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Clothes were flung from hangers as she got rid of outfits she hadn’t worn in a while and then she rearranged her shoes so that they were in neat rows. She moved to her jeans next, that were in large, crooked stacks on a high shelf, and she pulled them all down, letting them drop to the floor with a loud thud. A photo album she had forgotten about peeked out from in between a pair of Levi’s, like a dirty secret waiting to be discovered. Adrianna pulled the blue, leather bound book into her hands and wiped the dust from its edges. Her legs folded down so that she was Indian-style on the floor of her closet and she opened to the first page.
Her high came crashing down when she saw the first picture. It was one of Rachael and her from high school. They were hugging cheek-to-cheek and smiling brightly at the camera, Rachel’s blonde hair a contrast to Adrianna’s dark. She ran her hand lovingly over the photograph. It was from their junior year when Rachel’s parents had taken them to the beach for a long weekend to celebrate Rachel’s birthday. Flipping through the pages, Adrianna grew depressed and tears fell onto the plastic film that covered the photos. Soon Adrianna was sobbing. She missed her best friend.
Feeling desolate and drained now, she pulled herself from the floor to find her pills, her closet completely forgotten. After she popped one more, she flopped back down on her unmade bed and cried herself back to sleep.
Chapter 2
Adrianna’s days weren’t always as rough as the previous Saturday’s. She usually got through without suffering any breakdowns, as long as she was able to keep the physical pain at bay with the Vicodin. Speaking of her pills, she had noticed yesterday morning that her supply was running low and so she made an appointment with her doctor for that afternoon. It was the usual stuff; he checked her out, asked a few questions and then gave her a script for another hundred and twenty pills. It had not yet been a full month since her last visit but she had told him this last month had been particularly painful because she had pulled a muscle at the gym. He bought it. Adrianna didn’t go to the gym.
She didn’t work or go to school either. The accident four years ago that left her with crushed vertebrae in her back and neck had supplied her with enough money to live off of comfortably for the foreseeable future, and she was going to ensure it lasted by living cheaply. And so at twenty-six, Adrianna lived a mostly isolated life, taking Vicodin to get her through the week, and sometimes mixing in gin and sex on the weekends. It was boring, depressing, and getting old, but it was all she knew.
After taking two years to fully recover from the accident, Adrianna never resumed her degree in pediatrics and moved to Chicago, a few hours away from her parents who still lived in the small, suburban Illinois town she grew up in. They didn’t like her decision to move away, but she had been twenty-four, had money, and was ready to live on her own; away from her parents, away from her friends, and away from the pathetic glances that would be thrown her way whenever she went out in her small town.
Adrianna was returning from the pharmacy on a Friday when she heard noises coming from the apartment across the hall. Surprised that her neighbor Heather would be home at three in the afternoon, she stowed her meds in her purse and then let herself into Heather’s apartment. Heather was a thirty-six-year-old single mother with a little boy named Trevor.
She was Adrianna’s closest friend, which is to say she knew Adrianna was twenty-six, had been in an accident, lived alone, and didn’t have a boyfriend. Adrianna didn’t like to share much about herself with anyone but when she moved in across the hall, Heather and Trevor came over with an apple pie to welcome her to the building. In the two years since she’d moved in they became friendly.
Heather was in her living room rubbing a blue, fluffy thing attached to a long white stick across her wall.
“What are you doing?” Adrianna asked with an amused expression.
“Hey, toots!” Heather greeted looking over her shoulder. “I’m dusting.”
“Your walls?”
“Walls get dusty,” Heather answered, sweeping her duster a few more times and then turning her attention to Adrianna. She was a petite little thing, with light brown, curly hair and a decent amount of freckles on her face. Her outfit of cutoff shorts and baggy t-shirt told Adrianna she was in cleaning mode, which was a rare occasion for Heather. Being a single mother with two jobs, Heather hardly had time for serious housekeeping. Adrianna tried to help her out by doing her laundry for her every once in awhile.
