Toxic (Better Than You) (21 page)

             
The red dress Sam picked out for me slips over my head, falls into place too easily. It’s supposed to be tight, form fitting,
flattering.
It’s not. It just looks too big and too bright and too wrong. Like everything. I leave the bathroom because there’s nothing more I can do. Sam and Brody are standing by the door, waiting for me. Always waiting for me.

             
“What the hell, Lo? Didn’t we just buy that last week?” Sam asks, her hands moving over me, pinching and pulling the loose fabric. “I mean, it doesn’t look bad. It just looks a little big. But now that I’m thinking about it, it kinda looks like it’s supposed to be like that. I’m sure it’s fine.”

             
She’s backtracking, trying to make it sound like she isn’t disgusted by how much weight I’ve lost. The smile I practiced slips onto my face and I say, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now. Are we ready?”

             
Sam steps back to Brody’s side and readjusts her own midnight blue mini-dress. “How do I look?” She spins in a slow circle. “Not too flashy, right? This night is about you.”

             
“It looks perfect, Sam.”
Like always
. I don’t know if Sam is as miserable as I am. The show she puts on is so good that even I can’t see past it. We were cut from the same cloth, though, and she’s trying to hide from her past as much as I am embracing mine.

             
“Well, now that we’re done boosting each other’s egos, can we go, please? Jenson hates when we’re late.” Brody opens the door and gestures us through. Always the gentleman.

             
“Jenson can kiss my ass. This is Lo’s night and she can be late if she wants to be.”

             
I don’t want it to be my night. I don’t want their eyes on me, but as soon as we walk into Jenson’s house, the crowd yells “Happy birthday!” and then they’re all hugging me and spinning me and acting like we’re the best of friends. I can barely remember any of their names.

             
Jenson’s the last one to walk up to me, having watched all the commotion from a safe distance, as usual. He’s graceful and cool, always smiling but never letting himself be too engaged. I wonder if anyone else sees it, the way he carries himself like he’s better than everyone. The way the smile never reaches his eyes, the way he has sadness inside of him just like I do. Maybe that’s why he was drawn to me that first night. Maybe that’s why he keeps me around. Or maybe it’s because, with the new girl by his side, no one’s paying too much attention to him.

             
He dips his head and places a lingering kiss on my cheek. “Happy birthday, beautiful.”

             
I’m not beautiful. I’m not beautiful. I’m toxic.

             
I look into his eyes as he pulls back. They’re blue, but not as blue as Nathan’s. They’re soft, though; kind, so I keep looking into them and smile. “Thank you.”

             
Jenson lifts his head and looks at the crowd surrounding us “A toast,” he exclaims, raising his glass in the air, “to Logan. May this coming year be filled with happiness and good things.”

             
“To Logan!” the crowd yells back. Someone else whoops and then the music is playing and the crowd is dispersing and I can finally breathe without the weight of their eyes on me.

             
Jenson grabs my hand and pulls me up the stairs, into his bedroom. Closes the door softly behind him. “Are you alright?” he asks once he’s facing me again.

             
I nod quickly. “I’m fine. Just a little overwhelmed.”

             
“We can hide out here for a while, if you’d like.” He runs a finger down my neck, plays with the thin strap on my shoulder. “I have something for you.”

             
I know exactly what he has, and I want it. So badly. He walks over to the desk in the corner, his back to me as he works the powder into four thin lines. Two for me, two for him. “You first,” he says, holding out the shortened straw to me. I always go first.

             
It used to burn, but now it doesn’t. I barely feel anything as I inhale the first line, then the second. Take a deep breath through my nose and imagine the powder working its way into my system. Jenson stands in front of me when he’s done his lines and I lean my forehead into his chest, waiting for the high to take over. It won’t be long; it never is. First it’s a tingle, and then it’s a spark, and then my whole body is thrumming. Feeling. Which makes me laugh, because all I’ve ever wanted is to be numb.

             
“What’s so funny?” Jenson’s smooth voice rumbles against my forehead.

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

And that’s that. Jenson doesn’t push, just like everyone else. He asks a question once and doesn’t care if it’s answered or not. I think he likes that I keep things to myself. There’s no emotional baggage with us, nothing to tie us down or make us care. It’s shallow, easy, momentarily satisfying. I get what I want, he gets what he wants.

“We don’t have to do this, you know,” Jenson whispers into my neck as he pushes me towards the bed.

But we do, because I owe him. I owe a lot of people and I’m never going to be able to pay up. It’s a heavy thing, the burden of owing people your life. It makes me think of Mom. It makes me wonder if she’s alright, what happened when she found Dave, if she immediately blamed me, if she even noticed that I was there in the first place. The thoughts only linger for a moment, though, and I let myself get lost in the feel of Jenson. In the weight of his body on mine and the way my skin tingles when he moves over me.

By the time we leave the room, I’m a different person. The coke does that to me. It makes me happy, it makes me want to talk and laugh and dance. Jenson doesn’t stay near me or suffocate me. Anyone who comes to these parties knows better than to mess with me. I feel safe
, protected. Standing in the middle of the room, the music and laughter ringing all around, I close my eyes and make a wish. I wish for this year to be easy, to be good, but most of all, I wish to forget.

October 8, 2009

             
In my mind, I’m a the bottom of a mountain, making my way up but the floor is constantly moving against me, so as I climb, it pushes me back down. It takes twice the effort to make it just one step. Twice the time. But as hard as I try, I never reach the highest high. No matter how many steps I take or how many different paths I walk.

