Sidney’s Twitter account revealed the consequences of #YOLO. The party girl had gotten a DUI one month ago. Sidney had documented the process, tweeting out pithy thoughts about the criminal justice system, describing the mind-numbing uselessness of attending the DUI school on Cheshire Bridge Road, photographing her court-mandated log-in sheet to prove that she was attending the required number of AA meetings.
Callie squinted at the log, which was familiar from her own travails through the court system. Sidney had been given the standard thirty meetings in thirty days, then two a week thereafter. Callie recognized the church where the early morning meetings were held. They had delicious coffee, but the cookies at the Baptist across the street were better.
She looked at the time.
Two thirty-eight p.m.
Callie logged out of the computer. She looked for her backpack, but then remembered she had left it locked in her room along with her stash. Callie had shoved everything into the pockets of the yellow satin jacket she’d found inside of her closet. The collar was frayed, but a glorious rainbow decal was sewn onto the back.
It was the first item of clothing she had ever bought for herself with Buddy’s money.
She used the automated system to check out A Compendium of North American Snails and Their Habitats. The paperback fit snugly into the jacket pocket, the edges sticking not unpleasantly into her ribs. Callie groaned as she walked toward the exit. Her back would not straighten out. She had to shuffle like an old woman, though she took it on faith that even at eighty-six years old, Himari Takahashi had maintained excellent posture.
The sun blinded Callie as soon as she pushed open the door. She reached into her jacket pocket and found the green tanning bed goggles. The sun dialed down several notches when she put them on. Callie could feel the heat beating against her back and neck as she trudged toward the bus stop. Eventually, she was able to force herself upright. The vertebrae clicked like chattering teeth. The numbness in her fingers flowed back up into her arm.
At the bus stop, a fellow traveler was already sitting on the bench. Houseless, mumbling to himself, counting off numbers on his fingers. Two overflowing paper sacks were at his feet. They were filled with clothes. She recognized the anxious look in his eyes, the way he kept scratching his arms.
He glanced at her, then took a closer look. “Cool shades.”
Callie removed the goggles and offered them to the man.
He snatched them away like a gerbil taking a treat.
Her eyes started to water again. She felt a pang of regret as the man put on the goggles, because they were really amazing. Even so, she fished Leigh’s last twenty-dollar bill out of her back pocket and handed it to the man. That left Callie with only fifteen bucks, because she’d spent $105 on a package from the tanning salon the day before. In retrospect the impulse buy seemed like a bad idea, but that was junkie budgeting for you. Why not spend the money today when you weren’t sure whether or not you’d be getting a free concert from Kurt Cobain tomorrow?
The man said, “The vaccine put microchips in my brain.”
Callie confided, “I’m worried my cat is saving up to buy a motorcycle.”
They both sat in companionable silence for the next ten minutes, when the bus flopped in front of the curb like a tubby echidna.
Callie climbed aboard and took a seat in the front. Her stop was only two away, and it was a kindness to make sure the driver could see her because the look he’d given Callie when she got onto the bus clearly said that the man thought she was going to be trouble.
She kept her hands on the rail to let him know she was not going to do something crazy. Though it did seem crazy to touch a rail with your bare hands in the middle of a pandemic.
She stared absently out the front window, letting the air conditioning freeze the sweat on her body. Her fingers went to her face. She had forgotten that she was wearing a mask. A quick look at the other riders showed masks in various stages of coverage: pulled down below the nose, ringing the chin, and, in one case, pulled up over a man’s eyes.
She pulled her own mask up to cover her eyebrows. She blinked at the filtered light. Her eyelashes brushed against the material. She quashed the desire to giggle. It wasn’t this morning’s maintenance dose that was making her feel high. She had shot up again before heading to the library. Then swallowed an Oxy on the long bus ride to Gwinnett. There was more Oxy in her back pocket. She would eventually take it, and then she would shoot up more methadone and, eventually, she would be back on heroin.
This was how it always happened. Callie was good until the goodness broke down.