by James, Ella
I check my phone before I get back close to Nate and Co. It’s been more than twelve hours, and he doesn’t seem like he has a concussion. I don’t think a little Maker’s Mark would kill him. And it might keep the little bitch from being sad about not skiing at the fireworks with Alana.
I wait for Makis and Farhad to clear out—Farhad, especially, is a gossipy motherfucker—before I slip Nate the bottle. I could get busted for this, but his dumb face looking all happy makes it worthwhile.
“Cover it with cologne, man.” I pull a bottle from my pocket, and Alfonzo laughs his ass off like a fucking hyena.
“You’re just jealous because that chick you tried to hit on yesterday turned out to be the new Spanish instructor.”
He shakes his head. “Boy be smelling like some Christian Dior.”
“Shut up.”
“Trying to impress that little—what’s her name, Nathan, the little Finnish chick he likes?”
“Milla.” Nate is smiling as he swallows the bourbon behind his hand.
I feel my neck get warm and want to strangle Alf. “It’s not for Milla.”
“Sure it’s not.”
“I brought it for Nate here.”
Nate winks at me, and I roll my eyes. “Okay, gossip queens. I’m gonna peace out, catch some powder.”
The slopes at night are probably my favorite part of our annual winter mini-mester at Pontresina. I like them almost as much as being home with Dad for Christmas. Even Christmases like this one, where I had to go to SoHo and see Mom and babysit her other kids on Christmas Eve while she went to a party with Rich.
Funny that I’m thinking of her as I ride the lift. My phone vibrates, and I dig it out to find a text from her.
happy new years declan
I frown down at it as snow kisses my forehead and catches in my lashes. Strange. No punctuation. As I squint down at the screen, another message comes up.
when I left when you were five, it wasn’t because of you it was because of me. I wanted to be sure you know.
I stand up at the top of the slope, in the shadow of the lift shelter, and peer down at the little greenish screen for a few minutes.
Happy New Year, Mom. It’s okay.
My breath clouds things up, so I have to hold the phone out as I decide what to add—if anything. I like the sound of what I have, though. It’s short, but it gets the point across.
When I glide out from behind the shelter, there’s Milla. Her blonde hair glows in the lantern light. Her snowsuit is Caribbean blue. She’s standing with a friend in a pink suit, and when I wave, they both turn and smile.
Thank you, gods of New Year’s.
We ski till almost 3 AM, and I refill Nate one more time just after midnight. By 1 o’clock, Alana is drinking hot cocoa underneath a blanket beside him. When I walk by, on my way to the john, I wink, and they both turn red.
Get it, Nate!
My night ends in the hall to the girls’ rooms, with Milla hugged up to my chest and her friend, Hallie, wearing Alf’s jacket.
Not a bad start to the new year. Not too bad at all.
I’m in bed with a pocket bottle of bourbon under my pillow and a popping fire in the fireplace beside me when someone knocks on my door. I roll over, not bothering to get up for some dumb shit in the hall.
The knock comes again. I look at the skylights, striped between the ceiling’s rafters. It’s still dark.
Again, the knock. It’s more insistent now, so I sit up, thinking that it might be Nate. We share a bathroom back at main Carogue, but here we each have our own.
“Who is it?” I call as I jerk on boxers.
The knock comes harder this time. I forego pants and hurry over to it.
“Nate?”
I open the door, and there is…Mr. Laurent? He’s holding a glass of what smells like liquor. He smiles when he sees me, but the smile is like the first clip of a film reel of an accident. I can almost see it slide off his face in the second right before it does.
“What’s wrong?” The words are barely whispered.
“I apologize for the odd hour.” He looks over my shoulder. “Let’s have a seat.”
I shake my head. I try to get a deep breath, but I can’t.
“What’s wrong?”
“Come.” He takes my arm and leads me over to my room’s couches. “Sit.”
I do, because my legs feel strange and heavy.
“Declan. I’m afraid I’ve got some difficult news…” He leans slightly forward, and something in my chest catches.
* * *
“Declan! Please…wake up!” I hear her crying—Siren. Something’s wrong. I can’t remember…but I have to check on her.
I pry open my eyes to find her bending over me. I feel…really fucking shitty. Fuck, dude. I want to reach up for her, but everything hurts…like my joints. I don’t know if I can.
She sees my face and bends down, kinda hugging me against her.
“You smell good.” My voice sounds weird and raspy. I don’t like how bad I’m shaking.
“Oh, Declan.” Her hand feels good on my face. “What were you dreaming?”
“I don’t know.”
She asks me something else, but I can’t track it. I can’t even keep my eyes open.
Chapter Seventeen
Finley
For the remainder of that awful day, he barely moves and rarely speaks. When he moves, he’s stiff and shaky. When he speaks, his voice is groaned or tight with pain. His face is pale and slack, his blue eyes glazed and heavy-lidded. He shivers constantly and sweats so much, I fear he’s contagious and we’ll both die with it—underground, here in the darkness.
