Coach busts our asses all week.
She keeps saying now is not the time to congratulate ourselves. We can’t claim we’re undefeated until we’ve stared down the last opponent. Mattix says that in the regular season each game is a battle determining who gets to walk into the war of the tournament wearing conference champion patches on their uniforms, and a better rating for tournament bracket placing. If we want that to be us, we’ve got to earn it, and our last game will be the proving ground.
After the pep talk on Friday I’m feeling good. We all walk out of the locker room with set faces, determined to make it happen tomorrow morning. Left has forgiven me for bobbling the play at home last week and Coach assured me I’m starting, but if I lose my edge I won’t be finishing the game. I nod, knowing she’s right. I almost blew our record for everyone. That won’t be happening again.
Patrick’s stuff is consistent in quality, and I’ve taken copious notes so that I know exactly how much I can have, and when I can have it. My tolerance has risen, so I’ve had to adjust to shooting up the day before a game instead of two days before. I’ll give myself a nice dose tonight, sweeping away the soreness of a grueling practice, the lingering pain in my hip, and the sting on my inner thigh where I missed a curveball from Carolina. Like, I didn’t even get the glove on it.
It hit right on the meat of my leg and dropped dead in front of me. I gritted my teeth and acted like it just clipped me, but the entire inside of my thigh is purple, and I get to carry the stitches that I was admiring so much with me for a while. They’re imprinted on my leg, little indentations that I could feel if it didn’t hurt so bad just to touch the skin, the broken vessels all around them spiraling outward like fireworks.
The leg itself is swollen and I’m wondering if it wouldn’t hurt to give myself a little more of a boost than normal as I drive home. As soon as I think it I feel the ache in my joints, my body choosing the pain of withdrawal to goad me into giving it what it wants. I check my box when I get in my room to see if I’ve got enough to buy myself a buffer for tomorrow’s big game.
I don’t.
Mostly because I am the world’s biggest idiot and I fucked up and my blood pressure skyrockets and I can feel the pulse beating in my neck as I look at the mess that I’ve made. I didn’t screw the lid onto my water tight enough last time, and I didn’t tie off my balloons either. There’s a puddle of shit where my heroin is supposed to be and I don’t know if it’s salvageable.
I grab my whole kit and run to the bathroom, leaning over the counter, face close to the opened balloon. The light in here is way better and I’m using the end of my spoon to scrape together what I can from inside the balloon when Mom yells up the staircase.
“Mickey? You home?”
I kick the bathroom door shut. It’s instinctive and stupid and suspicious as hell, but it’s the only reaction my body allows for. I’m standing there with a heroin-caked spoon in one hand and a shoebox full of needles and there’s no way to make this better.
“Mickey?” Mom knocks on the door. “What are you doing?”
“What do people do in a bathroom, Mom?” I call back, trying to keep my voice light. I toss my last balloon into the toilet and jam the spoon into Mom’s makeup drawer. I bury my needles in the trash and shove the box into the bottom of the laundry basket.
“Mickey.” Her voice is stern now, uncompromising. “Open this door.”
I do the most impossible thing in this moment.
I take a piss.
I sit down on the toilet and think about nothing other than full bladders and running water and please, let me have to pee right now. I do. I pee as loud as I can and hope Mom can hear it through the door. But that’s not an issue when she drops all pretense and walks right in because kicking a door shut doesn’t lock it.
“Mom!” I yell squeezing my knees together. “What the hell?”
Please let me look innocent, even though I’m not. Please let her see her little girl, not what I actually am.
“Oh,” she says, losing steam. She looks around. There’s nothing to see. Some backsplash on the mirror and the hand towel I just used tossed on top of the hamper.
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “You just . . . scared me there.”
“Why?” I’m tense, defensive, somehow righteously irritated that she thinks I was doing drugs in the bathroom even though I totally would have been, given another five minutes.
“Nothing, it’s . . .” Mom waves her hands in the air, as if to clear it. “You know what? Never mind. You hungry?”
