Sticky Fingers (19 page)

“I picked this up for you.” Mat’s voice comes to me as if it’s floating through the air so slowly, I can actually see the sound. I feel him loop my purse back over my shoulder, and then jolt as Scott starts yelling at Mat, and Mat actually yells back.

I can’t seem to follow what they’re saying. Only that it’s loud. And that Scott wants me to come with him, and Mat’s saying I shouldn’t and telling me I need to choose.

“Courtney?” I hear myself ask. But it sounds hideous. Like a whine. And then I’m moving backward, away from all their voices. Scott’s voice is angry. Very angry. Then I feel a whoosh of cold air as a door opens in front of me and I realize I’m on the sidewalk.

It’s like I floated here.

I think I’m going to miss the New Year’s countdown.

Just as I manage to ask what time it is, I bring up
the nastiness in my stomach. One huge urp into the beautiful evergreens with their white, sparkling Christmas lights. I take a deep breath of the winter air and force myself to focus.

I only had half a beer. This doesn’t happen from half a beer. How did this happen?

I fight down a wave of panic. This is all wrong. Very, very wrong.

Why won’t my brain work? Why can’t I make it move from point A to point B, and figure out why I’m in such rough shape? And what I need to do to feel better?

“Come on, Jen, I’ve got you.” It’s Courtney. I don’t see Scott or Mat, but since I can barely see Courtney, I’m not sure who’s with me and who’s not. I’m too freaking dizzy to try to look. It’s like the sidewalk under me is moving, which is not a good thing when it’s so icy out.

Then I start vomiting like I’ve never vomited in my life. So hard it hurts my eyes, making me wonder if I’m going to pop a blood vessel. “Help,” I manage as I gasp for air.

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” I hear Courtney
say, and then I feel arms holding me up. I try to argue—I want her help, but I want Scott, too, and I don’t want to choose—but I can’t. I can’t string together the words to form a sentence.

Oh, crap. My parents are going to get called if I go to the hospital. They are going to be really, really pissed.

“How much alcohol was in her system?”

I can’t open my eyes. I’m tired, and it’s just too difficult. But the voice is my mother’s, and she sounds so calm, I know instantly that things are serious.

I’m so sorry, Mom.
I think it. I can’t say it.

“I don’t believe alcohol is the issue,” another voice answers. I don’t recognize this one. It’s male. Older.

“She only had one beer,” Courtney’s voice comes from somewhere nearby. Is she sitting next to me? “And I saw her pour part of it out. She just wanted to dance.”

There’s a pause. I think someone says something, but then I hear Courtney say, “I swear, Mrs. Kassarian. Jenna’s not a drinker. I don’t think I’ve ever
seen her drink before. She wasn’t going to the party tonight to drink. Really.”

I feel like I need to say something, to tell Mom that Courtney’s telling the truth. That she can believe in me. That I’m still the same good kid I’ve always been. But I’m completely frozen. Exhausted all the way through to my bones. And I’m not even certain I’m hearing the whole conversation. Pieces seem to be missing.

Wait, am I in a hospital? I vaguely remember Courtney saying something about taking me to the hospital.

“What do you believe
is
the issue?” My mom’s all business, making it clear she’s going to deal with my health first, and with Courtney and the whole beer issue later.

“Have you ever heard of date rape drugs?” It’s the man again.

“You believe someone put a drug in her drink?”

“It’s possible. We’d like to run some tests. There are several different types, but we’ve seen an uptick in cases involving GHB, a certain type of date rape drug, in this part of Massachusetts in recent months.” The
man’s voice keeps fading in and out—I can’t focus on the words—but I hear him mention something about classic symptoms, and then he says there are a few other drugs that might have caused me to get so sick. And I hear the word “roofie.” That sometimes people who aren’t aware of its dangers treat it like a recreational drug, thinking it’ll simply help them relax.

My stomach lets out a gurgle that’s unmistakable. I feel someone—a nurse?—help me onto my side, and then I vomit again. I think there’s a bin. I’m not sure.

