Little Battles (29 page)

This was ridiculous. I
could
be high, but I wasn’t. I was sober and sitting next to Elliott, waiting for class to start, hoping that somehow that horrible voice would shut up, because I didn’t want to be called a dirty girl right now.

I put my head down on the cold Formica table, extending my arms and wrapping my hands around the front edge of the table. I felt sick.

“SSSSophie?”

I ignored him because I didn’t want to talk to him right now. I wasn’t okay and I didn’t want to see his puppy face when I said that I wanted to get high.

I could hear Mr. Reese speaking and I took a deep breath, because his voice gave way to another.

You’re such a dirty girl, Sophie. Show me how dirty you can be and I won’t tell your mother.

My eyes snapped open and I sat up straight. My stomach lurched as something warm wrapped around my left hand and I looked down.

Elliott was holding it.

I still couldn’t look at him, but I squeezed his hand because this shit hurt.

I was supposed to go to P.E., but when Elliott turned toward the Administrative office, giving me a small lopsided smile as he went, I felt sick again. When I saw Aiden, I somehow made my way to the boy’s bathroom with him. I hated the smell of men’s bathrooms. There was nothing nastier than the smell of that urinal cake mixed with the pheromones of multiple men’s piss.

But once inside the stall, he took the long pointed stick of a pen cap and dipped it into the white powder, holding it out to me. “That’s my girl!” he exclaimed as I snorted it.

It grew dark around me.

Be my beautiful, dirty girl.

Don’t start that shit, Sophie. Don’t make me tell your mother.

Then the head rush kicked in and I leaned my head back against the red metal wall. That was better. I couldn’t feel that painful shit in my head seeping out and tainting my muscles and bone. Instead I felt the rush of whatever the hell I’d just inhaled.

Aiden pressed himself against me like I was going to let him do me in this bathroom that smelled like piss and shit. Maybe some other day I would have, but right now I just wanted to buy more of that shit and not be touched by him.

Languidly, I pushed him back. “How much will forty bucks buy?”

He attached his mouth to my neck as he touched me between my legs. “Not much, but I can front you some.”

I was confused because Aiden never fronted me anything since that first time I bought coke from him. I was also confused because he was rubbing me through my jeans and while it felt good, something inside my slow, yet speeding brain was yelling at me that it was wrong.

“How much will you front me? I don’t get paid until…”

“Suck my dick, Sophie, and I’ll front you a gram.”

My hands were suddenly fisted and Aiden gripped my shoulders as he tried to push down. I pushed him back with my fist. “Just give me forty bucks worth, Aiden.” My voice shook and I just wanted him to give me the shit and go away.

I didn’t want to be in this smelly bathroom with him. He pressed in again, moving closer. I didn’t want to kiss him. I turned my head, and pushed at him again. “I’m not going to have sex with you.”

He licked my neck and I shivered. My body responded even though I didn’t want it to. I pressed at him again and he stepped back.

“If I fucked you in the bathroom, would Dalton kick
my
ass too?”

I shoved my hand in my pocket, wanting to wrap it around that green rock I carried around now, but instead I pulled out the rest of my money. “Just give me that shit.”

Finally, he backed off of me and set about getting my shit ready. It wasn’t but a moment after he left the stall and I heard the bathroom door open and close when I snorted every last speck of what he left. Just moments after that, I was sitting on the dirty floor in the smelly, nasty boy’s bathroom, shivering.

“W-what did you t-t-take?”

I swayed a little. “I was being good.” Elliott kept looking at me, waiting for me to answer his question, but I couldn’t remember the answer. I couldn’t focus. “I shouldn’t have…I don’t know why I did.”

“W-what did you t-take?”

I thought for a moment, my eyes darting around the parking lot quickly, not focusing on any one thing. My nose itched. I’d snorted whatever it was, but all I could remember was Aiden stopping me in the hall and showing me something new.

I’d said that I wasn’t interested, but then what?

Then I kept hearing
his
voice, remembering
his
smell. He told me that I was so beautiful and that if I would just stop moving away, it wouldn’t hurt as much.

