Heroine(82)

“People do it.”

They weigh me and check all my injection sites and ask me questions I don’t want to answer. My teeth go together again, tight, but Devra comes back with me and she puts her hand on my knee, and I see that little needle-prick of a scar on the same hand as her wedding ring. Mom wanted to come back, too, but Devra said it might be easier for me to be honest if she didn’t. So I’ve got this woman with me instead.

And I’m glad.

They ask how I started.

I talk about my hip and the wreck, how Carolina tried to pull me to my feet with her good arm and we both ended up falling in the snow. I tell the doctor about therapy and Kyleigh being the good cop and Jolene being the bad cop and how I cried every night from the pain. I get to the Oxy, explaining how it not only took the pain away, but how I could find words when it was in my system, how I said things to Josie that made her my friend.

I talk about Oxy as a pill I’d throw back, then as a sticky grit between my teeth, and finally as something I popped into a vein. I tell them about the almost economical choice to switch to heroin, and rope days in gym class. I confess to stealing Mom’s wedding ring, cash from under Devra’s jewelry box, to not knowing when to stop or even if I wanted to.

Devra assured me that anything I say is covered by doctor-patient confidentiality, so I talk about Josie and Luther and Derrick, dead in a basement. I talk about leaving them there. I tell them about Edith and how everyone leaves her. I talk until all the words I’ve ever known have been used, most more than once, and my throat is swollen and sore.

I say so much, all of it true.

Coming clean feels almost as good as heroin.

Almost—but it’ll have to do.





Chapter Fifty-Four


shame: a painful sensation excited by a consciousness of guilt or impropriety, or of having done something that injures reputation

I find their obituaries.

Luther died unexpectedly.

Derrick passed away suddenly.

According to the paper, only Josie overdosed.

Their senior pictures look odd next to an obituary, what was supposed to be the documenting of celebration now used as commemoration. I hardly recognize Derrick, and I realize it’s because he looks confident. With Josie around he was either unsure or compensating, talking not at all or too loudly. In his picture, he looks like his skin fits.

Luther has a basketball on his hip, lanky arm hanging low. I have to zoom in to really see his face because Luther was so tall the photographer had backed way up to get the basketball in the shot. I can’t get a good look at his eyes without the image pixelating, but he’s there, staring back at me. I wonder if I’d loved heroin a little less, what could have happened between us.

Josie looks perfect, of course. Her hair is a pale sheet, smooth and glossy. Her nails match her sweater. She’s got one hip cocked and a look on her face that says she hasn’t decided if she likes you yet or not.

Her mom starts a nonprofit. The news interviews her and Jadine as they sit, perfectly poised on a leather couch in their front room, a place I passed through approximately once, on the way up to Josie’s bedroom, where she showed me the molecular structure of heroin. Jadine is wearing long sleeves.

There are certain things I can’t have. Not right now, anyway. My laptop is long gone and my phone hasn’t been replaced. Mom texts her number to all my friends so they can get in touch with her if they want to talk to me. No one does.

Coach Mattix does call, to make sure Mom knows I’m invited to the spring sports banquet.

I don’t go.

Mattix texts the date, time, and location of the next tournament game.

I don’t go.

We win districts.

I’m not there.

We win the first two regional games.

I’m not there.

My classmates graduate. Technically, I do too. But I don’t walk. I ask the school not to put my name in the program so there isn’t an awkward pause when they announce the graduates in alphabetical order, everyone noting my conspicuous absence in between Brady Castor and Jeanette Catawba.

Mom put parental locks on her iPad. I can use it as a calculator or to watch Netflix. That’s about it. Mom makes me chili as a joke and we eat it all. It doesn’t sit well and I lose most of in a fantastic fashion.

Dad talks to Vencella. They say I’m welcome to attend and play ball after a voluntary drug test, but Devra says it’ll be easy to get drugs there, and I won’t have my family as a support system, so it may be smarter to wait a year, until I’m a little stronger.

I agree.

Mom helps me fill out an application for the branch college twenty minutes away. My hand only shakes a little. She has to go back to work, but I go to Dad and Devra’s, or one of them comes over and stays with me. It feels like closeness and family, but it also means I’m not trusted by myself.

There is no longer a knob on my door, just a hole where Dad removed it.

The same is true of the bathroom.

I’m not allowed to drive, either. Someone takes me to my group sessions, which I thought I would hate, but they actually make me feel less shitty. There are people here who have done worse things than I have, and more that haven’t. We talk, and we listen, and when a new girl introduces herself as Jodie I almost smile.

Jodie from therapy is real.

I get my methadone pill after group and Devra takes me home. It settles my stomach and makes me think about heroin less. I could use a spoon to eat chili the other night and not curl my hand around an imaginary lighter. I don’t hurt nearly as much, and I’ve stopped attacking my own pain, digging fingernails into old wounds.