Heroine(81)

I think of Bella Left and NCIS and people being thrown against cars and handcuffed, metal bars striping their faces as their cells close. “Why not?”

“It’s your first offense, and you were only using, not selling. Unless there’s something else you need to tell me?”

I think of three dead bodies in a basement in Baylor Springs.

“No,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. “You’re a minor. You’ll get a slap on the wrist. Group counseling and some therapy.”

We’re quiet for a second, and she reaches out, fingers entwining with mine. There’s a small scar on her hand, a circular dot right above the big vein at her wrist.

“How long am I going to feel like this?” I ask her.

“Depends,” she says. “How long have you been using heroin?”

Forever. Always. Since I was born.

“A month. Month and a half,” I tell her.

“Okay,” she says, and I notice she’s been using that word a lot to start her sentences, like anything about this is actually okay. “You can try to go cold turkey, or I can take you to a methadone clinic. There’s a good one on Broad and—”

I start crying again at the thought that I might need a methadone clinic.

Devra breaks off, hand moving from mine to go around my shoulders. “Maybe a week,” she finally answers me. “When’s the last time you used?”

I think of an empty needle on a coffee table, next to a bag with a cat’s face stamped on it, the stuff I didn’t use. “Had a little last night,” I tell her. “Hardly anything.”

She sighs. “Okay, well, you don’t want to hear this, but you’re going to feel worse before you feel better.”

I nod, wipe my nose again. Devra’s answering my question, but she thought I was only asking about withdrawal. I’m not.

“When do I stop wanting it?” I ask her.

“Never,” she says.

My eyes are so swollen I don’t think anything can get through them, but more tears do and I’m falling to the side, collapsing against Devra, who is so small her arm can barely reach the length of my shoulders. I’ve got no strength left and she can’t possibly hold me up, her tiny bones could never prop up my own.

But somehow, she does.





Chapter Fifty-Three


support: that which upholds, sustains, or keeps from falling, as a prop, or pillar I admit to using.

Once the accusation is out there, Coach can’t ignore it, and I can’t hide from it. There are many muted phone calls, Dad and Devra and Chad more or less shacked up with us for the weekend, everyone with dark circles under their eyes and more text messages than they can keep up with. Dad talks to the athletic director at the school, Mom takes a leave of absence, Devra secures a place for me in a recovery group. Everyone else is in control of my life now; I’m only riding the waves of their actions, a piece of trash in the ocean of their movements.

Devra’s right. It gets worse.

The pain fades, but I alternate between wanting to be held like a baby and wanting to kill anyone who touches me. I scream at my dad that he should have never left us and I tell Mom she never wanted me. Devra calmly joins me in my bedroom and shuts us both in.

“Do you know what you’re doing to your family?” she asks.

“Do you know what YOU did to my family?” I scream, and that—finally—is something that drives her away. She takes Chad and goes back to Dad’s new house, and Mom yells at me for yelling at Devra, and I crawl under my bedspread and refuse to come out.

Dad lets himself in and sits on the edge of my bed, hand resting on my shoulder. I can feel the weight of him on the mattress, the warmth of his hand through the bedspread. I haven’t looked him in the face yet.

He doesn’t say anything.

I don’t say anything.

Mom and Devra tossed my room before I was allowed any privacy. They went through every pocket in every piece of clothing, emptied my drawers and even pulled them out of the dresser to check underneath. Dad hauled my mattress into the hallway and everyone went over it with their phone flashlights, looking for slits. Devra found my shoebox, cardboard dry but mottled. She carried it away and I almost followed her, nearly ripped it from her hands to check for residue.

Something.

Anything.

Devra comes back the next day, keys jingling in her hands. “Time to get up, Mickey,” she says. She’s smart enough not to try to sound bright and cheery, just making a statement of fact.

I don’t have to go to jail, that’s the deal.

I do have to go to hell.

My team is getting on a bus to go to Medina and begin their tournament run. I am getting in a minivan and going to a methadone clinic.

It’s not what I expect.

Mom fills out the paperwork. Devra sits on my other side. The people in the waiting room are not rocking back and forth. They’re not scratching at their arms or talking to themselves. A mother waits her turn while her toddler plays with a set of scratched blocks from the bin in the corner. A clean-cut guy a little older than me goes outside to smoke a cigarette, the shake of his hand as he lights up the only thing betraying him. There’s one older man who slumps in the corner, empty eyes on the TV.

I think of Edith.

My name is called and a lot of people want to talk to me, want to know what I used and how I did it, what’s gone up my nose or in my mouth or in my veins or up my ass. I make a face on that last one and the nurse only shrugs.