The After of Us (Judge Me Not #4)(67)

I’ve got the Focus up to eighty, music playing…loud, loud, f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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 f*cked.

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 f*cking 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.