I didn’t want to hear it anymore. I didn’t want to see him when I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to feel it, especially when I was sitting next to Elliott during Horticulture. So I’d found Aiden during last period and he let me try a little. I bought some and snorted it in the bathroom, then felt guilty about it.

I had known that Elliott would be so disappointed. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but immediately after I’d snorted it, I knew he would be. I sat in that bathroom stall with stupid tears leaking from my eyes until the final bell rang. By that time, my legs tingled and I was shaking.

“SSSophie?”

“I don’t know.”

“W-w-why did you? Did I do ssssomething to…”

“No!” I tightened my hold on his arm. Why did he always have to take things so personally? This wasn’t about him at all. This was about my screwed-up brain and my need to make stuff go away.

He reached out to brush a stray lock of my hair off of my forehead, and I flinched. “I’m sorry.” I let go of his arm and grabbed his hand before he could drop it back down to his side, and squeezed it tightly. “I won’t do it again.”

I shivered again and the fear that Elliott would see and know the truth assaulted me from the inside. He would leave. I wasn’t able to keep my word to him. I was horrible. I was bad. I wasn’t worthy. I didn’t want to do this anymore. I wanted to be good for him. I wanted him to love me and stay with me.

“I’m sorry. Don’t leave. I’ll be good, I swear. I won’t do it again! I promise I won’t. Just don’t…”

My mouth kept spouting stuff like that while my mind ran away from me, hating Elliott’s expression. My mind kept telling me that I didn’t deserve him, and the look on his face was proof enough.

But as my mouth kept promising that I’d do better, that I’d
be
better, and my mind kept telling me that I never would do better and I’d never deserve Elliott, he opened up his arms and pulled me to him.

I couldn’t think straight, but his arms and body felt so good.

I had no idea where the day had gone.

She was so incredibly high and couldn’t tell me what she was on. I nearly panicked, but her frantic pleas calmed me, oddly enough. Her nearly hysterical rambling and confusion reminded me of the last time Jane cut herself. This wasn’t good. Sophie shouldn’t be using drugs like this. I needed her to stop. I didn’t think I could handle this anymore. If she didn’t get better soon, I didn’t know what I’d do.

I pulled Sophie to me, hugging her close in the middle of the school parking lot while straggling students walked past, not even bothering to pretend not to stare.

She clung to me and I let her for many reasons. First, it was incredibly cold and I didn’t know where her coat and hat were, second, because I liked the feel of her so close to me, and third, she was
so
high that I was frightened she’d fall.

She didn’t look right, she wasn’t acting right, and she couldn’t speak right.

I thought that she’d gone to her last class when I headed to see Ms. Rice. After painstakingly making it halfway through
Green Eggs and Ham
, I waited for Sophie by her locker, but she never showed up. I checked by the gym and she wasn’t there. Then I checked in the library, and only found Mrs. Peters. Finally I went outside and found her standing in the middle of the parking lot looking around as if she didn’t know how she got there.

I raced over.

“Elliott! I found you.” She wiped her nose with the heel of her hand as she bounced with chemical energy. “I thought I was lost.”

She was babbling, saying she didn’t know what got her to this point or why she’d gone so far. Although she said that she hadn’t meant to get high, and was trying to be good, I had no idea how someone could not
mean
to get high. Especially not
that
high. But she just kept saying it over and over. I’d never seen her this bad before.

So now, as I held her to me, feeling her shaking and knowing that it wasn’t just the cold that was giving her chills, I kissed the top of her head and automatically swept my thumb across the four raised points of her fork scar.

“SSSSophie, where’s your c-coat?”

It took a few seconds before she mumbled something into my chest, her arms tightening around me. I removed her hand from my shoulder to tilt her chin up and look into her eyes, giving her a quizzical look.

She repeated her answer, only this time with more emotion. “I don’t know!” She broke out in sobs once again, pressing herself into me, and burying her face and tears in my coat.

“Is it in your l-l-l-llllllocker?”

