Fiend (25 page)

Frank’s little bit of jaw tendon flaps like slurped spaghetti.

I know, I know, I say.
What was my part?
Fuck, man, you always cut straight to the core of it, huh?

I sigh, leaning back in the chair. I put my feet on the edge of the table. I say, I was the one who was in your ear for the two weeks leading up to the relapse. The one saying sobriety
was gay and that I knew some sluts who wanted to party, and shit, think I even told you that you were getting fat. It was my money that bought your dope and my tweak. I was the one who told you to quit being a pussy.

Frank’s seizure shakes the table. I have to really press my feet against it so they don’t slip off.

As I’m watching this, something is happening to me, like the scante isn’t working, isn’t blocking out shit. I’m not trying to experience this moment of clarity. I’m working as fast as I can to boil more dope. I’m telling Frank that it’s really about me, every resentment, every perceived injustice is really me having fucked up and hurt people or at least put myself in a situation to be hurt. I’m thinking about calling my mom a cunt in the psych ward and how she stumbled at the door, her hand shaking on the metal handle, and then about my father and his
Jesus Christ, son
and then about Type and the fucking picture of his mother in the glove box and him just wanting companionship and about seeing KK share at meetings, how she’d started being able to look people in the eye, how around six months clean she quit talking about how bad it’d been using, and started talking about good things in sobriety—I got a raise at work, I took my GED, I enrolled in an intro comp course at Metro—and then I’m seeing her in the bathroom with her stomach burned to shit and I’m seeing scared Maddie look to me for guidance and I’m feeling his bony shoulders under my arm and telling him it’s all good, it’ll work out, and then I’m seeing him back away from Derrick with that tiny piece of crystal like a cross to a demon. All this shit is on me and I’m crying.
I’m crying because there’s no fucking cure—then or now or ever—and because the garage door isn’t going to hold and because Frank’s gone limp, his face pressed to the blue table, a halfhearted giggle bubbling from his lips.

I’m crying, on my knees, wishing I was with my sponsor, his stupid beard, his arm around me, him telling me we are not our actions, him saying repeat after me, and I’m doing it on the floor of the detention room, God, I am now willing that you should have all of me, both the good and the bad.

Frank’s giggles fade. He’s motionless. It’s déjà vu.

I push my own needle into my arm.

It takes a few seconds, but it comes—Fuck Frank, it was his own motherfucking fault, both then and now.

Typewriter seems to have disappeared. I need to find him because he’s the last loose end to all this shit. I’ll explain that I was really looking out for his best interest, just like always, trying to squirrel away an extra hit for him. I’ll remind him of all the times I fronted him tweak, ask him who introduced him to the Albino, who saved your life three or four times this past week, who helped you through the death of your mother?

I’ll tell him that me being alive is of paramount importance to his survival.

Motherfucker can’t argue with that.

I just can’t have him getting in the ear of anybody else, especially KK.

I finally see Type and Maddie in the kitchen and I’m like that cocksucker is stealing shit too, but then I see he’s scooping rice onto plastic trays. I stand there on the other side of the swinging doors. It’s just Typewriter and Maddie and they’re talking, whispering, and I know that shit’s conspiratory and Type sold me out. I can imagine him telling Maddie he saw the whole thing on the video feeds, me breaking in, scanning the kitchen like some two-bit thief, busting off a shard. I know Type’s probably telling him about the baby.
Chase just suffocated a baby. Not even sure it was a Chuck. You should have heard him, the way he was talking to it, like a fucking bedtime story, bro. Dude’s straight up lost his shit
.

Maybe Maddie’s telling him they should go to KK. Maybe he’s saying she’s the key to me, as soon as she sees who the fuck I am, it’ll be over. She’ll get everybody to turn.

And maybe Typewriter is agreeing. He’s saying, Should see how pathetic he is without her. For a year straight, all I heard was KK this, KK that. Such a fag.

I think I see them laughing.

My best friend’s plotting against me.

