Dawn breaks, blowing the night away like the bitter electric powder. A peek out the door with glaring eyes. I forget how many times I look, but it must be sixty. Seventy. By now it’s just to stay sane.
I lock the door again. The insane hours fall out of my over-amped brain as the pulsating energy fades to shaky, lingering weirdness. A single bulb flickers and the dingy bathroom takes on a tired feel. My thoughts and energy flicker with it, light and dark. Lines and edges blur and shake and cross over one another.
The bag fits in my palm, looks lighter than when I started. Two or three times I went back to it in the last hours, or was it four times?
I had to. It kept me watchful of Care. That’s good. No choice. Gotta stay awake, even now. But my muscles are stiff and angry, and my body feels like a spent battery. My battered bones and fighting bruises scream bloody murder.
Five minutes since I checked on her. Maybe twenty. I hobble over and she’s still out, but breathing better than before. My limp is getting better but each step is misery.
Back to the mirror. My face is white. It seems thinner, sickly, almost grotesque. I wonder if my skin doesn’t look rougher. Some punch bruises have begun to show on the sides of my face. The outlines of everything wobble gently from drugged exhaustion. My jaw aches and my teeth feel ready to fall out of my head.
A rap at the door rocks my heart, panic, and fear heat shooting from my chest. I look to the door, waiting, hoping the noise was hallucination. A longer, harder knock follows. My head turns to Care’s stall helplessly.
I pull the baton from my pocket, flip it open with a zipper sound, hide it behind my leg. Swallowing, I walk to the door reluctantly. My teeth set hard on one another as I twist the deadbolt and leap away.
The metal door creaks open to a blinding silhouette in the cold morning light. I stretch out my hand to block it as my eyes water.
Vision slowly clears as I shake in anticipation. Not a cop, but a startled old Hispanic man standing in the doorway. He looks to my weapon and then me.
“Ahh, need to clean here,” he says in a thick accent.
Quiet steps sound behind me. It’s Care, holding our bag. “Yeah, of course. We were just heading out.”
The janitor nods slowly as we hobble past, his world-weary face half-shocked. I close my baton on the wall and pocket it.
“Nice of you to finally wake up,” I say. “You okay?”
“Better,” she answers weakly. “You?”
“Worse than you last saw me. I was up all night on this stuff so no one found us both passed out with you drowned in your own vomit.” My shaking hand pulls out the baggie. She takes it and I light a cigarette.
“What’s this?” She opens the bag to taste it. “Woah, never seen speed like this... And where’d you get that cig?! Why’s our bag so heavy?”
We stop on a hill overlooking torn baseball fields and a rusty playground. She plops her ass and the bag on the ground with a big clank. She opens it and squeals at the sight of all the liquor. “Tequila, gin, vodka, wow! Ew, think I’m done with rum for a little while, though.”
“Look under.” I put a cig in her mouth and light it.
She looks like she’s about to faint from joy, seeing the bag of drugs. She cuts off her own “ohmygod” by smacking her hand over her lips.
“I was taking the ‘amph’ powder in there all night to stay up,” I say. “It was fun at first but now everything hurts and I feel like shit. Am I even alive?”
She rummages through everything then closes the bag, blows a satisfied cloud of tobacco smoke. She sighs deep and smiles brightly. “I’m almost thinking that Dryden shit was worth it now. This is the real pirate’s booty.”
I want to smack her. “Worth it?” I nearly yell.
She looks around us nervously. “Do you even see what all’s in that fucking bag? We’re in business now, babe. Come on, let’s go before someone robs us. It’s a whole different ball game.”
(...)
I sit on a log, cig smoke blowing past Care as she paces back and forth in front of me, the bag jangling, hanging around her arm. Her cig burns off quickly from excitement.
“I guess the sickness is wearing off...” I comment.
She stops and peers with one wide eye. “How can I be sick with a miracle in our laps?” she asks. She reaches into the bag, takes out some pills, tries to feed me one, but I shake my head. She puffs and wrinkles her head.
“Those drugs are dangerous. They could be poisoned like the booze you drank before! I only snorted that powder last night because there was no other way to stay awake and keep watch. We shouldn’t use any of it for fun.”
She giggles. “You know how many times I’ve heard an excuse why someone just had to do speed? This has to be their private stash. The creme de la creme.” She tosses a pill in her mouth and chomps it up, shivers. “These taste just fine.”
“Eww,” I go. “As if you know how every drug tastes.”
“Most of 'em,” she yawns, breaking another in half and swallowing a piece. “Tastes like Tylenol. These aren’t quite Tylenol, but they’re better. Open up.”
I sigh and open my mouth wide. Anything for the pain might help more than hurt. She tosses a pill and a half in and I swallow it with some spit.
“I just think we shouldn’t be getting high out in the cold,” I say. “We need clear heads.”
