We all hurried back into our cars and drove off, and the rush was overwhelming as I looked at Blake; he was cool as a cucumber. I knew that this was the life he loved. We drove a couple of miles down the road to check out the Ecstasy.
I’d done Ecstasy many times before then, but this night I will never forget. We were all high on cocaine and marijuana as Blake took three pills of triple-stacked Ecstasy pills, and then I took three along with Rory and Tyler. That was the night I probably should have died. What would my mother have thought of me? was all I could think of. I didn’t want to take the Ecstasy, but the peer pressure had gotten to me.
An hour had passed, I Started getting off while I was in the bathroom at Blake’s house after taking a piss. I noticed myself leaning over the toilet, almost passing out. I zipped up my pants as I looked in the mirror, and felt the most amazing feeling of my entire life. Every ounce of fear or sadness had vanished; I no longer felt bad about the life I was living, my body felt like it was floating in mid-air, and my mind was at peace. I couldn’t remember the last time that my mind felt so content and happy. I literally ran out of the bathroom and out Blake’s back door onto his porch, jumping down an entire flight of stairs like I could fly.
I swear that for that couple of seconds when I was in mid-air, I felt like I was soaring in heaven. I had no guilt, no cares, no sadness. Why couldn’t I feel like this all the time? We all sat on top of my car, bonding, hugging, smiling, and laughing until sunrise.
Maybe a part of me had died that night because if heaven was real, it would feel like that. The next day, I woke up at five in the afternoon. My whole body was shaking and ached. My thoughts were dark again, and I felt a big cloud hanging over just me. I swear that for the rest of the night, I lay in bed and realized that I had felt heaven and was now experiencing hell. How can someone go from being so happy about life to being so depressed? I must have been in bed for a whole day after that, and when my mom came in and tried to wake me, I brushed her off. The truth was, I really didn’t want to wake up ever.
Unfortunately, the next day arrived and I was back to my normal, miserable self. I didn’t spend all day in bed, but my life sucked anyway. Blake gave me a pound of weed to sell, along with a couple grams of cocaine. I went through my day as I usually did, picking up calls from losers and potheads and selling drugs, while my mother worked hard to find a new place for us to live. Blake had told me that he had a friend who was renting an apartment in Lowell and that there was going to be a party at his place that night. Apparently, the apartment was right behind the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and he was having tons of people over.
Blake and I arrived at the apartment that night with liquor, cocaine, weed, and Ecstasy; we had it all. We must have blown three lines before we even arrived, and we had been drinking during the whole ride there. We arrived at the party, where there were tons of hot girls dancing and people drinking and smoking weed. A couple of the bedroom doors were shut, and as Blake opened them up, we saw that people were blowing lines in there. There must have been over thirty people in a little apartment and people were also outside, hanging out in the streets, drinking, and smoking; basically the whole block was filled with people partying. There were different types of people, though, because we were directly in the center of the city of Lowell. There you had college students partying for the first time, junkies in the streets partying, and people having sex in cars and behind dumpsters. People were passing weed from left to right and some were even blowing cocaine off of girls’ breasts.
Blake was pretty well known because people feared him; he was a pretty big drug dealer who had been known to fight anyone who fucked with him, and I was one of his boys. I crushed up lines for people and we all snorted one after the other until I found myself in a room with five people in a deep conversation. These were people I didn’t know at all, and I found myself spilling my heart and my life to them. When I was high on cocaine, it actually felt like these complete strangers cared, but that was just the cocaine. We drank together until sunrise and I could barely sleep from all of the cocaine; I eventually passed out on the floor with no sheets or pillows.
Lowell must have officially been the lowest point of my life. The people that Blake and I partied with were all dropouts, junkies, and others with no goals or ambitions. When I wasn’t selling drugs during the day, I found myself in Lowell, partying. I even started to notice that I was snorting coke in the daytime. I was so alienated from society that people must have thought I was a ghost when they saw me. I spend many nights in Lowell, but a lot I couldn’t recall because I had been so wasted. The nights I did remember made me feel lucky just to be alive.
