But then … I thought about Billy.
His mom was perfect. She was everything a mom should be, and his dad was as cool as they came. They had done nothing to push him to do what he did, and yet he did it anyway.
And that was when I realized that it didn’t always matter what tree the apple fell from.
Sometimes, it was just rotten.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE LAST PILL
Age Twenty-One
The rent and electric bill were both due, and it wouldn’t be long before the cable bill was late. There was nothing to eat in the kitchen. And Mom had, of course, forgotten to do anything but buy her precious pills and booze with the little money she’d gotten at the new salon in town.
She had worked there for a promising two months before Gordon asked me to open the grocery store for a week. Apparently, Mom needed me to wake her up in the morning, and she had failed to show up for work that entire week.
“Mom, you need to get another job,” I said with a sigh, holding my head in my hands at the kitchen table we could no longer use for eating.
I hadn’t seen the surface of that table in years.
I had six hundred expendable dollars in my wallet. That could cover the electric, groceries, and part of the rent, but it wasn’t enough for everything. And while I could maybe beg the landlord for a couple more weeks to get the rest of the money together, that would only solve the problem this month. What about the next or the one after that?
“Maybe you can pick up more hours at the grocery store,” she suggested, slumped in her chair.
She was taking more pills than usual these days. She could barely keep her eyes open on a good day—and today wasn’t one of them.
“I can’t work more hours. They have laws against that.”
“Since when do we care about laws?”
She might not care about laws, but I did. Maybe I didn’t always do the right thing, maybe I didn’t live my life by the book, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care. And all I wanted was to get myself to the point where I could afford to live life by the rules.
Unbeknownst to her, I had been working on it. I just needed to stuff a little more money into the envelope I kept taped to the underside of my bed, and I’d be good to get the hell out of this shithole. All I needed was to convince her to come with me. Life would be better elsewhere; we would be better. We just needed to get away.
“Don’t you have any more money?” Mom asked, her unsteady voice teetering toward begging.
She didn’t want to be homeless any more than I did. She just didn’t have the willpower to look beyond her next high to do anything about it.
“No,” I lied.
If we absolutely needed it, I could tap into my escape fund. I wouldn’t let us starve. But I would sell some more pills before I did that.
I was already thinking about maybe heading over to The Pit. It was cold outside—a dreary Friday in February—but I knew there’d always be the usual suspects, not wanting to go home after school even if the ground was frozen and the air was bitter. They’d be looking for me. And while I never pushed anything on them, they knew who I was and what I did, and I hated every bit of the reputation I’d built for myself.
But, man, when you dug a hole that deep, how the hell were you supposed to climb your way back out if you hadn’t thought to bring a ladder down with you?
It’s never too late to turn shit around though.
Just dip into your savings. Take out enough to pay what you gotta pay.
Don’t go down there. Don’t go to The Pit. You can change.
I blew out a breath and nodded to myself, suddenly ready on my twenty-first birthday to turn to a fresh, new page in the story of my life. I wouldn’t go to The Pit. I wouldn’t fill my former classmates and the current wave of high school students with my peddled poison. I would do better.
Standing abruptly, I barreled toward my room with determination, then dropped down beside my bed and felt around the underside of the bedframe until I found the envelope.
A pitiful, strained sound squeezed its way from my lungs before I uttered, “What the hell?”
As if my brain needed a few seconds to catch up, I stared at the flat envelope—too flat to have as much money as I’d had in there—turning it over in my shaking hands while my heart rapidly climbed to an anxious, irregular beat.
“Oh no. Oh fuck.” I tore the paper open, revealing what I’d already known. “No, no, no, no … no! Where is it?!”
I dropped the envelope, thrust my hands into my hair, and pulled tightly at the strands as I tried to think over the hammering of my heart.
“It was right here. Where the hell did it go?!”
I had just put away a hundred bucks last night, and now, nearly nine thousand dollars I’d saved throughout the years was gone. My mind tripped over itself, scrambling to make sense of what was happening.
You know where it went.
I didn’t want to believe what I knew to be the truth.
But you know it’s true.
“Fuck.”
My throat tightened as I slumped against the rickety bedframe, holding the back of my hand over my mouth. My eyes watered, and my nose burned, but I couldn’t afford to give in to the tears I desperately wanted to unleash.
“Mom!” I stood up from the side of my bed to storm through the door and into the musty living room to find her in her usual spot, draped over the couch. “Mom, have you been in my room?”
“Huh?” She opened her eyes a crack to peer up at me.
“Have you been in my room?” I enunciated every word through my throat, clenched with panic and despair.
“I … I don’t know, Soldier. Probably. Why?”
“Did you take anything?” My hands were shaking uncontrollably. My teeth were chattering, as if I were freezing, despite the fire licking away at my veins and cheeks.
She turned away to face the ripped cushion beside her head.
“Mom! Did you look under my bed?! Did you take something from me?!”
Her silence told me everything I needed to know.
“Oh my God.” My eyes flooded as I lifted my hands to my hair. I stared down at her limp form, shaking my head and taking one, two, three steps backward.
What the fuck am I going to do now?
How the fuck are we ever going to get out of here?
I gasped, choked by a blinding panic I’d never felt before in my life. I knew we needed to get the fuck out of this hellhole. We needed to leave if there was any hope of us getting better and turning shit around for ourselves, and she had taken every last shred of hope for that from me—from us. She had taken every last penny I’d saved—and for what? More drugs?
Jesus fucking Christ, didn’t she have enough?
Angry and upset, I spun on my heel and headed straight for her bag on the floor beside the buried table. I knelt and opened it up for the first time without a care if she saw or not.
“What are you doing?!” she shrieked, sounding like a scared little animal as she tripped from the couch. “Get out of there! What are you doing?!”
There were four full bottles of pills. Four whole, large bottles. I shook my head as I pulled them all out and stood slowly, staring at the little pink pills through the translucent orange plastic.
“Give those to me!” She grappled with my arm, but I was too strong, too tall, and she couldn’t get the bottles away from me. “You fucking bastard! Give them back!”