Heroine(13)

I’m a tourist here.

But I don’t feel like Edith is taking advantage of me when she pops two cookies in my hands, still warm and gooey from the oven, and invites me to sit down at her kitchen table.

“How you feeling, darlin’?” she asks me, patting my shoulder as I lower myself into a chair, wincing, and lean my crutches against the table.

People have been asking me all day how I’m feeling, teammates and teachers, counselors and coaches. For them, I gave the expected answer. I am strong. I am a survivor. But I’m here for a reason, and Edith knows what it is.

“I hurt.”

“I know it, hon. I know it,” she says, putting a glass of milk in front of me. She tells me she’ll be right back and disappears down the hallway. I break apart one of the cookies, melted chocolate forming delicious bridges between the two pieces. I haven’t had an after-school snack since Mom went back to full time when I was in sixth grade. On the kitchen counter, a police scanner spews out codes and static, reporting as people get hurt, go to the hospital, die. God, why do old people love those things?

“How many you need?” Edith’s voice calls from the back of the house.

I like how she says need, not want.

“Um . . .” I think about it, while chocolate drips onto my fingers.

“Right now I’ve only got ten 30s, five 60s, and a handful of 80s.”

I try to do the math. I was prescribed two doses of 20 milligrams per day—one for the morning, one at night—and I stuck to it pretty good until physical therapy started kicking my ass.

“Hon?” Edith’s voice, high-pitched and inquisitive.

“Give me all the 30s,” I say real fast, before I can crunch the numbers. I don’t want her to walk out of the back and find me doing math on my phone like . . . well, like a tourist. She doesn’t answer me, but I hear the familiar noise of a bottle cap being popped, then the sound of pills sliding across a surface as she counts them under her breath.

I’m about to be out of pain, out of the private hell of pretending that I limped through all day. Sitting here with my bad leg propped up, in an overheated kitchen with a gooey cookie in my hand, I realize that for the first time all day I feel . . . comfortable.

That’s when the side door crashes open, and a girl my age walks in. “Edie?” She calls, flipping a glossy mane of hair over her shoulder. “Edes? Jesus Christ, it’s ninety degrees in here, woman. I know you have bad circulation but—”

She stops when she spots me, perfectly painted nails pulling her hair back to where it had been.

“Oh, hey,” she says. “That your car in the drive?”

These are the kinds of girls I can’t talk to, never have been able. We’re the same sex of the same species, but I always feel like an orca flopping around on dry land while gazelles like her hover around me, unsure of the large awkwardness that has claimed space among them. It doesn’t help that I just took my first bite of cookie and my jaws are stuck together. I go with nodding.

She tosses her purse—a Coach, I notice—onto Edith’s table and flops onto the chair opposite me. “Josie,” she says, holding out a hand. Both of mine are greasy, but one has less crumbs than the other, so I shake with that one.

“Mickey,” I finally manage to say, when I unstick my jaws, then wonder if I’m supposed to give a fake name or something, since I’m here buying drugs.

“Jos? That you?” Edith’s voice interrupts us.

“Yeah,” she calls back, glancing down at her phone when it buzzes.

“Mickey wiped me out of my 30s, hon, so if you want something you’ll have to go with 60s or 80s for now.”

So much for secrecy.

“How many 60s you got?” Josie asks, while answering a text.

There’s a pause. “Four.” Funny, I could swear Edith told me she had five.

“I’ll take ’em,” Josie says, reaching into her purse and pulling out a wad of cash.

Shit.

I was so busy trying to figure out how many pills I needed until the next appointment with Dr. Ferriman that I didn’t even think about if I had enough money to buy them. I asked Edith for ten 30s, so at a dollar a milligram . . . I just bought three hundred dollars’ worth of pills and I only have two hundred in my pocket.

What I have is birthday money, and it was going to go toward a tougher phone case and new workout playlists. Now, I’m recounting it in front of a stranger, as if I think the twenty-dollar bills in my pocket might have multiplied since I put them there.

“You short?” Josie asks.

I’ve got two choices. I can either admit to Edith that I don’t have it, and try to make it through the rest of the month by cutting pills in half, or I can be honest. It’s the idea of dividing pills that takes my pride down a notch.

“Yeah,” I say. “By a hundred.”

Josie peels five twenties off without blinking, and tosses them in front of me.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m good for it.”

“So’s my mom,” she says, eyes back on her phone.

On the counter, the scanner crackles.

32 to 7300 . . . Go ahead 32 . . . 7300 signal 13 at the gas station.

“Somebody’s gotta pee,” Josie says.

“What?”

“The scanner,” she says without looking up from her phone. “A thirteen means the officer is taking a leak.”