Saving Rain(18)

“Get the hell out.” He shook his head with disbelief, then plucked one pill from the top. “Well, don’t mind if I do.”

He swallowed it in one quick gulp and sighed with satisfaction. I shook my head, the disappointment in my soul never ending as I drove toward the high school parking lot. The snow had melted, the night was a little warmer, and I was hopeful that enough young people wanted a Friday night out of the house. I wouldn’t sell enough to replenish my savings—of course not—but with any luck, I’d make enough to pay the rent and keep a roof over our heads for another month.

Why I still cared, I couldn’t tell you.

Maybe it was just the hope that we could one day be better.

“So, it’s your birthday, isn’t it?” Billy asked, tipping his head back and deflating with another sigh.

The high was already taking over. I always hated watching the decline of his energy and spirit as a little voice in my head whispered I needed to do something before it was too late.

“Yep,” I croaked through a throat so tight and choked with unease and worry.

“Remember that time you had a birthday party?”

And I caught Mom doing the Bad Stuff for the first time.

A muscle in my jaw pulsed at the thought. “Yeah.”

“That was a good day.”

I smiled weakly at the sentiment. It had been a good day; Gramma and Grampa had made sure of it. And then I felt sad. All of a sudden, I struggled to swallow down the rise of sadness and tears and emotion as it clotted heavily in my chest, piling higher and higher until I struggled for a gasp of air.

Oh God, why had they had to die? Why couldn’t they be here now? Why couldn’t they have stopped this shit before it got this bad? I was immediately desperate for the salvation they’d always provided, their affection and love, and I pulled at the collar of my coat, unable to breathe past the heart-wrenching despair.

Then, in need of a distraction, I glanced at Billy.

His head was lolled to the side, bouncing off the window, his neck limp.

“Billy?”

It never happened like this. His high never hit quite like this. He never blacked out. He never breathed like he was trying to suck bubbles through a straw.

“Billy!” The tires squealed as I pulled the car over, just outside the high school parking lot. I reached over and gave his shoulder a violent shake. “Billy!”

He didn’t wake up.

I threw my door open and got out to race around to the other side. I opened the passenger door, unbuckled his seat belt, and pulled him from the car. He was limp, every breath shallow and slow—but he was breathing. And I held tight to every one of those puffs of air with more hope than I’d ever thought I could muster as I got down on my knees and called 911.

“Fuck!” I cried, releasing the torrent of emotion I’d been suppressing. “Fucking hell, Billy. Don’t do this to me. Please. Don’t do this.”

The operator answered and asked for my location and what the emergency was.

“My friend just took an oxy and won’t wake up,” I told her after telling her where I was, wiping the tears from my cold, wind-bitten face.

“Okay, sir. An ambulance is on the way. Can you describe to me what’s happening to him right now?”

I did as she’d said, and I realized that what little breath had been passing through his lungs had stopped.

“F-f-fuck, no … h-he’s not breathing. He’s—he’s n-not breathing. Oh God! What do I do?! W-what the fuck do I do?!”

A few stragglers from the parking lot had wandered over to see what was happening. I heard their whispers. I heard my name. I heard Billy’s.

“Sir, I need you to calm down. Do you know how to perform CPR?”

“Yes.” I had learned in school and had never been more grateful for those few hours I’d actually paid attention.

“Good. I’m going to talk you through it, okay? I need you to do what I say. Hang on. The ambulance will be there in two minutes …”

***

Two minutes was a long time.

It had been too long.

I was surrounded by flashing lights on the side of the road, watching through wide, bewildered eyes as a handful of cops searched my car—Stone Temple Pilots’ “Big Empty” playing on the radio—and the paramedics zipped up a body bag.

Billy was inside.

“It’s not him anymore,” I could hear Gramma saying as the paramedics took Grampa away. “It’s just his body.”

But it had looked like Grampa then, and it had looked like Billy now. Just … different.

Empty.

Cold.

“Soldier Mason?”

I looked up at the man in a police uniform through eyes that couldn’t stop tearing up. “Y-yeah?”

Maybe it would’ve been more respectful to stand. But I didn’t have the strength in me. Not after I’d watched my closest, longest, oldest friend die beneath my pressing hands.

So, the cop sat beside me instead.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said quietly, folding his arms over his knees.

I just nodded, unsure of how I would ever look at Billy’s mom again.

God, who’s going to tell his mom?

I imagined her receiving the news, imagined her pain and screams and tears, and I started to cry again, unable to find it in me to care that this cop and all of those people against the fence behind me were staring.