by S. R. Grey
I picked at a hole in my jeans. “Do I have a choice?” I asked, defeated, and, truthfully, feeling like I’d just been set adrift.
She shook her head no.
I’d known it was coming, but her words still flayed me up the middle and pierced my already damaged heart. I was shocked that my heart could continue beating, since it felt all smashed to hell. But beat it did. In fact, my heart pumped faster and faster, like it was going to burst right out of my fucking chest. Whether my reaction was from cocaine…or despair…I couldn’t quite figure.
With my heart pounding like a sped-up death knell, I tried to push some words out of my cotton-dry mouth. “Mom…” I croaked, my voice catching.
I just couldn’t finish.
Verbal communication failed me, so I tried to meet her eyes, speak to her soul. Was this really what she wanted? Send her eldest son away? Give up on me? Just like Dad did with all of us.
I searched and searched, but my mother had no answers in her big green eyes, no more than the stone angel had at my father’s grave.
Abby took in a stuttered breath and turned away. She swiped at a tear. “It’s for the best, Chase,” she mumbled.
And then she left me sitting there, all alone, warm air blowing across the back of my neck.
I went back to my room and cut up three more lines.
That was nearly two years ago and here I am. Mom is still in Las Vegas with Will, on steady boyfriend number six, last I heard. She’s still chasing the elusive jackpot too, hoping to recapture the life she once knew.
Good luck with that, I think bitterly. Jackpot, my ass. If anyone needs to hit a fucking jackpot, it’s me.
Suddenly, drug-induced visions of flashing pots of gold swim lazily into my head, along with some break-dancing leprechauns, and I can’t help but chuckle.
Tate looks over. He must think my mood has improved, ’cause he starts talking all excitedly about how much money we’re going to make from our new business venture with Kyle. I listen to his voice, not really hearing any words, but then the cell buzzes and I am alert, very alert.
Tate tosses it my way. “That there would be the ladies,” he says—all smooth like—as I catch the cell with one hand. Even impaired, my coordination is impeccable.
“Ladies, my ass.” I roll my eyes.
Tate laughs, knowing as well as I do that the two girls we’re meeting up with tonight are no ladies. They’re looking for the same thing we are, but therein lies the beauty.
“What’s it say?” he asks, nodding to the cell.
The text is kind of blurry, but, then again, everything is. I blink a few times and my vision clears. When I read it out loud, I mimic a high-pitched girl’s voice, just to be an ass. “Crystal and I are almost at the lake. Come prepared. Tammy. Laugh out loud, winking smiley face.”
“Dude-e-e.” Tate shoots me a knowing sidelong glance. “You know what come prepared means, right? You got that covered, yeah?”
As reckless as I am—and that’s pretty fucking reckless—I always make sure I wrap my shit up. Better safe than sorry. But as I feel around in the pockets of my jeans I realize I’ve left the condoms at home. “Fuck,” I mutter.
The blue Welcome to Pennsylvania sign looms ahead, our headlights flashing off the reflective letters.
Tate asks, “What?”
I rake my fingers through my hair. “I forgot the goddamn things at home.”
“Not a problem. We’ll just stop at the convenience store across the state line.”
“Bad idea,” I counter. “Cops are always hanging out in there. You think they won’t notice how fucked up we are?”
“How fucked up you are,” Tate corrects, laughing. “I didn’t smoke nearly as much as you.”
“You smoked plenty,” I mumble under my breath.
But Tate is right, I smoked more. And Tate smoked only weed. Plus, my friend didn’t see the pills Kyle slipped me before we left.
Still, I nod to the almost-empty bottle. “You pretty much drank that whole thing, dickhead. You’ll never pass a field sobriety test.”
“Yeah, but I don’t plan on taking one, my friend. And, I hide it better than you.” He shrugs. “Trust me, I got it covered. Just wait in the car. It’ll only take a sec.”
Tate’s always confident like this. He can talk anyone into just about anything. I always tell him he’s a natural-born salesman. Maybe if we ever get our shit together he can do something legit using his smooth ways. It’s cool, it’s Tate’s thing, and it helps make him popular. He’s an okay-looking guy—brown hair, brown eyes, kind of skinny—but it’s his smooth talk that gets him in with the girls. They eat that shit up.
