Heroine(61)

And if it is my decision, it’s an easy choice.

I am.





Chapter Thirty-Eight


heroin: an illegal addictive narcotic that produces euphoric effects I make a fist.

I find a blue line.

I break my skin.

I puncture a vein.

I pull blood up into the syringe, watch it dissipate for a moment, a part of my body outside of myself, diluted in heroin, drowning.

Then I plunge.

I am suspended in warmth, elongated like my blood in the barrel, dissipating. I am wholly without pain or caring, even when I vomit. The act itself is almost graceful, robbed of its unnaturalness as everything in my stomach makes its way to my mouth as if that were only to be expected, and I turn my head in agreement, casually leaving it all on the floor next to Edith’s couch.

It doesn’t matter and I don’t care.

My friends move around me, asking me questions. Luther pulls the needle from my arm. Josie pushes my hair back from my face. Derrick lifts my legs onto the couch. Edith cleans up my mess and covers me with a blanket, happy to have someone to care for. I have nothing but love in me, for them and for this place where not only do I not feel pain, but I cannot even remember what pain is.

There is no hurt, there is no fear, there is no stupidity or awkwardness. I am beautiful to these people and I want to share this warmth with them, press their hands to my skin and let them feel what I feel, absolute acceptance and love.

Then they do. One by one, I watch them go.

Luther hesitates after tying off, the hand that holds the needle shaky. Josie takes it from him, shows him how to hold the needle straight, not at an angle. He’s about to tell her no, his mouth ready to release the word when she shoots. There is no regret on his face.

Derrick is easier, happy to have Josie’s hands on him, eager to show her that he will do as she says. But even she is replaced as the object of his affection once his veins are full. Then there is only Josie, tearful, left behind and scared to stick herself. Edith does it for her.

She stops crying.

There are no tears here, no room for anything other than the feeling that everything is all right, and always will be, and always has been. I turn my head, drawn in by the pattern of Edith’s couch, my eyes tracing the outline of blue roses, long frayed by years of use. I’m lost, eyes rolling, then closing, leaning into the warmth like arms enveloping me, heavy and comforting. Endlessly wrapping me inside and out, rocking, cooing, lulling.

It’s as if I’ve found my mother.





Chapter Thirty-Nine


hyperfocus: intense concentration on a single subject The hate comes later, when I see the little round injection hole in my arm.

There are two, one higher up from where Jadine expertly found a vein when she dosed me with Oxy. Then there’s the one I gave myself, right in the crook of my elbow where it was easiest. Bruises circle both, the one from Jadine a fading yellow that doesn’t quite reach the dark blue surrounding my fresh puncture.

In the shower the newer bruise turns a livid red, the coagulating blood warmed by the water. I press on it, digging into the broken vein like I have with the screws on my hip, treating the wound with pain as punishment. There’s an ache that blossoms, pulling an exhalation from my teeth as I press until I feel my pulse, hot and insistent against my fingertips.

There’s still heroin in there, somewhere.

Josie told me it takes seventy-two hours to clear my system, even if I can’t feel the effects. It’s in there, chasing the multivitamin I take every day.

I hold my arm up to the flow of the water, studying the tiny scab that’s already formed, the outline my fingers left behind. Mom is downstairs, making breakfast. I heard bacon frying when I crossed the hall to the bathroom, the smell of coffee drifting up the stairs. She’s following the pattern that has kept us together since Dad left, a variation on a theme, two plates instead of three.

Mom’s down there right now, thinking about the women she will see today, the babies she will deliver. I’ve watched her often enough to know that her hands can perform one task while her brain ponders something else. She can mother me and many others at the same time, feeding me food while giving them her thoughts. Her life is in balance, calibrated.

She is thinking of what others need.

Her daughter is upstairs, fully focused on the crook of her left elbow.

I am thinking about heroin.

And that’s all.





Chapter Forty


boundary: that which indicates or creates a limit or extent; a separating line; a real or imaginary limit

I am not a changed person.

I go to school on Monday and no one knows that I have crossed a line. I have not become someone else. There is no sign on my chest. I am not accused of anything. Ironically, Lydia pulls me aside to apologize for what went down at the lunch table last week. I tell her not to worry about it.

But I do not tell her they were wrong.

I admit to myself that I am a heroin user, while also updating in my mind what that actually means. I am not a wasted person. I am not prowling the streets. I am not an addict. I am a girl spinning her locker combination. I am a girl who got a B on her math test. I am a girl who has two holes on the inside of her arm, but they do not tell the whole story of me.

When Bella Right lost her virginity she told us all about it at Lydia’s house, detailing it to a degree that left nothing to the imagination and answered most of the lingering questions any of us had, except for one.