CHAPTER 35

Lucy

––––––––

I HAVEN’T BEEN HOME in days. I’m sure the police are looking for me, but they can’t touch me here. Not in this hole.

As much as I hate being at Paco’s cousin’s, it’s a good place to hide. If Mendoza is searching for us, there are about five Crazy Eights here who’ll shoot his ass before he finds me.

The boys went out for beer. Until they get back I’ve glued myself to this shit-colored sofa stained with who knows what. Dani is keeping Paco’s cousin and his friends busy with her flirtatious laughter as they pass the pipe. But I’m not over this Mendoza thing.

Weed smoke floats in a thin sheet above my head tempting me to join them, but I’m too pissed to do anything but sit and sulk. More than anything, I feel betrayed by Mom and Ruth. They didn’t even pretend to listen to me, just pushed me away.

If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve always felt separate from them. Always second best. I can’t blame Ruth. A certain amount of love gets showered on the family’s first child. I get it. But I’ve always seen my mother’s effort to do things for me as her obligation to make up for that lack of attention. It’s never been out of a true connection with me. The two of them have their own little world. They’ve spent hours on road trips singing Broadway show tunes to the max, belting out the notes with the heat of their souls while I watched in back, knowing the words, but lacking the passion to sing along.

Their bond has driven a wedge between us since the beginning. And I’m not resentful of it. I’m actually grateful my sister is a younger version of my mother. Someone my mom can live vicariously through, replaying her theater days in high school. I’m glad they have each other. But it has set me apart.

Is it so wrong that while they bonded with each other, I bonded with my friends? I want to feel the way they do with someone. My friends accept me and love me the way I am. My toughness, my wild moods and disinterest in school, it’s not something that makes me different like with Mom and Ruth. It’s what makes my friends like me. It’s what makes us the same. And so I let myself get comfortable with them. I love them like family and bond with Dani like a sister. She gets me and knows me like Mom and Ruth do with each other. Isn’t it fair that I get that, too?

It wasn’t Ruth who stood by my side when I was trying to protect Mom from dating a murderer. It was Dani.

“Stop being so depressed, Chica. They’ll forgive you,” Dani pets my head on the couch. She knows all the reasons I’m moping. “Come on. Shawn’s got some medicine for you.”

She dangles a little baggie of crystals in front of my face.

“No way,” I push her hand away, remembering the awful feeling of coming down from that glorious high.

“Whatevs. I’m doing it.” She picks through the rocks and loads the pipe.

It doesn’t take much to convince me in my shitty mood—just a look. Dani raises her eyebrows waiting for me to cave, and I do. I shake my head at her and take a hit, letting the bliss wash over me as I exhale a massive cloud of white smoke. It feels good to forget everything. My Mom and Ruth. Mendoza. The shadows of guilt that follow me, and the secrets I keep in the tight fist of my heart.

Without this drug I am the walking dead. It brings me back to life. Dani and I take turns until I’ve been re-born. It feels like I’ve shed fifty pounds of old skin and I’m a new sleek and gleaming version of myself. I shove the remaining rocks and pipe into my purse, following Dani to the kitchen.

When Gabe and Paco get back I’ve given over to the devil’s call. I am transformed. Everything is vivid and beautiful. I want to clean and color. But Gabe is a better distraction.

I pull him to the bedroom, dragging his shirt up over his head in a frenzied rush. He laughs with surprise, a low soft humming crackle, but goes with it. Our lips crash together. My hands slide along the contours of his chest and the natural lines that form around toned muscle. His skin is smooth and brown like bourbon.

I can’t move fast enough toward him, against him. Forget slow and sensual. I want him like crazy. We kiss too hard and bump into furniture, but I don’t care. He follows my lead, letting me rip clothes off and tackle him into the bed. The high devours me, and we spend hours knotting up the yellowing sheets, ignoring the sounds of a party just outside the door. The night comes and goes, and our naked bodies turn hot with a feverish rush and then cold again with the chill of sweat. Over and over and over.

And then I crash. I hit the wall of oncoming sobriety and with it comes the weight. Walking across the room feels like slugging through tar. I can’t bring myself to sit up.

So we sleep.

When the sun burns through the ragged sheets tacked up on the window as curtains, Gabe nudges me in the side. “Come on. We’ve been sleeping forever. Get up.”

I can’t even muster the will to refuse. I’m naked, curled into a ball around one of the drool stained pillows and it’s my only anchor against the awful feeling. My veins have been filled with cooling cement.

“It’s like two o’clock. Get up, lazy.”

I don’t bother opening my eyes. “Tell Paco I need more medicine.”

“Huh?” I can tell by the way he says it, he’s genuinely confused, which makes me confused.

I pop one eye open, just one. “You know, the stuff,” I whimper. Talking is too hard.

“You need some Advil or something?”

“Fuck, Gabe. The fucking Meth! I need a hit. I can barely move right now.”

All I hear is the door slam. Then yelling. I don’t care what it’s about.

The door slams again, but I can hear him in the room. His feet shuffling, his angry breathing. He’s searching for something, and I’m too curious to not look. I open the one eye again. He has my clothes in a bunched up ball in his arms. I close my eye again and feel his gentle hands on my feet, slowly sliding them inside the rough unpleasant fabric of my jeans.

I let him dress me, but only because I don’t have the energy to stop him. He half carries me to the door. I’m not the only one spun out. Dani and Paco are slugs on the couch, half-dead, half asleep. Some of the other guys are moving like sloths throughout the apartment.

“Wait!” I gather my breath for the single plea, remembering the drugs I stashed. “My purse.”

Gabe grabs it for me, and I make it in a lazy fog to the car and sleep while he drives.

When we stop I wake up. The pink stucco of my building orients me. I’m home. The feeling I get upon seeing the place is equal parts panic and relief. He holds me up as we slug our way to the front door. It’s unlocked even though no one is home. Mom is lazy and forgetful like that. I miss her.

Gabe lays me in my bed and sits on the edge. He stares at the floor for a while, biting at his lip ring with a tight angry jawline.

“Fucking Paco,” he whispers to himself. Then he leans over me, checking my face. I’m pale with hunger, starving and thirsty, parched as a lake cracked and drying into an empty bed of waste. “That stuff is evil, Luz.” He kisses my cheek and his breath warms my ear. “I’m calling your mom.”

I don’t argue. I’m saving my energy for when he leaves the room. And he does. He pulls out his cell phone and wanders out the door to make the call.

I lunge for my purse and pull out the pipe and crystals, stuffing them under my mattress.