And yet…I can’t keep away. When his fists are clenched, I stroke his hair and he relaxes. When he’s rubbing at his forehead, I massage his pressure points—which makes him moan with what I pray is pleasure. Whatever feels good, that’s my focus: fingers through his hair, my nails over his goosebumped skin. I swing the hammer in between, and when I need to sleep, I lie beside him, curling near his warm body as if we’re not strangers.
I stroke his trembling, calloused hands and whisper to him. He mumbles in return. It’s all nonsense. Once, he asks me for a napkin. Sometime a bit later, he’s speaking to someone named Nate quite emotionally. His voice cracks, and I wrap my arms around him. He presses me to his chest.
“Siren,” he moans softly. He inhales near my hair.
“I’m here with you.”
When he seems more restful, I hammer the cave’s wall like a madwoman, exposing perhaps another eight inches of our boulder.
I’m smiling at my progress when I glance at the pallet and find it empty. I turn a bit more and find him standing directly behind me, shaking like a blade of grass in a gale. He looks wild-eyed and exhausted, his hair sticking up comically.
My belly tightens. “Hi there,” I murmur, stepping slowly toward him. “You got up quite stealthy.”
“I’ll be back.” His voice is flat and hoarse as he looks past me, toward the scattered rubble pile. I watch as he disappears behind it. When he emerges, dazed about the eyes but still upright, I feel a crest of relief.
“Let me help you to the blankets.”
I take his arm. He doesn’t protest as I help him to the pallet, spread my sleeping bag back over him. I kneel there beside him, and he looks at me with tired eyes.
“How are you, Carnegie?”
His hand closes around my wrist, his fingers caressing my inner arm. “Soft,” he murmurs.
Warmth spreads through me.
“I’ll be better soon. Another day.”
I feel a bite of horror at the notion—even one more day here is too much—but I don’t show him that. “I’m making good progress without you—more and more rock falling.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’ll be better soon, as you said.”
“I just…can’t sleep.” The words are whispered. Hoarse.
“What would help you?” I whisper in return.
>
He shakes his head, his mouth tight, and I feel near ill with sorrow for him. With my lower lip between my teeth, I lie beside him. Then, making a bit of a gamble, I wrap an arm gently across his chest. I feel his breath hitch, then a tremble.
“I’m not good…at getting off stuff,” he says in a creaky voice.
I snuggle closer. “What do you mean, darling?”
“Subs aren’t that bad. Makes me achy.” He winces, one hand going to his forehead. “It’s the benzos, I think.”
“Is it?”
He nods.
“Two years is too long.” His voice cracks on the words; then his mouth pulls taut, and I can see emotion quiver through his features.
“For what?”
“To be like this.”
I’ve no clue what he’s saying; it’s all nonsense. I lean my head against his shoulder. “Why would you be…that way for two years?” I murmur.
“Because it’s been so long.”
“What’s been long?” I ask, my voice soft and, I hope, hypnotic.
His eyes open, and he regards me strangely for a moment. “What did I just say?” His voice is rough and harder now, his body tensing beneath mine. His tired eyes look a bit delirious.
“You said it’s been so long.”
“What has?” He frowns.
“Benzos.”
At that word, his face goes to stone. When he speaks, his voice is strong and steady, making him sound nearly like his old self. “What did I say about benzos?”
“You said benzos made you messed up for two years.”
The look of shock he gives me is so startling, I look over my shoulder. He sits up. He holds his head and starts to breathe hard again.
Worry spikes through me. “Declan…what are benzos?”
He takes a few breaths—fast and heavy.
“It’s okay.” I rub the blanket. “Lie back down. I’m tired, too. I want to lie beside you.”
“Did you say…I had a seizure?” His brows cinch slightly as his gaze finds mine. I’m startled to find he looks truly confused.
“Yes. But that was yesterday.”
He looks around, and I can tell for sure he is.
“You’ve been poorly since then. How do you feel?”
He shakes his head, his eyes down on the blanket as his fingers tug at his hair. “You should keep on digging, Finley.”
“Why?” My tone is slightly sharp, because there’s something sharp and fearful lodged beneath my throat.
He shakes his head. I lean toward him, wanting just to get my arms around him as I’ve done so often in the last day. As I near him, he leans away. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
He looks skeptical, and I feel like a fool. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t,” I whisper, drawing my knees to my chest.
“Won’t what?” he asks.
“Won’t touch you.”
“Why would you touch me?”
I inhale slowly. Now I’m confused as well. “Because…we’re here together.”
“Did you fuck me?”
The breath leaves me like I’ve been hit in the stomach. “Why would you say such thing?”
He shakes his head and then he’s up, stalking toward the stream. I find him standing by it, trembling wildly. I brush his arm with my fingers, wanting to take his hand but too afraid to.
“Sailor…please come lie beside me. I’m so tired, and tired of being here.” My voice cracks at the sheer truth of it.
He looks at me bleakly. “I don’t think you want me near you.”
“You’re contagious?” I swallow. “Is that it?”
He frowns down at me. I can feel dissatisfaction coming from him, but I don’t know what I did to earn it. Finally, in a hard tone, he says, “Do you know why I’m here?”
My pulse quickens. “Would you like to tell me?”
His hand closes around my arm as his eyes shut. “I can’t.”
“You can and should. So I can take good care of you.”
