Catch Me

by Claire Contreras

  I made a couple of calls and got in contact with friends of friends that I’d met at the parties I frequented and was able to get us into a couple of good clubs that Friday. We did our usual lines of cocaine in the back of the car on our way to the club. Cocaine and cough syrup, that’s what we were about at the time. Periodically we would add heroin to the mix, but that was only when one of us was hitting rock bottom. Heroin was a rock bottom drug for us, the one we went to when we were feeing extra depressed. Shea loved it when we were on our heroin trips—that was his drug of choice, so when he’d hang out with us he brought it. He’d been to San Fran with us a couple of times but was busy that weekend. At that point he was still playing smaller shows in shopping malls and radio stations. He hadn’t hit it big yet, and our relationship was on the rocks, quite literally. The last time I’d seen him had been over cocaine.

  The thing about cocaine was that it was awesome the first handful of times. We felt like we were energized and on top of the world. After that, we started to become jittery after our first hit. That’s where the cough syrup came in to calm our nerves. We could’ve died, we knew that; we were playing with fire, we knew that too. We cared very little though. When you’re seventeen, you think you’re invincible as it is. When you’re seventeen and have nobody to show you that they genuinely care about you, or everybody that you want love from is too busy for you, you act out. That’s what we were doing: acting out, begging for attention from our parents. We realized at some point that we weren’t going to get their attention, but by then we were in too deep.

  We went to the club and danced our asses off that Thursday. On Friday we slept past noon, woke up, had breakfast again, sunbathed, got ready for another club and it was a repeat. Ryan’s parents were being more annoying than usual, blowing up his phone every hour. I never heard what they told him, but I saw the way his face crumbled every time he got off the phone. I saw the way he reached for our little Ziploc of coke the second he hung up on his screaming mother or berating father.

  That night, we went to a different club. Ryan disappeared with one guy, while I danced with a couple of others—it was our usual thing. When Ryan came back, he had a beaming smile on his face, his eyes glassy, and his red hair was slick with sweat. I asked him where he went and he told me he went to the bathroom with that guy. After they did whatever they did (Ryan and I never talked about specifics when it came to those things), he shot him up with heroin.

  “Best. High. Ever,” Ryan said.

  I pursed my lips in disbelief. “Yeah, right.”

  “Watch,” he said, calling the guy over and telling him I wanted some too.

  We ended up going back to our hotel. We had a two-bedroom suite with a huge living room and a gorgeous view of the city, so it made sense. Because my high was practically non-existent by that point, I wanted to get straight to business. The guy, a skinny blond with shaggy hair and a grin that was way too big for his face—he kind of looked like The Joker. He was just as creepy, too. He wrapped my arm with a band and I balled my fist so he could get my vein. This guy, a nurse practitioner, he said he was, claimed he was the best vein finder. I don’t know if he was right or not, I didn’t care. I let him do it anyway. He inserted the needle and pulled the plunger until I could see my blood rush into it, then slowly pushed the plunger, pulled it back, then squeezed. Tingles instantly started rushing up my arm and I let out a sigh of relief as I felt them before throwing my head back in ecstasy when the high hit me. It was magical, beautiful; it was unicorns, painted ponies, rainbows, kisses, tight hugs, acceptance and unconditional love all wrapped up in one beautiful medley.

  Ryan was right, it was the most amazing high I’d had on it yet. I tried to stay away from heroin, only doing it when Shea came to town and wanted to do it. I never understood why he wanted to do it with me. Heroin wasn’t like ecstasy where we would do it and have sex for hours. He could barely get it up when he was high on heroin, but the feel of the drug running through his veins was more important than him being inside of me. I tried to limit myself from it by not keeping in contact with the people I knew could get it for me. I even banned Ryan from telling me who his suppliers were. I really didn’t want it to be my downfall, and I knew it could be because none of my heroin highs ever topped the first one. Looking for that first high, that irrevocable one where I felt like I was having a conversation with God and his angels, would kill me. I knew it even then. And I didn’t want to die at seventeen; I just wanted the attention that would come with almost dying. I wanted to play with death through the fence; I didn’t want her to invite me in for tea and crumpets.