She nodded and I turned us both toward the school, intending to retrieve her things, but her legs buckled and I caught her just in time to save her from the pavement.

“Don’t leave, Elliott,” she whispered, causing dual reactions. While I was thrilled that she wanted me around, I was heartbroken that she believed I might actually leave her. She obviously didn’t understand that I was probably completely unable to leave her. I didn’t think my body would comply even if my brain demanded it.

“I-I-I’m not lllllleaving. We need to get your sssss…things.”

I managed to get us closer to the school. It was difficult, since she wasn’t really walking on her own, and she was leaning into me.

“We ssshould sssee SSS-Stephen.”

She stopped. “No! He’s a spy and he’ll tell them and they’ll send me away. They’ll take me away from you.”

I tensed. She was right. They would probably send her to rehab. The addiction recovery center that Robin liked to use was in D.C.

I didn’t want Sophie to go to D.C.

“They w-w-w-won’t ssssend you aw-w-way.”

She shook her head, obviously not believing me, which was understandable since I didn’t believe it either.

“Sssstop d-doing d-drugs on your own, and they w-won’t ssssend you aw-way.”

I managed to get both of us inside the building and to her locker. Getting the combination for her padlock would have been hilarious in one of those stupid teen comedy movies David and Jane liked, but it wasn’t as much fun in real life. People on drugs shouldn’t be asked things like, “What’s your locker combination?” or “Are you sure it’s 25-51-7?” because they have no clue how to access the information locked in their head.

Finally, one of the seemingly random series of numbers worked. 15-51-27 was her combination. I committed it to memory in case I should have to use it again, although I hoped that Sophie would retain her full faculties from this moment forward.

After retrieving her things, I took her back to my house and we went straight up to my room. I heard Jane calling Sophie’s name as we passed, so I hurried us up. She was in no condition to be around people.

Once in my room, she sat cross-legged on the couch, her hands clenching and unclenching while she rocked back and forth.

“W-what are you thinking ab-bout?”

She looked up at me, her head shaking fast. “Fire ants.”

I had no idea why she would be thinking about ants. It seemed incredibly bizarre.

We were both silent then, her rocking back and forth and me simply watching her. I thought about the past few days. I hadn’t known how she would react to me showing up at her work, but I wanted to see her, even if it was just for a minute.

Her smile was so beautiful when she turned around and saw me. I wanted to make her smile all the time.

Then I messed everything up in the car. She felt
so
good sitting on top of me and she was really sexy, but I didn’t know what to do about it because I wanted her, just like I told her I did. But I knew my limitations.

She went away thinking that I didn’t want her, which was the furthest thing from the truth. It was terrible she thought that because everything I was - my mind, my soul, my body - yearned for her.

Then on Monday I’d overheard some things during her session that I wished I hadn’t. I wasn’t trying to listen in, but her father got loud and at first I was nervous. Loud voices almost never led to anything positive. Then later he yelled again, and I didn’t want to hear what he said, but I had.

I wished that I had turned on my music or put the headphones on and tinkered around with the keyboard.

When she fell asleep on my shoulder, I was so scared that I would wake her up with any tiny movement, so I tried to be as still as I could. Normally being still was fairly easy, but when I really needed to be still, my body rebelled. My nose itched as a stray lock of Sophie’s hair tickled at my neck and I got a leg cramp.

Then she woke with a start and even though she didn’t scream, I knew she’d just woken from a nightmare. She nearly fell off the bed until I grabbed her. Then she was away from me in no time, picking up that silly green rock she’d just returned, and telling me that she was taking it as she gripped it tightly. I was fine with that. It was just some rock Jane found on last year’s vacation to North Carolina.

I’d been hoping she wouldn’t get high today, and she’d almost made it. I had no idea where she was during Study Hall and lunch, but her eyes were clear in Horticulture. Now she was high and I didn’t know what to do for her.

“I feel sick, Elliott.”

“If you k-k-keep doing this, you’ll d-d-die.”

Her eyes were closed and she was mumbling, but what she said was clear: “Have you thought that might be what I’m going for?”

My heart stopped. “W-w-w-w-what?”