I step in closer, caress his face with my gaze before I dare to wrap my arms around his waist. I lay my cheek against his warm chest. His arms close around my shoulders. I can feel him take in two breaths—shallow, fast.
“Finley…you can’t get what I have.” All his muscles tighten as he exhales. “I’m an addict.”
Chapter Eighteen
Finley
“I don’t understand.” Perhaps I do, a bit, but my mouth runs away with me as I look up at his face. “An addict, meaning—”
“Addict. Junkie. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes, of course.” I flinch at his hard tone, and I feel his body stiffen against mine. I lower my arms to my sides and look up at him.
“I’m afraid I—I can’t imagine you…as that. You’re so—” What I want to say is, he’s so handsome. He looks strong and healthy. “Sensible” is what I stammer instead. “Smart,” I add. “And you’re…well, you’re Homer Carnegie. How can that be true?”
I watch his jaw tighten, his nostrils flaring slightly as he inhales. His eyes close on the exhale.
“That’s why you’re here? To dry out? Or the equivalent?”
He nods once.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He rubs his forehead, his face angled toward the ground. “Figured we’d be out in time.”
In time…for what? “To avoid withdrawal?”
His hand covers his face, though I see his lips; I see them twist as he bites his cheek. “I was tapering. That night you came in…I was fucking stupid. I had everything in that one bottle.” He sighs softly. “And I dropped it in the tub.”
My mouth opens. “That’s what you were doing with the water. You jumped up and…” I can see him in my memory, which makes my cheeks warm. “You were tapering your dosage, to decrease…to quit. Therefore you had brought some along. And...was it all ruined?”
He nods, his gaze meeting mine for one small moment before dipping back down to the ground.
“That’s what you were at the clinic for, the time I saw you in the street?”
He exhales. “I was going to ask the doctor. But I saw you.” His mouth tugs up a bit on one side, revealing his dimple.
“Oh, Declan. And I suppose that’s why you offered to help with the herding? To butter me up?”
He rubs his head, and then gives me a guilty look.
“Well, that backfired quite spectacularly.”
He angles himself slightly away from me, and I sense more than hear him take a long breath.
After that, he sits down. I can feel it—him turning away from me. He got the secret out, and now he’s feeling…bare. Perhaps ashamed.
“You could feel the seizure coming.” I’m thinking aloud. “That’s why you went at the rocks that way. It wasn’t out of temper.”
“No—it was.” He sighs.
I stand over him for a moment before sitting by him on the cave’s floor.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper.
His hand is on his knee. I see it trembling and move to put mine over it. That’s when he turns himself away. And there’s a choice for me to make. If I’m brave enough to touch him. But it’s not a choice. From behind him, I wrap my arms around him.
* * *
Declan
If there was one thing I could change, it would be the shaking. I hate the unsteadiness. The Red Sox hate it worse. Since my last detox—Alaska in November 2016—I’ve never quite come off the Valium. When I cut below a certain point, my hands just…shake. And I can’t throw. We tried some other stuff, but nothing stops the shaking. My fingers sweat and I can’t focus. Even months after.
The rehab before that—Connecticut in spring 2015—I cut everything and got completely “clean”…and nearly lost my starting job to fucking twitchiness and paranoia. So the board covered for me. Not the whole board…mostly just the chair. We worked together with a few others from the club to game “random” screenings. They weren’t frequent anyway, becaus
e the league had never really known. Before my draft, some people whispered, but it never was substantiated. Mostly due to school being in Switzerland. I never did rehab in college, stateside. Not a quitter.
I can’t tell if Finley heard me when I whispered, “Please don’t.” She doesn’t let go of me. I can’t stand her touching me right now. I stand up, forcing her arms off me, and she stands, too, looking like I just killed her kitten.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs.
“It’s fine.”
It’s not. Even my voice shakes. As I walk back to the sleeping bag, I hear this static kind of thing, like several voices talking at once. Spooky shit like that has always been a problem for me when I try to get off benzos. Makes my heart beat triple-time, and my head throbs so badly that I’m pretty sure I’m going to get sick again.
Thank God, I hold that shit off.
She doesn’t know how much I hate the blankets. Hate the softness of them. Hate the air without them. How I hate it on my side and on my back and on my chest. Everything…so uncomfortable and just…miserable. The way that feeling wraps around your soul. There’s no way for anyone to understand who hasn’t been here. I feel like I can’t take it, but I can’t will my heart to stop, so I just pull my hair. It’s something I can do that won’t scare her.
If I was at home…needles. Any needle does it. Rated PG, baby—no syringe required. I just need the bite to fake myself out. For a second after spiking something pretend, I can feel a little bit of relief.
I have a trail of sharp, white knife scars down the inside of my thighs. Before I started spiking shit, before it was about the needle, I’d come down from something snorted or swallowed and need something to…lift me. Lying here, I’ve thought of that; I could get a sharp stone.
But…Finley.
I don’t want to scare her. I don’t want her knowing…any of it. I have never wanted anyone to know. I got in trouble a few times at Carogue—shipped off once, my last year there—but all the other times, I detoxed in my room. Coke and pills and even Xanny back then—it was easy to come off it.