CHAPTER 47
Courtney was really pretty. Not Charlie pretty, but pretty in her own punky, perky way. She had dark short hair, straightened, with bold chunks of blonde and red throughout. Her wide almond eyes were lined heavily with black liner, her lips smiled with blood-red lipstick.
She was a waitress at the Aurora. She had this experienced, bored aura about her, like she’d seen everything and been everywhere and tried everything at least once.
Courtney barely batted an eye when we asked for heroin, just threw her car into gear and started driving, tearing through the streets, chain-smoking and swearing a lot. She knew someone in town that could hook us up and was taking us straight there.
I was amazed. I figured our little town was too small, too innocent for heroin.
We stopped in front of a small, decrepit old house, the saggy entryway lit by a dim, failing bulb. Charlie and I eyed the exterior, nervous as Courtney got out of the car.
“I’ll go talk to him, and if he’s cool with it, you can come inside.” She explained.
I nodded silently, my eyes wide. I wasn’t usually involved with dealers and I didn’t really want to be…but I didn’t want to argue with her, either.
Charlie and I watched as Courtney ambled up the crumbling sidewalk and paused at the entry, the dim light casting over her little figure. It took a few seconds before she was let in—a single hand pushed the door open, and she was swallowed up inside.
We glanced at each other silently. I bit my lip. I didn’t know what it was about the situation that made me feel so sketchy, but it seemed to have danger written all over it.
Courtney reappeared in the doorway and waved us in. I really didn’t want to go, but as Charlie clicked her seatbelt off and opened the car door, I found myself following her. We were ushered silently into the little house, hit by a wave of heat and stranger-smell as we trailed behind Courtney into a tiny living room off the main entrance.
I was anxious. Part of me wanted to get away, to run right out the door and keep on running until I felt safe again. My heart was beating loudly in my chest. The other part of me—the part that wanted the heroin—was more than willing to stay, to sit with the sweaty, shifty-eyed men that occupied the dim, hot little room as we waited for one of them to get us our stuff. I didn’t look at them, I didn’t look at anything but my sweaty hands in my lap. I didn’t want any recollection of that place and how…dirty it made me feel.
Thankfully, Charlie was beside me. She seemed calm, anyway, which was comforting. Neither of us were brave enough to speak to the other. I could feel sweat trickling down my back, pooling in my palms, but I was too afraid to move, too scared to even wipe my hands down my jeans, too frightened to bring any kind of attention to myself. I wished fervently for Grey.
I just wanted to get the dope and get out of there.
“Here you go, ladies.” The man who introduced himself as Jack strode back into the room. He was good-looking, with longer blonde hair and a huge, built body.
He handed Courtney a little black balloon full of something.
“Uh…” My craving overcame my terror and stupidly, I spoke. “The kind I had was like, powder. Do you have any of that? China White, I think? You can sniff it.”
“No.” Jack looked at me from the side of his eye, like it angered him I’d opened my mouth. I clamped it shut. “Black tar is all we serve here. Like it or leave it.”
The way he said it sounded like a threat.
“No, no, this is good.” Courtney shot me a glare. “I just don’t think she knows how to do it this way. Can you show her?”
I wanted to intercede, to tell them I had no interest doing it any other way, but at the moment I was too petrified to argue, terrified of angering this lumbering hulk of a drug dealer any further. My tongue seemed swollen, dry, stuck to the roof of my mouth. I didn’t know what to do. And I wanted the heroin.
“Why didn’t you say so?” Jack smiled at me, creepily, like he enjoyed teaching new users how to inject. “Let old Jacky here show you how it goes.”
He sat down on the beat-up recliner beside us, pulling out a kit from beside his chair. He took out a spoon, a lighter, a cotton ball, some water, and two clean syringes, setting everything down on the coffee table in front of us.
At the sight of the needles, my heart began to hammer furiously in my chest .
I hated needles with such a passion. In school they had to wrap me up in a sheet for immunizations, and the only way I could get my bellybutton ring was with Riley shielding me from the sight, holding my hand.
My mouth went horribly dry, like the cotton ball on the coffee table. The part of me that was already scared nearly got up off the chair and bolted, but I knew I couldn’t go now; I was trapped there, feeble, helpless. I tried to calm myself down, to focus on the heroin and how good it felt, how good it was going to feel. How all of this would be worth it, in the end. It didn’t work. The same panicky sentence repeated itself over and over in my mind, “Not safe, not safe, not safe, not safe…” I wanted to cry.
I wished for Grey, prayed for Riley. For anyone to come and get me out of there.
Jack took a chunk of dark, sticky heroin from our balloon and put it on the spoon. He added a splash of water and then expertly flicked the lighter below to heat up the concoction. I watched the heroin dissolve, turning the liquid an oily, browny-black.
Using a little piece of cotton as a filter, he sucked some up into a syringe. “Ready?”
I shook my head as he held the needle menacingly towards me.
“N-No, I think I’m good.” I stammered thickly.
