Heroine(48)

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Wanna come with us?” Luther asks.

“Where?”

“Party with some Baylor kids. Just drinking, nothing else,” he adds, like he’s afraid I’ll get my hopes up.

“I don’t drink,” I tell him.

“Still better than hanging around here,” he says, and while that might be true, there’s no way I’m wandering into a party where I don’t know anyone, everybody has more money than me, and there’s no Oxy in my blood to boost my confidence.

“Maybe next time,” I tell him, heading back toward the house.

“Hey,” he calls after me, and I turn. “There’s a basketball game tomorrow night, college tournament. I got tickets, if you wanted to . . .”

Basketball is not my sport, but I can stand watching it. What I don’t know is if I can hang with Luther without Oxy and be as cool as he seems to think I am. Maybe one evening with regular Mickey Catalan—or worse, a withdrawing one—will be a huge turnoff. In any case, I’ve been debating it too long, and my lack of an answer makes his smile falter.

“I mean, whatever,” he says. “If you’re not into it, it’s cool.”

I take a step forward, involuntarily. “No, yeah, let’s,” I say, before I think about it.

“Yeah?” Luther asks, the smile back.

“Yeah,” I say, my heart stuttering a little bit.

“Hey, do you . . .” Luther fumbles in his pocket, pulling out two pills that rest on his hand, small and white in that huge space. My heart takes a full leap, way outdistancing the reaction to Luther’s smile.

“Do you want these?” Luther asks, holding his palm out to me. I cover the distance between us in a moment.

“Yeah. You don’t?”

“Meh.” Luther shrugs. “It’s okay, I guess, but if it’ll get Josie off your ass for tonight, I’d rather you have them.”

I hug him. It’s spontaneous and a little awkward, since I’m grabbing for the Oxy at the same time. But it works out.

“Thanks, man,” I tell him as I pull away.

“I’ll text you tomorrow. About the game,” he adds, when I look confused.

“Yep, sounds good,” I call over my shoulder.

Josie is on me the second I walk through the door, and I don’t have time to pop the pills Luther gave me at the kitchen sink, like I was planning on.

“Hey,” she cries when she spots me. “You holding out on me?”

“It’s for both of us,” I lie, slipping one pill into my other hand so that I’ve got something to get me through tomorrow. “I got us covered.”

“You’ve got shit covered, Mickey,” Josie says, leading me into the living room. “That’s one pill, between the both of us. Even if we snort it, all it will do is—”

“Help,” I say. “It’ll help.”

“Not much,” Josie mutters, shooting Edith a dark look even as she starts to grind the pill down with the edge of a coaster. Her phone goes off and her grip slips, sending the coaster rolling, a fine edge of white powder trailing it.

“FUCK,” Josie says.

Edith turns up the volume on 60 Minutes.

I grab the coaster, setting it aside in favor of the Precious Moments girl, while Josie answers her phone.

“What?” she says, as I feel the hard edge of the Oxy give way under pressure, the resistance melting to nothing as I grind.

“Yeah, I’m at Edith’s. No, you can’t take my—hey! I said no.” She’s quiet for a second, eyebrows furrowed together as she watches me make short work of the pill.

“Yeah, and Mom will be thrilled to hear that, won’t she?” Josie spits back at whoever she’s talking to.

I take a subscription card out of one of Edith’s magazines—Prevention—and start making two lines out of the powder. They’re short and thin, not nearly enough to lift Josie out of her funk or keep me in a good place.

“Yeah, well . . . ,” Josie goes on, back to picking at the piece of enamel on the table. “Not my problem.”

There’s a knock on the door. Edith jumps in her chair and I come to my feet.

“Seriously?!” Josie shouts into her phone. “That had better not fucking be you, Jadine, or I swear . . .”

“Helllooooooo . . . ,” a high-pitched voice sings from the kitchen, wobbly and more than a little grating. “Anybody home?”

“Oh, shit.” It’s Edith’s turn to swear, as she flips off the TV. Lost, I look at her.

“Jadine,” Edith repeats the name, as if it should explain itself. “Josie’s older sister.”

If I had seen her before I heard her, I wouldn’t have had to ask. The girl who saunters into Edith’s living room somewhat unsteadily is like a glance into Josie’s future, a place where all her baby fat is gone, as is any hint of innocence. Jadine is thin, but with curves in the right places. I can see her hip bones where they jut out above her jeans, the edge of her shirt barely grazing the denim. It’d be a trashy look if the clothes weren’t so obviously expensive.

The hollows in her cheeks could be from hunger or because she’s learned how to suck them in, holding her face perfectly. And something tells me Jadine has studied her reflection in the mirror enough to know exactly how far to drop her shoulder, how high to cock a hip. There’s a calculation to each of her movements as she leans in the doorway, even with only us as her audience.