“These are for pain, not getting high. The high is just a bonus.” She laughs giddily. “Besides, I don’t know about you, but I’m about as happy as the devil on Sunday right now.”
I didn’t get it. All the religious thoughts that seemed so clear before have boiled out of my head.
“You know what else we need?” She lifts up a bag of weed the size of two fists. “Look, there’s a lil' baggie of hash in there too!” She puts it aside and pulls out a bag of pre-rolled joints, half of them bent or broken. She took one out and lit up, puffing a few hits and handing it to me.
I look at it unsurely. “Will it make me feel better?”
“Duhhh!” she exclaims. “Go crazy.”
“I don’t want to go crazy.”
“No, I mean, hit it hard,” she says. “Relaxes you. Good for pain. Blah blah blah.”
I reluctantly put it to my lips, staring down the little tube at the cherry. It glows brighter as I inhale a huge cloud and hand it back. It tastes different than tobacco. Much better. A little peppery. It tickles my lungs and I cough up a fit as she laughs with a small gorgeous smile that lingers. I watch her lips close around the joint. The cherry slowly blinks with her eyes and the reflection of the whole world shines in them. My heart flutters.
She takes it from her mouth and holds it in front of me. It seems to stretch down a vibrating hall of static.
“What?” she asks. “It’s you.”
I take it and roll it intently between my fingers.
“You looked really nice a second ago.” I take a hit and pass it. “Really pretty.”
“Really?” she blushes. “I never thought I was pretty.” The smoke gently rolls up her high cheekbones and I think that’s ludicrous.
“I don’t think so either,” I say. She gasps and laughs. “I mean about myself! I mean, I didn’t even remember what I looked like till I looked in the mirror last night.”
“I’d kill for your looks,” she goes.
“You can have them.” I blow out smoke. “And the scars.”
Her eyes roll. “We all have scars. Yeah, I’ll just put my brain in your head. You don’t always use yours anyway,” she grins.
“If I didn’t use my brains, I would’ve gotten drunk off drugged liquor too and almost gotten us raped to death by Dryden and his creepy old lover guy.”
“All part of my plans,” she remarks. “To land us this bag of sweet shit.”
“Sure...”
“Though I’ll give you the quick-thinking award, getting us out of there with the goods.” She puffs the joint. “I barely remember... creepy old lover guy?”
I smack my face. “Yeah, he looked like he owned Dryden’s ass. He was about to own ours too.”
“Eww!” she exclaims. Her eyes are thin and red, gleeful.
“Yeah, he brought out the drugs. And the knives and handcuffs and sex toys...”
“Shiiit,” she goes. “That was a close one. Guess for all his tough talk, Dryden needed a sexy sugar daddy. Was the other guy good-looking at all?”
“No. Old, gangly, looked like a serial killer.”
“They probably were,” she says cooly. “Both of 'em. I knew there was something off about him.”
“Did you?!” I shudder. “The only reason I didn’t finish him for sure... Maybe I believed him when he said he didn’t kill anyone before last night. But maybe I was wrong.”
“Hate to say it but you probably should’ve finished the job.”
“He said he’d kill me!”
The cherry hits her lips and burns her a little. Dying ashes fall from her face. “Yeah. Definitely should have. I mean, I’m not one to talk after I got us in that mess. Just not my policy to keep people around that want to kill me some other time, ya know?”
“Everyone wants to kill everyone in this town.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” She flicks the joint into the cold dead grass. “I’m just saying, you leave people around cursing your existence like that, and eventually one of them is going to take the time to track you down and do you in.”
“You can’t just kill everyone, Care... I’ll try not to make more enemies.”
“Good. Loose ends make life hard.”
I suddenly feel something. A buzzing cascade of warmth wafting through my whole body. The pains hide away behind a blanket of coziness and my mind fills with bright thoughts of enlightenment scattered in a chaotic cloud of contentment and intrigue, a light shadow of paranoia and anxiety resting behind it all. I look to Care. She looks like she’s not paying attention- or is she waiting for me to say something?”
“So...” I pause, grasping at the threads of conversation that seem to flee away. “Isn’t Matty a loose end for you?”
She yawns, looking to the sky. “Yeah, I’m gonna kill him someday. And probably some others.”
I sit up. “Really? What others?”
“No one important. Just some people that went a little too far and pissed me off.”
A large pause... then she bursts into maniacal laughter, takes a breath. “It’s boring here. Let’s go.”
“Where? I ask, standing.
She hops off, leading us out of the woods into the brightening morning. We talk about everything we think.
(...)
We wander from the woods and end up at the same park from the night before. I look at her and she shrugs. “Good a place as any.”
Children are playing on the rusty playground in the sun while mothers watch, grouped in birdlike cliques, arms crossed in the cold. They grasp cigarettes and complain, tell boring stories in raspy voices. We light cigarettes too.