We cross the state line, turn into the convenience store. No cop cars. “See, we’re good,” Tate says, still as confident as ever.
I flip up my black hoodie hood and slouch down in my seat. “Just be quick,” I mumble.
Tate hesitates, and I know something is up. “What the fuck are you waiting for?” I ask.
He begins his sentence with “Don’t be pissed—” and I cut him off right away, hoping I won’t have to kick my good friend’s skinny ass. It would be a damn shame really, since Tate wouldn’t stand a chance against the likes of me. I am way bigger and far stronger, and the rage within me has no match.
“What?” I spit out, clenching my jaw.
Tate ignores my attitude; he’s used to it. “I kind of need you to hold on to something while I go in there. Just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
I am running out of patience. I scrub my hand down my face, wary to hear what Tate the salesman is up to now.
He smirks, and I tell him to knock that shit off, save it for the “ladies.”
“Okay, okay.” He raises his hands in mock surrender. “I may have kind of asked Kyle to give us a little something to get our entrepreneurial gig started.”
“Us?” I say, feeling the anger rise up. “You didn’t even know I was going to sell with you until about ten minutes ago.”
“What can I say, man.” Tate places his hand over his heart. “I had faith.”
“Whatever.”
I try to stay pissed, because what he did was really out of line, but my anger fades fast. High as I am, these strong emotions are too fucking slippery to hold on to for very long.
Tate hands me a plastic packet filled with little pills, a rainbow of color. “Jesus.” I know all too well exactly what this shit is. “X? You’re fucking higher than I thought. We’re supposed to start small, bitch. Move a little bud, see how it goes.”
Tate shrugs. “We’ll make more money this way. Like, I know we can sell to the girls tonight. Hell, I bet we can talk them into buying our hits.”
He’s laughing at his own ingenuity, but I ignore him. I’m too busy trying to count the pills in the packet. But being in the condition I am in, it’s a bit of a challenge.
“How much is this anyway?” I ask, giving up on figuring it out for myself.
“Twenty hits,” he tells me, and then he has the balls to throw another packet in my lap. “Make that forty…maybe a little more.”
“You’re fucking crazy. If we get caught, Tate, this isn’t possession. This is possession with intent to sell.”
“That’s why I’m leaving the shit here with you.”
“Oh, that’s real fucking cool.” Back to being pissed, even my high can’t calm me now. I whip one of the packets back at Tate. “I am so not getting caught with forty hits of Ecstasy, asshole.”
“Calm down, man.” He gingerly picks up the packet I’ve just thrown and holds it out for me to take back. “If a cop shows up just hit the road.”
“What about you?” I ask as I grudgingly accept the X.
Tate grins. “Don’t worry about me. You know I can play it cool. Just swing by after the heat’s gone, and we’ll be back in business.”
“The heat? What is this, the seventies?” I ask, laughing, but Tate’s already out the door.
I tuck the tw
o packets of Ecstasy into the back pocket of my jeans and think nothing more of it. Until a few short minutes later when a state cop pulls into the lot. Then, I panic.
I start climbing over the console to get the fuck out of there, but, suddenly, with every fiber of my being, I know I’ve just made the dumbest mistake of my life. That, however, doesn’t stop me from slipping down into the driver’s seat, throwing the car into reverse. I hit the gas, peel out of the parking lot, and leave a cloud of gravel and dust in my wake.
I’ve got the Focus up to eighty, music playing…loud, loud, fucking blaring. Maybe I can outrun this cocksucker? I’m tapping my hands on the steering wheel along with the beat, flying so fast it’s amazing I don’t lose control and crash.
But I don’t, I stay steady.
I even make it a good five miles down the road before a cop heading my way—backup, I’m sure—screeches to a wide arced stop in front of me. His patrol car blocks the entire road, so I have no choice but to hit the brakes and squeal to a halt.