I really can’t sit here much longer with a straight face. “Yeah,” I say. “But do you mind?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah,” she says. “Sorry.”
She backs out, but she doesn’t shut the door until I flush the toilet. I wash my hands, running the water long enough to cover the sounds as I dig through the makeup drawer, pulling out the spoon, which I jam into the waistband of my sweats.
“Big game tomorrow,” I call. That’s how it’s done. Change the subject, remind her of something amazing I’m a part of that no junkie would ever possibly be able to accomplish. It works. She’s smiling when I open the door.
“Let’s get some food in you,” she says, heading back down the stairs. “Steak? Lasagna?”
I hear her pop the freezer door when I’m halfway down the steps, my heart rate finally adjusting.
“I’ve got some corn dogs . . . ,” Mom calls. “Whoa. Scratch that. Freezer burn.”
My phone vibrates and I pull it out of my hoodie pocket to see a text from Josie.
You have anything?
I was just about to ask her the same thing. I go back to my room, dialing.
“No,” I say as soon as she picks up. It’s a white lie, but not much of one. There’s only enough on this spoon to keep me well for a few hours. “You’re out, too?”
“Down and out.”
My ache increases, whether it’s pain or want I don’t know. But I can’t feel this way tomorrow.
“Call Patrick,” I tell her. “Get enough for me too and I’ll pay you back . . .” I let my words trail off because I don’t know how I’ll pay her back, since I haven’t squared up with Patrick over the dose I literally just pissed on and flushed down the toilet.
“Number’s old,” she says.
“I sent you his new one,” I remind her.
“Yeah, but I deleted that text to cover my ass.”
“Then we’re screwed because I did too,” I say. “You’re not the only one with a mom.”
Josie sighs like me having a mom is an annoyance.
“Just call Jadine. Get the new one. Then let me know,” I tell her, and hang up.
When I get downstairs Mom is calling for a pizza. Apparently the sight of the freezer-burned corn dogs drove any inclination she had of making dinner out the window.
“Hope that’s okay,” she says when she hangs up. “I just didn’t . . .”
“Feel like it,” I finish for her. “Yeah, I get it.”
And I do. I scared the shit out of her with that stunt in the bathroom, and while she’s reassured now that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, the adrenaline rush has left her drained. My phone goes off.
Jadine not answering.
I tuck it back into my hoodie, not bothering to reply. I offer to take the trash out while we wait for the pizza. Mom’s thrilled to let me, and she smiles as she looks back at her laptop, one finger absentmindedly playing with the stem of her wineglass.
I dump the bathroom trash first, fishing out my last clean needle. I scrape a mess of tar off the spoon with my fingernail and put as much in the barrel as I can, topping it off with some water from the tap. There’s not much in the syringe when I’m finished, but it’s something. It goes into my waistband next to the spoon.
I dig my shoebox out of the laundry basket, toss it into my trash bag, and haul everything to the curb. Then I offer to meet the pizza guy at the door, and Mom hands me the cash. I keep the change. He
gives me a shitty look when I don’t tip, but his problems are not my problems.
I cram pepperoni and cheese and breadsticks with garlic butter in my mouth and down it all with Diet Coke, doing my best to appear normal. My mom knows the Mickey Catalan that eats like a horse, and I need to be that person for her right now.
I need to be who she thinks I am.
I eat until I might puke, my belly pushed tight against the band of my sweatpants, the dirty spoon and clean needle leaving impressions on my skin. We talk about plays and stats and things that happened at last week’s game and what might happen tomorrow. My phone goes off twice more and I reach into my pocket to turn it off. I cannot be getting updates about heroin while I talk about softball.
By the time we’re finished eating Mom has had a little too much wine and her eyelids are heavy. She groans when she stands and I tell her she’s pregnant with a pizza baby and her face folds in a little and that was a stupid fucking thing to say to a woman who can’t conceive. She goes into the living room and curls up with a blanket and a book, and I’m pissed at myself for being such a dumbass. Of all the words in the dictionary those are the ones I chose to say to her.
