Inevitable Detour (Inevitability Book 1)(79)

These days… Yeah, right. More like these blurry, f*cked-up segments of time.

Sighing, I roll the window up just enough to lean my head against the cool glass. What am I going to do? I silently ask myself.

What I really need to do is get the hell out of this tiny Ohio farm town I landed back in two years ago. I’m spinning my wheels here in Harmony Creek, hanging with a bad crowd. Problem is I have no plan, no money either. Drugs are my escape and have been for quite a while. My priorities are all f*cked up. My life, it’s upside down. Every day it seems like getting high—and staying that way—is my only goal. I want to stop—believe me I do—but I don’t think I know how to anymore.

A lump forms in my throat at this thought, but I swallow it down. “Hey,” I say to Tate, who is driving. “Let’s get out of this town.”

Tate Cody, my friend…and my partner in crime in everything wild and crazy these days—women, drugs, drinking, fighting—you name it, we do it. And if we’re not doing it nowadays, chances are we’ve done it at least once over the past couple of years. We’ve yet to slow down; we live on the edge.

I sometimes wonder when we’ll fall.

“What do you think we’re doing, Chase, my man?”

I take in and process Tate’s reply, while he lifts a bottle of cheap gin to his lips and hits the gas. And for this one long, tortuous drawn-out second, I can’t make a distinction between what I asked Tate and what I was only thinking. I panic, assuming my partner in crime’s response is to let me know it’s finally happening, we’re really falling.

But then Tate adds, “I’m getting us out of here as fast as I can,” and I breathe a little easier. He just means we’re leaving Harmony Creek. Not falling, after all. Shit, I need to ease up on the drugs.

I glance out the window, and though it’s dark I can see we’re heading east, nearing the state line. Soon we’ll be out of Ohio completely, and in the neighboring state of Pennsylvania. That’s where we’re supposed to hook up with two girls tonight. They’re from New Castle, and we’re meeting at a lake across the state line.

I don’t really care about all that, though. What I’d really rather do is keep on going. Hop on Interstate 80 and clock the miles to Jersey. Better yet, Tate and I could go farther. We could drive our asses straight into New York-f*cking-City. Now that would be sweet.

So while Tate barrels down a back road the police rarely patrol—until you get into Pennsylvania, that is—I pretend we’re leaving Harmony Creek for good. No looking back, no regrets, just flying the f*ck out of this lame-ass small town.

And speaking of flying, I’m flying a bit now too, feeling fine, baby, fine. I close my eyes so I can savor the s-l-o-w creep of numbness that cocoons me like a warm and fuzzy blanket.

I feel nothing, yet I feel everything.

My skin tingles a little, but when I touch my hand to my face it feels detached, like these parts of my body belong to two different people, neither of them me. That thought makes me happy, escape is exactly what I crave.

Needless to say, I’ve smoked—a lot—and not just weed. But it’s the pills I swallowed a while ago that are starting to wrap me up and spin me the f*ck out.

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.