Life of the Party

by Christine Anderson

  I squeezed my hand shut. I felt better knowing that relief was near, that soon the bliss would find me and have its way. My veins were slow to pop. I clenched and re-clenched my fist until one was near enough to the surface. Then, slowly, compensating for the shakiness of my hands, I plunged the needle into my skin.

  “You okay honey? I’ve got some Gravol here if you ….” The door began to open. I realized with horror that in my haste, I had forgotten to lock the door.

  “No, Mom! No, get out!” I screamed. But it was too late. The door was open. Mom looked confused at first when she found me leaning over the sink, my supplies scattered around me. And then comprehension hit when she saw the needle sticking out of my arm. Her blue eyes opened in fright, her mouth dropped but no words came. She pointed at me in terror.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice, whisper thin at first, gradually gained back its strength. “Mackenzie, what are you doing to yourself?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I had no excuse, no lie to tell. I stared at her, my dark eyes wide, like a deer caught in the headlights. I must have looked just as afraid as she did.

  “Answer me, young lady! What are you doing to yourself?”

  “Everything okay, Deb?” Dad’s voice floated up the hall, tight with concern.

  “No, no, everything is not okay.” Mom’s voice started to shake; I recognized the noise. She was on the verge of tears.

  “Mom, mom, its okay.” I don’t know why I was saying that. I knew it wasn’t okay; I just wanted her to calm down.

  “Get that thing out of your arm!” She demanded, grasping the needle from my numb fingertips and chucking it at the garbage. Her eyes were wild with despair as she looked at me, like she had never really seen me before. “Let me see you. Let me look at you.”

  “Mom, don’t!” I tried to pry my arm from her grasp but her grip was surprisingly strong. She pushed the sleeve of my sweater up until all the skin was exposed. Her face went bone-white at the sight, at the clusters of tiny red dots that covered my skin. I felt the heat in my cheeks, the warm blush of shame that spread across my face. I looked down at the floor.

  “Mitch. Mitch, look. Just look at what she’s doing to herself.” Mom’s voice held horror now, and I understood that my dad was there as well, taking in the awful sight. I dared to look up at his face.

  It was hard. Rigid, even. Colorless. He looked at me just as my mom had, like he’d never seen me before. Not before now. Now that they knew my terrible secret. I was addicted to heroin. Yes, I knew it then. There was no more denying it, no justifying it, no excusing it. I was a heroin addict. And I couldn’t hide it anymore.

  All the happiness from earlier slunk slowly from my being. Because all of it had been a lie. All of it. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me feeling happiness, acceptance. I couldn’t feel happiness, not real happiness.

  I couldn’t feel anything. Not anymore.

  “This is what you’ve been doing with yourself?” Dad’s voice was weak; there was no strength within it, none of its usual gusto. I nodded. His features hardened even further, as if he was steeling himself for what he had to do next. He shut his eyes.

  “Get out of my house.”

  It took me a second. “… What?”

  “Get out of my house. Do you hear me? I won’t have this …,” he didn’t even know what to call it, “I won’t have it in my house, Mackenzie.”

  “Dad, I’m sorry, I have to … I get sick if I don’t.”

  “I had no idea.” Mom gasped at my admission. “Oh, my baby … my baby ….” She stood nearby, wringing her hands, tears in her eyes.

  Dad’s jaw clenched. “Get out of my house!” He boomed suddenly. The harshness of his voice surprised me out of my stupor of shame, jolted me into action.

  “I’m going!” I shouted back. Tears filled my eyes, blinding me, but somehow I managed to collect my stuff, throwing my supplies into my bag and hastily zipping it up. I brushed past him and down the stairs, my arms around my stomach as it churned violently within me.

  Grey was as pale as a ghost as I came back into the living room. I was out and out sobbing by then, tears streaming down my face. Nausea clutched at my stomach.

  “Holy shit, Mackenzie, are you okay?” He stood and came before me, looking into my face. “Are you all right?”

