Carry Me Home

by Jessica Therrien

  “The whole thing?” he asks in shock. I can’t imagine what it must have looked like when those thugs toted a desktop computer through the open window of my apartment.

  “Yeah. And she’s gone again.”

  “Want me to come over?”

  He’s there before I finish my first cup of coffee.

  I don’t bother to change out of my nightgown or fix my hair. That’s why I find myself loving him so much. He sees right through it all, and appreciates me for the person I am, not the way I look.

  “I missed you,” he says, leaning over to kiss me on the couch.

  He sits next to me in full uniform. The contrast in our appearances is funny. Normally I’d laugh at the two of us, but I don’t have it in me.

  “Me too,” I answer. “Want some coffee?”

  I get up and grab him a cup, because I already know the answer. When I hand it to him, he gives me one of those hangdog, sympathetic expressions. I guess he can tell I’m a mess.

  “I think she had those Crazy Eight guys in my house.”

  His soft eyes intensify. “Why do you say that? Did you see them?”

  “Yeah,” I admit. “The room was dark, but I could tell they were grown men. One of them had a bald head and an eight-ball tattoo.”

  He presses his thumb and forefinger to his eyebrows and drags his hand over his face.

  “That’s not good, Rach.” He keeps shaking his head.

  I break. I’ve tried to hold it in, and pretend like it doesn’t bother me that she’s so wild, because she’s my little girl. She’s in there somewhere, and I keep waiting for this phase to pass or for her to realize how good she has it and come back to me. But I’ve finally fallen from the cliff of hope I’ve been scaling so carefully.

  “I don’t know what to do.” I let it out, burying my head into the deep blue fabric of his uniform. He cradles me and kisses the top of my head.

  I can’t think of the last time a man has held me like this. It feels strange to be comforted instead of yelled at or made fun of. I hold him a little tighter as the tears let up.

  “It’ll be okay,” he whispers.

  I sit up and kiss him on the mouth, another feeling I’m still getting used to. It’s been years since I truly kissed my husband.

  When I pull away, he looks me over, clearly distressed by my state. “Just say the word and I’ll put out a search. It might be what’s best for her. Maybe scare her back to reality, you know?”

  I bite my lip, tasting the salt from my tears. “Will she get in trouble, though? I don’t want her to end up in jail or with major charges on her record...”

  “She’s a minor. It won’t be anything serious, and I’ll try to keep things off the books. Get some buddies of mine to help me out.”

  I’m desperate. I want my daughter back. There’s just no way of knowing whether this will strengthen or snare the delicate rope that tethers us together.

  But it’s the only thing I’ve got.

  “Okay,” I say, taking a breath to find my courage. “Try and find her. Arrest her if you have to.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Ruth

  THERE’S NOWHERE I’D RATHER be than in this tent with Josh. It’s our second night camping with his family in a place called Anza Borrego Springs. Usually the wildflowers come in March, but there’s a late July bloom of sand verbena and desert sunflowers. The fields are blanketed with purple and yellow. I can smell them through the open mesh windows. It’s already hot, even though the grey light of dawn has just started to brighten with sunrise.

  When summer is over I’m starting college. I’m enrolled in Cal State Long Beach. They have a great film program. I’ve got an off-campus apartment lined up, pre-paid with scholarships and student loans. It’s all official. I want to be excited. I’ve been looking forward to college since junior high, but all my dreams and plans wither in the face of teenage love. I don’t want to go.

  I haven’t said anything. Neither has he. We’ve both been pretending the end isn’t coming, because he’s enrolled in an east coast college in Boston. There’s a reason high school sweethearts is a term that everyone knows. Nobody forgets their first love, no matter how irrational it is to call it love, it’s what it feels like, as undeniable and unforgettable as the first brush of color on the stark white pages of life.

  He’s still asleep next to me, the front of his body warm against my back. I have yet to move from under the weight of his arm resting on my hip. I used to practice this feeling, laying a rolled blanket over my side. The real thing is better.