We’re eating rice, everybody but Maddie. He’s in his cell. We eat in silence and the weight is beyond heavy—the burden of utopia fallen. I catch Typewriter staring. He’s obvious in his backstabbing. Derrick shovels rice into his mouth. Randy’s
good cheer is gone. He eats with his hands. A piece of rice hangs from his bottom lip. I reach under the table and give KK’s leg a squeeze. She pulls away. It’s like family meals when things first started to go bad, me at fifteen, suspensions and found joints, my parents not sure how to circle around the subject of my fuckups. We eat and pretend things are okay, wishing for everybody else at the table to choke.

The hole’s huge now, Randy says.

Where? KK asks.

The garage. Gonna give, Type says.

The cure doesn’t work, I say.

No shit, Derrick says.

Fucking kill me, KK says.

Randy’s like, How about a little shot? He looks across the table at Derrick. Just something to take the edge off?

Derrick pulls a Ziploc out of his jumpsuit pocket. There’s got to be close to two ounces in it. He says, Have at it.

We stare and salivate and we know it’s his way of saying
see what the fuck happens
. Maybe it’s the fact that I shot up a few hours before instead of at seven in the morning like Randy, but I have a little sense, a little perspective. I tell Derrick to put it away. I say, We’ve got a routine right now, let’s not mess with that.

Easy for you to say, Typewriter says.

Derrick’s like, The fuck is that supposed to mean?

Type shrugs.

I want to kick him under the table and to pin him in his cell and tell him it was for his own fucking good, everything
I’ve ever done, motherfucker would be dead without me. Instead, I say, The door’s fine. Plus there’s other doors, man, not like it’s a free shot in.

Just because you pretend it isn’t a problem, doesn’t mean it’s not, KK says.

It will hold.

Not for long, Derrick says.

And when the garage door gives? KK asks.

Then we go out another way. There’s got to be some other exit.

Through general population, Derrick says. Big Chucks, hundreds, if not thousands.

I’m trying to figure out something that will appease their fears, some bit of excitement that will get Type the fuck off my jock, something that will give them a morsel of hope, because I know a junkie without hope is as good as dead. I picture the hole in the garage door. I’m remembering Maddie making us strip. I’m looking over his shoulder to the police cruiser. The fucking police car! It’s perfect. If it gets bad, like really bad, the Chucks about to break through, we pack up the lab and get in the car and gun it over any walking dead stupid enough to get in our way.

I spit my plan out as it comes to me.

Derrick nods his head.

I tell them that we’ll get out of the city, head north, way north, middle of Canada north, hitting every farm for ammonia and pharmacy for ephedrine along the way. I talk about reinventing ourselves in wooden huts and booby traps and
eating berries and we’ll reinvent the human species, some Garden of Eden shit.

Jesus, just shut the fuck up for once, Typewriter says.

I ignore him. He’s just one person. But the others, I see it over each of their faces—the formulation of a thought, a kernel of hope.

Typewriter stands. He says, Can’t listen to this bullshit. So fucking done with the Chase Daniels show.

And you’ve got a better idea? You want to step up for once in your fucking life and give a goddamn solution?

He says, So fucking done with you. He turns and heads toward Maddie’s cell.

I look at those of us still at the table. I say, Fuck him if he can’t get on board, because this shit here, this plan, it’s as foolproof as anal sex is to preventing babies.

Those of us left at the table smile, even Derrick. KK’s dimples are back, the good ones, her being happy.

I’m lying in bed. KK’s next door reading the fucking Big Book. Type’s still with Maddie. I’m a little freaked out because the giggles from down the hall seem to be even louder than usual. Plus, I’m picturing the garage door caving like chain-link fences around South American soccer fields. I have our real guns spread out, the ones that can actually kill. There’re two slugs in each shotgun. I have two shots left in the pistol.
Six deaths, if aim isn’t an issue. Six
get out of jail free
cards. That’s it. There’s got to be at least seven Chucks in block A alone. Who knows how many in the mess hall. Hundreds or thousands outside of the garage. Six shots. Six rounds. Randy, Maddie, Derrick, Typewriter, KK, myself.

The lights cut. There’s an instantaneous eruption of Chuck laughter.

My first thought is that Nazi Derrick is trying to conserve power.

I hold on to Buster and my pistol. Everything’s pitch black. I hear Typewriter from across the common room say, What the fuck? I place the pistol in the pocket of my orange jumpsuit, grip Buster’s stock.