  We partied all night that Friday. All. Night. And when I woke up the next morning and stumbled to Ryan’s room, I shook him awake and he laughed with me at the craziness of the night before. Then his phone started ringing and I knew it was his mom calling again, so I stepped out. When I stepped back in again, he was brewing. I always knew to leave him alone when he got that way because he was like me, he didn’t want people to see him cry.

  “I’ll be back, Rye, I have to buy a dress for tonight anyway,” I said.

  “Cool. See you later then,” he said.

  I spent the afternoon shopping, and when I got back, Ryan was ready for dinner. He was his usual smiling self, and I was glad he wasn’t letting his parents ruin the weekend for us.

  “I don’t understand what their deal is,” he said over dinner.

  We went to Akikos that night, his favorite Sushi joint in San Fran.

  “Why do they keep harassing you?” I asked.

  He tilted his head as he looked at me with a look, telling me not to be dumb. “Because I’m gay, Bee, and they don’t want their socialite friends to find out about it.”

  My shoulders slumped. I felt so bad for my best friend. He was a straight-A student, graduated Summa Cum Laude, and got accepted to Georgetown University. What more could they possibly ask of him? Ryan had been gifted an Aston Martin for his seventeenth birthday and had never even gotten a speeding ticket. I even got a speeding ticket driving the damn car, but not Ryan. Other than his frequent drug use, which stemmed from the hatred he got at home for being something he couldn’t change, he was a straight-laced kid.

  “I don’t get it,” I muttered. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Ryan shrugged, letting out a breath. “I think they’re just embarrassed since I’m going to Georgetown and that’s where they went. I dunno.”

  My brows furrowed. “What does that have to do with anything? They were the ones that made you decline Yale and Harvard. How stupid can they be?”

  “Very,” he said, laughing.

  I laughed along in agreement.

  “Don’t you have that thing tonight?” Ryan asked.

  “Shit,” I said, looking at the time. “My mom’s gonna kill me. I’m supposed to be there at nine.”

  My mom had signed me up to attend some type of party for a popular magazine since she couldn’t make it. I agreed because I knew if I didn’t, she would try to cancel my trip with Ryan by canceling my credit cards. When my mom asked me to do something, I did it, not because I wanted to be a good daughter, but because there was a stringent catch attached to it.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, feeling bad that I couldn’t take him as my date. Mom had already set up for me to go with some guy I didn’t know. He was supposed to be picking me up at my hotel half an hour before the event.

  “Eh, I dunno, I’ll find something,” he said, shrugging.

  We went back to the hotel and hung out there for a while, talking crap and flipping through magazines, making fun of the men and women’s faces. The front desk called when my date was downstairs waiting, and I groaned at having to go.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said with a pout, throwing my arms around him and kissing him soundly on the cheek.

  “Yeah, yeah, have fun,” he joked. “Love you, Bumble Bee.”

  I rolled my eyes, laughing. “Love you too, Rye face.”r />
  Sprinting to the elevator, I cursed when I realized I forgot my phone and went back to the room. When I opened the door, I saw Ryan stretched out on the couch, watching TV, typing away on his phone.

  “Forgot my phone,” I said in response to his questioning look.

  He nodded and went back to his phone. I went downstairs, smiling at my date when I saw him. He was wearing a suit and a pair of Chucks, which I thought was cool. He had long black hair that tucked behind his ears, pale skin, and black eyeliner around his blue eyes. I instantly liked him and hated myself for it because that was one of the things my mother had said to me.

  “You’re going to love him, he looks all rocker and gross like those guys you like,” she’d said.