Lowell became a place for lost souls, people who wanted to forget about their shitty lives. Some nights, I would drive home from Lowell so wasted that, if I had gotten pulled over, my life would have been changed completely. One time, I left Lowell so wasted that I drove over a three-foot-high curb and almost smashed my whole car. Times got rough and on some nights I’d almost fall asleep at the wheel, just praying that I would get home to sleep in my bed.
Lowell was filled with fights all of the time, too. I wasn’t a fighter and I didn’t think that I was tough at all. There were many reasons behind the fighting, actually. People were on so much coke and were so drunk that they thought they were the toughest out there. Also, we had a pretty close group of people who we knew, and when people from other towns heard about this magical place in Lowell, they started to come party there.
A group of kids from a rival town came to Lowell to party. Of course, we all got along and were blowing coke and smoking weed and drinking until an argument started. We were all in a small bedroom in the apartment. Now, there may have been like ten of us, blowing cocaine and drinking. Of course, there is always one kid who is too hammered and gets in people’s faces, being obnoxious. Most of the partiers ignored the obnoxious kid until he got in the face of Blake’s friend. Wrong move; Blake’s friend had anger problems.
“What’s up, man?” he said as the kid got right in his face.
“Can you back up? Don’t talk to me.”
The kid immediately started to get defensive and got up closer to Blake’s friend’s face and start swearing at him. I was right next to Blake’s friend and could see the anger in his eyes start to form as his fist began to clench.
“You got a problem with me being in your face?” BOOM! I swear to God, I had never seen anything so disgusting in my life. Blake’s friend punched the kid in the face three times and the kid’s eyes rolled back into his head and his teeth flew out of his mouth as he dragged against the wall, sliding down, unconscious.
Immediately, everyone stopped the music after hearing the disruption. Some kid I’d never seen before ran in; he must have been like six-foot-six and muscular.
“What the fuck did you do to my friend?” He grabbed Blake’s buddy and knocked him out, and he had five more friends who ran into the room to beat on Blake’s friend. All of a sudden, I was in the middle of this small room with a lot of people swinging fists and some people knocked out on the ground. Then, worst case scenario, the lights get turned off, and I found myself getting punched in the face. My adrenaline raced after I got hit, and I punched back as hard as I could, and heard my opponent falling to the ground.
Bottles were being smashed over people’s heads and televisions were being thrown on people. The fights spread into the living room and throughout the whole house as the girls started to scream and run out. Then Blake was fighting some huge kid one-on-one and we all gathered around him, chanting and cheering.
“Smash his fucking head in, beat his ass, Blake; get him, Blakey!”
Blake knocked the kid out, and we all ran out the front door and jumped into our cars, bleeding, and drove away as fast as we could, before the cops came.
“Holy shit,” I said to Blake as we burnt out, passing the cops who were heading to break up that party. I looked over at Blake and saw that his head was pretty fucked up, hi
s eye was swollen shut, and he was dripping blood as he laughed. This guy is fucked, I thought.
Just another night in Lowell, I thought as I fell asleep. From there on, Lowell must have had a fight every time I was there. Kids from other towns would come by to start shit, and when there were fights in the street, the cops would come. I must have run from the cops dozens of times in Lowell; it was almost a regular thing.
If I wasn’t running from the cops in Lowell or driving home hammered, I was sitting on stairwells in hallways, blowing coke with strangers or passing out face down on a sticky floor. It was becoming bad; my lowest nights took place there and the people I partied with weren’t truly my friends—they were just there for the drugs, like me. I guess I had forgotten what a true friend was because for me, it definitely was almost never a person who was always there for you. I had people who were always there for me, but I always had to supply them with drugs to ensure their loyalty.