  We’ve unzipped and re-zipped our sleeping bags to make it one single bed. Thankfully his parents have their own tent, which they’ve placed some distance away, so I’m hoping all they hear is the hum of our conversations at night.

  As he stirs, fighting with the heat for a few more minutes of sleep, I try to think why I like him, why my heart keeps screaming at me that it’s love. When I met him, I don’t remember finding him what others would consider especially attractive, but his features have become affectionately familiar to me. His frizzy curls, which seemed oddly paired with his Asian eyes, have become cute, the way tousled morning hair can be endearing. Even his slightly pudgy belly is comfortable and adorable to me under cotton pajama shirts and sweatpants.

  But his looks are, honestly, the last thing on my list of reasons I think I love him.

  He sees me. I’ve never been noticed by a boy before. He’s the first to patiently wait while I shed my cocoon of shyness, and he actually enjoys the person I am beneath it all. I’m comfortable around him, as comfortable as I am when I’m alone. There’s no effort, no anxiety. That’s what truly makes me love him. That I can be me, and he likes me just the way I am. What if I never find that again? How can I let that go?

  “Hey,” he says, stretching his arms above his head. His eyes squint into tight wrinkles as he yawns.

  “I don’t want to go,” I say, sitting up in our sleeping bag.

  He rolls to the side and slides his arms around my waist, kissing the bare skin of my hip.

  “You’re the only girl in Southern California who wants to keep camping.”

  I laugh, because that’s probably true. I’m not like most girls. I pick flip-flops over heels, pajamas over the club scene. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

  I sigh. “I mean, away, to Long Beach.”

  He breathes warm against my thigh, and I feel lost in his silence.

  “Me either,” he says.

  I sit there for a while, staring at the green canvas of our tent until he pulls me back to my pillow. He puts his face close to mine, so our cheeks are touching. Is it just the feel of first love or is this it, this so-close feeling that makes it hard to breathe without each other?

  “What if we didn’t go?” he says. “We could just tell our parents to get screwed. Mine will kick me out, but I can get a job. We can get a place together.”

  I shake my head, just enough that he can feel my answer against his cheek.

  “No. You need to go to school. I don’t want them to hate me.”

  “So come with me,” he says, propping up on his elbow.

  It’s not a solution, so I shrug it off. “I can’t. Everything is set up for Long Beach.”

  “Well, it’s either I go with you or you go with me. Or, I guess we just talk on the phone a lot.”

  I don’t like any of his options, but if I have to choose the most feasible, Boston doesn’t sound half bad. My mom has always said follow your dreams, follow your heart. What if my heart is moving to Boston? She’ll understand. It would mean giving up scholarships and grant money, but what good will any of that do me if I’m miserable?

  So I decide in that wildflower moment in the middle of Anza Borrego to let go of my future and make a new one.

  “I’ll come with you,” I say, my lips a tight-lipped smile afraid to let the joy out.

  “What about your—”

  “I don’t care,” I interrupt.

  Hi
s brow is a pinched in disbelief, but he’s smiling. “Okay.”

  “Okay.” I seal our decision with the word, before panic quickly levels the little city of excitement I’ve been building in my head. “Unless you don’t want me to.”

  “No. I do. I’ve been going crazy over it.”

  “So we’re doing this?”

  “We’re doing this.” He scoops my face up in his large musician hands and kisses me.

  I pull away, thinking of cracks in our plan. “Aren’t you staying in the dorms? I can’t stay there.”

  “We’ll find a place. We’re adults, right? They’re sending us into the real world. Who says we can’t figure it out together?”

  I return to the kiss with deeper breaths, but the seal of our mouths keeps fighting with my smiling lips. He gives up trying to kiss me sweetly and resorts to quick happy pecks from cheek to ear to forehead, until I release the rush of laughter I’ve been holding inside.

  We love each other, layers deeper than teenage obsession.

  I never want to leave this tent, this tiny room where I gave into to the youthful foolishness I’ve been warned about. That reckless love that old married people tsk-tsk at because “we’re too young to know anything about life and happiness and true passion”.

