“Does any family?” the second nurse asks, and she sounds indignant. Good for her.
“No, I guess not,” Jessica answers. “I’m just tired. I feel sorry for the mom. Don’t pay attention to me.” She laughs tiredly, but her words weren’t a joke. They stung.
“I would imagine the mom wants her son to live no matter what,” the other one replies, her voice dry. Jessica falls silent, and they push and pull me some more.
When they are ready to leave and I’m waiting on my family to come back in, I think on the conversation.
It can happen to anyone, but this time . . . this time it happened to me, and I have a horrible, heavy pit of guilt in my chest whenever I think on it.
I’m to blame. I don’t deserve to live. I don’t deserve to live when my father died.
Jessica is right. Everyone has been through enough already.
* * *
I’D BEEN DREAMING.
About the twisted red wreckage of my father’s car.
When I came to that night, I’d been hanging upside down by the seat belt. The OnStar had been talking to me. Don’t worry—help is on the way.
I’d pushed the release button and fallen onto the roof of the car. I’d pulled myself through the broken window, and I was alone.
My father was nowhere to be found, and the car. It was mangled past the point of recognition. All I could see in the dim reflection of the streetlights were flashes of red paint twisted among the metal.
But I wasn’t there now. I was here.
The abandoned building shimmered with the wintry sun and I thought for a minute as I sat up.
How did I get here?
My thoughts were mushy, but I found them.
I’d spent a long time in the first building. Maybe a couple of weeks. I’d gone through my money, and I’d traded my car for more H.
H was what my new friends call heroin. I’d picked up some lingo, tricks of the trade.
Then I’d left.
The first building had hardened me, educated me. I saw what was what, and what people do. The boy in the corner? He regularly had sex with older men for drugs. He didn’t have any money because he never needed it. He pimped himself out.
I stood up, and dizziness swirled around me from lack of food and from coming down from my last high. I was low now, in a pit. I crunched across the trash in the building and emerged into the cold air, sucking it in like a drowning person.
There was a cigarette butt in the street and I knelt to examine it. Even though it was tattered and dirty, there were a couple of puffs left on the thing. Someone might’ve even run over it, but I wasn’t choosy.
“Dude,” I called to a stranger passing on the sidewalk. He was young with his ball cap on backward. “You got a light?”
The guy paused, examined me, his eyes flicking up and down, and I saw the questions in them. Was I safe? Was I an addict? Was I going to rob him?
Yes, yes, and probably not. I was too fucking tired.
The guy dug in his pocket and tossed me his lighter.
“Keep it,” he said curtly and continued on his way. It was a red plastic Bic, half-full. That was good, because I had somehow lost my other one.
I lit the butt and stuck my new treasure into my jeans pocket, next to the piece of hot dog bun I’d found this morning. I wasn’t hungry now, and I wouldn’t be later, but I knew I had to eat. If I didn’t, I’d die. I was probably already on that path; I didn’t need to rush it along.
A bell ringer collecting money for Christmas stood in the doorway of a nearby store and watched me with a pinched mouth. Behind her, I saw my reflection in the window, illuminated by the streetlights, and I knew why she was suspicious.
God, I was getting skinny. I looked like hell because I hadn’t had a haircut or a real shower in weeks, and I was tall. So even though I was skinny, I was big from sheer height. I guessed I was intimidating, particularly since I had deep circles under my eyes. You couldn’t even tell what color my eyes were. They just looked dark and hollow.
It was fitting, because that’s how I felt.
Digging in my other pocket, I pulled out every bit of money that I had to my name.
One nickel and three pennies.
I dropped the eight cents into the woman’s red bucket and I swear to God she flinched.
“Uh, thanks?” she said, and she was sort of snotty.
I guessed to some, eight cents wasn’t much. In fact, once upon a time, it wasn’t much to me either. I used to actually vacuum pennies off of the floor of my car because I was too lazy to pick them up.
A lot of things annoyed me then.
Long football practices, giggling cheerleaders, gossip, calculus, college applications, my mom nagging me to clean my room, my little brother hogging the shower.
All of those things didn’t matter anymore.
Real life arrived with a vengeance, and a year had passed, aging me ten years in the process. I was eighteen and while I looked twenty-eight, I felt a hundred and eight.
I looked into the window and studied my eyes. They might have looked black, but they weren’t.
They were moss green.
No one noticed that anymore, though. What they noticed now was what the uppity woman noticed . . . what everyone noticed. I heard her whisper “junkie” to someone next to her and they both stared at me.
It was a stage whisper, meant for me to hear. I didn’t know if it was meant to shame me, or humiliate me, or what.
The joke was on her—I didn’t feel anything at all.
Heroin took my feelings weeks ago. It absorbed everything in my life and became everything and took everything.
My conscience.
My emotions.
My heart.
My wit.
My drive.
They were all tucked in heroin’s handbag now, and it happened so fast and I didn’t know if she’d ever give them back. I said she because I’d decided heroin was a woman. She had to be. I didn’t know if a man would be able to plan such a multifaceted attack. Men weren’t good multitaskers, and men simply weren’t so vicious.
