Heroine

by Mindy McGinnis

  He doesn’t say anything.

  I don’t say anything.

  Mom and Devra tossed my room before I was allowed any privacy. They went through every pocket in every piece of clothing, emptied my drawers and even pulled them out of the dresser to check underneath. Dad hauled my mattress into the hallway and everyone went over it with their phone flashlights, looking for slits. Devra found my shoebox, cardboard dry but mottled. She carried it away and I almost followed her, nearly ripped it from her hands to check for residue.

  Something.

  Anything.

  Devra comes back the next day, keys jingling in her hands. “Time to get up, Mickey,” she says. She’s smart enough not to try to sound bright and cheery, just making a statement of fact.

  I don’t have to go to jail, that’s the deal.

  I do have to go to hell.

  My team is getting on a bus to go to Medina and begin their tournament run. I am getting in a minivan and going to a methadone clinic.

  It’s not what I expect.

  Mom fills out the paperwork. Devra sits on my other side. The people in the waiting room are not rocking back and forth. They’re not scratching at their arms or talking to themselves. A mother waits her turn while her toddler plays with a set of scratched blocks from the bin in the corner. A clean-cut guy a little older than me goes outside to smoke a cigarette, the shake of his hand as he lights up the only thing betraying him. There’s one older man who slumps in the corner, empty eyes on the TV.

  I think of Edith.

  My name is called and a lot of people want to talk to me, want to know what I used and how I did it, what’s gone up my nose or in my mouth or in my veins or up my ass. I make a face on that last one and the nurse only shrugs.

  “People do it.”

  They weigh me and check all my injection sites and ask me questions I don’t want to answer. My teeth go together again, tight, but Devra comes back with me and she puts her hand on my knee, and I see that little needle-prick of a scar on the same hand as her wedding ring. Mom wanted to come back, too, but Devra said it might be easier for me to be honest if she didn’t. So I’ve got this woman with me instead.

  And I’m glad.

  They ask how I started.

  I talk about my hip and the wreck, how Carolina tried to pull me to my feet with her good arm and we both ended up falling in the snow. I tell the doctor about therapy and Kyleigh being the good cop and Jolene being the bad cop and how I cried every night from the pain. I get to the Oxy, explaining how it not only took the pain away, but how I could find words when it was in my system, how I said things to Josie that made her my friend.

  I talk about Oxy as a pill I’d throw back, then as a sticky grit between my teeth, and finally as something I popped into a vein. I tell them about the almost economical choice to switch to heroin, and rope days in gym class. I confess to stealing Mom’s wedding ring, cash from under Devra’s jewelry box, to not knowing when to stop or even if I wanted to.

  Devra assured me that anything I say is covered by doctor-patient confidentiality, so I talk about Josie and Luther and Derrick, dead in a basement. I talk about leaving them there. I tell them about Edith and how everyone leaves her. I talk until all the words I’ve ever known have been used, most more than once, and my throat is swollen and sore.

  I say so much, all of it true.

  Coming clean feels almost as good as heroin.

  Almost—but it’ll have to do.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  shame: a painful sensation excited by a consciousness of guilt or impropriety, or of having done something that injures reputation

  I find their obituaries.

  Luther died unexpectedly.

  Derrick passed away suddenly.

  According to the paper, only Josie overdosed.

  Their senior pictures look odd next to an obituary, what was supposed to be the documenting of celebration now used as commemoration. I hardly recognize Derrick, and I realize it’s because he looks confident. With Josie around he was either unsure or compensating, talking not at all or too loudly. In his picture, he looks like his skin fits.

  Luther has a basketball on his hip, lanky arm hanging low. I have to zoom in to really see his face because Luther was so tall the photographer had backed way up to get the basketball in the shot. I can’t get a good look at his eyes without the image pixelating, but he’s there, staring back at me. I wonder if I’d loved heroin a little less, what could have happened between us.