“Look at ‘em,” Care says, pointing her cig to a group of toddlers. “Cute, huh?”
I watch their bizarre little actions for a moment. Flailing, jumping off the dilapidated metal skeleton with its peeling paint, into wood chips spread thin and sparse over frozen black dirt.
“I guess they’re alright,” I go.
“Are you gonna have kids?” she asks.
“Uhhh...” I pause, speechless. “I don’t know. Never crossed my mind. I don’t think I have enough life in me to live, let alone give birth. Why even try?”
“I dunno,” she giggles nervously.
“Do you want to?”
She giggles more. “I don’t know. Probably not. I mean, maybe. Could happen. I feel like everyone normal has kids eventually.”
“But you’re not very normal,” I laugh.
She gives me a sideways glance, her lower lip jutting with the cig hanging out. “I don’t know... I’d just like to hold something innocent and beautiful in my arms, give it everything it needs to live, protect it, give it every bit of comfort I can...”
“And get comfort back?” I ask. “What about a cat or dog?”
“No,” she snarls. “I don’t care. I just want a little ripoff of me that can go on and live a better life than I got to, ya know?”
“I don’t know if I’d want to bring anything innocent and beautiful into a world like this,” I say carelessly.
She watches the ground.
“I mean, that’s awesome and good. But you can live a beautiful life yourself.”
She shakes her head. “Nope. Tragedy only.” She smirks.
“Well, with that attitude...” I go, half-joking.
“I’m just kidding... But not really. I’m fucked.”
“Every day’s an opportunity to make something new,” I offer.
“Cute.” She spits. “If only every day reset everything and started fresh.”
“Then we couldn’t build anything bigger than a day.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” she says dryly. “It’d make everything simpler.”
“Nothing’s simple,” I go, as if someone else is saying it.
Her eyes drift toward me and I notice I’m looking at her intently.
“What?” she asks.
I look away, embarrassed. “I don’t know.”
“Never know anything, do ya?” She snickers.
“Not usually...”
“Well, let’s get going anyway. Gotta sell drugs to some kids.”
I look at the playground full of kids.
“Not them,” she laughs. “C’mon, at least pretend I have a heart. Follow me and let’s see if I can find where I’m thinking of.”
(...)
Later in the afternoon. The sun is high but it’s still cold.
We’re standing in the doorway of an empty storefront inside an old brick building, just sitting and waiting. The occasional car goes by, passengers staring. We look back with hard eyes of vague suspicion, wondering who the strangers are, driving past for that brief moment.
A large building across the street lined with parked cars and idling school busses. Chain link fence surrounded most of it, sectioning off a sports field surrounded by sparse woods. Its grass was trampled, muddy and dead.
“Shouldn’t be much longer,” Care says, the fourth time in thirty minutes. She takes another sniff of the speed powder. “Highschoolers love drugs and we have drugs. They’ll give us cash for our drugs and then we’ll have cash, and then we’ll be rich plus loved by everyone. Get it?”
I must look unconvinced.
“It’s totally true. Cash rules the world,” she offers.
“I just want enough to survive a little while longer and not have to steal and dumpster-dive.”
“Oh, we’ll get better than that.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing, though?”
“I always know what I’m doing,” she replies smugly. “I’ve seen a lot of dealers and kids and drugs. I’ve seen dealers deal, dealers deal to kids, kids deal to kids, dealers dealing kids, kids kidding dealers...”
“Okay! I get it! Is school out?”
“Looks like it,” she says with a devilish grin. We get up and go closer.
Kids around our age walking in every direction. Some in dark, baggy clothes with shiny chains or red or white symbols embroidered on the legs or shirts. Lace, fingerless gloves, black leather boots, skate shoes. Some are thugs in hanging pants with boxer-covered asses half hanging out underneath leather jackets or sweatshirts, gold chains and rings flashing.
“Jocks, punkers, skaters... fuck these dumb kids. It’s like a TV show.” Care grumbles. “They don’t know shit about the real world.”
“How would you know?” I go. “You didn’t go to school, did you?”
We stop on the sidewalk, partly covered by a great tree in the long front yard of the school.
“Yeah? What school did you go to? I met a lot of people that did, and I read books, so there!”
My face must go red.
“I mean, look at 'em!” she exclaims. “Their bullshit little groups where everyone likes the same stupid shit. Like, not one of them’s strong enough to just be their own person. And they all go back to their nice warm homes and parents and don’t have to worry about a thing.”
“They’re Piercing kids, Care. A lot of them probably go home to a lot worse things than you’d think.”
“They look like a bunch of bullshit wannabes to me. None of 'em have been through shit.”
“Everyone goes through their own shit. Get over it.”
She looks surprised, then annoyed. I don’t even know where that came from.
“Whatever,” she looks away. “Let’s get to business. Talk to someone to get things rolling.”
