“Rock?”

My eyes flicker to the guy on my left. I pretend to study the street sign.

“Nah, man,” I mutter. Put your eyes back down. Flip through the apartment guide. Look busy.

He curses at me and shuffles off. I didn’t see him; I don’t even know if he was offering or asking. But it doesn’t matter, either way.

Don’t second-guess this. Austin is still a good choice—this is just a bad neighborhood. I know the depths of all cities are like this, everywhere. Suburbs, too. You can go anywhere in America and find anything, once you know to look.

The hard part is forgetting how. I wonder if people sense it, if they can see something rising off me like an aura, that makes me look like a good mark.

A long night in the bus station has my back twisted. While I walk, searching for the right street, my spine pops and cracks itself into position. This bag has less than five outfits in it, but feels like an entire closet, today.

The apartments I’ve dog-eared are all out of my budget, but cheap enough that I know younger people must live in those neighborhoods. It’s just a matter of finding someone in need of a roommate.

My eyes scan the buildings: older construction, not exactly attractive, but definitely affordable. The neighborhood has an up-and-coming feel to it, too, with bars and takeout dotting the lower levels. A bike lane, unfinished, looms along the sidewalk.

Sure enough, the first telephone pole is littered with flyers. I take tabs from every single roommate wanted sign and shuffle through them like a bad hand of poker, trying to find any matching street name while I walk.

“Lost?” a waitress asks, when I run right into the waist-high fencing of her restaurant. She’s wiping down two bistro tables on the sidewalk, smirking.

“Kind of. I’m looking for these.” I hand her my slips.

“Not this place,” she says dramatically, passing one back. “It’s had four fires in two months. Oh, and this one? Plumbing sucks. They were on the news about it, some kid’s toilet basically exploded. Shit everywhere. Can you even imagine? And this one’s okay, but I’ve been to parties there, and there’s no noise control at all.”

“I’m not picky. I just need a room, fast.”

She pops her gum and passes the rest of the slips back, pointing to the one she placed on top. “I know the guys who put this one up,” she says. “Charlie and Zeke. Nice guys, decent place. You want me to take you?”

“Oh, thanks, but….” I motion to the rag and sterilizer in her hands, the salt shaker perched precariously close to the edge of the table. “I can find it.”

“My shift is over. I’m just cleaning this up, then I’m out. Wait up.” She breezes into the restaurant before I can decline again.

I lean against the fence and look around. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have a local help me, since I have no idea where I am. And if she can get me a good word with these guys, so much the better.

“Okay,” she says, when she comes back, “follow me.”

The walk is short, according to her. Along the way, she pauses to shake out her hair from its bun, then lights a cigarette. She offers me one.

I’m tempted. My hand is already reaching for one, in fact. “Uh, thanks,” I say, pulling back, “but I quit.” I’d prefer to keep my stress smoking on the hotel curb a one-time mistake, if I can. This is a new city, my new life. I can start over here. I want to do it right.

“Where you moving from?” she asks, eyeing me as we cut through an alley. I grab her elbow to steer her away from a mud puddle. She smiles.

“Indiana.”

“And that’s all you brought?”

I look at my bag. Heavy as it feels, it looks pathetic: the fabric folds in on itself, revealing how empty it really is. “Yeah. All I needed to bring.”

“Well, hope you brought some cash, too,” she laughs, “because Zeke isn’t letting that room go without a deposit upfront.”

The girl seems nice. Innocent, like she wouldn’t harm a fly. But Jess was like that too—and it was true: she wouldn’t hurt a fly. Her sights were set on much bigger things.

“I can work something out with them, I guess,” I tell her. It’s better to be as aloof as possible, right now, until I know who I can trust.

Yet again, I think about Lila. That was a decent record: an entire hour without seeing her face in my head, without missing her, and without thinking about how much I trusted her, almost from the start.

When I got in the car with her, that felt like starting my life over. It was exciting. My stomach twisted, but in a good way. Right now, I feel like I’m fumbling along a dark wall for a light switch, unsure if I’m even in the right place.

“Here it is,” the girl sings. She knocks on a window, not the door. “Zeke, Charlie? It’s Elise. Let me in.”

An enormous amount of shuffling occurs before a face appears in the window. “Did you bring any garlic bread?”

“No,” she says slowly, stepping aside and motioning to me, “but I brought you a roomie.”

The guy sighs. His breath doesn’t even fog the glass, it’s so warm outside. “Fine.”

The apartment is how I expected: pizza boxes stacked on the pass-through, furniture that looks like it was discovered curbside, and a too-small table with a television on it, tuned to a comedy special.

“Charlie.” The guy sticks out his hand. I take it.

“Shepherd. Nice to meet you.” Both of us glance at Elise, who’s stretching her gum into a tightrope with one hand, texting with the other.

“You want the room?” he asks. When I nod, he starts up the stairs and waves after me. I follow. At the top of the staircase, I hear the couch springs squeal when Elise falls into it.