I take our plates to the kitchen and add the spoon from my pants to the dishes in the sink, then power my phone back on to find four texts from Josie.
Jadine still not answering.
Seriously do you have Patrick’s number?
I am not doing so grassroots over here.
Lol weird autocorrect. * great *
I’m not doing so great either, and when I hear a slight snore from the living room I take a chance and call Josie.
“Where the fuck are you?” she demands.
“Nice,” I say. “I’m at home.”
“You seriously don’t have Patrick’s number?”
“No, I seriously don’t.”
I hear a tiny popping noise over the phone, and I think she just bit into one of her nails. I imagine nail polish cracking, Josie scraping away at what’s left.
“Okay, look,” she says. “Get over here, and we’ll figure something out with Edith’s guy. She gave me his number.”
I glance into the living room. Mom is out.
“I thought she said he’d deliver, like Patrick?” I argue. “Why can’t I just meet you at Edith’s?”
“Because she doesn’t want us over there right now,” Josie tells me. “That neighbor, Mr. Suspicious Dick, told her that next time he sees more than just her car in the driveway he’s calling the cops.”
“He can’t do that,” I say. “It’s not illegal for us to go to Edith’s.”
“Technically, no,” she agrees. “But what we do there is illegal, and she said to just chill for a little bit.”
There’s a rumble in my stomach, the pizza rolling uncomfortably. “Edith actually said chill?”
“No!” Josie yells at me. “And that is so not the point right now, anyway. Are you coming over or not? Mom’s on a date with the new guy and she wore her expensive underwear so that means she’s not coming home tonight.”
“Ewww,” I say.
“Try being me,” she snipes back.
I glance back into the living room, where my mom is just being a mom. Tired and worn out on a Friday night, wrapped in a blanket with a book that’ll take her a year to finish splayed across her chest. She’s snoring louder, her chest rising up and down.
My stomach rolls again, and it feels like everything in there moves south.
“I’ll be there in ten,” I say.
Chapter Forty-Eight
overdose: an excessive amount; a lethal dosage of a drug
“I can’t hang out,” I tell Josie as soon as she gets in my car. “I’ve got a game tomorrow and—”
“And softball is everything. Yeah, I know,” she interrupts. “Head out to the truck stop on the freeway.”
“Seriously? That’s like twenty minutes.”
“Yep,” Josie confirms. “And we don’t have Patrick’s working number and Jadine isn’t answering her phone and we can’t go anywhere near Edith’s. Now, either we make a new friend or we both have a long fucking night, and a real shitty day tomorrow, because I cannot take this, Mickey, and judging by the sweat that just popped up on your lip I’m guessing you don’t feel so awesome, either.”
I’m not exactly talkative, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard Josie say so much. She’s in a bad way, her hands shaky and her nails torn, the tips just sticking out of the ends of her sleeves.
“No, I don’t feel so awesome,” I say. “And I’ve got—”
“A game tomorrow that decides the fate of the universe, I know, so can you fucking drive faster?”
“Being conference champs is important,” I snap at her, remembering Coach’s speech under locker-room lights, the set faces of my teammates. “It affects our ranking going into the tournament bracket. It matters, Josie. It really does.”
“So does going into withdrawal,” she says.
And I can’t argue with that.
When we get to the truck stop, Josie checks her phone.
“Okay, he says drive over to where the dumpsters are.”
“Classy,” I say under my breath, breaking my silence, but I clam up again when we get behind the line of semis and a rusted-out S-10 flashes its lights at us.
“That’s him,” Josie says, tucking her phone into her pocket.
We get out together and walk over as the driver shuts his door. He’s Edith’s age, hair tied back in a ponytail, the seam on his flannel shirt blown out on the left shoulder.
“You Edith’s girls?”
“Yeah,” Josie says as we get closer.
“Let’s make this quick,” he says, glancing around. “I’ve got CVS, Zombie Eater, and a couple of Five-Toed Cat with me.”
