hand resting on top of my helmet.
“All right, Mickey,” she says. She sounds sad, like she knows this won’t end well. I shake it off and make my way to home plate.
“You okay, catch?” the umpire asks. I give him a curt nod, and ignore the searching look the Dandridge coach gives me. It’s bleak and assessing, like he hopes I’m going to crash and burn right here so they’ve got a chance.
Fuck that.
I crouch, everything inside of me shifting together. I’m aware of all my organs and can feel each one touching the next, all of it putting pressure right where I don’t want it.
Carolina throws out the first girl in three pitches, all of them perfect, right down the pipe. There might as well not even be a batter in the box. The ball zips between the two of us, almost too fast for anyone else to see. I stay as I am, the only thing moving my arm. If she can keep this up, I can too.
But the second batter gets the ball on one and it pops up. Pure reflex gets me on my feet and I flip off my helmet, looking to Carolina for a cue. She’s pointing straight up and I see the ball, falling back down to the ground just a little to my left. I barely have to sidestep and it falls, neatly, in my glove.
I can do this.
Everyone’s clapping and even Carolina has a smile for me as I toss the ball back to her, but Dandridge’s coach is creeping on me again, eyes raking over my face before I get the chance to pull the mask back on.
I crouch again, and this time my stomach protests. Not upward, but down, and I have to grit my teeth and tell myself that I am absolutely not going to shit my pants. Not here. Not now. Not ever. Mind over matter.
We’re three pitches in on the next batter—two balls, one strike—when I realize that I can’t will myself out of this. My insides are pure liquid, and as I jump to snag the next pitch—one that got away from Carolina on the release—I know that something just shifted inside of me. I clench everything I have and call time, choosing to walk the ball out to the mound, like I’ve got something to say to Carolina about the count, when really I’m just delaying going back down into a crouch.
I push my face mask up, the cool air touching every bead of sweat on my face, ignoring the heavy eye of the Dandridge coach as I cross the space between home and my friend.
“Hey,” I say, when I make it out to her. “Two down, you got this.”
“I do.” She nods. “What about you?”
I shrug, trying to be cool. “You don’t want me behind the plate? Tell Coach to put Nikki in.”
Carolina shakes her head. “She’s not Mickey Catalan.” I hand her the ball, our fingers touching for a brief second. “But you’re not really Mickey Catalan anymore either, are you?”
I’d already half turned when she says it, so I don’t see her face. But it’s a knife in the gut all the same, the last place I needed it. Her words twist and burn, and everything inside of me goes with it and willpower couldn’t keep me from the needle and it isn’t going to keep anything out of my pants, either. So I’m running for the porta-potty, gear slowing me down, legs awkward in my guards. Somehow I make it in time and the smell of rotten shit is almost welcome as I tear off everything I can before it all comes out.
I swear there can’t be anything left but somehow I’m still going, doubled over and half conscious and puking now too. The shin guards are splattered and my spikes will never smell like leather again and there’s snot and tears and vomit on the chest protector and thank God I threw off the helmet before I got in here because I would’ve puked right through the face mask.
There’s a knock on the door, timid at first but then insistent. Coach tells me if I can’t come out that’s fine, but they need the gear for Nikki. The entire game is held up because of me and everyone is looking when I crack the door, sliding out the gear piece by piece, giving over everything to my replacement, with a little something special smeared all over it.
I don’t come out.
Not in the fourth inning. Not in the seventh.
I stay there, ignoring the occasional knocks, insisting to anyone who asks that I am fine. I stay there, and I hear the last game of my senior year unfold. I stay there, sweat trickling down my skin, filling needle holes. I stay there, listening to my team win the league title without me, the smell of shit in my nose, and the taste of vomit in my mouth.
Chapter Fifty-Two
empathy: the action of being sensitive to, and experiencing the feelings of another
They’re playing “We Are the Champions.” They do that on the bus ride home when we win. Or they win, I guess. I can hardly claim a part of this victory. I don’t come out until I know the bus is loaded, my teammates’ accusing faces safely separated from mine by glass and metal. Mom coaxes me out with the reassurance that no one is there but her, and I crack the door, not meeting her eyes. I slide out and close it behind me so she can’t see the vomit on the floor, but I know she can smell it.
I keep my head down and she guides me across the parking lot, the sound of Queen and my friends’ voices following as we get into Dad’s minivan, bought new to go with his fresh start. Dad’s behind the wheel, Chad and Devra in the middle row. The back has been reserved for me, covered in trash bags they must have rushed to buy when I had shouted somewhere around the sixth inning that I wasn’t riding the bus back to the school.