•••
My mother finally found a new place to live and told us that we would be moving in a couple of weeks. She had an old high school friend who owned a house in North Reading; he had a basement for occupancy downstairs. The area wasn’t bad; it was a nice town, but our place would just be smaller and it was underneath his place. The rent was a lot cheaper and Jared could continue to go to North Andover High School until he graduated. He would be a little further from his friends, but the address wasn’t too far from North Andover. We moved on a beautiful April morning into our new place. I was hung over, of course, and felt like death, but managed to help my mother move us into the new home.
Our place was a cozy, three-bedroom apartment with a small kitchen and old, rug-covered floors. I had my own small room, Jared and Vanessa shared a room, and my mother had the biggest room. It was pretty musty in the basement, but it was all we could afford. I tried to give my mom money for rent as often as possible, but I wasn’t making a lot from selling weed anymore, mainly because I smoked away all of my profits.
On top of that, DSS stopped visiting, but I needed to figure out a way to persuade them I wasn’t a drug dealer. The cops also knew my name and were starting to trail me whenever they saw me driving. I typically drove with at least a pound of weed in my car, and sometimes cocaine, too; if I had gotten pulled over, my poor mom would be officially perceived as a bad parent.
I started to look in the papers for jobs again; the problem was that no one would hire a high school dropout. After thorough searching, I found a construction laborer position for twelve dollars an hour, paid under the table. It was work for a builder who owned a realty company and was building new homes around towns like Andover, North Andover, and Boxford.
The interview happened in a trailer at the construction company. I walked in wearing my forward-facing black Adidas hat, like a punk. I was always very polite, though, when it came to speaking with adults. I chatted with the receptionist and then saw a man walk in who had been staring at me. He must have been in his early fifties, muscular, and well-groomed with pearly white teeth. He shook my hand hard and looked at me with a smile.
“Steve Sardou. How are you?” He offered me a position on the spot and wanted me to start in a month, working full-time when they started the new project. I didn’t want to work full-time, but it was either this or back to the want ads, reading minimum-wage job listings again. I said yes and walked out, not knowing why I did it, but I think that in the back of my mind, I was slowly trying to start over and help my mother.
I arrived home, excited to tell my mom that I had gotten a new job, but of course she was not home; she was working late again. Jared and Vanessa were in the other room as I sat down and laid my head against my mother’s old leather couch. I took a deep breath and thought to myself, How am I going to get out of this hell of a life I’m living? I had no girlfriend, and the nights that I’d been with a girl were clouded by the fact that I didn’t know whether she loved me for me or if loved me for my marijuana and coke.
My phone rang later that night—it was Blake. “Logan, I need you to come to a pick-up with me.” My eyes were tired and my lungs felt like they were on their last breath, but I had to go.
“Sure,” I said. He picked me up in his Mercedes and passed me a blunt once I got in the car.
“We need to pick up some money from my connection in Roxbury.” We drove into the city as my eyes drooped from the marijuana and my paranoia increased higher than a kite. “I’m going in to pick up the money; you watch the car and hold this.” He put the gun on my lap as my heart raced and my sweaty hands held the gun. I really didn’t want this lifestyle anymore; it wasn’t me. I sat, the lookout guy, with a gun in my hand, and I could feel my eyelids lower as I denied that this was my life.
I looked down at the gun and thought about ending it all: no more pain or disappointing my mother. Minutes later, I realized that my hand was gripping the gun tightly as my arm lifted it closer to my head. As my arm raised higher, all I could see was a picture in my head: my mother’s eyes staring at me. I heard whispers saying, “Logan, this isn’t the life for you; I believe in you.” My eyes almost teared up as I lowered the gun, and then I saw Blake come out of the house.
“You ready?”
I handed his gun back to him as I turned my face to the window, just hoping to arrive home to see my mother. I finally got home that night to find that my mother was sleeping in her room; as I saw her, looking like an angel, sleeping so peacefully, I mumbled under my breath, “I love you, and I’m sorry.”