Now I hear Derrick’s voice, a bark: Who hit the lights?

I know nobody touched the lights. We’re out of power. The grid has failed. We’re now in the dark ages. I wonder about candles and flames to cook meth and about toilets that don’t flush. I go out in the main room.

Six shots. Six deaths. It’d be that easy. Saving the last people alive from a death worse than death.

KK reaches out and takes my hand.

All I can hear is the echoes of laughter. Darkness and laughter. I know KK’s imagination is the same thing—Chucks bashing down unlocked doors—because when we see a flicker of light, she screams.

Maddie holds a lighter in front of his face. It’s the first time I’ve really taken a good look at him since the beating. His right eye is swollen shut, angry and blackening. He doesn’t say
anything, just stares at me. The flame dissects his face and he’s scarier than any Chuck I’ve seen.

The power grid, I say.

Fuck me, Derrick says.

Typewriter flicks his lighter. He stands a few inches away from Maddie.

Need to go, Randy says, Christ, mates, we need to leave now.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, KK chants.

All gonna die, Maddie says.

Stop, everybody, Derrick shouts. Shut the fuck up with that. We planned for this. Chase’s plan. It’s fine.

Fine? Fine? Fuck, bud, half these locks are electronic, Randy says.

Got the keys right here, Derrick says. He jiggles a chain and it sounds like a toy poodle. He says, Not electronic, that’s only in the pen.

We’re quiet.

Finally, Derrick says, We’re fine in juvie. Fine for the night.

Bullshit, Randy says.

Derrick’s right, I say. There’s nothing to do right now. We try to get out in this darkness, we’re …

Dead, KK says.

Dead, Maddie says.

Derrick tells us to shut the fuck up. He says, We get up at dawn, take the cruiser, and get ghost.

We listen to giggles and I think about the backup plan of a slug in each of our sleeping mouths.

Derrick says, Get your personal shit together. We leave at five.

He’s a shadow walking back to his cell. We stand there not knowing what to do. I feel a hand on the small of my back and it’s KK and her nose is giant even in the dim light and I take my left hand off Buster and put it over her shoulder and she leans into me, my armpit, my shoulder, my girl.

All gonna die, Maddie says. He lets his lighter go to darkness. He says it again, All gonna die.

We stand there. None of us want to move away from the table, away from each other. Finally, KK and I walk to our side. She walks into my cell. I tell her I’ll be back in a second. I go over to Typewriter’s and he’s sitting on his cot with his lighter casting shadows on the white walls. I know he hates the dark. Kid slept with a night-light his entire life, right up until the moment we burned his house down. I know he’s scared. I know he needs me.

Need to talk, I whisper.

Don’t.

I take a few steps into his cell and sit on the desk connected to the wall. I’m like, Dude, I’m not sure what you think I—

Just stop, he says. Just fucking stop, Chase, heard your shit for years.

Whatever you
think
you saw—

I don’t
think
anything, bro. I saw you. I fucking saw you on the camera.

Here, is this what you want? I pull out a little bit of scante from my sock and throw it at Type and I’m like, Fucking take
it. Is that what this is all about? You just mad I didn’t give you a taste?

Fuck you.

Because I can remember a thousand times when you stole shit from me. From the Albino. How many bags you short in your life?

Not the same.

Bullshit.

Not the fucking same and you know it, he hisses. He tosses the cellophane back at me. He stands and I reach for my pistol inside of my jumpsuit and I wonder if I have what it’d take to kill my best friend and he’s in my face now, the flame gone, just his hot breath and the whites of his eyes.

Fucking loved you, he says.

I know this is him saying he’s done with me and I’ve fucked up things beyond repair and this is him saying he looked up to me like a brother from the very first moment he made
you holding?
eyes at me on the bus and that it’s all gone now, everything changed, me, I’ve fucking changed, that’s what he’s saying—you’re not the person I loved, you’re not a person with a habit, you’re a junkie, the motherfuckers we never wanted to become, the kind who rob welfare mothers for their EBT cards—and this is too much for me to handle. So I laugh. I laugh into his face. I call him a faggot. I say, I always knew you wanted to fuck me. His inhale has an audible catch. I tell him he’s an ungrateful faggot, to have a nice sleep without his night-light.