“You’re having cereal for dinner, so don’t even think about asking for anything else,” she mumbled, dropping the bottle on the table. “Use the milk. It's gonna go bad if you don't.”
I thought about the ham Billy was eating with his family as I asked, “Why aren't you at work?”
Mom sighed and touched her fingers to her temples. “They, um … they let me go.”
“So, we don't have any money?” If Mom couldn't pay to keep the lights on, how were we gonna pay for anything else? What were we going to eat? What if we didn't have a place to live? “Mom … what are we going to do?”
“God, Soldier, it's fine,” Mom said, throwing my worry away with a roll of her eyes. “I'll go on some more interviews, find another job … you know how it goes.”
I did know. Mom had been through probably a million jobs as far as I could remember. But back then, I hadn’t worried. I had Gramma. I had Grampa. They didn't let us go without lights. They had made sure we had food and lights and TV and whatever else we needed. But now, without them, things were bad, and they were getting worse, and what if Mom couldn't find another job? What if she'd been through all of them and there were no other jobs to lose?
“Soldier,” Mom interrupted my thoughts and walked into the living room, “it'll be fine, okay? Now, stop worrying about it.”
I didn't say anything because I didn't believe her. Then, she announced she had a headache and was going to bed. I stayed in my uncomfortable folding chair and watched as she opened her purse and took out her bottle of pills, popped it open, and dropped two little pink pills into her mouth. She swallowed without water, put the bottle back into her bag, then went to her room without saying good night.
My eyes remained on her bag as I thought of everything that could happen if Mom couldn't find another job. If we couldn't get the lights back on. If we couldn't buy food or pay the rent or find anywhere to go. We'd be homeless and hungry, and where would we go? What would happen to us?
But if I could make some money …
I slowly got up from the chair and tiptoed to Mom's bag, thinking about the ten dollars Billy had spent on one of those pink pills. One. If Billy was paying Levi for them, other kids probably were too.
I quietly opened her bag, gritting my teeth as the cheap zipper resounded loudly through the dark, hushed apartment. The bottle was right there on top of everything else, and I picked it up in my shaking hand, careful to not let the pills rattle against the plastic. There were tons of them inside the orange bottle.
Would Mom notice if I took five or six?
Hell, what about ten?
I wasn’t the best at math, but my mind raced with equations and possibilities. Ten pills would equate to a hundred dollars. A hundred dollars could feed us for a couple of weeks. A hundred dollars was worth the risk of Mom finding out and yelling at me. She was going to yell anyway. She always did.
But above all else, what made me open that bottle and count out ten of those little pink pills was the thought that, if I took them and stuffed them into my backpack, Mom would have ten less pills to take. And that was worth it—even if my thirteen-year-old brain couldn’t compute that she would always, always, always find the money for more … regardless of if the lights were on or not.
CHAPTER THREE
ROTTEN APPLES
Age Sixteen
“Thanks so much, Soldier,” Billy’s mom said after I finished loading a dozen bags of groceries into her trunk. “Am I allowed to tip you?”
My boss, Gordon, had told me I wasn’t supposed to accept tips. Sweeping the floor, bagging groceries, and helping people load them into their cars were what I was paid to do, he had said on more than one occasion, and accepting extra money for it was strictly prohibited.
Still, I hesitated for a moment as I watched her dig a ten out of her purse. I stared at the bill in her hand as the very end of the green paper flapped gently in the breeze, tempting me with every flutter. I heard the sound of it like an alcoholic heard a cap pop off a beer—amplified ten times over, resounding louder than the rest of the world around me. I wanted to reach for it, grasp it in my greedy hand, and spend it on something. A nice, juicy burger or maybe a new pair of jeans down at the thrift store. Something I needed more than I wanted.
But I didn’t.
“Oh, I can’t accept tips,” I finally told her, peeling my eyes away from the bill after too many seconds went by. “Gordon doesn’t let us.”
Billy’s mom eyed me with more sympathy than I preferred. Then, she whispered, “You can take it, Soldier. I won’t tell anyone. You know that.”
She was tempting me too much. If she’d pushed just a little harder, I probably would’ve taken it and blamed it on her insistence and not on how badly I needed some new socks. But I shook my head profusely and thanked her anyway with a forced grin, and she sighed and tucked the money back in her purse.
“What about dinner?” she asked hopefully. “Can you at least come over for dinner? You haven’t been by in such a long time, and we’d love to have you.”
It wasn’t an exaggeration. I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d been to Billy’s house for anything, let alone a meal. Hell, I only ever saw Billy at The Pit these days, when he wanted to get high after school or over the weekend. Sometimes, I walked him home if there wasn’t anybody else hanging around, but usually, I hung back to mingle and watch for the hungry eyes that always came my way.
No point in leaving if business was good.
But now, I wanted to eat dinner at his house. I wanted to remember what life used to be like before Gramma and Grampa died, back when I could afford to have a life outside of work, The Pit, and making sure Mom was still alive after she passed out on the couch. I wanted to remember, just for once, that I was still just a sixteen-year-old kid, and I wanted desperately to simply have fun.
So, I lifted one side of my mouth in a smile and said, “I’d really like that.”
And later that night, I did like it. No, scratch that—I loved it.
God, I loved everything.
I loved the meatloaf she had made. I loved the mashed potatoes and buttery green beans and gravy. I loved the fresh iced tea and cornbread. I loved how Billy’s mom didn’t care if I ate seconds or thirds. I loved hearing his dad talk casually about his workday. I loved that Billy’s mom asked her son how school had been that day and how Billy answered in a bored kind of way, as if she asked him that question all the time and he was sick of hearing it. I loved that they all listened to each other and cared, and most of all, I loved that his parents had no idea what their kid was up to after school and on Saturdays.
I loved that they couldn’t fathom the idea that he’d ever want to do shit like get high on little pink pills.
But I also hated it just as much because I knew the truth.
Billy was messed up, and I wished I knew how to stop it. I wished I could say something to his mom, I wished she knew the same things I did, but …
To tell her about him would be to tell her about me—and I couldn’t afford to do that. I couldn’t afford the lack of money or the way I knew her disapproval and disgust would pierce my heart and make me bleed out on her living room floor.