My car ends up parallel to the cop car, both of us straddling the lanes, engines idling like we’re in some fucking action movie. The air reeks of burning rubber, and smoke billows around us. The speakers beat out a song from 50 Cent that is frankly ironic at this point.
When all the smoke clears, the sign for the lake is right smack dab in front of me. I can’t help but laugh. The shit situation I’m in, and all I can think of is that Crystal and Tammy are out there, waiting, for two boys who are never going to show.
Two more cops—including the one from the store—pull up behind me. I pitch the door open, tumble from the seat. I hit the warm pavement and try to stand. Someone yells, “Hold it right there, hands on your head.”
I hear guns being drawn, cocked. This isn’t a movie, I know they’re loaded. I squint to try to see what’s happening, but all the flashing lights leave me blinded. Before I can think another drug-muddled thought, someone tackles me from behind. My face smacks right into the yellow center line, but I don’t feel a fucking thing.
Whoever tackles me yanks down my hood, frisks me, and comes up with my wallet. Oh, and the forty hits of X, of course.
It’s all ambient noise from that point on, but I do hear, “Chase Gartner, you’re under arrest.”
I have no idea that, despite the altered state I’m in, these will be the last coherent words I remember for a very long time.
The time following has no sense of structure. Days, weeks, they all blend together. I’m in jail, facing a long, long list of charges. But it’s the X that has me fucked.
Bond is set high. I call my mom, but all she does is cry. Like, these horrible wailing sobs that do nothing but make my head ache more than ever. She keeps apologizing for not having the money and swears she’ll help me when she can. I hang up. I won’t be holding my breath. The past has taught me not to put too much stock into Abby’s flimsy promises. Mirages in the desert are what they are—get too close and they disappear.
My grandmother wants to mortgage the farmhouse, all the property around it. We’re talking a good fifty-five acres. It’d be enough to make bail, but I tell her no way. She’s done enough for me already, and look at how I’ve repaid her. I don’t deserve her money…or her love.
So I’m on my own. And not thinking very clearly. Once all the illegal shit is out of my system, I find myself in a constant state of agitation. I can’t sleep, I barely eat. I sweat bullets even when it feels like I’m freezing.
Eventually all that passes, but then all I want to do is fight. Like beat heads in. It’s worse than when I was back in Vegas; I feel so much more fucking rage. I sit around clenching my fists, hoping for a chance to kick some poor unsuspecting soul’s ass.
Finally, my wish is granted.
They throw a cellmate in with me and my ass is on him like an animal, beating the hell out of this never-saw-me-coming sap. But then two guards see what I’m doing, pull me off the bloodied and broken man, and promptly return the favor.
Another blur of pain.
This one, though, I welcome. The medical staff gives me plenty of drugs, legal ones this time. And still more before I am put before the judge.
Even in the sedated fog I float around in, I quickly learn the law…and some new math.
MDMA, Ecstasy—X, as I like to call it—is a schedule I narcotic, and carries as stiff a penalty as heroin if you’re caught dealing, which they naturally assume I was. Casual users don’t tote around forty-plus hits of Ecstasy, but dealers do.
I say nothing one way or the other to dispel their myth, I rat no one out. I just stay quiet and accept my fate.
My math lesson continues…
Ten pills are equal to one gram, and I’ve been caught with over forty pills. Forty pills equal four grams, which is more than enough to be charged with possession with intent to sell. But I already knew that part, right?
My lesson isn’t over though. It’s only just beginning.
I learn in Pennsylvania, the state in which I’ve been apprehended, four grams can easily earn you a prison sentence. This is especially true when you don’t have enough money to hire a good attorney. Add to that, your public defender isn’t getting paid enough to care. Not that you’re doing much to help the overworked, underpaid man do his job. And, oh yeah, don’t forget that one prior arrest for fighting last fall. It didn’t seem like much at the time, but it sure haunts your ass now.
Are you keeping up?
Some final math…
Four grams buys you a six-year sentence at a state correctional institute when you have no resources, and, really, no heart to fight it.
Twenty years of age feels like ninety when your freedom is stripped away.