I feel like I have the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had. I’m dog-tired, and even though I can tell I’m not going to vomit anymore, I don’t want to eat anything either.

I just want to sleep. I want it all to go away. And I want the doctor and my parents to stop asking me questions I can’t answer.

“Hey.”

I glance toward the door of my hospital room and see Courtney standing there. She’s in different clothes—The Skirt has given way to her favorite pair
of faded Levi’s and an Old Navy T-shirt—and her hair is back to her everyday style.

“Hey, yourself,” I say. I blink a couple times, realizing that the sun’s all the way up now. It’s probably noon or later. And I’m thinking,
Happy New Year, idiot.
As in,
How could I start what’s supposed to be one of the best years of my life doing something so stupid?

She hesitates, then comes to sit beside me. “How are you feeling?”

“Bright and perky,” I say in my most sarcastic voice. “Like I’m ready to run the Boston Marathon.”

She gets a look like I slapped her. “Come on, Jen.”

I force down a sigh. “Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“I feel awful. I can’t believe some jerk slipped me a roofie at Aric’s. You know that’s what the doctor told my mom that the blood and urine tests showed, right? That I had Rohypnol in my system? I should’ve known not to drink any beer. I wonder if anyone else got sick.”

“No, just you.” She leans back in the chair, fiddling with a piece of fuzz on the mauve cushion. “And it’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

“How is it
your
fault?”

She looks up at the ceiling. Her eyes are filled with regret and fear, and I can tell she’s trying to hold back tears. “Because that roofie never would’ve gotten in your drink if it wasn’t for me.”

She starts to say something else, then shuts up pronto when a nurse wearing a cotton, floral-patterned top and dusty blue pants comes in, acting all chipper and asking me things like, “How are we doing today?” as if I’m a plural.

Another one of my pet peeves: I hate when people say “we” when they really mean “you.” And the fact that I want to rip the truth out of Courtney, which I can’t do with Miss Nicey Nurse in the room, makes the nurse’s “we” comment piss me off even more than it usually would.

Nicey Nurse rolls a small table next to my bed, then walks back into the hall and returns immediately with a blue plastic tray, which she deposits onto the rolling table. There’s milk, water, broth, crackers, and a small bowl of what I think must be vanilla pudding, though the pudding has a very fake yellow cast to it. It reminds me of the pudding they served us at summer camp when we were kids, right out of generically labeled, industrial-size cans.

I hated that pudding.

“Try to get some of this down,” Nicey says. I try to focus on what she’s saying instead of on the blinding flowers on her top. Why do nurses always have to wear such ugly outfits? What happened to those starched white dresses you see on old television shows? The hats were stupid, but at least the colors weren’t painful.

“I’m sure you still feel awful,” she says, “but it’s because there’s nothing in that stomach of yours. If you eat a little something, though, then we can take out the IV this afternoon.”

“We can” in this case meaning “she can,” take out the IV, I imagine. I can’t picture us ripping the thing
out together. I mean, I can’t even look at my hand right now, which is where the line from the IV drip disappears under a bandage meant to hold the needle in place.

I hate needles. Especially thick needles that have to stay put.

When she finally leaves, I roll my eyes. Courtney wrinkles her nose in the nurse’s direction, then gets up and shuts the door.

“So we have some warning next time,” she says. “Plus, your parents said they’d be back soon, and we need to talk without them popping in.”

I wait for her to explain her comment about the whole roofie thing being her fault, but instead she asks if I’m going to eat anything.

I shoot her the evil eye, but she says, “I know it’s nasty. But maybe the crackers will be okay. And it’ll mean you can get that needle outta your hand. That looks painful.”

“It’s more the idea of it that’s painful. Painful is my head. And my stomach.”

Reluctantly, I pull myself up enough to grab the cracker packet. The effort wears me out, though, and
Courtney takes the packet from me and rips open the plastic.

“I’m just beat. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my entire life.” I nod in the direction of the crackers. “Thanks for doing that.”

“You won’t thank me in a minute.”