  His named was Bryant and he was the drummer for a band that had been signed with a rival record label. My mother, once again, feeding me to the fish and knowing that I was the shark to catch them, took the opportunity and paired us together for that event. By the end of the night, I had Bryant and the rest of his band members dying to sign, not because I did much pitching, but because I got drunk and high with them and they thought I was the “coolest chick they’d met in a while.”

  Bryant and I ended up hooking up in the limo on our way back to my hotel, which I informed Shea of on my way up to my room. Shea’s words were, “Why would you do that to me? Why would you hook up with another artist knowing I’ll have to see him at parties? What the fuck, Brooklyn?” Shea never called me Brooklyn, only when he was beyond mad at me. “Don’t call me again,” he’d said and hung up the phone. The funny part was that the reason I called Shea to tell him was because I wanted him to get jealous. I wanted him to care that I hooked up with somebody else and leave all the groupies he was hooking up with. I wanted him to look around and decide that I was worth more than them. I was an idiot for thinking he would.

  I went up to the room and noticed Ryan wasn’t in the living room anymore. His room wasn’t completely closed, so I knocked a little and peeked in.

  “Hey, Rye,” I said.

  “Hey, Bee. How’d it go?” he asked, sounding sleepy.

  The room was dark so I couldn’t see him clearly, but I heard him ruffling in the sheets and I knew he was in bed.

  “It was good. Met a guy,” I said.

  “Yeah? Cute?” he asked.

  “Very.”

  “Your usual grungy type?” he asked with a laugh. Ryan hated my usual type of guy. He was always saying I needed to hook up with a nicer looking guy, a preppy guy that would treat me right. I promised him that maybe one day I would stop hooking up with musicians and actually give the nicer looking guys a chance. He would laugh and say that I was going to marry a heavily tattooed guy with piercings and my mother was going to really disown me then.

  I laughed. “Yeah, black eyeliner and everything,” I said.

  “Nice,” he responded.

  I yawned. “‘K, I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe we can actually do touristy shit.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ve always wanted to actually walk that damn bridge,” he said. “I’m sure you can see Alcatraz from there. Maybe we can go on one of those boat tours to Alcatraz,” he suggested.

  “That would be cool!” I agreed. “Goodnight, Rye-Face. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Bumble Bee.”

  I went to my room and threw myself on the bed, not bothering to take off my makeup. I remember smiling about that and picturing my mom flipping the hell out over me going to sleep with an unwashed face. I went to sleep peacefully that night, despite my fight with Shea. I knew he’d come around, he always did.

  Stretching my arms over my head, I rolled my neck and looked over the covers, catching a glimpse of the sun peeking in through the drapes. I groaned and pushed my head back into the pillow, wondering if Ryan was still sleeping. Ryan loved to sleep late, so I assumed he was, even though I wasn’t sure what time it was. With a sigh, I decided to get out of bed and groggily made my way to the bathroom. My limbs were sore from last night and the night before; the mix of drugs, dancing and sex catching up to me. After I showered, I noticed it was noon and decided to wake up Ryan. I stepped out of my room and noticed his door was still half-open. I looked inside and smiled when I saw him sitting up.

  “Rye, I thought you would be sleeping,” I said, walking over to the window and opening the top layer of his curtains. I glanced at him over my shoulders and felt not as if my heart fell through my chest, but everything in my body just plummeted all at once at the sight of him.

  “Ryan?” I shrieked, running to him with wide eyes that were already welling up with tears.

  He looked gray. Lifeless. He was sitting up in bed but looked more like a stone sculpture than himself. I knew. I just knew. A majestic blue band was wrapped tightly around his bicep and his arms were laying over his crossed legs, his face hanging down over his chest, the needle in his right hand.

  My heart went from still to sixty as wildfire spread through my body, my chest heaving out of control in sobs and breaths that would overtake me at any moment. Lurching forward, I wrapped my arms around him, trying to keep him warm because his body looked like it was freezing. He was so cold, so, so cold under my touch, so dead, so lifeless. My sobs started spilling out.

