Heroine(38)

“If you’ve really got the flu, that should take care of it,” she says, trying to keep her tone light, but her face changes again when I lift my head. “Are you sure it’s the flu? Honey, you look . . .”

I swear if she says like you’re going through withdrawal I will run out the front door as far as my shaky legs will carry me.

“When is the last time you had a bowel movement?” Mom asks, suddenly brisk, no longer a parent, now a doctor. “If you’re becoming toxic or have a renal tear we need to get you to the hospital.”

“It’s a stomach bug. Going around,” I tell her, finding the strength to hold my head still. “Bunch of kids went home today.”

“Okay.” Her hand is still on my back, tremulous, unsure. “But you can get really sick if you don’t use the bathroom. I can give you an enema if you need me to, and if that doesn’t work I can manually evacuate—”

I’m saved from having to react to that when my phone goes off. It’s Dad, and I answer fast, putting him on speaker.

“Hey,” he says. “What’s going on?”

“Mom just offered to stick her finger up my butt,” I tell him.

“You too?”

“Geoff!” Mom grabs the phone, her face a sudden, blazing red.

“Oh my God,” I groan, half in reaction to whatever just happened, half because I think my constipation is about to be solved in a very abrupt manner. Mom misses my dash for the stairs as she makes her own embarrassed exit, my phone to her ear.

I make it to the bathroom in time, but only just.

Shivering, I collapse onto my bed a few minutes later, burrowing under the covers like an injured animal. That’s what I feel like, a lost feral thing that got clipped by a car, dragging my hurt leg behind me while I make for my hole in the ground.

I keep my Oxy next to the bed, hidden in plain sight. The prescription bottle might have my name on it, but those are Ronald Wagner’s pills inside. I resupply my bottle out of the baggie stuffed under my mattress, tossing his empty bottles in a recycling bin outside the gas station. Even if Mom doesn’t buy my stomach flu story, the pill bottle next to my bed has pills in it, long after my prescription has run out. There’s nothing here to suggest that anything is wrong.

Except the girl on the bed going through withdrawal.

I curl into a ball, but the fetal position brings no comfort. My spine feels like it’s spiked, each curve threatening to tear through skin. I can pinpoint each screw in my hip, where they enter bone and where they end, gripping. I roll over, stifling an involuntary sound that escapes as I do. It’s like the flu, only heightened, so that even the touch of the pillow against my face is unbearable.

But the stomach flu that’s going around only lasts a day, and I have no idea how long withdrawal can hold on. Right now I can’t conceive of even getting up to turn off my light, and the idea of going to school in ten hours is laughable. After that comes practice, and there’s no way I’m letting Nikki catch for Carolina with our first game on the horizon. Besides, if I don’t show up at school after spending most of today’s practice crouched down, Coach might think I’m nursing an injury. If she suspects that at all, I’m benched.

“Shit,” I whisper to myself, the word rattling out between my teeth.

Downstairs I hear Mom laughing. I wonder if she’s still on my phone, talking to Dad, and what Devra would think of that. It’s that normal sound that does it: Mom’s laughter. I could ruin it, walk downstairs right now and tell her that I think I’ve got a problem, reduce whatever life she’s managed to rebuild for herself into rubble.

Mom would blame herself for not seeing it. Dad would feel guilty for not being here to notice. The Galarzas would no longer tell me that what two can eat, three can eat. Coach would be done with me, since our school has a zero-tolerance drug policy. I imagine the harsh cutoff of Mom’s laughter when I tell her, the collapse of each face as they flood with disappointment.

Or I can reach for the bottle, knowing that one pill can fix it, restore my balance and put my skin back in the right place and realign my bones, my feet planted firmly on the ground in the morning. Those are my choices. I can derail the lives of everyone I care about, or I can take one white pill and make it all better.

When you think about it that way, it’s easy.





Chapter Twenty-Five


friction: the resistance with which a body meets from the surface on which it moves—or—a clashing between two persons in opinion

I think of it as a maintenance drug, taking two 80s every day the same way Bella Right takes her birth control pills or Mom does for her Cymbalta. Even though upping my dosage means Ronald’s pills are almost gone, I tell myself I don’t need to be ashamed of it. My goal has always been to drop the pills as soon as possible, and right now, it’s not possible. If withdrawal is going to leave me with liquid guts that come out both ends and hands that can’t make the throw to second, there’s no question of putting myself—and my team—through that right now. When the season is over, when my leg is healed. That’s when I’ll do it.

For sure.

At school, the Bellas got the okay to set off confetti cannons in front of the locker room after school for the first game of the season. They get the JV team to make a tunnel and two girls at the end set off the cannons, streamers flying out in school colors, the band lining the hall and blaring the fight song. Carolina and I lead the charge, running under the outstretched arms of the JV players, the Bellas, Lydia, and the rest of the starters behind us. We run through the halls, slapping hands, chest-bumping some of the guys who lift with us.