Pausing, I stared up at the black sky. The stars were hard to see here in the city because the Chicago smog masked everything. The city light swirled upward, ran together, and faded into the clouds. It bent and swayed, and was it real?
I thought so.
I rambled around the streets, walking in and out of traffic. I didn’t hurry, and people honked and swerved but I didn’t care. Their headlights turned into stars and the stars turned into streetlights, and I didn’t even know if the bench I eventually sat on was real.
I sprawled on it and the wood was cold beneath my ass, so I was pretty sure it existed.
Someone sat on the other end, and I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman because it was dark and my vision was cloudy from heroin.
“You been here long?” I asked the shape. It nodded.
“All night.”
“You gonna rob me?” I asked it. “If so, you’re outta luck. I don’t have anything.”
“No worries,” it told me, and I still couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. I guessed it didn’t matter. “I’m just resting, man.”
“Me too.”
I closed my eyes, and the honks and traffic noises blended into silence and black.
“I’ll watch out for you while you sleep,” the voice told me, and I didn’t know if I could trust it, but honestly nothing even mattered at this point. The heroin had dulled every waking thought I had, every nerve ending, every emotion.
This was where I loved to be, in the abyss, and if something happened to me in reality while I was gone, then so be it.
Nothing mattered.
I drifted into sleep, into unconsciousness, into the dark, dark ravine, and when I woke, I thought maybe days had passed.
The reason I knew that was because my back hurt from the bench, from the wood.
There was a small tree at the other end, and I decided that the person I
was talking to was never real.
It was the tree all along.
Go figure.
eighteen
NATALIE
MERCY HOSPITAL
8:47 A.M.
I POKE AROUND IN THE WHITE plastic hospital bag that holds Beck’s possessions.
“That’s the stuff he had in his pockets,” the nurse tells me while her fingers rest on Beck’s radial pulse.
I nod.
There’s the marble that Devin gave Beck long ago, two quarters, a gunky penny, and his driver’s license.
How could an entire life be reduced to this?
“I tried so hard to find him,” I whisper, and I’m not talking to Elin or Sam or Kit. I’m talking to myself. “He didn’t want to be found.”
“We know.” Sam soothes me, her arm wrapping around my shoulder. “We know, hon.”
“It wasn’t enough,” I tell her. “There isn’t anything that parents can do. Once their kid is past eighteen. Calling the police doesn’t help. If the kid left home willingly, the police won’t look. It’s a broken system.”
Elin looks away, and Sam nods. “It is,” she agrees.
“Normal people . . . we just aren’t equipped to know what to do. Everyone thinks they can do it better, but trust me, if you’re in this position, you don’t know what to do. You don’t have a right answer.”
“Is there a right answer?” Sam asks, looking sadly down at my son.
I have to shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
* * *
“MA’AM,” THE VOICE ON the other end of the phone explained patiently, “I’ve told you. We can’t send anyone out to look for him. He’s not a runaway. He’s of legal age.”
“But he’s on drugs. He’s a danger to himself,” I argued. “I can’t find him. If I can’t call the police to help, who can I call?”
I’m frustrated, the helplessness closing in.
“We suggest that you call all of his friends,” the voice said helpfully. But it wasn’t helpful. Of course I’d already done that. Many times over. “If he gets picked up, you’ll be called.”
“Thanks.” I hung up. This wasn’t getting me anywhere.
I walked up to his room and sat on the bed.
It was exactly as he’d left it, like a tornado had hit it. Football gear on the floor by the closet, notebooks scattered. I opened his nightstand. Big mistake. A big box of condoms was in there, and I closed the drawer quickly.
“Where are you?” I whispered. “Please come home.”
I texted him yet again, and I scrolled up through the thread. It was completely one-sided as far back as fifty messages. I’d asked him and asked him where he was and to come home.
He hadn’t answered.
I dialed his number and it rang twice. I wasn’t expecting him to pick up, but he did.
My heart leapt.
“Hullo,” he said woodenly, his voice slurred.
“Honey? Where are you?” I asked. “I’m sorry about what happened. Please let me come get you. We’ll sort everything out.”
He laughed and it was a scary, mirthless sound.
“That’s ridiculous,” he slurred. “You’ve gotta stop calling me, Mom. I’m where I belong.”
“But where is that?” I demanded. “Beck, you’re scaring me. Please.”
“Love you.”
There was a bunch of muffled noises, and then the phone went dead.
“Beck? Beck?”
But he was gone, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
nineteen
BECK
MY EYEBALLS FELT LIKE THEY were going to explode right out of my head from the pressure, because they weren’t used to being sober, and my hands weren’t either. They shook hard enough to vibrate the leg of my jeans.
Whrrrrr. Whrrrrr. If vibration could make noise, that’s what it would sound like. Whrrrrr. But wait. It was making noise.
I was sober, so I knew it was real.
I was sober, but I wished I weren’t.
