Life of the Party (58 page)

“Oh, yeah, I’m
fine.” I sat up, shakily. “I think I just ate too much.”

“Do you need
anything, honey?” Mom wondered.

“No, I’m okay.
I’ll … I’ll be right back.” I hurried from the living room and up
the stairs to my old bedroom, where all the supplies were stashed
in my overnight bag. I took them all into the nearest bathroom and
shut the door. Quickly, my blood pounding in my ears, I fought
back the nausea and started a batch. The sickness made my hands
shake and it took me way longer than normal to get the heroin into
the syringe.

I squeezed my
hand shut. I felt better knowing that relief was near, that soon
the bliss would find me and have its way. My veins were slow to
pop. I clenched and re-clenched my fist until one was near enough
to the surface. Then, slowly, compensating for the shakiness of my
hands, I plunged the needle into my skin.

“You okay
honey? I’ve got some Gravol here if you ….” The door began to open.
I realized with horror that in my haste, I had forgotten to lock
the door.

“No, Mom! No,
get out!” I screamed. But it was too late. The door was open. Mom
looked confused at first when she found me leaning over the sink,
my supplies scattered around me. And then comprehension hit when
she saw the needle sticking out of my arm. Her blue eyes opened in
fright, her mouth dropped but no words came. She pointed at me in
terror.

“What are you
doing?” Her voice, whisper thin at first, gradually gained back its
strength. “Mackenzie, what are you doing to yourself?”

I didn’t know
what to say. I had no excuse, no lie to tell. I stared at her, my
dark eyes wide, like a deer caught in the headlights. I must have
looked just as afraid as she did.

“Answer me,
young lady!
What are you doing to yourself
?”

“Everything
okay, Deb?” Dad’s voice floated up the hall, tight with
concern.

“No, no,
everything is not okay.” Mom’s voice started to shake; I recognized
the noise. She was on the verge of tears.

“Mom, mom, its
okay.” I don’t know why I was saying that. I knew it wasn’t okay; I
just wanted her to calm down.

“Get that thing
out of your arm!” She demanded, grasping the needle from my numb
fingertips and chucking it at the garbage. Her eyes were wild with
despair as she looked at me, like she had never really seen me
before. “Let me see you. Let me look at you.”

“Mom, don’t!” I
tried to pry my arm from her grasp but her grip was surprisingly
strong. She pushed the sleeve of my sweater up until all the skin
was exposed. Her face went bone-white at the sight, at the clusters
of tiny red dots that covered my skin. I felt the heat in my
cheeks, the warm blush of shame that spread across my face. I
looked down at the floor.

“Mitch. Mitch,
look. Just look at what she’s doing to herself.” Mom’s voice held
horror now, and I understood that my dad was there as well, taking
in the awful sight. I dared to look up at his face.

It was hard.
Rigid, even. Colorless. He looked at me just as my mom had, like
he’d never seen me before. Not before now. Now that they knew my
terrible secret. I was addicted to heroin. Yes, I knew it then.
There was no more denying it, no justifying it, no excusing it. I
was a heroin addict. And I couldn’t hide it anymore.

All the
happiness from earlier slunk slowly from my being. Because all of
it had been a lie. All of it. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me feeling
happiness, acceptance. I couldn’t feel happiness, not real
happiness.

I couldn’t feel
anything. Not anymore.

“This is what
you’ve been doing with yourself?” Dad’s voice was weak; there was
no strength within it, none of its usual gusto. I nodded. His
features hardened even further, as if he was steeling himself for
what he had to do next. He shut his eyes.

“Get out of my
house.”

It took me a
second. “… What?”

“Get out of my
house. Do you hear me? I won’t have this …,” he didn’t even know
what to call it, “I won’t have it in my house, Mackenzie.”

“Dad, I’m
sorry, I have to … I get sick if I don’t.”

“I had no
idea.” Mom gasped at my admission. “Oh, my baby … my baby ….” She
stood nearby, wringing her hands, tears in her eyes.

Dad’s jaw
clenched. “
Get out of my house!
” He boomed suddenly. The
harshness of his voice surprised me out of my stupor of shame,
jolted me into action.

