Tweaked (8 page)

I look at him.

“I mean, it's not a good idea. They won't let me in if they see you. They won't trust you. I'll just go in and pay them. You can watch me from here.”

I close the door again. “I don't trust
you
.”

“I'll be five minutes. You'll be sitting right here. I'm not kidding, they'll slam the door in my face if you're with me. We'll be out of here faster if you just wait.”

I know he's about as trustworthy as a rabid skunk. But he is within my sight, and I guess I figure he won't try anything with me right here.

“All right, you've got five minutes. If you're any longer, I'll be pounding on that door until it comes down.” I dig the envelope containing the two thousand dollars out of my pocket. “This is it, Chase. Your last chance. Pay those losers off, get back here and leave this crap behind you.”

Chase nods. He snatches the money from my hand, removes it from the envelope and rolls it into a wad.
He stuffs the roll in his pocket, letting the envelope fall to the floor of the car. He is twitchy. I figure he's nervous about facing his dealers. I watch as he crosses the scruffy yard and knocks on the front door. He turns and looks at me once, but he doesn't acknowledge me. I glance at the clock. Six minutes after ten. The door opens and he disappears inside.

I wait. It's now quite dark and Burnaby Mountain looms close. A car drives by and turns into the driveway of the house two doors down on the same side of the street. A man steps out from the driver's side. He holds the back door for two young children while they jump out. All the time he stares at me sitting in Mom's car in front of the drug house. It creeps me out that if he knows what goes on inside his neighbor's house—and how could he not know with guys like Chase and Ratchet coming and going at all hours—he probably thinks I'm a druggie.

The blinds are drawn in the two windows that face the street. The small front yard is neglected: weeds grow through the bark mulch, which looks like it was thrown down at some attempt to landscape many years back. A dead cedar stands in the corner of the yard next to the driveway. Red needles lie scattered around its base.

I look at the clock again. Ten minutes after ten. It has been four minutes since Chase walked through the door. God, I hope this changes things. Chase still has to
face the assault charges, but if he's working and Mom and Dad can return to dealing with the regular hassles of life—the fridge on the fritz or repairing a burned-out headlight—life would be so unbelievably good.

A car pulls up behind me. Two guys and a girl get out. The girl I notice the most: stringy hair, legs like bowed matchsticks, stumbling behind the two guys like an awkward starving goat. When the door opens, they immediately enter the house.

Ten fifteen. Nearly ten minutes. Okay, I'll cut him some slack. He may not have found those two right away, or they may have been busy. I have no idea how their business works. I begin to worry about sitting outside the house, waiting for a guy who's both a criminal and a user. What if the cops pick that night to raid the place? They know who owns the Passat and what they do for a living—I'd learned that at the police station. They have to be aware of what goes on inside the house and occasionally they must clean it out. Wouldn't that be just great? Me, not only arrested for frequenting a meth house but responsible for helping Chase break bail.

Ten twenty. My pocket feels empty. The money had been noticeable, clumsy at first, but after carrying it around for several hours, I certainly notice it's gone. Ten twenty-one. I am starting to worry. What if he doesn't come out? I want to go in and haul him out about as much as I want to eat a bowl of mud. I told him he had
five minutes. It has been fifteen. Just five more. Surely he will be back by then. And if not, well, I don't have much choice but to go in after him, although he's sure going to hear about making me sweat.

The door opens. The two guys who parked behind me return to their car without the girl. They take off. Maybe Chase is having trouble getting out. Maybe his dealers decided to beat him up a little for interest on the two thousand. Whatever the reason, he is still in there, and I've waited long enough. As I open the car door my heart begins to race. It's not knowing what to expect that frightens me. On the other hand, I don't have to actually go into the place. All they have to do is hurry Chase up and send him out.

I follow the crumbling concrete sidewalk leading to the front door and lift the knocker. Moments later the door is opened by a man whose age is hard to judge. The whites of his eyes are the color of egg yolk, and he is thin, except around the middle where his liver bulges. He stands next to the door guardedly, and he doesn't relax when he finds someone unfamiliar standing on the other side.