  Josie looks perfect, of course. Her hair is a pale sheet, smooth and glossy. Her nails match her sweater. She’s got one hip cocked and a look on her face that says she hasn’t decided if she likes you yet or not.

  Her mom starts a nonprofit. The news interviews her and Jadine as they sit, perfectly poised on a leather couch in their front room, a place I passed through approximately once, on the way up to Josie’s bedroom, where she showed me the molecular structure of heroin. Jadine is wearing long sleeves.

  There are certain things I can’t have. Not right now, anyway. My laptop is long gone and my phone hasn’t been replaced. Mom texts her number to all my friends so they can get in touch with her if they want to talk to me. No one does.

  Coach Mattix does call, to make sure Mom knows I’m invited to the spring sports banquet.

  I don’t go.

  Mattix texts the date, time, and location of the next tournament game.

  I don’t go.

  We win districts.

  I’m not there.

  We win the first two regional games.

  I’m not there.

  My classmates graduate. Technically, I do too. But I don’t walk. I ask the school not to put my name in the program so there isn’t an awkward pause when they announce the graduates in alphabetical order, everyone noting my conspicuous absence in between Brady Castor and Jeanette Catawba.

  Mom put parental locks on her iPad. I can use it as a calculator or to watch Netflix. That’s about it. Mom makes me chili as a joke and we eat it all. It doesn’t sit well and I lose most of in a fantastic fashion.

  Dad talks to Vencella. They say I’m welcome to attend and play ball after a voluntary drug test, but Devra says it’ll be easy to get drugs there, and I won’t have my family as a support system, so it may be smarter to wait a year, until I’m a little stronger.

  I agree.

  Mom helps me fill out an application for the branch college twenty minutes away. My hand only shakes a little. She has to go back to work, but I go to Dad and Devra’s, or one of them comes over and stays with me. It feels like closeness and family, but it also means I’m not trusted by myself.

  There is no longer a knob on my door, just a hole where Dad removed it.

  The same is true of the bathroom.

  I’m not allowed to drive, either. Someone takes me to my group sessions, which I thought I would hate, but they actually make me feel less shitty. There are people here who have done worse things than I have, and more that haven’t. We talk, and we listen, and when a new girl introduces herself as Jodie I almost smile.

  Jodie from therapy is real.

  I get my methadone pill after group and Devra takes me home. It settles my stomach and makes me think about heroin less. I could use a spoon to eat chili the other night and not curl my hand around an imaginary lighter. I don’t hurt nearly as much, and I’ve stopped attacking my own pain, digging fingernails into old wounds.

  What it doesn’t help with is the guilt. I print out their obituaries and hang them around my mirror. Josie, Luther, and Derrick stare at me every morning. I let them.

  I wake up from one of my many midafternoon naps to find Mom sitting at my dresser, looking at the obits.

  “I recognize Luther,” she says. “Did you know the others?”

  “Yeah, they all went to Baylor,” I say, sitting up and pulling sweaty hair out of my face.

  “She was really beautiful,” Mom says, reaching out to touch Josie’s face.

 
“Supersmart too,” I tell her. “And Derrick . . . he had all this energy.”

  “Did he play any sports?” Mom asks. “What did he like?”

  “Fashion shows,” I say stupidly, and cry. “They were my friends. Luther maybe something more than that. I don’t know. I fucked it all up.”

  Mom stays where she is, folding her hands. “They weren’t really your friends, Mickey. Not if they let you do what you did. Real friends would’ve stopped you.”

  Anger soars from a familiar place, the violence of withdrawal still skulking inside me. “And what would a real mom have done, huh? Maybe a real mom would’ve known. Maybe a real mom would’ve stopped me.”

  It’s the lowest I can go, one of the worst things I’ve ever said.

  “That’s unfair, Mickey,” she says, using the measured tone she’s picked up since going to a support group for parents of addicts. I hate it. I throw myself back down on the bed and cover my head with a pillow.

  “Leave me alone,” I say.

