CHAPTER 38

Lucy

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I WAKE UP FACE down in a motel bathtub. The faucet drips against the back of my once flat-ironed hair. Water has found its way up my nose, and I cough it up, wincing from the sting.

“Shit,” I whisper to myself as I sit up and blink my eyes back into focus.

The front of my white tanktop is soaked. I pull it away from my hot pink bra and try to wring it out.

“What time is it?” The question is meant for Dani, but nobody answers.

At first I don’t remember where I am. The bathroom is unfamiliar. Damp towels are balled up on the white tile floor. Cheap lights above the mirror fill the silence with their constant hum. But then I see the complimentary shampoo and thinly sliced hotel soap, and it all comes back.

Calling Shawn, our dealer. Finding the small hotel behind Glendale High. Rounding up buyers to meet us there. Then kicking everyone out when we realized we wouldn’t have enough for us if they stayed.

Now that the heaviness is back, the living-dead feeling, I’d kill for someone to just come in, pick me up, and feed me the pipe.

But I’m alone.

“Dani,” I try calling her, but even if she’s here, I know she won’t respond if she’s coming down.

My need for another hit is what drags me out of the tub. I find Shawn asleep on one of the queen-sized beds, sprawled out on top of the covers. Dani is gone.

My heart rattles with fear at being without her, but I have more pressing issues. I start rummaging for the drugs, opening draws, flipping over pillows. Finally I see the pipe, clutched in Shawn’s hand.

I don’t even care if he wakes up. I pry it loose, dig in his pockets for the crystals and lighter. He doesn’t move.

Even as I light the pipe and melt the crystals, he sleeps. I inhale the great white smoke, puffing it out like an Indian, in perfect, wide circles. Each time I do, it feels like that deep breath of air after too long under water. The rushing expanse of my chest spreads the feeling throughout my body. I’m alive again.

Only after I’ve reached the level I’m looking for do I bother to check Shawn.

“Hey,” I shove him.

“What?” he groans, without moving his lips.

“Where’s Dani?”

He doesn’t answer. I doubt he knows anyway.

I have nowhere to go, so I clean and rearrange furniture, moving lamps, folding towels. I keep myself busy until Shawn succumbs to the urge and joins me in the land of the living. We smoke until we’re basically crazy.

After my panic-cleaning fit I grab a phone book and a sharpie. I draw for six hours, until it’s dark out.

“Come on,” Shawn says, taking the pen from me. “This is boring. Let’s do something more fun.”

He looks nothing like Paco, despite them being cousins. Shawn’s skinny as hell. His entire face is covered in tattoos, so are his arms, and you can tell by the way they disappear under his shirt they go all over his body. He smells like an old man and dirty socks. He’s twitchy and hyper and paranoid.

He’s not attractive, so when he sits next to me and reaches for my thigh, I scoot away.

“No, Shawn. I don’t like you like that, okay. I love Gabe.”

“Tssss,” he hisses a breath through his stained teeth. “Gabe ain’t into girls who tweak. He don’t get it.”

“Still,” I say. “I don’t like you like that. I’m not attracted to you.”

The tattoos on his face outline his skull, all the teeth along his jaw, the hollow bone of his nose, the dark pits of his eyes. I don’t like looking at him, but I’m forced to at this distance. I wonder in my crazed-high if he’s the grim reaper, some shadow demon finally come to make me pay for my sins.

“Why not?” His tattoos shift into a glare, darkened by shadow.

I look away. “I don’t know, okay.”

“You know you have to pay for all this shit you’ve been smoking.” He yanks at my arm, forcing me to turn and face him. “Right? You got money for that?”

Maybe it’s the onset of the comedown that makes me complacent or the surge of what’s left that drives the anger through me like sheets of needling rain, but I rip my arm away and jump to my feet.

“Fine,” I say, standing right on top of the mattress. “Take what you want.”

I rip my clothes off in rough violent yanks, and throw each piece at him. This isn’t the first time I’ve used my body for drugs, but it’s the first time it’s not my idea.