  I wondered what I must look like. Grey seemed really alarmed. “We’ve gotta go.” I answered through my tears. Marcy and Greg just stared, frozen in place, their eyes wide with confusion as they watched us. I wasn’t going to explain anything to them. They’d know soon enough. I grabbed the key to my car and the journal Marcy had given me. Grey found his coat in the hall closet and was back to me in an instant. He put an arm around my shoulders and helped me walk to the garage through the crippling pain.

  “It’s okay, sugar. We’ll be home in no time.” His voice was oddly panicked as he hit the garage door opener and helped me into the passenger seat of my car, then ran swiftly to the driver’s side and starting the engine. I curled up into a ball in my seat, tighter than the fetal position, wrapping my arms around my knees and sobbing as if my very heart were broken.

  Because it had been, in a way. I didn’t know how to describe it, I still don’t know how exactly, but it was just like … complete betrayal. I’d been lying to myself the entire time. It was the closest I’d ever come to actually experiencing the whole big-happy-family scenario. But all of it had been a lie. All the love, all the acceptance, all of it had been broken by my secret. I hadn’t really been happy. I couldn’t be happy. I wasn’t capable of being happy. Not without the drugs.

  Through it all, my craving growled in protest, famished, flaring with need. Screaming in my ear. More important than the rest. More important than anything.

  “Its okay, Mackenzie.” Grey was nearly desperate, listening to me sob. “We’re almost home. They’ll forgive you, they will.”

  “They won’t,” I cried. “They won’t. And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault ….”

  CHAPTER 55

  By the time we made it back to our room, I was calmer. My breath still hitched in my throat, but it was nothing like the racking, heart wrenching sobs that had broken from my body. I watched Grey, sniffling and trying to catch my breath as he hurriedly broke open a red rubber balloon and took a large chunk from the tarry substance inside. I was desperate for the heroin. Sick and getting sicker by the minute. Grey’s features were tense as he worked, determined. I noticed he took enough for both of us.

  “Are you okay, Mackenzie?” He asked worriedly, looking up from his actions just long enough to assess my expression. I knew I must’ve looked terrible, I probably had mascara running all the way to my chin, but he seemed relieved by whatever he saw there.

  “Yeah,” my voice was still hoarse from crying. I held my arms around myself to try and keep the nausea at bay. “I’m okay.”

  “That was pretty intense.” He let out a breath, as if he’d been holding it this whole time. “What do you think your parents will do now?”

  Inwardly, I cringed. I didn’t want to think about them. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw again the look of utter revulsion on my dad’s face … the deep, aching disappointment in my mom’s gaze. I shook my head free from the vision.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “They’ll probably do what they always do. Nothing.”

  “They wouldn’t like, call the cops on you, would they?”

  “No.” I adamantly refused the idea. “No. Are you kidding? Think of what their friends would say. No, with my parents, its more … lets just pretend this didn’t happen. Let’s just sweep this under the rug.”

  Grey nodded. “I thought it might be something like that.”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t want to think about them anymore. I tried not to remember how good our day together had been, how loved and accepted I’d felt, before …. We sat in silence a moment as Grey struck the lighter beneath the spoon. I watched him eagerly. I knew that none of this would matter in a few seco
nds, that the whole scene would seem like a far off, distant nightmare. One that held no threat, one I could think about again without it scaring me anymore.

  “I’m sorry I lost it.” I apologized, biting my lip. Sweat was beading on my brow. “I don’t know what came over me. Talk about dramatic.” I tried to smile at my ridiculousness, tried to seem light-hearted for him. It came out as a grimace.

  “It’s okay. I mean, you freaked me out a little … but I understand.” Grey looked up at me with avid concern, his blue eyes penetrating my gaze. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I am. I am okay.” I assured him. “Seriously. I just need to get high.”

  “Yeah, I know, but ….” He sighed again “… maybe we should think about getting off the drugs. For real this time.”

  “Yeah.” I agreed easily. “Sure.” But the words held no threat to me. That’s all they were, just words, and we both knew it. Just more empty promises. We couldn’t have quit the heroin then, even if we wanted to. I couldn’t anyway. I needed it. I needed it because I was afraid to be sober, afraid to face everything that had happened and what I had become.

