Heroine(72)

“Mickey?” Mom knocks on the door. “What are you doing?”

“What do people do in a bathroom, Mom?” I call back, trying to keep my voice light. I toss my last balloon into the toilet and jam the spoon into Mom’s makeup drawer. I bury my needles in the trash and shove the box into the bottom of the laundry basket.

“Mickey.” Her voice is stern now, uncompromising. “Open this door.”

I do the most impossible thing in this moment.

I take a piss.

I sit down on the toilet and think about nothing other than full bladders and running water and please, let me have to pee right now. I do. I pee as loud as I can and hope Mom can hear it through the door. But that’s not an issue when she drops all pretense and walks right in because kicking a door shut doesn’t lock it.

“Mom!” I yell squeezing my knees together. “What the hell?”

Please let me look innocent, even though I’m not. Please let her see her little girl, not what I actually am.

“Oh,” she says, losing steam. She looks around. There’s nothing to see. Some backsplash on the mirror and the hand towel I just used tossed on top of the hamper.

“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “You just . . . scared me there.”

“Why?” I’m tense, defensive, somehow righteously irritated that she thinks I was doing drugs in the bathroom even though I totally would have been, given another five minutes.

“Nothing, it’s . . .” Mom waves her hands in the air, as if to clear it. “You know what? Never mind. You hungry?”

I really can’t sit here much longer with a straight face. “Yeah,” I say. “But do you mind?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” she says. “Sorry.”

She backs out, but she doesn’t shut the door until I flush the toilet. I wash my hands, running the water long enough to cover the sounds as I dig through the makeup drawer, pulling out the spoon, which I jam into the waistband of my sweats.

“Big game tomorrow,” I call. That’s how it’s done. Change the subject, remind her of something amazing I’m a part of that no junkie would ever possibly be able to accomplish. It works. She’s smiling when I open the door.

“Let’s get some food in you,” she says, heading back down the stairs. “Steak? Lasagna?”

I hear her pop the freezer door when I’m halfway down the steps, my heart rate finally adjusting.

“I’ve got some corn dogs . . . ,” Mom calls. “Whoa. Scratch that. Freezer burn.”

My phone vibrates and I pull it out of my hoodie pocket to see a text from Josie.

You have anything?

I was just about to ask her the same thing. I go back to my room, dialing.

“No,” I say as soon as she picks up. It’s a white lie, but not much of one. There’s only enough on this spoon to keep me well for a few hours. “You’re out, too?”

“Down and out.”

My ache increases, whether it’s pain or want I don’t know. But I can’t feel this way tomorrow.

“Call Patrick,” I tell her. “Get enough for me too and I’ll pay you back . . .” I let my words trail off because I don’t know how I’ll pay her back, since I haven’t squared up with Patrick over the dose I literally just pissed on and flushed down the toilet.

“Number’s old,” she says.

“I sent you his new one,” I remind her.

“Yeah, but I deleted that text to cover my ass.”

“Then we’re screwed because I did too,” I say. “You’re not the only one with a mom.”

Josie sighs like me having a mom is an annoyance.

“Just call Jadine. Get the new one. Then let me know,” I tell her, and hang up.

When I get downstairs Mom is calling for a pizza. Apparently the sight of the freezer-burned corn dogs drove any inclination she had of making dinner out the window.

“Hope that’s okay,” she says when she hangs up. “I just didn’t . . .”

“Feel like it,” I finish for her. “Yeah, I get it.”

And I do. I scared the shit out of her with that stunt in the bathroom, and while she’s reassured now that I wasn’t doing anything wrong, the adrenaline rush has left her drained. My phone goes off.

Jadine not answering.

I tuck it back into my hoodie, not bothering to reply. I offer to take the trash out while we wait for the pizza. Mom’s thrilled to let me, and she smiles as she looks back at her laptop, one finger absentmindedly playing with the stem of her wineglass.

I dump the bathroom trash first, fishing out my last clean needle. I scrape a mess of tar off the spoon with my fingernail and put as much in the barrel as I can, topping it off with some water from the tap. There’s not much in the syringe when I’m finished, but it’s something. It goes into my waistband next to the spoon.

I dig my shoebox out of the laundry basket, toss it into my trash bag, and haul everything to the curb. Then I offer to meet the pizza guy at the door, and Mom hands me the cash. I keep the change. He gives me a shitty look when I don’t tip, but his problems are not my problems.

I cram pepperoni and cheese and breadsticks with garlic butter in my mouth and down it all with Diet Coke, doing my best to appear normal. My mom knows the Mickey Catalan that eats like a horse, and I need to be that person for her right now.