  I hear her get up and move to the door, but she falters there, and when her words come they’re dulled by the pillow.

  “Carolina never got an abortion, did she?” Mom asks. “You used that money for drugs and used a lie about your best friend—a real friend—to cover your ass, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Jesus Christ, Mickey,” Mom says, her voice fading as she leaves my room. “Jesus Christ.”

  I cry some more, my tears soaking into the pillow, my breath coming back at me, hot and wet.

  Sometimes it’s hard to decide what’s the worst thing I ever did.

  I don’t leave the house except to go to the clinic.

  My team sweeps regionals. Coach texts Mom the time and date of the first state tournament game in Akron. I don’t go.

  Twenty minutes after the first pitch Mom comes in my room and hands me her phone with a little smile. I hold it awkwardly, like I’ve forgotten how.

  “Hello?” I say.

  “Top of the first,” Nikki says. “We won the coin toss. Carolina put down a nice single. Bella Right is up with a full count—”

  I hear a collective groan.

  “Scratch that. She struck out.”

  I listen to the announcer, his voice heavy and strong as it carries. Bella Left—he actually says her real name—steps into the box.

  “Oooh, damn, that one was moving,” Nikki says. “He’s going to call it inside though . . . yep. Ball one.”

  “You’re not seriously going to narrate the entire game to me?” I ask.

  “Don’t you want me to?”

  Nikki’s quiet for a second, and I hear the click of spikes on concrete, a helmet dropping, the ding of a bat hitting another one as someone gets theirs from their rack, Lydia ranking the other team by their attractiveness.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Okay. My dad’s in rehab for the third time,” Nikki says, like it’s part of the conversation. “And that’s a walk for Bella Left . . . nice. Runners on first and third. Carolina stole.”

  Of course she did.

  “Coach’ll send the one on first,” I say. “Try to get the catcher to throw on her, then send the runner on third.”

  I hear Nikki spit out a sunflower seed. “Their catcher isn’t fast enough. She’s no Mickey Catalan.”

  “Neither am I,” I say.

  “Crap, I’m in the hole. I’m handing you off to Lydia, okay?”

  “Um, yeah, sure,” I say. I don’t know if Lydia wants to talk to me or if the phone is shoved on her, but suddenly she’s there on the other end.

  “Catalan,” she says. “Aw, shit, their catcher just threw on the runner and the second baseman totally fucked it up.”

  There’s indiscriminate screaming. Lydia doesn’t bother taking the phone away from her mouth. My eardrum is blasted with the dugout going insane and I know that our runner on third just scored. When she speaks again she’s out of breath.

  “Carolina made it in!” she says. “She’s got dirt all the way to the back of her neck. Perfect backdoor slide.”

  “I’m sure it was,” I say.

  I hear Carolina come into the dugout, can make out the sounds of everyone smacking her on the back, or the ass, whatever they can reach. The sound goes muffled for a minute and I know Lydia is telling her I’m on the phone, but I already know Carolina doesn’t have anything to say to me.

  “You’re still my hero, Mickey Catalan,” Lydia says.

  “Heroine,” I correct her.

  “Yeah, fucking irony, right?”

  Something impossible happens. I smile.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  bittersweet: a feeling of happiness accompanied by regret

  They win state.

  There is a parade and a bonfire even though it’s eighty degrees out. I imagine the team sitting on straw bales and throwing candy at everyone as they’re hauled through town on a flatbed trailer, most people throwing the candy right back at them. Last year when we won regionals Bella Left said we should throw out condoms instead and those probably wouldn’t get thrown back, and her mom was mortified.

  They’re on the front of the newspaper and Carolina even gets a spot on the local news, talking about the free ride she got into college. The news reporter makes sure to mention that three other members of the team will be playing at the college level—Lydia Zoloff, as well as Bella Carter and Bella Graham. I will never get used to hearing their last names.

  Nobody mentions Mickey Catalan.