  “Ryan, noooo,” I kept saying. “Please, no!”

  I grabbed his phone from the nightstand and called 911. The operator picked up on the second ring.

  “911 Emergency, how may I help you?” she said.

  “My friend. I think he overdosed. Oh my God,” I said before losing my ability to speak. “Please, please help him,” I cried into the phone.

  “Calm down, ma’am. What drugs did he take?” she asked soothingly, but I couldn’t calm down. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t think. All I could do was hold my friend in my arms. My best fucking friend. The only person who was there for me at all hours, any hour of the day to listen to me, to hold me, to kiss my tears away, to put up with my endless rants about my unloving parents. The only person that I could turn to with anything and know I wouldn’t be judged. And he was gone. I knew he was gone. I knew nothing I did, nothing the operator told me to do, nothing the paramedics would do when they arrived would save him.

  “Where are you?” she asked, rushed. “I’ll have someone there shortly.”

  I told her the number of our suite at the Fairmont Hotel and let the phone drop from my hands, unwilling to stay on the phone with her. I couldn’t bear to hold it up as I held the only positive thing in my life in my hands, knowing he had withered away from me without me being able to help him. I should’ve slept with him last night. We should’ve gotten a one-bedroom suite, like we usually did. Why had we gotten two rooms? What did we need all of that for? Those were all things I sobbed against him as I rocked him in my arms, refusing to let him go. Letting him go would be watching the light at the end of the tunnel disappear, and the worst part was knowing that it should have been me that was gone, not him.

  He was the one with the bright future ahead of him. I was just Chris and Roxy Harmon’s fuck up socialite daughter, the one that didn’t have anything in her life worth raving about. I was nobody and I would be nothing without Ryan. I cried until I had nothing left in me. When the paramedics pounded on the door, I zombie-walked over to it, opening it and letting them in, not even bothering to look at their faces as they rushed over to Ryan. I stepped out of the way as they checked him and confirmed that he was gone. They asked me a million questions that I couldn’t make out through the hollowed sounds in my ears.

  “He was fine last night,” was all I could offer between cries. “I just saw him last night.” My knees buckled and I fell on the floor as I thought about it. The more I thought about it the more fucked up this all was. “We were supposed to go to Alcatraz today. He always wanted to go to Alcatraz. He always wanted to walk the bridge,” I sobbed. “He always wanted to see the world.” I’d never felt such heartache and I never would again. Not like that. Nothing could ever hurt me as much
as losing him did.

  I rode with him in the ambulance and went to the hospital where they would perform unneeded tests. I knew how he died. They knew how he died. The one question everybody kept asking me was, “Did he have a reason to commit suicide?” The only question I could give them was, “Don’t we all?” It didn’t mean he did, though. It didn’t mean he purposely took his life. He wouldn’t. As fucked up as his parents were and as much as they bullied him for being gay, he wouldn’t have taken his own life. He was almost out of his house. He was supposed to leave for DC a couple of months later. He was waiting to celebrate my eighteenth birthday with me and then he would be gone. He was waiting for me. The way he always was. And he died because of it. He died because of me and everybody would constantly remind me of that.

  Ryan’s mother blamed me and my “crazy rock star lifestyle.” My own mother blamed me for it, saying I always took things “too far.”

  “You’re probably the reason he was gay,” my mother said a couple of days after his death. “You’re probably the reason he can’t bear to be with a woman.”

  I had no response for that. What could I say? My mother didn’t even fully accept the fact that her own brother was gay and living with a man. You would think she at least had a reason, like religious beliefs that made her be that judgmental. She was weirded out about it. The funny thing is that Hollywood is very much like a small high school: everybody talks, everybody has gossip on everybody’s parents, and one of the many rumors I had heard was that my mom had been with one of my classmate’s mother back in the eighties.