             
I can feel my body deteriorating, can feel the hunger gnawing inside and the thirst grating against my cheeks, but nothing is as important as reaching the high I first felt. The one that made me happy, made it feel like flying was possible. Now all I feel is trapped in my own head, lost in thoughts, a prisoner to all of the
what if’s
and possibilities and impossibilities. Images run through my head like a slideshow moving too fast. It’s all a blur, this life I’ve lived, the life I’m living. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it’s all fake, made up, pretend. Just a story real moms tell their sons and daughters to scare them away from booze, drugs and sex. Maybe I don’t know better. Maybe this is all a bad dream and I’ll wake up with a family who loves me and friends who care.
Yeah right.

             
Jenson’s bed is comfortable. The fan above me spins in lazy circles and I watch it for a while, but soon it’s too much work. Just like most things. I’m forever chasing a high I can never reach, thinking about a life I can never have, wondering about the one person who I’ll never see again. I close my tired eyes and imagine his shaggy blonde hair falling into his endless blue eyes. The way his smile creased his face, how the lines told a story of a life well lived. His warm hands, soft touches, gentle whispers. And the lies. The hurt. The betrayal.

             
I roll onto my side and curl into a ball. It helps to make me feel small, invisible. Jenson’s king sized bed swallows me whole and I lay there for God knows how long. I don’t sleep, I don’t think. I’m stuck in a state of
zoning-out
. No one specific thing in focus. Just an unseeing gaze from an unfeeling person. The bed dips behind me and cold arms slide around me. A kiss is nuzzled into me neck, his hot breath rolling over my cheeks as he whispers into my ear. “I have something for you.”

             
He always has something for me. And I always take it; greedily, desperately, hoping that the next high will be
the
high. I turn to face him, let him pull my body in close. We fit together, not as well as puzzle pieces are made to fit, but well enough. It’s more than I can expect, more than I deserve. He’s good to me and so I stay, try to act like a normal human being, like I give a shit about breathing and living.

             
But I don’t. I don’t want to live this life anymore. I don’t want to be a slave to addiction. I don’t want to exchange sex for drugs. I don’t want to feel like everything inside of me is just
begging
to be let go of, talked about, heard.

             
It should be enough to walk away. It should be enough to ask for help. But it’s not. As I bend down to snort the third line, I wonder if anything will ever be enough.

November 3, 2009

             
I’m drowning in a sea of pain, suffocating as it grips every part of my body. Another tremor rolls through me and I’m forced to acknowledge the fact that I’ve lost control. My body is no longer my own. It belongs to the coke and right now it’s threatening to give out on me. But Jenson’s not here, hasn’t been all morning and I haven’t the slightest clue where he is. Sam and Brody are in class and aren’t answering their phones. I’ve given up calling because the effort it takes to dial their numbers is too much. The effort it’s taking to breathe just may be too much.

             
I have to do something.

             
The bathroom seems so much farther away when stabbing pains are shooting down my legs. I do some sort of crawl-walk thing and make it there in what feels like an hour. Even through the pain and the shaking, I think about how glad I am that no one is here to witness this. The weakness, how pathetic and far gone I am. I always thought the drugs were the one thing I had control over, the one part of my life that I could take or leave. How insanely wrong I was.

             
My fingers fumble with the door on the medicine cabinet and it opens with a bang, spilling the contents out onto the granite countertop. There are medicine bottles for days, and I sift through them, squinting my eyes at the small lettering that’s blurring in and out of focus. The Roxies I find first and I nearly rip a finger nail off in the process of getting the bottle open. I swallow two dry and keep searching the bottles, finding the Xanax next. Swallow two of those also. Then I let my body collapse to the floor and curl into a ball, waiting for the unbearable pain to disappear.

             
The pills don’t work as quickly as the coke. It’s more of a slow release thing, but twenty minutes later and I’m feeling better. The shaking has disappeared. I can finally see straight. I’m nauseous, but it’s better than feeling like I’m being stabbed. With my back against the bathtub, I take slow, deep breaths. Focus on the movement of my chest, in and out, in and out. Hold my hands out in front of me and watch as they settle.

             
Now that I’m back in my head, I start to think about the things I need to do, have been wanting to do. Getting a job is at the top of that list. Visiting Mom is at the very, very bottom. It needs to be done, though, and I’d rather do it now while I feel somewhat normal than later when I’m liable to kill her. Or anyone else in the house. At least Dave won’t be there.

             
Dave.

             
Out of all of the things I’ve done and seen, his face has yet to leave my dreams. It’s always the same; he’s laughing, trailing a finger down my neck, across my collarbone, over the top of my breast. It’s as far as het gets because in the next second, my hand is flush against his temple, holding the hilt of a knife in a death grip. His finger falls away. The evilness is gone, replaced instead by complete shock, hurt, betrayal, as if I was his lover and the knife was in his back. I watch, completely helpless and guilty, as the life dims from his eyes. Scream as his body slumps to the floor, his arm pinned underneath him at an unnatural angle. The blood pools around us, soaks into every fiber of my skin and clothes, floods the house and drowns me in a sea of red. I breathe him in, feel his pain, and know that it’ll only be a few seconds until I join him wherever the dead go. But then I wake up and the only thing I’m aware of is the need to inhale a line or three of white powder.

             
Just thinking about the dream now threatens to send me into a state of hysterics. Before I decide that staying here, in bed, is better than going anywhere at all, I grab my purse and keys and head out of the door. My piece of shit car is sitting in the driveway next to Jenson’s sporty Audi. It’s embarrassing, a stark reminder of how much I don’t belong in Jenson’s world.