I crawl to the back, collapsing onto the seat. Devra unbuckles and disentangles her hair from Chad’s grip to join me.
“You really don’t want to do that,” I tell her.
She props me up, reaches across my chest and buckles my seat belt. I’m too weak to tell her no, and I don’t care enough to fight her when she grabs my chin and makes
me look her in the face, despite the smell of my breath. I can’t resist when she pushes up my sleeves, going past the elbow to my bicep, cool index finger running over the broken vein there. Next she pushes up the leg of my pants, heading right for the crook of my knee.
Devra does it all in silence, touching each injection spot lightly.
“What’s this from?” she asks only when she spots the trailing bruise from where Carolina’s pitch got me in the thigh, the first two imprinted stitches of the ball showing past where she rolled up my pants leg.
“Didn’t get my glove on it,” I tell her, my voice weak. I can’t hold my head up anymore, instead resting it on the back of the seat.
“Okay, Mickey,” Devra says, covering everything again as she puts my clothes back in place.
My head rolls to the side and I see that Mom is talking to Coach over by the dugout. They both have their arms crossed and no one looks happy. Mom is crying. Coach might be close. I might be too, if I had anything left in me. But it’s all out now. Snot, tears, shit, vomit, and the pretense of caring. Nothing matters anymore.
Mom walks away from Mattix, carrying my gear, impossibly small under the load. Dad opens the liftgate and she dumps it there before she climbs into the passenger seat. Apparently they all came together to my last game of the season in a big show of solidarity and all I did was hide in a porta-potty.
“Everybody buckled?” Dad asks when Mom shuts her door, like everything is fine and I don’t smell like vomit and his ex-wife sitting shotgun while his baby sits alone and his new wife holds my hand in the back is perfectly normal.
I thought everything was out but I was wrong because I’m crying again and Devra is quietly reaching over and cleaning my face every now and then with a wet wipe from the diaper bag. Nobody talks, but Mom and Dad are having a conversation with their eyes, a trick that doesn’t leave with a divorce.
Dad drives to our house and everyone comes in, like it was decided beforehand. Devra hands Chad off to Dad and he gives me a sad smile over that chubby, perfect shoulder. “Go upstairs, Mickey,” he says. “Go with your mom and Devra.”
I don’t have the energy to disobey.
They strip me in the bathroom, Mom shaking her head and crying while Devra peels my clothes off, the broken holes and burst veins nothing she hasn’t seen already. I don’t say anything. My teeth have melded together as I watch Mom, only able to look at her reflection in the mirror, unable to meet her eyes.
They make a pile of my stinking uniform, Mom actually folding it as if to restore some dignity, vomit-splattered spikes resting on top. Devra hands me a towel and I wrap myself in it, covering my body but no longer hiding my skin, every hole I ever put in myself on display as I sink to the floor, back resting against the tub.
“Mickey,” Mom says, her voice small. “The Dandridge coach suggested to Mattix that you be drug tested.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I thought I was empty but again I was wrong. I have screams in me. They come out, angry and belligerent, righteously offended even though my very skin brands me. I’m screaming and I can’t stop, even though I taste blood in my throat. I’ve never been good with words but it turns out I don’t need them. A primal sound is erupting from inside, tearing me apart at the seams, and I won’t ever be put back together again. Not the way I was before.
Dad’s pounding on the bathroom door and Chad is crying and I see the baby in his arms for one second, the fear on Dad’s face as Mom goes to the hallway to try to explain, as if there are sentences that make this okay.
I’m still screaming, unintelligible, my forehead resting on my knees and the towel the only thing between me and the cold floor and I just want to sink through it, just want to be gone. I want to go somewhere there’s a rope swing and I get more than three pushes and all I want is my hair blowing behind me and the weight removed from my heart and the darkness out of my soul. That can’t happen here, not in this bathroom where I’m practically naked and my dad’s second wife is staring at me.
“What?” I shriek at her, my swollen throat distorting the word.
“Mickey,” she says calmly, a stark counterpoint to my rage. “I’m not your mom and I’m not your dad, okay? All I am right now is a recovered addict, and you can talk to me.”
But that one exclamation is all she’s going to get out of me. I grind my teeth together, barely leaving enough room for breath. I can’t deny what they’ve seen, but I won’t confirm it either. So I just sit. Sullen. Silent.
“Your coach said she can’t just ignore the suggestion from the Dandridge guy. So what will that mean, for you?”