She didn’t respond, so there was nothing to alleviate my fears. My heart began again, practically thumping out of my chest. “I-I-I d-d-don’t w-want you to go aw-w-way, SSSSoph-ph-phie.” When she didn’t say anything, I revealed a bit more. “W-what you ssssaid sssscares m-me.”

She opened her eyes and slowly they rolled toward me. “I said ‘might,’ Elliott, don’t freak out or anything.” Then she paused. “But you never know, do you?”

I had no clue what she was talking about. “W-w-what?”

“Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. Life’s like that. You never know shit, and it’s not until you know that you’ll never know shit that you’ll actually understand and
know
, you know?”

People who were high should probably
not
try to sum up Socrates. Once again, this would have been funny had she not been so high and saying things about chasing death.

“D-don’t…I c-c-can hhhhelp you. J-j-j-just ssssssss…” I said, once again hating how I fumbled my words, making me sound stupid. I couldn’t say “stop,” so I gave up on that course and went with the most honest and simplest words I could find. “I d-d-don’t want you to d-d-die.”

She finally looked at me with a troubled expression. I sat down on my bed, having nothing else to do with my anxious body.

“I n-need you, Soph-phie.”

She turned from me and she became very still. “People don’t need other people. They
want
. Just because I
want
you, doesn’t mean I
need
you.”

I wished she could just see that being an island wasn’t healthy for her. In a short time she’d gone from someone who checked her blood sugar before she ate anything, to someone who grew increasingly involved in harder drugs and would constantly forget that she needed to care for herself, even though she had a condition that could kill her.

I wished that Sophie would allow herself to need me.

Maybe she needed to get help with this. Actual help from trained professionals. Maybe it would be in her best interest to go to rehab. Perhaps she would get straightened out and the anger she would feel about me revealing the depths of her addictions would fade once she was truly sober.

“It’s o-o-okay to n-need someone else.” God knew that I only survived the first few years away from my family because of Jane.

She gave me a sarcastic laugh. “Right, because
so
many people have got my back, right?”

“I do.”

She looked at me and I hoped that she could really
see
me. With or without rehab, I knew I could help her. I
would
help her if she would let me. She didn’t have to live this life alone, dependent on chemical highs that would only serve to make her need more.

“N-not everyone will hhhhurt you.”

She stood up and stretched, rubbing the heels of her hands over her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. I know not
everyone
will hurt me.”

“N-no you don’t. You think I want to hhhhhurt you.”

She pulled the green rock from her pocket and went over to my bookshelf. “No, I don’t,” she whispered.

I didn’t know if she was telling the truth. I could never tell what went on in her head, since she very rarely let me in. I did wish she could just
know
that I wasn’t like
everyone
else.

“B-but do you w-w-want to d-d-die?” Waiting for her answer made me extremely nervous, so I kept talking. “B-because that’s…you sssssseem lllllike…that’s w-what you w-want.”

She laughed again and I wished that it was a real laugh instead of an angry one. “I don’t
want
to die. It’s just that living isn’t all that great either, you know?”

I stood and crossed the room to be closer to her now that she was a little less frantic. I thought maybe she was starting to come down. “B-but you don’t let p-p-people hhhhelp you make it great. Your d-d-d-d, fffffather…he might not do everything r-r-right, but he llllllloves you.”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Hhhhe llllloves you enough to in-in-intimidate me into t-treating you r-r-right.”

“But you didn’t need to be intimidated like that. He’s an ass.”

I shook my head. “Hhhe doesn’t know m-me. Hhhe was p-protecting you.”

“Let’s talk about something else, okay?”

I thought for a moment, because Sophie was used to not dealing with things she didn’t want to think about, and I had to make a choice as to whether I’d let her do that. She didn’t want to talk about why she used drugs, which meant that she might never be healthy. But if I pushed her, then she’d think I was just like everyone else trying to take something from her.

I compromised with myself. I would leave the question of giving up drugs alone for now so that she wouldn’t feel boxed in, but I was going to use this time to learn more about her. It was natural. It was what we did.