The clouds moved in artistic ways, in ways man never could. They bent and melded and morphed, and I wished I were among them. I’d float away and never come back.
That was the dream.
Did everyone have it?
I didn’t know how long I sat pondering that.
I only knew that I’d drifted off, in and out of a warm haze. My fingers were relaxed, my legs were liquid, and my lungs filled with soft air. It came and went in velvet breaths, puffing from a dragon’s nose, and I’d never felt so fucking good.
I lifted my hand and stared at it because it felt so weightless. I needed to make sure it still existed, that I was still here.
I was.
I traced the outline of my fingers and they were there and I was real.
I rested my hands on my legs, and the feel of the denim beneath my skin felt like heaven, so textured, so striated, so perfect. I stroked at it, and it was soothing.
At some point, though, my phone buzzed on the seat next to me, disrupting my serenity. I scowled at it, at that vestige of reality, but it persisted, buzzing again and again.
It used to be that when it called, I answered. I was glued to it, a prisoner. It was my master, and I was its slave. But now . . . now . . . things were going to be different.
By ignoring it, I felt like I was snipping a leash that used to keep me tied to the earth, tied to pain. It was an iron chain, and it was attached to an anchor and the anchor was me. But the thing about being an anchor, the thing that people forget, is that if you’re an anchor, you drown.
I was not going to drown.
I was not an anchor anymore.
Fuck anyone who thought otherwise.
I drifted away and imagined that I was on a raft in a dark, dark sea. I shoved away from shore, and I was floating and then gone, lost in the middle of the calm, my fingers dangling in the water.
I didn’t know how long I floated.
When I finally decided to sit up, it was dark.
I’d been there awhile.
A long while. I’d been parked in the same place for too long, because there was a two-hour parking sign right in front of me, glinting in the dim streetlight. I had to move, even though rules felt so far away, distant things that applied to other people but not to me.
I started my engine and pulled farther down onto the side street to park again. I thought perhaps I’d just sleep there. I was soft and warm and this was as good a place as any.
First, though, I looked at my phone because I chose to, not because I had to.
My mother had called four times and sent seven texts.
Where are you?
Beck!
Beckitt!
Answer your phone!
Please come back.
I’m sorry.
I love you.
If I weren’t high, I’d be annoyed, but honestly, I could barely remember what I’d been angry about in the first place. It seemed like a faraway land, a distant time.
Elin’s texts were next.
Beck, we’re worried. Your mom thought you were here, but I don’t know where you are.
Please, babe. Call me.
I know you love me. I know you do. Call me.
You love me, I love you. That’s the way things are. Call me. Please.
That was the way things were. Nothing would ever be the same again. I let my phone fall out of my hand, onto the seat.
I curled up, one hand beneath my cheek, and slept.
When I woke, it was light again.
And there was a guy sitting next to me.
I startled because the heroin had worked out of my system and I’d turned jumpy.
The guy had a longish beard tied with silver beads at the bottom, and he looked at me as though being in my car were the most natural thing in the world.
“Hey,” he said in greeting. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”
I nodded. “Uh, thanks.”
“Of course,” he said, smiling. “Want me to show you around?”
I started to shake my head, to politely decline, because something told me not to, that he wasn’t the kind of person I should be around. But he held up my empty baggie between two fingers.
“You’re my people,” he said simply, and somehow, somehow, that changed everything.
Because I knew right then and there that I wanted another hit.
I wanted to feel what I felt last night . . . a warm nothing.
So I found myself nodding.
“Sure,” I said.
He smiled. “Come on,” he said, and he opened the car door. “I’ll show you.”
I followed him down the alley, over broken bottles and trash littering the pavement.
He paused outside of a broken-down building.
“You have money? If not, I can take you to an ATM.”
I thought on that. I had three hundred dollars in my wallet. “I’m good,” I told him.
He nodded and opened the door and gestured me inside.
I stepped over the threshold into another world.
In that moment, I thought . . . Things are gonna change now.
People sat in the dingy building, on boxes, on broken chairs, on the floor. Some were talking, some had the vacant and empty expression of the truly high, and I even saw a pair of people having sex in the back corner. Two men, actually. One young and one old. My head snapped back because I wasn’t expecting that.
The boy, who was maybe my age, stared at me with wide-open eyes as the guy behind him had his way, and the boy’s expression didn’t change. He wasn’t into it, but he wasn’t not into it. He was just . . . there. Enduring it? I didn’t know.
“Welcome to the neighborhood,” the guy said again, pulling my attention back, and he was amused at my expression. “I’m Dan.”
“Nice to meet you.” I didn’t give him my name, and I still felt the boy watching me, the boy who was getting ass-fucked in the corner. His gaze was on my skin and I felt dirty with it.
“Come here,” Dan said, gesturing, and I followed, mainly to get away from the boy’s stare. I didn’t know why I was there in the first place, other than the fact that I had a driving need to disappear.
That was a startling thought.
I wanted to disappear.
I wanted to be nothing.
Dan led me to another guy in another corner, a guy with a black duffel bag.