My face crumples again, but there are no tears left, so I just sob, big, hitching breaths that send me into a dry heave. I go for the toilet, towel puddling around me, but nothing comes out. Devra cracks the door, asks Mom to bring me some comfortable clothes, then shuts it again. Devra leans against the wall and waits for Mom’s quiet knock, then tosses me a pair of sweats and a hoodie. I put them on, wash my face, and rinse out my mouth.
“Want to get out of the bathroom?” Devra asks, but I shake my head. I can’t look at my parents just yet.
“Okay,” she says agreeably, sinking to the floor beside me. “So can they make you get tested?”
“No, they can’t legally make me get tested,” I say. “But now that it’s been brought to her attention she’ll have to report it to the school, and they have to tell the cops.”
My voice breaks on the last word, one that never used to apply to me and now has terrifying connotations.
“Right,” Devra says. “And what does it mean for you athletically, if they find something?”
She has the grace to say if they find something, even though she just saw my skin.
“First offense, you’re barred from competition for half the season,” I say.
“So . . . no tournament games?”
No. No tournament games. No ticking off the wins through sectionals, districts, and regionals as we rise through the ranks. No state tournament run.
Not for me, anyway.
I shake my head and wipe my nose. The sweatshirt Mom grabbed for me is bright orange, bought so that I could run in the evenings and still be visible. Right now it looks like a prison jumpsuit.
“I don’t want to go to jail,” I say.
Devra laughs. It’s light and soft, weirdly out of place in this room where I was just screaming so loud my ears popped. “Honey, you’re not going to jail.”
I think of Bella Left and NCIS and people being thrown against cars and handcuffed, metal bars striping their faces as their cells close. “Why not?”
“It’s your first offense, and you were only using, not selling. Unless there’s something else you need to tell me?”
I think of three dead bodies in a basement in Baylor Springs.
“No,” I say.
“Okay,” she says. “You’re a minor. You’ll get a slap on the wrist. Group counseling and some therapy.”
We’re quiet for a second, and she reaches out, fingers entwining with mine. There’s a small scar on her hand, a circular dot right above the big vein at her wrist.
“How long am I going to feel like this?” I ask her.
“Depends,” she says. “How long have you been using heroin?”
Forever. Always. Since I was born.
“A month. Month and a half,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says, and I notice she’s been using that word a lot to start her sentences, like anything about this is actually okay. “You can try to go cold turkey, or I can take you to a methadone clinic. There’s a good one on Broad and—”
I start crying again at the thought that I might need a methadone clinic.
Devra breaks off, hand moving from mine to go around my shoulders. “Maybe a week,” she finally answers me. “When’s the last time you used?”
I think of an empty needle on a coffee table, next to a bag with a cat’s face stamped on it, the stuff I didn’t use. “Had a
little last night,” I tell her. “Hardly anything.”
She sighs. “Okay, well, you don’t want to hear this, but you’re going to feel worse before you feel better.”
I nod, wipe my nose again. Devra’s answering my question, but she thought I was only asking about withdrawal. I’m not.
“When do I stop wanting it?” I ask her.
“Never,” she says.
My eyes are so swollen I don’t think anything can get through them, but more tears do and I’m falling to the side, collapsing against Devra, who is so small her arm can barely reach the length of my shoulders. I’ve got no strength left and she can’t possibly hold me up, her tiny bones could never prop up my own.
But somehow, she does.
Chapter Fifty-Three
support: that which upholds, sustains, or keeps from falling, as a prop, or pillar
I admit to using.
Once the accusation is out there, Coach can’t ignore it, and I can’t hide from it. There are many muted phone calls, Dad and Devra and Chad more or less shacked up with us for the weekend, everyone with dark circles under their eyes and more text messages than they can keep up with. Dad talks to the athletic director at the school, Mom takes a leave of absence, Devra secures a place for me in a recovery group. Everyone else is in control of my life now; I’m only riding the waves of their actions, a piece of trash in the ocean of their movements.
Devra’s right. It gets worse.
The pain fades, but I alternate between wanting to be held like a baby and wanting to kill anyone who touches me. I scream at my dad that he should have never left us and I tell Mom she never wanted me. Devra calmly joins me in my bedroom and shuts us both in.
“Do you know what you’re doing to your family?” she asks.
“Do you know what YOU did to my family?” I scream, and that—finally—is something that drives her away. She takes Chad and goes back to Dad’s new house, and Mom yells at me for yelling at Devra, and I crawl under my bedspread and refuse to come out.
Dad lets himself in and sits on the edge of my bed, hand resting on my shoulder. I can feel the weight of him on the mattress, the warmth of his hand through the bedspread. I haven’t looked him in the face yet.
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