He seems amused, but I just want it over with. I don’t really feel up for the alternative, being beaten and raped in a motel, then left here with no drugs.

I lay like a blowup doll on the scratchy maroon comforter and turn my head so I don’t have to look at him.

He takes it. What he wants. In angry, awful thrusts. Then he stops.

“Why aren’t you doing anything?” he asks.

I stare him straight in his dead skull eyes. “Because I don’t want it. That’s what rape feels like.”

The full force of his open hand leaves a sting across my cheek, but he pulls off. He grabs his jeans and shoves his legs inside before moving to the other bed to sulk or sleep while I lay there, naked and motionless.

I get up when I hear his snores and grab the pipe, smoking and smoking into the night. Until my throat burns. I go to the bathroom to check in the mirror, opening my mouth in strange ways trying to catch the light. When I get a look, I freak out, stretching my mouth wider, desperate for a better view. Maybe it’s just the reflection.

It’s not. I tilt my head, just enough to see the strings of meth that have fused to the back of my throat like they’re a part of me. My panic squeaks out in an open-mouthed whimper as I stick my fingers back there, trying to pick and peel the meth away.

I’d taken this too far. Up until now, I’d always told myself I could stop. It was just for fun. But I haven’t eaten in three days. The drugs have done damage. What if I can’t come back from this? What if the drugs have already killed me?

I gape at the mirror again, gagging on my fingertips, and cry in a panic for what seems like an hour, checking and re-checking to see if the strings are gone. They don’t change. In that hour I become hyper-aware of the chords of tweak that slide along the path of my spine. I rub my tongue rhythmically against them, like a panting dog as I pace the bathroom, my nervous energy pulsing with the hummingbird beats of my heart. I have to do something about it.

Shawn has a knife for cutting the drugs in its powdered form. I sneak into his pocket, trying not to shake too hard, and slide it out with trembling fingers.

It’s a folding blade with a wooden handle. It’s sharp. Really sharp. I need to be careful.

I have to hold my head at a weird angle to see in the bathroom mirror, so I go slowly, reaching the knife point to the back of my throat to cut the strings. Blood starts to flow and I choke on it, coughing and gagging until I puke into the toilet. Little dots of red, spackle the white porcelain, the mirror, the wall.

After I vomit, I grab at the pain, throttling my neck with desperate hands. I check the mirror again and see blood coming out through my teeth, mixing with my saliva. It scares me so I drink water and sit on the counter, shoving twisted-up hand towels into my mouth like a gag, and worry about dying. I have no idea how severe the wound is, and I’m not confident in my judgment while I’m high.

Please, I pray to a God I’ve never known. Get me out of this and I’ll be done. I promise. Just help me.

The towels help. Eventually the blood stops, and I can finally see the cut. It’s deep, but I think I’ll be okay. It hurts to swallow, though. I can’t imagine eating, yet I can feel myself starving.

An angry knock interrupts my worry. I ignore it, but listen past the hum of the bathroom lights.

It comes again, this time with a voice, a Chinese lady threatening in broken English to call the cops.

I get to the door in a hurry, but answer only a crack.

She’s tiny, with a wrinkled face and mean, squinty eyes. “Get out. It 11:30. I knock for half hour. Check out is 11. I have room cleaned. Get out.”

At first I think about searching for Shawn’s wallet, but I want out of here anyway. Instead of digging through his stuff, I leave the door open and go to shake his tattooed chest.

“Shawn.” I shove him harder. “Get up.”

He doesn’t move.

“Shawn!” I slap his face a little harder than I should. Nothing.

I check over my shoulder at the Chinese woman who has her arms crossed and is watching everything I do. He has a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there.

“I don’t know,” I tell her, shrugging.

She gives me an urging glare to try something else.

I find the ice bucket, which is now just a vase of cold water and dump it on his head. He doesn’t even flinch.

