Chapter Eight - Maddie
Outside I feel kinda lost. I mean, I know where I am. I just feel like I don’t know where I am. My heart is jumping a little. And I suddenly realize I can hear it.
Is that normal?
I’m not sure what’s going on but I stop at a street corner and lean against a lamppost, taking a moment to just be still. Think. I’m just—
“You OK?”
“What??” I snap my head and look around but no one’s there.
Well, there’s lots of people but none of them are looking or talking to me.
Am I hearing things?
I’m sure there’s like a dozen rational explanations for how I feel right now, it’s just the frontrunner is leaning towards… what?
God, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just feel like I need to look around. Check my back and see if anyone is there.
Which is stupid. Leftover side effects of the whole drug-lord thing down in Mexico, that’s all. Maybe it was my devil talking to me?
But I check my shoulders and nope. That asshole has taken the day off.
“Jesus Christ,” I whisper, crossing the street. “You are insane, Maddie.” Not because I’m hearing things. Because I actually looked for the devil on my shoulder.
I keep walking, unsure of what to do with myself while Tyler...
Unsure about anything, really. How does that happen? One second you’re cool with everything in your life and the next second you’re not?
Is it because I’m not seeing what’s happening with Tyler?
The farther I get away from the salon, the more uneasy I become. My heart is definitely thumping now. I can feel the blood pumping through my body like a building sense of panic.
So I do what I do. The only thing I know how to do. The only thing I can do.
I pretend it’s not happening. I smile. I feel the wind on my face. I walk.
I. Keep. Going.
And that’s when I realize this is the same direction I was walking on Halloween. That Pete’s is just a few blocks away.
My feet suddenly have a destination and this, for whatever reason, makes all the difference. I inhale, exhale, and then the thumping is gone. The sense of uneasiness fades with each step I take towards Pete’s. And by the time I get to the burned-down rubble where I used to work, I am calm.
Which also makes no sense at all. Or else it absolutely does.
“Do you know what happened?”
I startle again, but this time when I glance over to my shoulder, I find a young woman dressed like a hooker, looking like she’s been awake for way too long. “Bad shit,” I sigh in reply.
She’s smoking a cigarette, which she flicks, and drags, and flicks again. Eyes taking in the scene. She says, “Yeah. I tried to get a job here.”
She’s obviously strung out and I wonder if there’s any chance Pete would have ever hired this woman. Probably not. “I just pulled an all-nighter.” I think she says it by way of explaining her strung out looking state. Because it comes out slightly defensive.
“Yeah?” I reply back.
“Yep,” she says, dragging her tired eyes up to mine to stare dead into them. Then she adds, “...I’m leaving today.”
“Yeah?” I ask. “Where ya going?”
“Home,” she says. Like everyone knows where home is.
“I needed the bus fare, so I worked all night. But before I made up my mind to leave, I was thinking about working here. I heard the guy was a good guy. The owner. What was his name?”
After a pause, I say, “Pete.”
“Yeah. Heard he was a good guy.”
“He was,” I say.
“I interviewed a few months ago but he turned me down. Said I should get clean.”
I nod. “And did you?”
She scowls at me. Because I think she feels like it was a judgement. Maybe it was. I don’t want it to be, but maybe it was. “I’m better than I was before,” she says.
I nod. I get it. I mean, she looks like shit now but bad is a bottomless pit, right? “I worked here,” I say.
When I glance over at her, she’s already looking at me. “I know,” she says. “Feel like I’ve seen you around.”
“Oh,” I say. Weird. The realization that people you don’t notice can notice you. “It was a...good place,” I say. Because it was. “He was a good guy.”
She nods. Sighs. Drags on her cigarette. Drops it to the ground and stomps it out with her hooker shoe. “I didn’t really know him. Couple times he saw me hanging around and gave me some breakfast. Before…” She waves her hand in the air, like ‘before’ encompasses a whole load of baggage. “But yeah, I came out of the hospital a few days ago and I swung by here. To tell him I was serious. That I was gonna get clean and come back in a few months to get that job and quit all this shit. But…”
She doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to.
But it was gone. Plan A was a non-starter.
“You look good,” she says.
“I do?”
She nods. “Yeah. I mean, Like I say, I’ve seen you around and yeah, you look better. I was standing over there,” she says, pointing to a street corner. “Just got dropped off from my last call ever.” Which makes her smile. Almost laugh. “And there you were. And I thought to myself, Damn. She looks good. And then I was thinking… like, you give me hope.”
“I do? How? Why, I mean.”
She shrugs, “I saw how you were a couple months back. You had this crazy look in your eyes all the time. Which, and I’m not judging, OK?” She makes a special point of letting me know that she’s not judging me. “But it came off as kinda desperate. And I used to think… I’m not the only one. But then it seemed like you got better. And it was bugging me.”
I don’t actually know what to say to her. I’m just… stunned that this woman I never met seems to have so much of her...time...invested in me.
“It bugged me that you were changing, I guess. Maybe I was jealous?” She smiles at me. An embarrassed smile. “I’m not giving up though. I’m one of those tough bitches, ya know?”
Which makes me smile. Kinda big. “I do know.”
“I just keep climbing. I never look down, either. That’s pointless. I just keep my head up and climb. It’s all you can do. Give up or keep climbing. And I’m just not a quitter. I wish I was, it’d be easier. But I’m not. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
I just nod, dumbly. I’m speechless.
“So… it’s hard. But I got my bus fare.” She looks down at her small purse and pats it. “Worked all night to get it and now I’m leaving.”
I want to say all kinds of things. Stupid motivational things that mean nothing unless you’re saying them to yourself. Things like, Hang in there. It gets better.
But I don’t. And she turns to leave.
I don’t want her to leave, I realize. So I say, “Hey?”
She stops walking and looks over her shoulder at me. “Yeah?”
“You need anything? Money? A ride? I can call you a car or get you a taxi.”
She shakes her head. “Thanks, but no. I’m good. I’m really good.”
And then she turns and walks away. Disappears from view as if she was never really there. Like a figment of my imagination. She just fades into the crowd.
It’s only then that I realize there’s loads of people around. People who like… faded into the background while we were talking. That life goes on, no matter what. The world never stops turning. The sun keeps rising, the night always comes, and then the light takes its place.
Every twenty-four hours there’s a new opportunity for a fresh start.
That girl. We are the same person, she and I.
I hope she makes it.
I wish I could help her.
I will help her.
Maybe not her, specifically. But people like her.
People like us. People who fuck up and keep going.
People who never give up.