by S. R. Grey
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 two 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 will 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.
Continue the story…
Read the rest of I Stand Before You now!
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not considered to be real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Tomorrow’s Lies
Copyright © 2015 by S.R. Grey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
ISBN-10: 098615654X
ISBN-13: 978-0-9861565-4-0
Editing: Hot Tree Editing
Cover Design: ©Hang Le
Ebook designed and formatted by:
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Books by S.R. Grey
About Tomorrow's Promises
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
PART ONE
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
PART TWO
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
About the Author
I Stand Before You
Copyright Notice