The Chinese woman calls 911 and blocks me from leaving, standing in the doorway like a club bouncer. My first instinct is to bowl her over and run, but something about cutting drugs from my throat has been eye-opening. Eventually I’ll have to atone for my sins. Maybe this it that moment. Besides, no matter how fucked-up he is, I can’t walk out on Shawn, leaving him to die. It makes me think of Littles. Running from her didn’t mean escaping what happened, it meant carrying it around with me forever.

We wait in that dread-filled room together for the ambulance to arrive. The come down takes its hold, and I feel like a block of cement against the wall. I swallow down the salty tang of blood at the sound of the EMTs’ footsteps. I’m scared to death I’m going to jail. That Shawn’s fucking dead.

I stand as they check his vitals and try to wake him, but nothing works. Finally they lift his limp body onto a gurney. I know the police will be here any minute.

Right on cue I see the cop car pull into the lot.

“Shit,” I whisper. It’s Mendoza. Of course it is, that motherfucker.

I slump against the wall and wait for him to show as I second-guess myself. It was a mistake to stay here, but I don’t have the energy to run. Maybe I can work a sympathy angle on him.

Then just like that, God gives me a pass.

Shawn jumps to his feet, breathing hard and staring at the two EMTs like they’re aliens.

“See he’s fine,” I say, standing in a rush, pushing past the heaviness. “He just drank too much. Can we go?”

But it’s too late. Mendoza is at the door, and I know I’m not getting out of this. He gives me a look like a disappointed father and it pisses me off.

“Oh just fucking arrest me already. Get it over with.”

He escorts me to the cruiser and leaves Shawn with the medics. We don’t talk as he drives. I’m surprised he isn’t giving me his “you’re a good girl” speech.

I start to recognize the streets we’re on, and catch his eyes in the rearview as we pull up to Mom’s pink apartment. He stops, comes around to open the back door and removes my handcuffs.

“One chance,” he says. “That’s all I’m giving you. Make it right with your mom and get clean or I’m pushing you through the system.”

I rub my wrists as he folds the cuffs and follow him up the steps. He unlocks our front door. Apparently he’s gotten closer to Mom than I thought. That kind of pisses me off too, but what he’s doing right now is pretty cool, so I lay off of him.

“Thanks,” I say.

Before I walk through the door I realize this is about the fourth miracle that’s saved me. I look up at the blue sky, wondering if God really heard me. Either way, I made a promise.

* * *

It takes me all night, and even the next day, to recover from my high. I stay in bed, ignoring the distant image of my mother who keeps coming in to check on me. Every time I want to smoke a little bit, just to take this horrible edge off, I think of those strings down my throat and my promise. Finally when I get the strength to move, I manage my way to the shower.

I stand under the running water, a weak, skeletal being. Hardly human. I can’t move. My body is fading, failing. I’m dehydrated, despite the water pooling around my feet. I give up on standing and sit on the floor of the slick tub. The pain is a cloak draped heavily over my shoulders. It’s everywhere. I feel the dirt in my pores, fighting its way out. My senses are sharpened to a point of excruciating discomfort. The light is too bright, the sound of everything hurts my ears. I can hear the grind of my teeth whenever they touch.

I sit in the bath, with the shower beating the top of my head, and my legs stretched out in front of me, scrubbing and scraping my arms and legs. It feels like my skin is dying. I stay until my pruned feet and hands begin to peel.

Eventually I work up the energy to shave my legs, though I still don’t stand. The stubble is minimal, but I’m more eager to shave another layer of dead skin off my body. Another layer of the poison that’s working its way through my pores.

When the shower turns tepid I start to cry. I lose control. Tears blur my vision and drip from my chin. I’m drowning in something so much worse than water.

I don’t even remember cutting myself, but the blade must have slipped against my leg. The cut is deep, and the bath fills with blood. I panic, and drag myself over the edge onto the floor. My strength is gone. I’ve wasted into nothing. I’m literally starving to death.

I can’t even manage to pull a towel from the cupboard. Instead I roll myself into a ball, watching the blood flow from my skin in beautiful patterns. It trickles onto the floor, but I’m in a trance. My thought process is gone. I don’t care.

I close my eyes and let myself bleed.