  But then what is this feeling? What is this, if not the bud of our future opening in the desert sun?

  CHAPTER 38

  Lucy

  I WAKE UP FACE down in a motel bathtub. The faucet drips against the back of my once flat-ironed hair. Water has found its way up my nose, and I cough it up, wincing from the sting.

  “Shit,” I whisper to myself as I sit up and blink my eyes back into focus.

  The front of my white tanktop is soaked. I pull it away from my hot pink bra and try to wring it out.

  “What time is it?” The question is meant for Dani, but nobody answers.

  At first I don’t remember where I am. The bathroom is unfamiliar. Damp towels are balled up on the white tile floor. Cheap lights above the mirror fill the silence with their constant hum. But then I see the complimentary shampoo and thinly sliced hotel soap, and it all comes back.

  Calling Shawn, our dealer. Finding the small hotel behind Glendale High. Rounding up buyers to meet us there. Then kicking everyone out when we realized we wouldn’t have enough for us if they stayed.

  Now that the heaviness is back, the living-dead feeling, I’d kill for someone to just come in, pick me up, and feed me the pipe.

  But I’m alone.

  “Dani,” I try calling her, but even if she’s here, I know she won’t respond if she’s coming down.

  My need for another hit is what drags me out of the tub. I find Shawn asleep on one of the queen-sized beds, sprawled out on top of the covers. Dani is gone.

  My heart rattles with fear at being without her, but I have more pressing issues. I start rummaging for the drugs, opening draws, flipping over pillows. Finally I see the pipe, clutched in Shawn’s hand.

  I don’t even care if he wakes up. I pry it loose, dig in his pockets for the crystals and lighter. He doesn’t move.

  Even as I light the pipe and melt the crystals, he sleeps. I inhale the great white smoke, puffing it out like an Indian, in perfect, wide circles. Each time I do, it feels like that deep breath of air after too long under water. The rushing expanse of my chest spreads the feeling throughout my body. I’m alive again.

  Only after I’ve reached the level I’m looking for do I bother to check Shawn.

  “Hey,” I shove him.

  “What?” he groans, without moving his lips.

  “Where’s Dani?”

  He doesn’t answer. I doubt he knows anyway.

  I have nowhere to go, so I clean and rearrange furniture, moving lamps, folding towels. I keep myself busy until Shawn succumbs to the urge and joins me in the land of the living. We smoke until we’re basically crazy.

  After my panic-cleaning fit I grab a phone book and a sharpie. I draw for six hours, until it’s dark out.

  “Come on,” Shawn says, taking the pen from me. “This is boring. Let’s do something more fun.”

  He looks nothing like Paco, despite them being cousins. Shawn’s skinny as hell. His entire face is covered in tattoos, so are his arms, and you can tell by the way they disappear under his shirt they go all over his body. He smells like an old man and dirty socks. He’s twitchy and hyper and paranoid.

  He’s not attractive, so when he sits next to me and reaches for my thigh, I scoot away.

  “No, Shawn. I don’t like you like that, okay. I love Gabe.”

  “Tssss,” he hisses a breath through his stained teeth. “Gabe ain’t into girls who tweak. He don’t get it.”

  “Still,” I say. “I don’t like you like that. I’m not attracted to you.”

  The tattoos on his face outline his skull, all the teeth along his jaw, the hollow bone of his nose, the dark pits of his eyes. I don’t like looking at him, but I’m forced to at this distance. I wonder in my crazed-high if he’s the grim reaper, some shadow demon finally come to make me pay for my sins.

  “Why not?” His tattoos shift into a glare, darkened by shadow.

  I look away. “I don’t know, okay.”

  “You know you have to pay for all this shit you’ve been smoking.” He yanks at my arm, forcing me to turn and face him. “Right? You got money for that?”

  Maybe it’s the onset of the comedown that makes me complacent or the surge of what’s left that drives the anger through me like sheets of needling rain, but I rip my arm away and jump to my feet.

  “Fine,” I say, standing right on top of the mattress. “Take what you want.”