•••
My first day at the job was brutal. I had to work from eight-thirty to four-thirty. I woke up and smoked two cigarettes as I drank my French vanilla iced coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts. My new boss, Steve, had just bought a property in my hometown of North Andover. The site was in the rich part of town where my old friends used to live; working there, I was just hoping they wouldn’t see me. Steve mainly had me take trash out, carry wood, and help out other contractors on the site. He worked me hard, five days a week throughout the summer.
On the weekends and after work, I would sell pot and go to Lowell. I would still get into all sorts of trouble throughout the summer, but at least now I could give my mom a hundred dollars a week toward rent. I wasn’t able to save any more money and was basically just working to live, getting high every day and blowing cocaine and drinking on the weekends.
Some nights when I got home from work, I thought, Is this life? This is it? My car was running like shit and had a hole in the muffler, which made it scream. I had to put thousands of dollars into it, just to maintain it. I was nineteen years old and living at my mother’s house, watching the world pass by me. I was so stuck in my ways that I continued to deal weed and small amounts of cocaine to have some extra money, but I spent most of my profit. On the weekends, I could be found drunk and passed out on a floor somewhere in Lowell. Summer went by so quickly that I didn’t even know who I was anymore until one day near the end of August. I clearly should have seen this night as another sign from above, but I was ignorant, as usual.
On an August Saturday morning, I went over to Blake’s house to smoke a joint and to pick up my weed. He tossed a pound of weed to me to sell and also handed me a joint so I could get stoned on my way home. He also needed me to give one of his friends a ride home, which I had no problem doing. His friend lived downtown, so we lit up the joint and smoked it on the ride into the city of Lawrence. I swear the higher I got, the louder my exhaust sounded. I started to get paranoid as I drove into the city because my car was so loud, and I had a pound of weed tucked under the spare tire in my trunk.
We must have been five minutes away from his house in the middle of downtown Lawrence on Broadway Street. The city was busy and many eyes were on my car because my muffler was damaged; it seemed like the hole was getting bigger and louder. Out of nowhere, something led me to look in my rearview mirror; just a hunch, you could say. In the distance, I saw blue lights flashing as my stomach got tight and my heart froze with hope that
the lights weren’t for me. The cop passed one car, passed another, and was now two cars behind me. Please God, don’t be for me; it can’t end like this. His lights approached closer and the siren got louder. Please God, make it not be me, I thought, make it be for the car behind me.
My eyes closed as he passed the car behind me, and I pulled over to the side of the busy downtown street, hoping he would continue past me. Nope.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?”
For some strange reason, when he pulled us over I didn’t care; my heart wasn’t racing and my nerves were calm. I think I had been through so much shit lately that I just wanted it to be over with. I was sick of running, sick of being a person that I never wanted to be.
“Yes, officer, because my car is loud; I’m trying to get it fixed.”
He looked at me in disgust and had me step out of the car with Blake’s friend to sit on the curb. I looked like a degenerate, wearing a baggy, plain white T-shirt, baggy shorts, and work boots that I had just thrown on to leave the house that morning. People were driving past us while we sat on the curb looking like burnouts, as the cop started to search the front of my car.
He searched the car because it smelled like weed since we had just smoked a massive joint. On top of that, I was ridiculously high with, now, two cop cars at the scene. Good thing we had thrown out the joint; however, he found a little piece of weed on the floor. “Is there any more marijuana in the car I should know about?”
“No, officer, there isn’t,” I replied.
“If I find any and you lied, you’re going to jail. I’ll tell you what, how about I ask your friend, and if he tells me, then only you will go to jail, or you can give me five hundred dollars right now, and I won’t search your car.”
The officer was smart, but not smart enough. He thought that I didn’t know what he was doing. If I agreed to give him the money, he would know I had marijuana in the trunk. I honestly didn’t even fucking care what this crooked cop was saying anymore.
The Crossroads of Logan Michaels Page 18