“Five-hundred a month,” he says, as he swings open a door. The room is small and white, with beige carpet. “We need first month upfront.”

“I’ve got two-fifty.” I wince even as I say it. Cash is king, and I knew this would be a longshot. But I also know how these things tend to go: people would rather accept less of a sure thing, than just the promise of it all.

Charlie nods at my bag. “Show me.”

I pull it closer, hesitant.

“Oh, come on, dude,” he laughs. “I’m not gonna rob you or some shit.”

I have no reason to believe him. My own friends have robbed me. I robbed them. I even robbed Lila.

This is my only lead, though, so I reach into my bag and pull out $200, then get the rest from inside my shoe. I’ve got another ninety in my other one, but I decide to keep that a secret. I’ll need food until I can find a job, after all. I’m not even sure what, exactly, I’ll sleep on tonight.

Charlie counts the bills. He’s not at all disturbed by the fact some of it was just wedged underneath a sweaty shoe liner.

“Yeah,” he says, “that’s chill. Just get us the rest by…I don’t know, two weeks? You got a job yet?”

“Not yet. I just got into town last night.”

“I install windows with this startup, if you can handle tools and heavy lifting.”

“Really? That’d be perfect.” I catch myself. “I mean, if they like me.” My experience in construction is unimpressive. And if it’s any kind of corporation, apt to run background checks, I’m screwed.

“Guess I’ll let you unpack, then,” she says, pocketing my money.

I throw my bag onto the floor. “Done.”

Charlie laughs and hits me with the back of his hand. “Zeke’s got a sleeping bag you can borrow tonight, if you want. Is that really all you brought?”

“That’s it. I, uh…I kind of left Indiana in a hurry.” My mind skims the catalogue of all my possessions: a few more clothes than what I brought, DVDs with scratches all over, and junk mail. Leaving all that behind was the easiest part of all.

I can still picture my old room at my parents’ house, stocked with soccer posters, karate ribbons, Scouts memorabilia, and a tower of Christian rock albums I haven’t played since I was fourteen.

It’s weird: I still remember the lyrics to so many of those songs. I really, honestly liked that stuff, and not just the music—my friends and I would save up for weeks to get tickets to those shows and festivals. Our parents even let us go by ourselves, figuring we couldn’t get in much trouble at a Christian music event. They were wrong, in that we could have. We just didn’t want to.

I was a good kid. Squeaky-clean, in fact. The type of son you’d expect to find in a pastor’s household: obedient, respectful, and happy.

By high school, though—even one as insular as mine, with no more than 200 students—it was obvious which kids were cool, and which weren’t. I fell somewhere in the middle, while my friends sank right to the bottom.

The first time I smoked was after a school play, at the cast party. I’d landed the role of Rolf in The Sound of Music, and everyone thought it was funny to give me a Nazi salute when I arrived.

“Hey, Fish,” somebody shouted. When I turned, I expected to see one of my friends, dressed head-to-toe in black from their work as stagehands. Instead, it was Jackson Tate.

“We’re down here,” he said, like I should know who “we” meant. He still had stage makeup on his face from his run as the Captain. The closer I walked, the more I could see, gathering in the creases near his mouth.

While I followed him down the basement steps, I wiped my face with my sleeves. Streaks of foundation and powder marred my sweatshirt by the time we reached the bottom, but at least my pores could breathe.

“Fischer!” someone called out, right as a few others shouted “Jones!” I had a lot of nicknames in school, and it was impossible to tell if someone was saying it kindly or not. This time, I got the feeling it was a mixture.

Besides Jackson, there were four people I recognized from the popular crowd, two from the basketball team, and some from the play. A kid I didn’t know was packing a bowl.

“You were great tonight,” Lauren Anderson smiled, as she made room for me on one of the sofas. She’d played Liesl. Our kiss was supposed to be an innocent little peck, and stayed that way through every rehearsal. On stage tonight, during the real deal, she caught me by surprise with some extra enthusiasm, and a little tongue. We laughed our way through the teacher’s backstage rant, afterwards.

“Thanks,” I told her. “You, too.” Her boyfriend was on the other side of her, his arm visibly tightening on her waist, so I turned my attention to the bowl.

“You smoke?” Jackson asked.

I wish my downfall were less clichéd. In so many ways, it really did play out that simply: I wanted to be cool, some cool kids offered me drugs, and I did them. I turned into a D.A.R.E. cartoon.

There was more to it than that, of course: I was tired of everyone, including myself, assuming I would be just like my dad. I didn’t want to teach people. I wasn’t a leader. My childhood dream of becoming a CEO or VP, some suit with a big wallet, didn’t appeal much anymore, either. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, or who I wanted to be. I didn’t want to have to decide at all, but especially not at fourteen.

So in that moment, when everyone looked at me and the girl who’d played Maria finished her hit and passed the bowl to me, I answered, “Yeah, sometimes.”