“I’m going!” I
shouted back. Tears filled my eyes, blinding me, but somehow I
managed to collect my stuff, throwing my supplies into my bag and
hastily zipping it up. I brushed past him and down the stairs, my
arms around my stomach as it churned violently within me.

Grey was as
pale as a ghost as I came back into the living room. I was out and
out sobbing by then, tears streaming down my face. Nausea clutched
at my stomach.

“Holy shit,
Mackenzie, are you okay?” He stood and came before me, looking into
my face. “Are you all right?”

I wondered what
I must look like. Grey seemed really alarmed. “We’ve gotta go.” I
answered through my tears. Marcy and Greg just stared, frozen in
place, their eyes wide with confusion as they watched us. I wasn’t
going to explain anything to them. They’d know soon enough. I
grabbed the key to my car and the journal Marcy had given me. Grey
found his coat in the hall closet and was back to me in an instant.
He put an arm around my shoulders and helped me walk to the garage
through the crippling pain.

“It’s okay,
sugar. We’ll be home in no time.” His voice was oddly panicked as
he hit the garage door opener and helped me into the passenger seat
of my car, then ran swiftly to the driver’s side and starting the
engine. I curled up into a ball in my seat, tighter than the fetal
position, wrapping my arms around my knees and sobbing as if my
very heart were broken.

Because it had
been, in a way. I didn’t know how to describe it, I still don’t
know how exactly, but it was just like … complete betrayal. I’d
been lying to myself the entire time. It was the closest I’d ever
come to actually experiencing the whole big-happy-family scenario.
But all of it had been a lie. All the love, all the acceptance, all
of it had been broken by my secret. I hadn’t really been happy. I
couldn’t be happy. I wasn’t capable of being happy. Not without the
drugs.

Through it all,
my craving growled in protest, famished, flaring with need.
Screaming in my ear. More important than the rest. More important
than anything.

“Its okay,
Mackenzie.” Grey was nearly desperate, listening to me sob. “We’re
almost home. They’ll forgive you, they will.”

“They won’t,” I
cried. “They won’t. And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault ….”

By the time we
made it back to our room, I was calmer. My breath still hitched in
my throat, but it was nothing like the racking, heart wrenching
sobs that had broken from my body. I watched Grey, sniffling and
trying to catch my breath as he hurriedly broke open a red rubber
balloon and took a large chunk from the tarry substance inside. I
was desperate for the heroin. Sick and getting sicker by the
minute. Grey’s features were tense as he worked, determined. I
noticed he took enough for both of us.

“Are you okay,
Mackenzie?” He asked worriedly, looking up from his actions just
long enough to assess my expression. I knew I must’ve looked
terrible, I probably had mascara running all the way to my chin,
but he seemed relieved by whatever he saw there.

“Yeah,” my
voice was still hoarse from crying. I held my arms around myself to
try and keep the nausea at bay. “I’m okay.”

“That was
pretty intense.” He let out a breath, as if he’d been holding it
this whole time. “What do you think your parents will do now?”

Inwardly, I
cringed. I didn’t want to think about them. Every time I shut my
eyes, I saw again the look of utter revulsion on my dad’s face …
the deep, aching disappointment in my mom’s gaze. I shook my head
free from the vision.

“I don’t know.”
I shrugged. “They’ll probably do what they always do. Nothing.”

“They wouldn’t
like, call the cops on you, would they?”

“No.” I
adamantly refused the idea. “No. Are you kidding? Think of what
their friends would say. No, with my parents, its more … lets just
pretend this didn’t happen. Let’s just sweep this under the
rug.”

Grey nodded. “I
thought it might be something like that.”

“Yeah.” I
didn’t want to think about them anymore. I tried not to remember
how good our day together had been, how loved and accepted I’d
felt, before …. We sat in silence a moment as Grey struck the
lighter beneath the spoon. I watched him eagerly. I knew that none
of this would matter in a few seconds, that the whole scene would
seem like a far off, distant nightmare. One that held no threat,
one I could think about again without it scaring me anymore.

“I’m sorry I
lost it.” I apologized, biting my lip. Sweat was beading on my
brow. “I don’t know what came over me. Talk about dramatic.” I
tried to smile at my ridiculousness, tried to seem light-hearted
for him. It came out as a grimace.