  I needed it to cover up the little piece of me that died the moment my mother opened up the bathroom door. It was my problem. It was my solution.

  Wordlessly, Grey seemed to understand.

  Once the needle plunged into my vein everything was good again, just like I knew it would be. Then I was on my back, floating on a sea of sweetness, where nothing could touch me but the strong, warm sun on my face. I knew I should be upset; I knew I should feel sad, but with the heroin fresh in my veins, racing through them, erasing all the negativity, it was all too easy to forget.

  Maybe Grey needed it too. He never left me once to shoot up alone, and whenever I’d sober up enough to hold my arm out for more, it wasn’t long before he joined me again. We lived in a slackened state of total peace upon his bed.

  We stayed that way for a long, long time.

  “Mackenzie?” There was a soft rap on the door. “Hey, Mac, are you up?”

  “Hmmm ….” I moaned into the mattress. “What?” I croaked, opening my bleary eyes and squinting at the door. It was Alex, looking apologetic. His voice dropped to a whisper.

  “There’s someone here to see you. Some Riley guy?”

  Riley? Riley? Riley was here …? Oh, right. It was the holidays. Riley would be on his vacation right now, he would have come home to see his mom, just like the good son that he was. Vaguely I remembered our graduation—it seemed like ages ago when Riley promised to come and visit me whenever he was back in town. And if I was still alive, he had joked. Was I still alive? I wondered, a wry smile on my lips. Not really. I was too deadened to even register surprise that he had come to see me, and my answer didn’t require any thought. There was no way I could see Riley, not now. I sunk my face back into the mattress, relieved when all I felt was … nothing. I felt nothing—no sadness, no loneliness, no regret. I hadn’t even thought of Riley in months. I shut my eyes again, at peace with my decision.

  “I don’t want to see him, Alex. Tell him to go away.”

  “You’re the boss.” He saluted me, and that was that.

  But Riley didn’t go quietly. He came to see me the next day as well. Grey was just about to ease the needle into my arm when Zack knocked on our door this time, interrupting us.

  “There’s a Riley at the door.” He motioned with his thumb.

  I shook my head adamantly, refusing to even entertain the idea. “No. I don’t want to see him, Zack. Tell him I’m sleeping or something.”

  Grey eyed me quizzically, but I think my response secretly pleased him. He raised an eyebrow at me.

  “We can wait, Mackenzie, if you want to go see him.”

  “No, we can’t wait. And I don’t want to see him.”

  “Okay. I’ll get rid of the guy.” Zack promised. Grey frowned at me as soon as the door had shut behind him.

  “Not that I mind … but what was that about?”

  “What?” I asked impatiently. I was antsy—eyeing the needle in Grey’s hand, wishing it was in my arm.

  “You haven’t seen Riley in months. Why don’t you want to now?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got nothing to say to him.” I lied. I couldn’t tell Grey the truth. I couldn’t tell him how hard it would be, to see Riley, to have him laugh and smile and talk to me before he ultimately left me and then went back to his real life. I had no coping skills for that. I had no coping skills at all.

  Nothing but the needle.

  But the next day when Riley came, I was all alone. Zack and Alex and Grey had gone into the city to get some more dope. I was actually up and out of bed, shakily standing in the kitchen in plaid pyjama pants and my Blondie t-shirt, forcing down some Honeycombs. The cereal made me nauseous, but I knew I had to eat something. I couldn’t remember the last time anything had been chewed by my teeth and swallowed by my throat. Lately they’d only been used for vomiting.

  As I stood there idly, I caught a reflection of myself in the microwave. The sight actually staggered me. I stopped. I nearly dropped my bowl of cereal. I gasped and took a step closer to the reflection, raising my hand to my cheekbone and touching it gingerly. It looked sunken into my face. Clumps of my dark hair were matted around my head—dreaded, tangled. The skin under my eyes was dark and purplish; my lips were pale and dry. I looked like a ghost. Like I should be haunting people. I stared at myself for a long moment, horrified. How long had I been binging for? How long had I looked like this?

