Friends Like These(78)

“Maybe I’m not the only one with a substance abuse problem.”

“But why not go home and hang out in a bar in Brooklyn?” Derrick pressed— he sounded suspicious now, of Finch though, not me. “There must have been half a dozen trains back to the city since this morning.”

“Do I look like a goddamn travel agent? Fuck, Derrick, who cares why Finch stayed?”

It was 7:53 p.m. Only seven minutes to get inside and ditch Derrick. I couldn’t risk him following me. Trying to stop me. Trying to save me from myself. That wasn’t happening, not this time.

“You have fifteen minutes,” Derrick said as he pulled open the door to the bar. His stern big-brother voice made my chest pull tight. I should have left Derrick a note too. “Thank you,” I would have written, “for being so loyal.” Because Derrick was always loyal, loyal to a fault.

I saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

Inside, the Falls was even busier than it had been the night before, Aerosmith blasting, wall-to-wall damp bodies, a fucking mob scene near the bar. Something on the TV maybe. Despite all the people, when I looked up I met eyes almost instantly with the contractor sitting at the back. He even lifted his chin in my direction. I wondered if he thought that Jonathan and Peter were with me and had his money. They could already be on their way. Fuck. Another reason to speed things along.

Finally, a buzz in my back pocket. The location, had to be. For a second I wondered whether there was any chance this could end differently. But I couldn’t see how. I had no money. These people didn’t believe in second chances. And I’d already had way more than that. There would never be enough money to dig me out of this mess anyway. Rehab wouldn’t be a real fix, either— I already knew that. It would just be an exhausting pit stop on a never-ending downward slide.

“Can you get me a beer?” I asked Derrick. “I’ve got to take a piss.”

“A beer?” he asked. “Are you kidding me? We’re supposed to check you into rehab tomorrow.”

“Fine, get me a Coke.” I smacked him on the shoulder. “And keep an eye out for Finch. He’s here somewhere. Sooner we find him, the sooner we can leave. That’s what you want, right?”

Derrick looked around. He still seemed nervous. “Yeah, what I want, right. You’re a dick, you know that, Keith?” he said mildly as he turned toward the bar, looking back at me over his shoulder with that kind of regrettable love that he always had for me somehow, even now. He was a better person than me. All my friends were.

As soon as Derrick was out of sight, I headed into the crowd, toward the bathrooms and the back exit to the bar— toward the dark and the quiet and the night. Alone.

1225 Main Street. Corner of Main and Spencer. That was all the text had said. I was standing on Main already, using my phone to figure out the right direction. Nine blocks from the bar, away from the lights and the sound. Not an accident, of course. By block six the streetlamps were gone, the only light left from the half-moon through the trees.

Twelve twenty-five was a falling-down abandoned house with boarded-up windows and overgrown hedges in front, obscuring most of the porch. They were waiting up there, had to be.

And I wouldn’t run. I wouldn’t change my mind. I’d be brave once and for all, for my friends who’d tried for so long to save me. I’d finally face this person I had become. This place I, and I alone, had delivered myself to.





JONATHAN


SATURDAY, 8:26 P.M.

“This is insanity,” Stephanie snapped as she got out of the car. She’d been complaining, loudly, ever since Peter got the text from the contractors: The Falls, 8:30 p.m. “Are we seriously about to go into this bar to give these people twenty thousand dollars? In cash? When does paying people off ever actually turn out well?”

“Stephanie!” I hissed as we crossed the street. “Enough already. Let’s get this over with.”

She was just worried, though. I knew that. We were all worried. In the midst of everything, Keith and Derrick had also vanished— no explanation, no note, nothing. Surely Keith had talked Derrick into something, and surely it would not be good. They’d presumably gone somewhere Keith could buy, and Derrick had fallen for whatever excuse had gotten him to drive. Though, even for Derrick, this seemed awfully naive. Stephanie wasn’t so sure it was that simple.

“Keith got a call from someone when I was with him,” she’d said. “Someone who was very angry, he said. He seemed scared, too. And you know Keith, he’s usually so— ”

“Impervious,” I’d finished her thought. And this was true. Keith had a dangerously high terror threshold.

And now neither Derrick nor Keith were answering their phones— and, yes, the signal was spotty up there. But it wasn’t a good sign. Maeve had agreed to stay behind to watch for them, but Stephanie insisted on coming along with Peter and me so she could look around herself at the Falls. She had already mentioned going to the Farm if we didn’t find Derrick and Keith downtown. But there was no way I was ever going back there. Absolutely no way.

Stephanie disappeared into the packed crowd in search of Derrick and Keith as Peter and I made our way around, looking for our good friend Luke the contractor. I thought it had been crowded the night before, but now there was some kind of fight on the TV, and we had to wade through a sweaty sea of bodies.