“It’s okay. I
mean, you freaked me out a little … but I understand.” Grey looked
up at me with avid concern, his blue eyes penetrating my gaze. “Are
you sure you’re okay?”

“I am. I am
okay.” I assured him. “Seriously. I just need to get high.”

“Yeah, I know,
but ….” He sighed again “… maybe we should think about getting off
the drugs. For real this time.”

“Yeah.” I
agreed easily. “Sure.” But the words held no threat to me. That’s
all they were, just words, and we both knew it. Just more empty
promises. We couldn’t have quit the heroin then, even if we wanted
to. I couldn’t anyway. I needed it. I needed it because I was
afraid to be sober, afraid to face everything that had happened and
what I had become.

I needed it to
cover up the little piece of me that died the moment my mother
opened up the bathroom door. It was my problem. It was my
solution.

Wordlessly,
Grey seemed to understand.

Once the needle
plunged into my vein everything was good again, just like I knew it
would be. Then I was on my back, floating on a sea of sweetness,
where nothing could touch me but the strong, warm sun on my face. I
knew I should be upset; I knew I should feel sad, but with the
heroin fresh in my veins, racing through them, erasing all the
negativity, it was all too easy to forget.

Maybe Grey
needed it too. He never left me once to shoot up alone, and
whenever I’d sober up enough to hold my arm out for more, it wasn’t
long before he joined me again. We lived in a slackened state of
total peace upon his bed.

We stayed that
way for a long, long time.

“Mackenzie?”
There was a soft rap on the door. “Hey, Mac, are you up?”

“Hmmm ….” I
moaned into the mattress. “What?” I croaked, opening my bleary eyes
and squinting at the door. It was Alex, looking apologetic. His
voice dropped to a whisper.

“There’s
someone here to see you. Some Riley guy?”

Riley?
Riley?
Riley was here …? Oh, right. It was the holidays.
Riley would be on his vacation right now, he would have come home
to see his mom, just like the good son that he was. Vaguely I
remembered our graduation—it seemed like ages ago when Riley
promised to come and visit me whenever he was back in town. And if
I was still alive, he had joked. Was I still alive? I wondered, a
wry smile on my lips. Not really. I was too deadened to even
register surprise that he had come to see me, and my answer didn’t
require any thought. There was no way I could see Riley, not now. I
sunk my face back into the mattress, relieved when all I felt was …
nothing. I felt nothing—no sadness, no loneliness, no regret. I
hadn’t even thought of Riley in months. I shut my eyes again, at
peace with my decision.

“I don’t want
to see him, Alex. Tell him to go away.”

“You’re the
boss.” He saluted me, and that was that.

But Riley
didn’t go quietly. He came to see me the next day as well. Grey was
just about to ease the needle into my arm when Zack knocked on our
door this time, interrupting us.

“There’s a
Riley at the door.” He motioned with his thumb.

I shook my head
adamantly, refusing to even entertain the idea. “No. I don’t want
to see him, Zack. Tell him I’m sleeping or something.”

Grey eyed me
quizzically, but I think my response secretly pleased him. He
raised an eyebrow at me.

“We can wait,
Mackenzie, if you want to go see him.”

“No, we can’t
wait. And I don’t want to see him.”

“Okay. I’ll get
rid of the guy.” Zack promised. Grey frowned at me as soon as the
door had shut behind him.

“Not that I
mind … but what was that about?”

“What?” I asked
impatiently. I was antsy—eyeing the needle in Grey’s hand, wishing
it was in my arm.

“You haven’t
seen Riley in months. Why don’t you want to now?”

“I don’t know.
I’ve got nothing to say to him.” I lied. I couldn’t tell Grey the
truth. I couldn’t tell him how hard it would be, to see Riley, to
have him laugh and smile and talk to me before he ultimately left
me and then went back to his real life. I had no coping skills for
that. I had no coping skills at all.

Nothing but the
needle.

But the next
day when Riley came, I was all alone. Zack and Alex and Grey had
gone into the city to get some more dope. I was actually up and out
of bed, shakily standing in the kitchen in plaid pyjama pants and
my Blondie t-shirt, forcing down some Honeycombs. The cereal made
me nauseous, but I knew I had to eat something. I couldn’t remember
the last time anything had been chewed by my teeth and swallowed by
my throat. Lately they’d only been used for vomiting.