It takes one hundred and forty-three steps to walk down a long, noisy corridor to reach cell block seventy-two.
And when they turn the key, you hear one life—the only one you’ve ever known up until now—ending.
“It’s all about the numbers, man,” as Tate would say.
It sure is, my friend. It sure is.
Four years later…
CHAPTER ONE
CHASE
Seventy-two push-ups on the cold hardwood floor, seventy-two sit-ups. It’s still all about the numbers, Tate, four years later. But Tate is dead, overdosed at twenty-two. He never went to prison, never spent four years of his life in cell block seventy-two like I did. Yet he threw his life away all the same.
Seventy-two pull-ups at a bar I installed in the doorway of a room long forgotten in a house I don’t deserve. Fuck, no, make that forty-nine. My ass is tired today, which is why I overslept. Damn Missy Metzger and her glitter-coated lips. Damn my lack of self-control.
Father Maridale would kick my ass all the way back across the state line if he knew what I’d done with the head of the bake committee. Head. I can’t help but laugh, because that sure does sum it up. Oh, if only the congregation of Holy Trinity Catholic Church knew how Missy spent her Saturday night. In an alley behind the Anchor Inn bar, down on her knees, worshipping my cock.
I shed the gray sweatpants I’m wearing, toss them into an overflowing laundry basket in the bathroom. Laundry, yet another thing I’ve neglected since getting out of prison. A whole month back in Harmony Creek, and I’m still adjusting to the little things a guy living alone needs to stay on top of.
Speaking of which…11:15…shit.
Mass started fifteen minutes ago. Guess I am not going to make it today. A part of me feels shame for my indiscretion with Missy last night, but that part also feels relief. I don’t have to face Missy—or her mom—both of whom sit perched every week in the front pew.
I step into the tub and adjust the shower head; turn it on full blast. The pulsing water feels good and cleansing, I just wish it had the power to wash away my latest sin. I didn’t go out looking for trouble, I truly didn’t. I’d like to think my worst days are behind me. I’m determined to lead a better life, which includes staying clean. Sure, I drink a beer or two some evenings, usuall
y while relaxing out on the porch swing in the back, watching the day fade into night while the frogs sing to each other down at the creek. But drinking is my only vice these days.
Okay, and maybe swearing. No, definitely swearing. But that’s it. Just drinking and swearing. And the drinking I keep to a minimum. Drugs? I’ve given them up completely. And I can’t remember the last time I got into a fight.
No, wait, that’s a lie. I do remember. It was two years ago in prison. And here’s what happened…
This new inmate—some skinhead who thought he was the biggest, baddest motherfucker to step into the joint—started up with me one morning in the exercise yard. He kept shooting his mouth off. That was his first mistake. The second was taking a bullshit swing at me when I laughed at his sorry ass and walked away.
Bad fucking move.
I could go into details, tell you all I did, but let’s just say when I was done with him, dickhead was begging for mercy and crying for his mother. No joke. And no real surprise. It’s been my experience the biggest talkers fall the hardest and cry the loudest.
After spending a week in the infirmary, the skinhead gave me a wide berth whenever we crossed paths. If he had to address me, it was all “yes, sir,” “no, sir,” and then he’d get the fuck out of my way. Yeah, he’d been schooled.
I was never the biggest guy in prison—even standing at six two—but I was one of the strongest, one of the toughest. And, sadly, while serving time I learned a dozen ways to really hurt a guy.
But that’s all in the past. I’m trying to change my ways, make smarter choices, be a better person. I even have a job working for the church, doing maintenance and fixing shit. I like it, it’s good for me. The work keeps me busy. And I need that kind of structure. If idle hands really are the devil’s workshop, then I’m safe for now.
I spent most of last week working on—and fixing—an air-conditioning problem in the rectory. And on Friday I sealed more than a dozen leaks plaguing the stained glass windows in the church. Maybe even more impressive—at least to me—is that I’ve gotten up and dragged my ass to Mass three Sundays in a row. It’s a personal best, and Grandma Gartner would be proud if she were here today. Sadly, she’s not.