“Me?” My voice comes out high. “I thought this was your thing....”
“You should give it a shot,” she smuggly suggests. “You’ll never learn nothin’ if you don’t try it.”
“Seriously?”
She just crosses her arms and nods toward a group of kids. When I hesitate, she pushes me.
I sigh and walk over. Most of them melt away. A kid about sixteen is looking down as he walks, his face hidden by puffy brown hair. I step in front of him and he looks up, surprised.
“Hey, uh,” I say. “I’m trying to unload some shit. Are you looking?”
“What?” His voice is deeper than I expected..
“Drugs. I want to sell 'em.”
His face twists in confusion then melts away into mocking laughter. “Fuck off.” He marches off.
“Okayyyyy,” Care says, running into me from behind and guiding us away. “Let’s just... cancel that plan before you get us beat up or arrested.”
“I guess I was a little obvious...”
“Yeah... I mean, don’t worry about it. You tried. Gotta leave things to the pros if you want it done right.”
“But it was your idea...”
She drags me to a crowd of highschoolers standing around a rotten wood bench near a dirty, empty playground. It’s coated in vulgar graffiti and stinks of sex just by looking at it.
Eight teens. Five guys, three girls, all in nice clothes. Care pulls out a couple joints in one hand and a lighter in the other and starts placing them in their mouths one by one, lights them all. They pass them around, joking and chuckling and giggling, and Care lights her own. “Good stuff, right?”
“Yeah,” a girl goes.
“I think my guy had the same stuff a couple weeks ago,” another says. I hope not.
“Yeah, it’s called Care Kush,” Care lies with a mischievous grin.
The girl just says, “Ohhh...” and puffs on her joint.
“Yeah.” Care takes a hit, talking in a deep, strained voice as smoke billows from her mouth. “I mean, it’s not the best, but it’s alright.” She passes the joint to me and I snatch it, taking meek little drags.
She takes a few minutes chitchatting with them, letting the weed kick in and gaining some of their trust before she gets to the point, when one of the boys asks her if she’s from here.
“Yeah, I just moved back into town after staying at my mom’s a while,” she lies.
“Cool. You party?” another boy asks.
“Do I party? Man, I’ve been talking to my old friends out here- the kind that make parties good but not the types that go to 'em- so I’m all hooked up and ready to go. But no one’s invited me to anything special. Fuck me, right?”
A girl speaks up. “Everyone who’s supposed to know already knows what’s going on.” The group laughs. Care laughs along, a vein in her head twitching. Suddenly her eyes thin.
“Mm, I doubt that.” She steps over to the biggest senior and wraps her arm around his waist, circling him like a cat rubbing its tail off a leg. She pulls the joint from his mouth, her cigarette between her pinky and ring finger, slowly sucks on it, then gently places it back between his lips, her fingers touching them. She peers into his eyes, says lightly behind the smoke, “I think yinz just don’t know me well enough yet.” And she hops away from him, finished being admired.
The guy is dumbfounded. His friends look at him. He puts on a sly face that barely covers his horniness. “There’s a party tonight.”
Care instantly gleams and the other girl scoffs and mutters to her friends, grabbing a joint from one of them and smoking her defeat.
“You know the Oak Village? Toward the elementary?” he asks.
Care nods.
“Number eighty-four, tonight. Big place. It’s all night, but come early. I wanna see you there.”
He smiles crookedly and awkwardly winks.
“Sure thing.” Care smiles prettily, flashing a predator’s glance at the others. She turns away, waving back nonchalantly. “Later, then.” We walk off, their eyes still burning in our backs.
We make it away down the street and she grabs the half-smoked joint from my mouth, sucks it dead in one giant pull, till a fleck of ashy paper falls from her lips.
“That was amazing,” I say.
“What? You gotta learn to smoke right.”
“No, playing them like that.” Suddenly I’m embarrassed at trying to sell drugs earlier.
“Ah, yeah, easy-street. Kids try to act all tough like real crooks, but they’re just kids. Easy pickins’. When the bitches don’t like you, you know the guys do. Divide and conquer, baby. Then go for the big man. They’re usually the dumbest. You gotta realize, they probably all have sticks up their asses because there’s loads of narcs around here.”
“Narcs?”
“Kids paid by the cops to get other kids busted, tell on who’s dealing, where there’s gonna be a party they can swoop in and bust. But you saw. Good shit and the right moves speak loud.”
“So what do we do now?” I ask.
“Put on some cool-kid clothes and wait till night when the party starts. When the wo-olves come out! Oahooooo!” she howls.
I sigh in relief. “Can we get some food first? I’m so...”
“Stoned. Sure thing, dopey. I’ve got the munchies too.” She slaps my back and hands me another joint she lit out of nowhere, a menthol hanging out of her mouth.
She high-fives me. “Here’s to getting shit done!”