Feeling simultaneously powerful and helpless, I brushed her off of me easily and barreled for the door as I said, “No.”
“Soldier! Stop! Those are mine, you piece of shit! They’re mine!” She was crying, begging, and pleading. “Where are you going?! What are you going to do?!”
“What am I gonna do?!” I looked over my shoulder, seething at the woman who’d had the nerve to bring me into this fucking world twenty-one years ago to the day, and shook my head. “I’m gonna go save your ass. Like I always fucking do. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll thank me for it one day.”
***
“Hey, man, I’m heading to The Pit. Just thought you might wanna come,” I said over the phone, steering my piece-of-shit car through the darkened streets, barely lit by the dim streetlamps in need of new bulbs.
“Ah, jeez, I don’t know … Jessica wanted me to head over to her place tonight, and Mom was saying she has some shit for me to do around here tomorrow morning.”
Billy liked his drugs—he liked them a whole lot—but he at least still had a handle on his responsibilities. That was one thing I could give him—more than I could say for my mother.
For now.
“Tell Jessica to meet us over there.”
“Dude, you know she hates The Pit. She doesn’t like it when I’m high.”
Neither did I, but I never pushed the point the way his on-and-off girlfriend did. “All right. It’s fine. I just—”
“You know,” Billy cut me off, already talking himself out of being the responsible one, “maybe I can go for a little bit. Then, I can just swing by her place afterward.”
I smiled despite the gross feeling in my gut. I was grateful I wouldn’t have to do business alone. Ever since Tammi had gotten back with Levi, I’d been flying solo a lot of the time, and most days, it sucked. It got lonely, and if I was being real, I was starting to feel like a creepy piece of shit, surrounded by a new batch of high school kids with so much potential and hope—if only there weren’t guys like me and Levi around to take it all away.
Hell, if we were being really real here, I hated myself.
So much.
But what could I do?
After I pulled up to the curb outside of Billy’s parents’ place, his mom waved out the window as he climbed into the passenger side. Both of us were losers, still living at home, but we both had reasonable excuses. He was in school, too busy with classes and drugs to get a job, and me?
Well, you know what I was doing.
I forced a smile and waved back to Billy’s mom as the little boy living in my heart cried and screamed, pressing his hands against the frosty window and begging her to rescue him from a life he’d had little choice of living.
Then, we drove away, and Billy reached for the orange bottles in the center console.
“Holy shit! What did you do, hit the fuckin’ jackpot?!”
“We’re not selling them all,” I warned him, flashing him a pair of narrowed eyes. “But I need to get rid of them. I dunno … maybe I’ll, uh … I dunno. Maybe I’ll throw them in the lake or something.”
“Fuck, no, don’t waste them! I’ll take whatever you don’t get rid of tonight.” He popped one of the tops off the bottles. “God, how much did she buy?!”
Billy was the only person on the planet who knew where I got my supply from—and who the hell knew who Mom bought them from? It was a question I never asked because I knew she’d never say. But I had my suspicions.
“I’d say nine thousand dollars’ worth,” I grumbled as I begged the anger nagging at my nerves to settle just a little. Nobody wanted to buy from a guy who sounded like he was two seconds away from choking the life out of someone.
“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?!”