  And that was when Riley knocked on the door.

  I crumpled to the floor, hiding myself from his view behind the kitchen island. I sat a moment, my eyes wide, listening and waiting—hoping, praying that Riley would just give up, that he’d just go away. It made me angry, his determination.

  And then he knocked again.

  “Mackenzie.” Riley called. He voice rocked through me, with warmth and familiarity and comfort and a long lost feeling of … security … almost. His voice felt like home. And at that instant I was pained—heartbroken that he was so close, just on the other side of the door, but there was no way I could see him. Not now. He just couldn’t see me like this, I wouldn’t let him. I leaned my head back against the cabinet and steeled myself against the tears that threatened.

  He knocked again. With sudden horror, it occurred to me that the front door might not be locked. And if it wasn’t, there was nothing to stop him from just walking into the house. Walking in and discovering me there on the floor, looking like road kill. For a moment, I wondered if I could play dead. I looked like I was dead. Maybe it’d be enough for him to leave me alone.

  I pushed the thought from my mind, bit my lip and slowly crawled across the kitchen floor, as stealthily as I could. Luckily, the blinds were down on the window and he couldn’t see me as I slowly sidled up to the door. Crouching there, I lifted my arm and deliberately turned the knob on the padlock.

  It clicked just a little too loudly. Riley started.

  “Mackenzie?” He rapped again. “Mackenzie, I know you’re in there. I know you can hear me. Open the door!”

  I shook my head in silence, dropping my head into my hands. He was so close to me; only literal inches of metal separated us. I could hear his feet shuffling on the front step, could hear the hesitation in them.

  “Mackenzie.” His voice sounded choked. “Mackenzie, please?”

  Tears smarted in my eyes again at the sincere concern deeply apparent in his all too familiar voice. I pressed my palm against the door, as if I could steal some of his comfort through the cold metal, and shook my head again. I can’t, I mouthed in silence. I can’t Riley. Just go away. Go away. Forget about me. Have a good life.

  He sighed. I could hear him rubbing his hands in the cold. Then, after a few tense, silent moments, finally I heard the sound of his boots slowly crunching away on the snow. His step was heavy, defeated. I didn’t relax until I heard his car start and pull out onto the road. I got up
then, woodenly, and walked straight into the bathroom.

  I got in the shower and washed my hair. I was numb, physically and mentally devoid of any kind of feeling. I let the hot spray pound in my face. I washed my hair again, using extra conditioner to try and detangle the clumpy, knotty mess. I felt blank, empty. I began to shave my legs. Swiping the razor too quickly, I nicked my knee, starting at the quick burst of pain and watching as the watery blood trickled down into the tub. But I felt it. And it felt … good. Inspired, I took the razor firmly in my grasp, sucked my breath in, and dragged it slowly across the forearm of my left hand. It hurt. Blood flowed down my wrist. But it made me smile. The pain was sweet. I shut my eyes with pleasure, letting out a shaky breath of relief. Here was the release I needed, the release I’d been craving. I felt something again.

  I opened my eyes, and now they were gleaming.

  CHAPTER 56

  “Do you have to go?” I looked up at Grey hopefully. Damn, he was so gorgeous. It was impossible not to feel good, at the moment, with the liquid heroin dancing deep within my blood stream. I couldn’t help but feel content.

  He chuckled at me, rubbing remnants from the cocaine he’d just done across his gums. “Sorry, sugar. We have to play tonight, and I haven’t practiced in …,” he flexed his stiff fingers, “way too long.”

  “Ohhh …,” I moaned. We both had to work that night. The Aurora was re-opening after the Christmas break with its annual New Years Eve party. Apparently it was a huge event, bringing in crowds of people every year. Grey’s band was slated to play and I was going to be stationed in the bar. Walter had trained me to work there himself, as quickly and abruptly as he did everything else—but I actually found that I liked it. It was easier to bartend than to try and squeeze through the drunken throng, carrying a tray and trying not to get stepped on. It was harried and chaotic behind the bar, remembering recipes and shooter mixes and trying to keep up with the orders being screamed at me. But I always liked a challenge.