“What’s your fancy?” he asked, and he was deadly calm and casual. His index finger had a ring on it, a plain silver band, his hand resting on the top of his bag. I assumed the bag contained his precious cargo.
I didn’t want to say what I wanted out loud.
I paused.
“Well?” the guy asked. “I can’t read your mind, friend.”
That’s when I reminded myself . . . They’re all into this. Not just me. I was one of them now, and they wouldn’t judge me.
“Uh. Heroin,” I muttered, fast and jumbled. “The pill kind.” The guy rolled his eyes.
“I don’t carry that pussy-ass crap. I got the real shit, though.”
I stared at him. “Okay. I’ll take that.”
“How much, newbie?”
That, I didn’t know.
I didn’t know the going rate and I didn’t know what to ask for.
I pulled out a hundred dollars.
“This much.”
He nodded and dug in his bag and pulled out a baggie with tiny rocks inside. “You need a rig?”
“I, uh. Yeah, I guess.”
He dug around again and handed me a shiny spoon, a lighter, and a needle sealed in a medical wrapper.
My heart pounded as I took it, and he said, “That’ll be an extra ten bucks.”
Of course it was. I handed him the money, but I only had a twenty.
“Sorry, I don’t have change,” he said, shrugging.
Right. I didn’t challenge him. He was surrounded by his people here, and I was alone. I knew they’d accept me, but only if I played by their rules.
I backed o
ff, away into the room. There were hallways and other rooms, not one of them empty and not one of them with an electric light. There were battery-powered camping lanterns scattered here and there, casting LED light over the dirt.
There were people everywhere and they weren’t the kind you would take home to Mom. Most were dirty, although some weren’t. They all had the same expression in their eyes, a hardened, jaded expression. They knew what was up. I could tell that. They were like a family. A new family. It was a comforting thought, actually.
I was alone, but not really.
I found a dark corner in a back room because I felt self-conscious.
I was new, and if they watched me shooting up, they’d know. It was a dumb thing to worry about.
I examined the rocks in the bag. It seemed to me that I should’ve gotten more for a hundred dollars, but there was no way for me to know for sure. So I didn’t say anything. I put one in the spoon, heated it up, and then drew the amber liquid into the needle.
I looked at my arm.
I could see the veins on the inside of my elbow, branching out like a tree with small purple limbs and no leaves. I wasn’t quite sure how to do it.
I held my mouth firm and positioned the needle above the biggest purple branch.
Without giving myself time for second thoughts, I pushed it in.
I didn’t hit a vein.
I pulled it out, repositioned, and tried again.
Again, I missed.
“Dude, you’re doing it wrong,” a guy said next to me—he’d come from nowhere. “Here.”
He helped me insert the needle at an angle, and I pushed the plunger in.
Lord God Almighty, I felt it immediately as it slid into my vein, fucking bliss. I released the plunger and it stung it stung it stung, even as it was warm and soothing. It was that blessed place between wake and sleep, that nameless place where you hover and are weightless.
That was heroin.
My vision blurred and my head dropped back and I thought I saw the guy smile.
“You got some for me?”
I pulled out my baggie and offered it without opening my eyes. He took it and I allowed the warmth to swirl around me, and the warmth felt like it had a color.
It was orange.
Everything was orange.
“Don’t hit the same vein twice in a row,” the guy told me through the orange haze, and everything smelled yellow. “And don’t let anyone use your needle.”
I nodded, but I couldn’t open my eyes at this point. My eyelids were too heavy, and I didn’t want to.
Reality was too heavy now and I laid it down. It had no place here among the orange weightlessness.
I put it away and it ran and hid and I hoped it never found me again.
sixteen
NATALIE
MERCY HOSPITAL
8:31 A.M.
THE MACHINES BEEP AND BEEP, but I don’t trust them. I don’t trust that they’ll keep Beck alive, because every once in a while, they stumble. The beeps become erratic, and his cheeks get flushed. His forehead is clammy, and even though he looks peaceful on the outside, I know there’s a storm raging on the inside.
There has to be.
He has to be fighting in there. If I don’t believe that, I’ll fall apart.
“You’re stronger than you think, Nat,” Kit tells me, and I hear him from a distant fog. I’d been so focused on thinking about Beck’s struggle that I forgot Kit was even here.
“I’m not,” I tell him without looking up. “Trust me.”
“I know you,” he reminds me. “And after everything that has happened, you’re still standing.”
“Barely.”
“Nat . . .”
“No. You know I fell apart. You know Beck held everything together. If I’d been better, he might not be here right now.”
“I don’t think that would’ve mattered,” Kit finally answers. “He had many other things that were tormenting him, Natalie. You know that.”
I want to blame myself. I need to blame myself. Because if something is my fault, then maybe I can fix it.
“A few days before he left . . .” My voice wavers, and then I try again. “We had a huge fight. The most terrible things were said. I got sucked down into the depression again that day, and I was curled up into a ball, and . . . It was bad. So, see? It wasn’t just you that last day. It was a lot of things.”