“I'm looking for Chase.”

The guy scratches the lose skin of his throat. The entire back of his hand is scarred—like the skin has been ripped off or it has been horribly burnt. “He's not here.”

For a moment, his answer stumps me. I know Chase is in there. Maybe he just hasn't seen him. “But he just went in. I watched him walk through the door fifteen minutes ago.”

“I didn't say he wasn't here. I said he's not here now.”

Okay, I'd been watching the door the entire time. The guy is mistaken. “He must be. I would have seen him leave.”

He shrugs. “I'm telling you, he's not.” He begins to close the door. I thrust my foot between the door and the jamb to prevent it from closing.

“I'd like to take a look myself. I'm his brother. All I want is to find him and take him home.”

This time, the man scrutinizes me more closely. Perhaps he believes me, but more likely he knows I'm a lot stronger than he is, and I'm not going to give up. Besides, judging by the cars in the driveway, he probably has plenty of backup inside the house.

“All right,” he says. “Suit yourself.” He wanders away, leaving me to step inside and find Chase myself.

It is a filthy house, made worse by the peeling wallpaper and the dingy light. There is no furniture in the tiny living room, just an old sleeping bag on the floor with a couple of bodies lying across it. They don't move. Their unnatural positions tell me they aren't sleeping, but passed out. Clothes and blankets, dirty and threadbare,
lie in piles around what should be a dining room. A couple sit on the floor across from one another, sharing a pipe. They don't acknowledge me.

I cross the floor, following the man who answered the door to a room at the back of the house. It's the kitchen, although it doesn't look like much cooking or eating goes on. The cabinets are beat-up and hang off their hinges, there is no stove and the refrigerator door is missing. Ratchet, DC and some other loser sit at the table, smoking weed. The thin man who answered the door leans against the wall.

“Well, look who's here,” Ratchet announces.

“Where is he?” I ask.

Ratchet's expression immediately changes. It occurs to me that he probably thinks that I'm here to buy-brought here by Chase.

“Where's who?” DC asks.

“You know who—Chase. He just paid you two thousand dollars.”

Ratchet and DC look at each other. The look makes me sick. I instantly know that this isn't what happened. “I gave him two thousand. He was going to pay off his debt.”

DC stands up. “Five hundred,” he says. “He gave us five hundred. He said he's come into a pile of cash and he'll bring more tomorrow. It's all he could withdraw at once.”

I stare at them. I can't believe what is happening, yet I do believe it. I think I'd been expecting it. I'd never really believed him. It was only hope that made me do what I did. I feel like screaming, beating them until they tell me it's a lie and Chase really had paid the full amount. “Where is he?” I manage to repeat.

Ratchet motions toward the door leading off the kitchen into the backyard and shrugs. “He left. We gave him a little incentive to ensure he comes back tomorrow. Hey, it's the first time he's come up with so much cash at once. We took it.”

It's all I can do not to lunge at him. He could be lying. I tear out of the room and down the hall. I open a bedroom door and flick on the light. Three people lie on a bare mattress on the floor. They are so out of it, I could have been a swat team and they wouldn't have reacted. I recognize one of them as the skinny girl I'd seen arrive with the two guys that have since left, but there is no Chase.

I slam the door and look in another room across the hall. There is one guy, sitting on the floor, in a room empty of furniture. He is chipping at the floor with a pair of pliers. When he looks up, I get the feeling he's about to sling the pliers at me, so I close the door again.

The bathroom is a rathole, but it's empty. I find the basement door off the hall and pound down the wooden steps. The last riser is broken, and I stumble
before hitting the concrete floor. It is a slum: one open space filled with half a dozen people stoned out of their heads. But Chase is not among them. I return to where Ratchet and DC still sit. By now, I am in a total panic. “He's not here.”

DC crushes his cigarette butt in a jar lid. “That's what we told you. He left.”

