If I couldn’t have the drug, I’d settle for the man.
“I will overcome this addiction. This addiction will not get the best of me. I am bigger than my addiction. I am in control.”
“Hmm?”
“Repeat it, Solana,” the young feminine voice ordered.
I cleared my parched throat. “I will overcome this addiction. This addiction will not get the… best of me. I am bigger than my addiction. I am in control.”
“Yes! Look at you. I didn’t have to repeat it or nothing.”
“I’m… good with directions.”
“I don’t like this for you.”
Closing my eyes, I tried to place the voice.
Bella?
No, she has a bit more of an accent in her speech.
It’s not Pearla’s—her voice is much lighter.
Mahzeyah?
Yes, it’s Mahzeyah.
“Neither do I, Mahzeyah,” I responded, somewhat tired from just trying to figure out who was talking to me through the steel door’s opening.
I didn’t like being here either, but my days of hating that I’d been thrown inside this room were gone. There was no sense of dwelling on things I could not change, at least not in the present. I had some days ago to make the best of what this was, but my body and mind needed to get on one accord with reality.
“How do you feel?”
Horrible.“I feel okay.”
“You do not.”
Chuckling, I shut my eyes tightly because the small laughter had hurt. Every part of me hurt, down to my fingers and toenails. I couldn’t do another day of feeling like this, and if I had to, then I’d put a pillow over my face and end it myself. That wasn’t me being suicidal. It was me being overwhelmed by the pain.
“Tell me the truth. How do you feel?”
Mahzeyah—So bossy and so sassy.
She and Bella had that in common. They were both sharp at the tongue. But, like me, I could tell Bella had grown up around boys, and I was sure there were many boys. Asbonita(pretty) as she was, she had this force in her. There was a streak as wide as a river of defiance in her. Mahzeyah, on the other hand, was bossy because she was an only child or the oldest. I didn’t know the specifics, but I could almost guess their lives from simple conversations. She had the traits of an only child. I didn’t have any close relationships with people back home, but when I was in school, I had classes with Valeria. We took classestogether for many years, and although they were of different ethnicities, Mahzeyah reminded me so much of Valeria. They were both confident, mature, and responsible. I knew Mahzeyah was responsible because she had been given free rein by her parents, and she was over here almost every day since I’d met all of them. Those were just a few traits that I knew to be true that children without siblings held. Self-centered was another, but I had not seen that in Mahzeyah just yet.
“Everything hurts,” I answered her.
“Mentally or physically?”
I couldn’t see her face since she was behind the door, and my head wasn’t at the slot, but I imagined her arched brow rising. She was a little lady, much more in tune with the world than I was at her age. She also possessed things that I had not—friends that loved and adored her, loving parents, and a boy who was obsessed with her, although neither of them knew what to do with it yet.
“Both…” I groaned. “But today is all physically. My hair. My nails. My chest. I feel...”
“Heavy?”
“Si.”
“I get what they are doing, and it’s not for me to speak on it because, one, I’m a child. Well, almost a young adult, but I’m a child right now. And, two, it’s not my place to get in their business. However, this isn’t right. I get Shio wanting you to get clean, but this isn’t the right way to go about it. If you’re not mentally strong… or physically support… This could?—”
