I Stand Before You (Judge Me Not #2)(2)

A bottle hits the back of my hand and my eyes fly open. Shit, I forgot I am not alone in this car.

“Drink, f*cker,” Tate urges.

I take the gin, despite the fact I can barely see straight. No isn’t part of my vocabulary when I’m like this. And, sadly, more often than not, this is exactly how I am. This is who I am becoming: Chase Gartner, burgeoning drug addict.

As per most nights, Tate and I stopped at Kyle’s before embarking on this night’s little adventure. Kyle Tanner supplies us with more drugs than we could ever hope for. And the quality is always top notch. Kyle takes a certain kind of pride in dealing only primo product. But you’d never guess such a thing if you saw the rundown shithole he lives in.

Our dealer resides on the other side of town, over by the closed-down glass factory, in a clapboard house he shares with his meth-addicted dad. Lately, going there has been a contradiction of emotions for me. I love and hate concurrently when Tate and I cross over the railroad tracks that mark the end of the safe neighborhoods of Harmony Creek. Then, I vacillate between love and hate as I watch the Sparkle Mart grocery store appear…then disappear. I lean a little more towards hate when we reach the rundown apartment building where the junkies hang out, where their emaciated bodies lean lazily against the dirty brick exterior.

I sure as f*ck don’t want to end up there, God, no. But maybe I’m powerless to stop my downward spiral. Lord knows, by the time we start down the long dirt road that leads to Kyle’s place, I crave and I want. And love trumps hate by that point. Even the junkies seem less scary. So we go…and we go…and we keep going back.

Tate tells me the road to Kyle’s house is the road to salvation. Salvation, my ass. I’d be more inclined to say Tate and I are traveling a path to hell. We’re in the express lane to damnation, and one step closer to burning every time we travel down that f*cking dirt road. I know it, he knows it, but do we ever do anything to stop? Do we try to crawl out of the hole we’re wallowing in? No, never.

In fact, Tate wants us to delve in deeper—start selling. He says we’ll make, at the minimum, enough money to help pay for the copious amounts of shit we ingest…snort…smoke. Yeah, we do it all, everything short of needles. I somehow know if I ever cross that line, there will be no going back.

But I’m considering the selling thing, albeit for a different reason than my friend. Tate hopes to eventually make enough cash to buy his own wheels. He hates borrowing the piece of shit we’re currently in—his mom’s old, rusted Ford Focus. I just want to make enough money to buy a ticket out of this place. The little bit I earn painting people’s houses, picking up construction work here and there—it’s not adding up fast enough for my liking.

Hell, I still live at my grandmother’s farmhouse out on Cold Springs Lane. Granted, I recently fixed up the little apartment above the detached garage, moved from a bedroom in the main house to an area not too much larger. But that little apartment provides privacy, and that’s what I need. I am no longer a teenager, like when I first moved back two years ago. That’s why I want, more than anything, to just get the f*ck out of here. I’m thinking the money I make selling will make escape a reality, not just some pipe dream. No pun intended.

I raise the bottle of gin to my lips and tip it back. Alcohol heats my throat. “I think I’m going to take Kyle up on his offer,” I say after I swallow the burn, the resulting grimace distorting my voice. “I need the money and it’s going to take forever to earn it legit.”

“You’re making the right decision, my friend,” Tate replies as he reaches over to take back the bottle.

Whoa… My vision turns wonky. There are three overlapping filmy images of my friend, and then just two.

“It’s all about the numbers, man,” two filmy Tates tell me.

I tell myself I need to slow down, and then I say to Tate, “That it is.” I squeeze my eyes shut to keep from swaying in my seat. “That it is,” I repeat.

The irony is that I once had money. Well, my family did, enough that my parents had a trust fund set up for me. Not a big one, mind you, but enough that it would’ve allowed for me to go to a decent college, get set up in a new city, shit like that.

I have no idea what my future holds nowadays, but I know it’s been tainted by my past.

Back when I was around eight my parents moved from this town out to Las Vegas. My dad, who’d been successfully building houses here for a while, started a similar construction business out in Nevada. The timing was right, the stars aligned. We caught magic in the early days of the housing boom. Everything was golden and money poured in. It was happy times. For a while.

During those good times, Mom got pregnant. She gave me a little brother named Will that I still love like crazy and miss every f*cking day. We used to talk on the phone all the time, but now I’m lucky if I get a two-word text from my little bro. I suppose when you’re eleven years old—and haven’t seen your big brother in two years—memories become a little hazy.

That’s another thing the extra money from selling drugs will help with: I’ll have enough funds to fly out to Vegas to see Will. Or I can just buy him a ticket to come here. As it is my mom, Abby, barely makes enough to get by out there.

But, like I said before, it wasn’t always that way. In the early years, my father’s construction company grew and thrived, so much so that I once entertained dreams of taking over the business. I used to imagine following in my father’s footsteps, as sons are apt to do.