  A month later I’m off methadone and Devra is making me take morning runs with her, before the sun is too hot. She says the heroin blew the dopamine receptors in my brain, which is why nothing is interesting anymore and it’s almost impossible for me to be happy. Just like weaning off the drugs, now I have to build up my natural dopamine levels so that small things like seeing a puppy or watching a funny movie will feel good again.

  I know better than anyone that exercise is a natural high, so I agree to go with her, shaking off the stiffness of my hip at seven in the morning when Devra shows up on the doorstep, looking perky in a bright-pink shirt.

  She looks cute as hell, but she can’t run for shit.

  I beat her to the park and she waves at me from half a mile back, walking, arms above her head so she can get her breath. I’m sitting on a bench stretching my leg when someone comes up behind me.

  “Hey,” Carolina says.

  She’s strong and tan in an electric-blue tank that shows off her muscles.

  “Hey,” I say back, shading my eyes against the sun, all too aware that I look pale and sickly next to her.

  “Can I sit down?” she asks.

  “Sure,” I say. She does, but not too close. “I saw you on the news,” I tell her.

  “Yeah, that was pretty cool.” She scuffs the toe of her shoe against the concrete. In the distance, Devra’s pink shirt comes closer.

  “Can I ask you something?” Carolina says.

  “Yeah, anything.” I’ve been answering intensely personal questions from so many people that nothing bothers me anymore.

  “Why?”

  Except maybe that one.

  “What do you mean, why?” There’s an edge in my tone, defensiveness I didn’t mean to put there.

  “I hurt too, you know,” Carolina says, her voice lifting in response. “My arm was busted all to hell, and I went through therapy and took Oxy just like you did. But I listened when my prescription ran out and Mom and Dad said no more. I spent the winter scared shitless that I wasn’t going to be able to throw all season and I’d lose my scholarship, but I didn’t jam a needle in my arm. I didn’t lie to my friends. I didn’t fuck myself up. So why did you? Why you and not me?”

  It’s a hard question, one that gets passed around in group sessions and sticks in my head at night, while I lie staring at the ceiling, thinking about heroin. I’ve asked myself and we’ve asked each other and our parents have blamed themselves and our therapists have tried harder and our doctors
have written articles.

  What it boils down to is simple, and terrifying.

  “I don’t know,” I tell Carolina.

  Her face twists. She doesn’t like the answer any more than I do.

  Devra is at the edge of the park now and she waves at me. I wave back to let her know I’m okay, but when I turn to say more to Carolina she’s gone. I watch her ponytail sway between her shoulder blades as she walks away from me.

  I still had things to say, and I could call her back and give it a shot. Try to find the words—in any language—to tell her that I fucked everything up between us and that I know it. That she’s the best friend I’ve ever had and I set her aside for something that almost killed me. But even those words don’t feel like enough, and I can’t get them out anyway. They’re too stuck inside, tangles of guilt not letting them escape.

  So I stand silently, and watch her go.

  Maybe in ten years we can go to our reunion and I’ll have a better answer than I don’t know. Maybe she’ll have seen someone else she loves go through it and realize it wasn’t entirely in my control. Maybe I’ll be a decade clean and know more by then and I’ll have the words to explain it. Maybe she won’t even come to the reunion. Maybe I’ll relapse and be dead.

  I don’t know.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  renew: to make new again; to restore to freshness, perfection, or vigor; to give new life to; to rejuvenate

  Leaves are falling, and I decide to go for a walk when I get home from my first class at the branch, a nutrition class that should transfer easily if I decide to take Vencella up on the scholarship that still stands and finish my physical education degree.

  I’m allowed to drive myself places now, and I have a phone. Mom has the passcode to open it and I know she checks my location occasionally because last week she texted me asking if everything was okay when I stopped to get gas without alerting her ahead of time. It’s annoying, and sometimes we fight about it. Mostly though, I get it. Trust has to be earned, and I’m trying.