He couldn't have gone far the way he'd been itching to get cranked up after more than a month. I bolt into the backyard. It's nothing more than a patch of weeds and stubble stretching to a small wooden shed at the back. There is no patio or garden, only a few broken lawn chairs. The entire property is surrounded by a low, chain-link fence.

I check inside the shed. I feel around until I find a pull-chain for an overhead light. Illuminated by one bare bulb I survey the clutter of boxes, broken glass and needles littering the wood plank floor. There is no Chase. The yard backs directly onto the neighbors' properties in three directions. There is no alley. Chase would have had to hop the fence to take off, but I have no way of knowing in which direction and it's now very dark. I choose the neighbor's yard to the east, the one with the easiest access. Searching between the hydrangeas and rhododendrons, I back into a swing, which creaks and starts a dog barking. A light goes on in the house. I sprint around to the front and return to Mom's car.

I clench my fists and beat them against my legs. Hysterical. I've only read the word in books and heard it referred to in movies, but I know this is what it must be like. It's like I've gone deaf and blind all at once. I can't think, I am so disoriented. And I am so mad every nerve in my body is sparking. If at that moment Chase appeared, I would go for his throat without giving him time to defend himself.

I am also scared to death. How will I ever explain this to Mom and Dad?

I grip the steering wheel and breathe deeply. Okay, maybe he's just taken off for the night and he'll be back. Maybe he'll be back before my parents are up in the morning. He knows it's breaking bail, that everything in his life—our lives—depends on him sticking around. I start the car. Who am I kidding? He's a crankhead with fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket. He's gone, along with my money.

I call Jack on my cell, but there is no answer. I don't know what else to do or where to go, so I drive to Jade's. Her mother and sister are in bed, but she is up, watching
TV
.

Sitting at the kitchen table, speaking in a whisper, I tell her what an idiot I am, how stupid I was to be duped by an addict. I'd watched it happen in my house a thousand times. If I'd only gone with him, everything would have turned out differently.

“It's not your fault,” she says after I finally stop repeating myself. “You did what you thought was right.” She then adds, “I don't know if it helps, and I'm sorry if I sound like a cynic, but I also don't think it would have turned out any differently. Maybe it wouldn't have happened tonight, but eventually, he would have taken off. Obviously, that's what he wanted.”

“But I made it so easy for him.”

“You can't think like that. You're not dealing with a rational person, so stop beating yourself up.”

“Oh, god, what have I done?”

“Gordie.” Jade lays her hand across mine. “You are going to have to tell your Mom and Dad.”

It's after midnight when I leave Jade's apartment, but I can't go home, not without looking for Chase first. Sitting in Mom's car on the street outside Jade's apartment building, I try Jack's number again.

This time he answers. “Hey,” he says, “what's up?”

In as few words as I can, I explain what's happened. I tell him that I took Chase to pay his dealers, but my plan backfired and he took off instead. I finish by saying, “You've got to help me look for him.”

There is a pause at the end of the line. No doubt he hears the panic in my voice, but there is the practical side to my request. “But it's a school night. They won't let me go out this late.”

Jack's bedroom is in the basement. “Sneak out,” I tell him. “I'll be parked in front of the Watts' house in fifteen minutes.” I hang up, not wanting to give him a chance to argue.

Fifteen minutes later, Jack is where I asked him to be, sitting on the utility box in front of a hedge at the
edge of his neighbor's front yard. He gets in the front seat. “You know I'll be forced to beat on you if my parents find about this. What's going on?”

As I start down Mountain Highway, heading back toward the Second Narrows Bridge, I fill Jack in on the details. I try to word it carefully, or at least so I don't come off like a total fool.

Once I've finished, he neatly sums up what I've said. “Okay, let me get this straight—you gave him two thousand dollars in cash—your cash—and you let him go in the house alone? You idiot! How could you be such a chump? Your parents are going to kill you.”

There isn't much I can say. I know it well enough myself.