“You aren’t yet.” Jack chuckled, wickedly. “But you will be. You will be.”
He clamped the syringe between his teeth, grasping my arm and wrapping one of those rubber band things around it, the kind they use at the hospital, the kind that pinch the skin with their tightness. I tried to pull away, my heart hammering wildly as I watched the veins sticking up.
I couldn’t get my arm free. What had I done? What had I gotten myself into? Jack grasped the syringe, holding it just above my elbow, his other hand clenched around me like a vice. Holding me. Still. Trapped. Helpless. Tears of terror stinging my eyes.
“No-no! Please. Don’t!” I pleaded.
Then he plunged the needle into my arm.
It was instant. It was intense. It was wonderful, beautiful, magical. All the fear was gone, all the tension, all the anxiety. I’ve never felt so good in my entire life, I’ve never known that kind of euphoria—not in all my drug use had I even been so overcome with such overwhelming bliss. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t do anything but relax against the couch cushions, my mouth open in awe, a tear slipping down my cheek. I was awash in utter joy, I could feel the heroin dancing in my veins, spreading and peaking and making me tremble with uncontrollable pleasure.
Charlie went next. Suddenly she was beside me on the couch, slack and motionless, her eyes shut and a peaceful, ecstatic smile on her face .
I don’t know how long we lay there for. I forgot everything, my fear of the sweaty men, the dirty junky-ness of the house, the unbearable heat.
I couldn’t even feel the heat. It couldn’t even touch me.
When I came to, we were back in Courtney’s car. Charlie was slumped over in the front seat, Courtney driving us around our darkened town, smoking, humming quietly along with the intro to the Rolling Stones song, “Gimme Shelter”.
“How you feeling?” She chuckled, eyeing me in the rearview.
I didn’t know how to put it into words, the warm nothingness that consumed me, the peaceful lethargy I felt, the emanating bliss that wound its way through my entire being. “…Good…” I answered simply, my head nodding with pleasure.
Her blood-red lips smiled at me in the mirror.
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know.” Charlie groaned. Her beautiful blonde curls were a tangled mess around her face, her makeup smudged beneath her eyes. She peeled her cheek from the carpeted floor. “Morning?”
“It’s too bright to be morning,” I argued, laying my arm over my eyes to keep out the blinding rays from the window. My throat was parched, it hurt to swallow. I tried to sit up, but my stomach muscles still ached from all the heaving and vomiting I’d done, a blur in my distant memory. “Can’t you see the clock?”
“No.”
“What time did we get to bed last night?” I wondered.
“I don’t know.”
I couldn’t really remember either. I knew it had been very, very late when Courtney dropped us off at home; when Charlie insisted we shoot up again. I’d been just high enough from the last batch that I hadn’t minded the needle so much that time, but I made Charlie do it for me—I couldn’t even look as the cold steel penetrated my skin. She was sloppier than Jack had been, but the results were the same, and we’d spent the rest of the night nodding off in the living room, apathetic and perfectly, wonderfully happy. Aside from the odd bout of crippling nausea, of course.
“Was I right, or what?” I wondered, risking the light to look over at my friend. “Did you like it? Wasn’t it great?”
“Better than great,” Charlie admitted. “So good. Do we have any left?”
“I don’t know. You cooked up our last one. Did you use it all? ”
“I don’t think so.”
I rubbed my face with my hand, already craving more. “What time is it?”
Charlie laughed at me. “I still don’t know.”
“I’ve got to work tonight, and Grey’s getting in…” I started, stopping myself as Charlie’s face fell. I realized my mistake too late. If Grey was getting in, that meant Zack was getting in as well. She closed her eyes and frowned at my reminder.
“Sorry, Charlie.” I grimaced.
“It’s okay.” She shrugged. “Let’s do some more.” Her blue eyes lit up at the prospect. “Jack gave me more needles, they’re clean.”
“He did?” I couldn’t keep the eagerness out of my voice. With much effort, I sat up and peered at the clock. If I had even an hour to spare before work, I was going to do more heroin with her.
“It says it’s five-seventeen.” I frowned. “It can’t be five in the morning, can it? I feel like I’ve slept all day.”
Charlie just shrugged. Confused, I flipped on the TV to the cable guide. Then I realized why it felt like I’d slept all day. I had.
It was five-seventeen. PM .
“Oh, shit.” I looked at Charlie, aghast. “I’m like, over an hour late for work.”
Charlie grinned up at me wickedly. “I guess that means you’re not going.”
I bit my lip, lit a smoke and debated for a moment. I needed my job. I needed the money I made to support all of my habits, to keep living on my own. Surely, going in an hour late was better than not showing up at all. They’d probably forgive me.
But Charlie was already getting out the supplies to whip us up another batch. At the very prospect of more heroin, all my responsible deliberating went right out the window. All I could think about was how good it felt, how in mere moments, I wouldn’t even care about missing work.
And then my decision was made.