She waits until she’s sure I can eat the crackers on my own, then rolls the table closer so I can reach the straw for the water without having to raise my head too much. When I’ve got it, she plunks back in the mauve chair.

“So. The roofie.” She bites her lip even as she says the word “roofie.” “The thing is, I kind of knew about it ahead of time.”

Ex-queeze me?
“Please tell me you’re kidding. I mean, how could you know something like that?”

“It’s a long story, but—”

“But you’re going to tell me all of it.” Or I’ll kill her. Once I find the energy.

“You’re not going to like it.” She looks like she’s going to get up and run. But I decide I’ll force myself to get out of bed and fall on her if it’ll keep her here.

In the most calm, reassuring voice I can muster, I
say, “Just tell me. Please. I promise to listen first and kill you later.”

She nods, then gets up and starts walking toward the door. I’m about to yell after her when I realize she’s just checking to make sure no one’s standing outside, trying to listen. When she gets back, she sits on the side of the bed instead of in the chair. “The police were here earlier, so you never know.”

“The police?” How much have I missed?

“Yeah. I’ll get to that part.”

She’d better. If I’m about to be busted for underage drinking, I’d better know before they come back. Just so I can prepare myself.

Her voice is quiet, and I can barely hear her as she explains: “The night before you and Scott went bowling, I overheard him talking to one of the guys working out on the dock. You know, one of the guys whose job it is to unload the milk trucks.”

“He’s introduced me to a couple of them,” I say. “They seem like mostly nice guys. Scott likes to hang out back on the loading docks when he’s on breaks, instead of in the break room.”

“All the time,” she agrees. “Fresh air and all that.
So, anyway, when I saw him back there at the beginning of break, I wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing. I was just trying to find one of the deli guys who’d gone out for a smoke. Then, all of a sudden, something this one guy was saying to Scott caught my attention.”

“Like?”

“He was offering to sell Scott some kind of drug.”

I must look doubtful, because Courtney puts her hand on my arm. “Hear me out, okay? I couldn’t believe it either. We both know Scott would never do anything to harm his perfect jock bod, right? But instead of telling the guy to blow, Scott started asking how strong it was, and was the guy sure it wasn’t dangerous, and it became more and more obvious to me that this was a serious deal and that Scott was totally into it. I totally freaked out. I mean, neither of them had seen me, and I didn’t know what to do, so I just turned around and went back in the store.”

Courtney’s eyes are filling with tears, and even though I have the urge to grab her hand and comfort her, I don’t. I want her to tell me the rest.

I also want to know whom to believe here. Because
I’m guessing Scott’s story isn’t going to be the same as what she’s about to tell me, and she hasn’t had the best track record for honesty lately. “So did you say anything to him later?” She must’ve, at some point.

She swallows hard and nods. “When my shift was over, I asked him if he was busy, and when he said no, I told him to meet me after work. That it was really important for us to talk.”

“The Dunkin’ Donuts on Route 126?”

Her eyebrows arch up in surprise. “How’d you—? I guess Mat told you?”

When I tell her that’s where I heard it, she says, “I had to lie to Mat about the whole thing, which was awful. But I felt trapped. Scott made me promise not to tell anyone.”

He
made
her? I decide to let it go for the moment, and ask, “So what happened at Dunkin’ Donuts?”

“I told Scott what I overheard. At first, he told me I was dreaming—that it couldn’t have been him, or that maybe I misunderstood—but he knew he was busted.”

“So he never admitted to anything.”

“Actually, he did.” For a split second, she looks proud of herself, like a TV cop who just got a confession out of a suspect, but the look disappears quickly, and she’s serious again. “I wouldn’t let up on him, so he eventually admitted that he did talk to the guy about drugs. He even told me it was about roofies—which I hadn’t overheard—but that he didn’t buy any. And he claimed they weren’t for him, anyway. He told me this lame story about how he was curious ’cause someone on the basketball team had been asking him if he knew anything about roofies: what they did, how strong they were, that kind of thing. I told Scott flat out that I didn’t believe him. And I told him I was going to tell you and let
you
ask him about it if he didn’t feel like he could be honest with me.”