To that end, I waited beneath the bridge while the L clattered above me, the old train cars bouncing along the track, click, click, clack. I waited quietly and impatiently, a crumpled ten-dollar bill in my hand.
I’d stolen it this morning, lifted it right out of a lady’s wallet at the grocery store.
Women were bad about wandering down the aisle to look at products, leaving their purses unattended. This was something I’d learned in the crack house, tricks of the trade. I didn’t want to steal, but my mistress was demanding, and I had to had to had to have a hit.
My time came when a hooded man strolled up. He went by the name Weezer, and I’d dealt with him before. Sometimes he gave me credit, sometimes he didn’t, but the further I’d fallen down this hole, the more my credit with him was denied. He was a master at addicting people.
“What do you have?” he asked me in a throaty rasp.
“Ten.”
“Good.” He slipped me a little plastic bag and I handed him the cash. I could’ve used the cash for a meal, but I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t need to eat. What I needed what I needed was the bag. Give it to me give it to me.
I practically ran to the nearest dark alley and pulled my spoon out of my pocket. It was bent and blackened now, but it worked. I held the lighter beneath the belly of the tarnished metal, lighting it up, heating what I needed.
I needed it.
I needed it.
My hand shook and I could hardly wait, but I did I did I did. My veins pulsed and waited and pulsed, and they were caving in, waiting waiting waiting.
When it was liquid, I took the syringe out of my pocket and slid the barrel back, drawing the thick oblivion in, farther, farther, until it was full.
I injected it between my toes, where it wouldn’t show, not that it mattered anymore. It was just a habit, and the twinge of pain felt so good so good so good, a blessed relief. I could feel the warmth spreading through my foot, through my leg, pulsing up toward my heart, clearing my head, then clouding it.
Thank God.
Thank God.
Thank God.
My vision blurred and bent and contorted, and I was back where I belonged. I was where reality wasn’t real, and the things I saw might have been pretend. That was fine, because real things were hard. So hard, too hard.
I felt limp and soft, and my legs didn’t want to hold me up, so I lay down, right in the alleyway, slumped against a dirty brick wall. I curled onto my side, my hand against my face, and I stared at my fingers.
They were dirty, they were smudged, they needed a shower and smelled slightly of sex that I didn’t remember having. My eyelids slid slowly lower, and I saw my knuckle, then a sliver of my fingernail, then blackness.
It was where I liked to be.
Nothing could reach me here.
Behind the darkness my eyes moved. I saw things, things I couldn’t turn off, even though my eyes were closed. Images, faces, shapes. The thing with being high was that the emotion usually attached to those things was gone. My heart was cleared of worry, of pain, of fear. It was a blessing.
Because the things I saw were awful.
The fear.
The blood.
The shriek of tires and the screech of metal.
The headlights in my face, the long honk of a horn, the wail of a siren, the red and blue flashing lights, like beacons in a shattered night.
It came back to me every night, high or not, but when I was high, it was bearable.
When I was high, I could deal with it.
No one understood me. No one could. I was alone.
My thoughts faded, and my legs became numb. I thought I felt my cell phone vibrating, and I was startled for a minute because I thought it was turned off, but that thought must not have been real. It was ringing now, and I thought about not answering it, but suddenly I was so lonely.
I moved my tongue as I pushed the button. It felt like a lump of wood, hard and restraining, but it did the job.
/> “Hullo?”
My voice didn’t even sound like me anymore. But I was on the nod now, in a place of relaxed wakefulness, in a place where I was floating through the air, and the air was black, and I was breathing breathing breathing it in. I had time before I passed out.
“Honey?”
The voice sounded like a bell, clear and melodious, and I focused on it. It was my mother. “Where are you? Tell me, and I’ll come get you. You need help. I’ll help you.”
“I can’t,” I murmured. “I can’t.”
She cried and I could hear it, and I didn’t feel bad, because that was a benefit of H. It carried that burden for me.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she told me. “Stay put.”
I knew she was going to track my phone, so I had to turn it off and run.
“Love you,” I muttered, and I powered it off. I heard her cry out for me before I ended the call, but I couldn’t focus on that. I had to run. I couldn’t let her take me. She’d put me in rehab, and then reality would be mine, and everything that had happened would surround me day in and day out, and I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t.
I tried that, and I failed, and I don’t want to go there again. This was better. This was my road. I’d chosen it and it was mine. I owned it.
My feet pounded on the pavement as I put distance between that alley and me.
My legs wobbled and wavered and protested, but they carried me, as good legs should.
I collapsed somewhere far away, in a park, I thought. I was at the top of a twisty slide, a tornado. It was metal, and it was red and blue and yellow, and the colors the colors—they swirled.
Kids went around me, sliding down, shrieking and laughing, but I was out of sight from their parents. Parents didn’t come up this far, so I was safe. Someone stepped on my ear, but it didn’t hurt. It should’ve, but it didn’t.
I heard the rush rush rushing of my blood, pulsing through my membranes and cells and pores, and it lulled me to sleep.
I was lost I was lost I was lost.
It was where I wanted to be.
twenty
BECK