It hit me fast. I felt like I was sinking into a hot tub, but my heart was thundering. I wondered if Lauren could feel it through my arm, touching hers while she made out with her boyfriend.

The pot itself wasn’t my downfall. If I’d kept it at that, just gone upstairs and listened to music, maybe taken my friends up on their offer for a night of video games and pizza at one of our houses, I wouldn’t have fallen at all. A preacher’s kid who smoked weed: I wouldn’t have been the first. I could have taken a road somewhere between piety and the gutter.

Instead, I took the pills Lauren palmed me without question, when our highs wore off. We sang our duet and laughed, hysterical and sleepy, before sneaking another kiss while her boyfriend went to get more beer. She got the Ativan from him, she told me, and put his number in my phone. Just like that, I had my first connection.

I didn’t see what was happening to me until it already had. I think that’s how it happens for most people. Nobody wakes up and decides they’re going to become addicted to something. It starts a lot like my story did: a fun time with some friends. You try it, you like it, you do it again. Everyone around you keeps doing it, too, and some of them can handle it, some of them can’t.

No matter what, you assume you’re one of the ones who can. That, in the end, was what undid me.

So now, when I go back downstairs behind Charlie and hear Elise tell him, “I texted Zeke, he’s got our bars,” I freeze.

Charlie notices. He gives Elise a look.

“It’s okay,” I tell them, but I’m sure my stammer says otherwise.

It seems like more than enough for Elise, who holds her hand out at me. “See?” she asks Charlie. “He’s fine.”

“I’m, uh…I’m gonna walk around for a while, get the lay of the land.” I step between them and pull the door open, praying Zeke won’t be on the other side with God knows how much Xanax.

When I’m halfway down the sidewalk, I hear Charlie calling me. Actually, he’s shouting, “Dude!” instead of my name, already forgotten.

“Here’s your key.” He slaps a spare into my palm like a handshake.

“Oh. Thanks.” Outside, with no walls closing in, I feel like I overreacted. Then I imagine it: sitting up in my empty new room all night, knowing it’s just a few stairs away. Maybe tonight would be pretty easy to resist.

But what about the next one, or the next?

“Uh, actually,” I start, then clear my throat as Charlie turns back, “I’m not sure this is gonna work for me.” I try to think up a good reason, and then decide that only the truth makes sense. “I used to have a drug problem.”

“Oh.” He stares at the key I put back into his palm. “Well…it’s not like we do it a lot. And nothing crazy.”

I used to be the same way, I think, but don’t tell him this. For one thing, they might be the kind of people who can take pills for fun. For them, it might be a phase.

Or, in a year or two, they could wind up exactly where I did. There’s no way to tell, until it happens. Even if I told him this, though, it probably wouldn’t make a difference. I remember when things were still casual, for me. No one could tell me shit. I wouldn’t listen.

We go back to the apartment. I get my bag. Charlie gives me my money back without a word, which I have to admire. I wasn’t sure I was prepared to fight him over it, if he kept it.

“You’re leaving?” Elise pouts. “We were going to celebrate!” Her hand creeps up my arm.

“Thanks, but…yeah. I’m leaving.” I slip out of her grasp. “I appreciate your help, though.”

“It doesn’t seem like you do.”

“Elise.” Charlie hits her shoulder with the back of his hand, softer than he did to me. I wonder if that’s a thing of his, but feel relieved I won’t be around here long enough to find out.

“You need a ride?” Elise puts a new stick of gum in her mouth. “My roommate has a car.”

“Thanks,” I say again, “but I’m just going to the Greyhound station.”

“On foot?” Charlie asks. “That’s all the way across town.”

“Already walked it once, today. It’s no big deal.”

“That’s stupid.” Elise grabs her purse and pushes past me, wiggling her fingers over her head. “I live right across the street—I’ll get the keys and take you.”

Charlie shrugs when I look at him for help.

Elise is already across the street at another row of townhouses, waiting. I’m about to turn her offer down again, but my feet ache, just from standing here. The thought of walking all the way back makes every blister pulse in agony.

I wait outside while she gets the keys. Her roommate’s car is small, but spotless, except for two distinct shoe marks on the dash.

Elise tries to make conversation. I answer every question and make listening noises, but I don’t engage any further than necessary. I don’t feel like talking to anyone, right now. I just want to think.

The only problem: all I can think about is Lila.

“I don’t get it. You just got here.” Elise puts her hand on my leg after we pull up to the station. It’s more crowded than it was this morning. I watch the people instead of looking at her.

“Wasn’t what I thought I needed.” My hands can’t unbuckle my seatbelt fast enough. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Yeah,” she says, scoffing. “See you around.”

I haven’t even closed my door all the way before she takes off down the road. All it does is make me think of Lila again, when she tried to kick me out at the bus station a few days ago. I fought so hard to stay. If only I’d done it when it mattered most.

Inside, I lose myself in the thinning crowd and look at the routes.

Indiana isn’t where I want to go, but it’s the only place I deserve to go: back to my mess, left to climb out for myself.