The questions echo in the empty car. I know I won’t get answers, but I yell them anyway, until my throat burns, until I’m too tired to keep fighting.
Because I don’t know what else to do.
47
Lydia
We’re all singing Blue Strips by Jessie Murph at the top of our lungs on the way to a huge house party off campus tonight. We’re having a good time together, and everything just feels so…amazing. I feel like I’m back in my groove, back with my girls, and back to life after a long and pretty damn lonely Christmas break without them.
Also, new year, new me…right? Hell, something like that. I mean, no one said the new me had to be a better me, just…different. I definitely don’t recognize the girl I left behind last year. She was asadshit-show. Now? Now I’m just a regular shit-show ready to have some fun.
Lani reaches up from the back seat and turns the music down slightly. “I just want y’all to know how much I love you, and how glad I am we all met. This is gonna be our year, I can feel it.”
Simone throws a quick, questioning look back in her direction before turning back to the road. “Lani…have you been pre-game drinking without us?”
Lani slaps her arm, pretending to be offended. “No! Geez. A girl can’t show her appreciation for her two closest friends? Damn.” She laughs, and we all start laughing. “I’m just happy, that’s all. I’ve never had friends I wasas close to as you two before. I mean, I always had friends back home or whatever, but I was never any of their first picks, you know…so, in turn…screw ‘em, they were never mine either. But y’all are.”
I stick my bottom lip out and look back at her. “That was sweet, Lani. We love you, too.”
She reaches up and gives me this weirdly positioned side hug before whispering, “I’msoproud of you. You’ve been doing so good.”
Fuuuck.
I pat her arm awkwardly with one hand and force a smile that I pray doesn’t look as forced as it actually is. You see, the thing is, that day Lani found me, made me promise to stop doing all the drugs and shit. Well, Imighthave…kept doing them. I don’t really have an excuse for that other than I was just desperate for her not to say anything to Simone, and I gave her the lie that she needed to make herself feel better about keeping the secret.
I’ve gotten really good at hiding it now, though. I honestly think Lani believes I actually stopped—as if I’m not high as fuckright now.
She watched me for a while, though,veryclosely, and I always thought she knew whenever I was high, but she’s never said anything. And so she kept her promise—she never told Simone—even if I never kept mine. But I never had any intentions of keeping mine if I’m being honest, even as the words were leaving my mouth that day. I knew I would wake up the next day and get high again.
Lani is looking at me with this soft, proud smile…and suddenly, I feel like there’s a big screen being held in front of me. I see my younger self playing on it. I’m looking at my mom with the same look on my face that Lani is looking at me with.
Fuck.
It jolts me a bit. Pulls me back into a memory I didn’t even know I had, one of me staring over at my mom at six years old, telling her that she looked so happy for the first time…I thinkever. That I loved how much she was smiling and how pretty she looked…I’m realizing right now, it’s because she was high. That happiness was fabricated. She was probably so far gone that the pain my father was causing her became a dissociated memory, and she was finally able to breathe again, smile again.
Has everyone I’ve ever fucking known and loved died in some way or another because of drugs? What the fuck. Is that my future, too?
“Why are you crying, Lydia?” Lani asks quietly.
I see Simone look over, concerned. “Are you okay?”
I put that fake smile back on and wipe the tears I hadn’t realized were falling. “Yeah…yeah. Um, they’re happy tears,” I lie. “I’m just…so thankful to have y’all. That’s all.”
Both of them look at me with smiles that break my heart a little. I really don’t want to hurt them the way everyone I’ve loved has hurt me…and left me.
A part of my brain always tries to fight that and tell me they don’t actually care about me. That no one can care about methatmuch. That they would probably move on pretty easily if I were really gone. That I’ve never been special enough to be cared about in the same way I’ve always cared about other people. The logical part of my brain tells me they genuinelydolove me and would be sad if I were gone, but the louder part always tells me I’m just lying to myself.
“So,” Simone starts, pulling my attention back over to her and out of my head. “What did you end up getting into for the last five weeks while we were away? You know…when you broke my heartandSarah and Mark’s when you decided not to come back home for Christmas break?”
I roll my eyes, laughing and playing it off. “We talked just about every day, Simone…I told you what I was doing. Mostly just stayed in the dorm and caught up on all the assignments I begged my professors to give me extensions on so I could pass my classes.”
“No parties?” Lani asks, shocked almost. “Not a single one?”
“Nope,” I say, popping the p.
Lani and Simone exchange a look with each other, and I don’t like whatever they’re trying to silently communicate.
“Hey,” I say, pointing between the two of them. “Don’t do that.”