Kit tries to say something, but it doesn’t matter what he says. I know the truth.
I know I drove my son away.
* * *
I HADN’T FELT LIKE eating in two days.
I didn’t know why the grief came in waves. For days, I was able to cope, then suddenly, BOOM. It was back and it was debilitating.
Today, I had managed to get the kids off to school before I’d crashed onto my bed. I’d sprayed Matt’s cologne onto his pillow, and I’d hugged it to me until I’d fallen asleep.
That was how Beck found me hours later.
I woke to find him standing in the doorway, his eyes red, his face tired.
“Mom, you’ve got to get up.”
He was firm, tired, angry.
I rubbed at my eyes, glancing blearily toward the clock.
“Can you just . . . can you wait at the bus stop for the kids? It’s not that big of a deal, Beck.”
He glared. “It is a big deal, Mom. You need to stand outside for them. You need to put clothes on and comb your hair and act like a goddamned adult.”
My head snapped back.
“Don’t swear at me,” I told him quickly. “Use some respect.”
“Then earn it,” he snapped. “This is getting ridiculous. I’ve been patient. You told me you’d be better. And here we go again. You’re in bed again. I can’t do this again, Mom. I can’t!”
I stood up and pulled a robe on. My hair was mussed, and I knew he was right. But the tone he was taking infuriated me. This wasn’t the kind of son I’d raised him to be.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” I told him tiredly. “But I’m your mother, and I’d like for you to respect that at the very least.”
“Then give me something to respect,” he retorted. “Please, I’m begging you.”
But he wasn’t begging—he was screaming.
The anger came raging out, and I raged back.
“Do you think I asked for this?” I screeched, and he was startled. “Do you think I asked to be left alone with three kids? Do you think I wanted this?”
“All you’ve wanted is to sleep all day, every day,” my son answered. “You’ve left me to do everything in this house, to sign permission slips and pay bills and take care of the kids. Your kids. You checked out and it wasn’t fair, and I hate you for it!”
I saw red, and words tumbled out before I could stop them.
“Do you think I don’t hate you too, sometimes?” I demanded. “If it hadn’t been for your stupid college visit, your dad would never have been in the car that night. He’d still be alive.”
As soon as the words were out and I saw the look on Beck’s face, I wanted to take it back.
“I’m sorry,” I fumbled, reaching for him. “I didn’t mean that. It wasn’t your fault, Beck.”
He wrenched away from me, heading toward the door.
“Wasn’t it?” He paused, turning to me. “I know it was my fault. And now I know that you feel that way too.”
He turned to leave, but paused.
“Do you know what today is, Mom?”
I stared at him blankly. I never knew the date anymore.
“It’s October 12. The one-year anniversary of the accident. It kills me what happened. It kills me that it’s killing you. I know it’s all my fault. That’s why I understood when you didn’t get out of bed for my graduation. That’s why I tried to understand that you needed me, so I haven’t complained that I can’t go to college yet.”
I started to protest, but Beck’s face twisted in anger.
“I can’t leave,” he pract
ically spits. “You can’t even comb your fucking hair. I have to stay here to babysit you, and to make sure the kids are okay. My life is slipping away, and while it’s mostly my fault, maybe you should realize that there’s a part of it, a part that’s growing bigger and bigger, that’s your fault too.”
I was stunned, and silent, and he left, his tires squealing as he drove away.
I’d never hated myself more than I did in that moment.
seventeen
BECK
MERCY HOSPITAL
8:37 A.M.
“MA’AM,” A NURSE SAYS, COMING in and speaking to my mother. “We’d like to empty your son’s catheter and check some of his reflexes. Would you like to use this as a chance to get some fresh air or coffee?”
Even I can tell she is politely asking my family to leave the room. They apparently do, because in a moment, I’m alone with what I can only assume are two nurses. I have hands on me from both sides of the bed.
I am poked and pulled, and my eyelids are pried open, a light shining into my eyes. Then darkness again.
“What’s his story, Jessica?” one of them asks the other.
“God, it’s tragic,” Jessica answers, her voice hushed. “His dad died a year or so ago. I was here. He and his dad were in a terrible car crash—it’s amazing this kid lived. But he did, and then apparently he started using drugs after.”
“That’s awful,” the other one clucks as she picks up my elbow, her hands cool.
“He comes from a good family,” Jessica continues. “His mother is as sweet as pie. His dad was some important attorney. It just goes to show this crap can happen to anyone. I don’t know what she’s gonna do when she loses her son.”
The other nurse agrees. “Yeah. I doubt he’s gonna make it. The stroke, his injuries . . .”
“Maybe it’s for the best,” Jessica decides, her voice right next to my ear. “He’s an addict. It’s going to be a struggle for him to survive even if he does live through the day. He might be permanently damaged, even. It’ll be hard on him, hard on the family. They’ve all been through enough.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say, Jessica,” the other one says, and I agree.
“Hey, I just call it like I see it. I’ve seen a thousand other kids like this one, and this family doesn’t deserve it.”