“Uh . . .” Josie’s face goes blank. She looks to me for help.
“What are you even saying?” I ask him.
He cocks his head, like I’m the one not making sense. “You want heroin, right?”
“Yes,” Josie and I say at the same time.
“So . . .” He pulls something out of his pocket, a little white baggie with a stamp of a cat’s face on it.
“Black tar,” Josie tells him. “That’s what we want.”
She says it like we have a preference or something, not like it’s because we have no idea how to mix anything else.
He jams the bag back into his pocket, offended. “That Mexican shit?”
“Are you seriously trying to guilt me into buying American right now?” Josie snaps.
“Hey, girlie.” He raises his voice, bringing his finger up to Josie’s face. “I fought for this country and I don’t need—”
“Fought for this country?” Josie repeats, cutting him off. “Against Mexico? Is one of your bags called Remember the Alamo?”
“Okay, okay.” I step in between them. “This is not helping. How much?”
Mentioning money brings the bag back out and improves his mood. “How much you need?”
The truth is, I have no idea. This is like me trying to play basketball, running up and down a court instead of in a diamond. I don’t know how strong his stuff is or how much it’ll take to put me in fighting shape tomorrow.
“I’ve got a hundred bucks,” Josie says, pulling out cash.
I’m not an expert at buying drugs, but I do know she just fucked up. Now he knows what we’ve got, on top of knowing that we’re out of our element. He can tell us that’ll only get us one bag and we’re in no position to argue. In the end, he hands over five bags—two with the cat face, one with a zombie on it, and two—bizarrely—stamped with the Starbucks logo.
“Let me know when you need me,” he says, getting back in the car. “Have fun, kids.”
I don’t like this. I don’t like him and his stamp bags and how he told us to have fun rather than telling us to be safe, the way Patrick does. But Josie doesn’t share my reservations, is already texting Luther and Derrick, letting them know to c
ome to her place instead of Edith’s. I’m highly aware of the syringe I brought from home, loaded with something I’m familiar with. We get to Josie’s and she takes me straight downstairs to a den, where we dump the bags on the coffee table and Google for advice on how to shoot powder.
It really shouldn’t be this easy.
Josie is drawing up a needle for herself when Derrick and Luther come busting down the stairs, bringing with them the smell of clear, cool outside air.
“What’s up, ladies?” Derrick asks, polite enough to make it plural but too transparent to look at anyone but Josie.
“Yeah, what is up?” Luther echoes, but his eyes are on the table and the different setup going on there.
“Trying something new,” Josie says breezily. “Couldn’t get ahold of Patrick.”
“Cool, cool,” Derrick says, flopping onto the couch next to her. “I’m in.”
Luther looks at me before answering, but I avoid his eyes, focusing on my phone. By the time they get their own needles together I’m stifling a yawn as I pull my own syringe out of my hoodie.
“The fuck?” Josie gives me a dirty look. “You said you were out?”
“This is nothing,” I say, then tell everyone about taking a piss on my last balloon.
“Fuuuuuuuck,” Derrick says, tying off his arm. “I would’ve fished that out, piss or no piss.”
I definitely thought about it, but Mom made sure I flushed, any last suspicions she had circling the septic tank along with my heroin.
Derrick nods off, then Luther, and Josie asks me to dim the lights. I do it, yawning as I go, the massive load of food in my belly dragging me into sleepiness. My phone goes off. A text from Mom.
Where are you?
At Carolina’s—last game, senior year, getting together.
Home soon.
I send along a selfie of me with Carolina and Lydia, faces crammed together. It’s from a party at her place months ago.
K. Have fun. Don’t stay out too late!
“I can’t hang out,” I remind Josie as she ties off and I sit down next to her.
“You going to do that here?” she asks, nodding toward my syringe.
I consider it. Taking anything back home would be stupid after such a close call with Mom, and what little is in the dose I scraped together will only take the edge off the withdrawal, not put me anywhere I can’t function.
Heroine Page 22