  I rip my clothes off in rough violent yanks, and throw each piece at him. This isn’t the first time I’ve used my body for drugs, but it’s the first time it’s not my idea.

  He seems amused, but I just want it over with. I don’t really feel up for the alternative, being beaten and raped in a motel, then left here with no drugs.

  I lay like a blowup doll on the scratchy maroon comforter and turn my head so I don’t have to look at him.

  He takes it. What he wants. In angry, awful thrusts. Then he stops.

  “Why aren’t you doing anything?” he asks.

  I stare him straight in his dead skull eyes. “Because I don’t want it. That’s what rape feels like.”

  The full force of his open hand leaves a sting across my cheek, but he pulls off. He grabs his jeans and shoves his legs inside before moving to the other bed to sulk or sleep while I lay there, naked and motionless.

  I get up when I hear his snores and grab the pipe, smoking and smoking into the night. Until my throat burns. I go to the bathroom to check in the mirror, opening my mouth in strange ways trying to catch the light. When I get a look, I freak out, stretching my mouth wider, desperate for a better view. Maybe it’s just the reflection.

  It’s not. I tilt my head, just enough to see the strings of meth that have fused to the back of my throat like they’re a part of me. My panic squeaks out in an open-mouthed whimper as I stick my fingers back there, trying to pick and peel the meth away.

  I’d taken this too far. Up until now, I’d always told myself I could stop. It was just for fun. But I haven’t eaten in three days. The drugs have done damage. What if I can’t come back from this? What if the drugs have already killed me?

  I gape at the mirror again, gagging on my fingertips, and cry in a panic for what seems like an hour, checking and re-checking to see if the strings are gone. They don’t change. In that hour I become hyper-aware of the chords of tweak that slide along the path of my spine. I rub my tongue rhythmically against them, like a panting dog as I pace the bathroom, my nervous energy pulsing with the hummingbird beats of my heart. I have to do something about it.

  Shawn has a knife for cutting the drugs in its powdered form. I sneak into his pocket, trying not to shake too hard, and slide it out with trembling fingers.

  It’s a folding blade with a woo
den handle. It’s sharp. Really sharp. I need to be careful.

  I have to hold my head at a weird angle to see in the bathroom mirror, so I go slowly, reaching the knife point to the back of my throat to cut the strings. Blood starts to flow and I choke on it, coughing and gagging until I puke into the toilet. Little dots of red, spackle the white porcelain, the mirror, the wall.

  After I vomit, I grab at the pain, throttling my neck with desperate hands. I check the mirror again and see blood coming out through my teeth, mixing with my saliva. It scares me so I drink water and sit on the counter, shoving twisted-up hand towels into my mouth like a gag, and worry about dying. I have no idea how severe the wound is, and I’m not confident in my judgment while I’m high.

  Please, I pray to a God I’ve never known. Get me out of this and I’ll be done. I promise. Just help me.

  The towels help. Eventually the blood stops, and I can finally see the cut. It’s deep, but I think I’ll be okay. It hurts to swallow, though. I can’t imagine eating, yet I can feel myself starving.

  An angry knock interrupts my worry. I ignore it, but listen past the hum of the bathroom lights.

  It comes again, this time with a voice, a Chinese lady threatening in broken English to call the cops.

  I get to the door in a hurry, but answer only a crack.

  She’s tiny, with a wrinkled face and mean, squinty eyes. “Get out. It 11:30. I knock for half hour. Check out is 11. I have room cleaned. Get out.”

  At first I think about searching for Shawn’s wallet, but I want out of here anyway. Instead of digging through his stuff, I leave the door open and go to shake his tattooed chest.

  “Shawn.” I shove him harder. “Get up.”

  He doesn’t move.

  “Shawn!” I slap his face a little harder than I should. Nothing.

  I check over my shoulder at the Chinese woman who has her arms crossed and is watching everything I do. He has a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her, shrugging.

  She gives me an urging glare to try something else.

  I find the ice bucket, which is now just a vase of cold water and dump it on his head. He doesn’t even flinch.