Page 31 of The Comedown

“Hey!” I call over to Julian. “Have you eaten?”

Julian holds up the unlit cigarette. “Does it look like it?”

A cigarette for breakfast? And he thinks he doesn’t have an eating disorder…

“Leave that out here and I’ll make you breakfast.”

“Need me to run to the store?” Antonio asks, ushering me inside.

“No, thanks. We should have enough.”

He gets his medication, then lingers near the kitchen, watching Julian climb—literally on his hands and knees—up the few steps on to the bus.

“Do you want me to stick around? I’ve got a brand-new crossword puzzle I wouldn’t mind spending an hour or two on.”

“I’ll be okay,” I assure him. “Go stretch your legs while you can. Seriously, enjoy your time off this thing.”

He hands me the keys with plans to meet up later so I can give them back to him directly, then steps over a laid-out Julian.

I watch the rapper lying motionless in the middle of the aisle for a minute before going to stand over him.

“Are you alive?”

“No.”

“Why not? What happened to you?”

“Same thing that happened to you.”

“You have no idea what happened to me.” Nobody does.

“I don’t have to know to know,” he replies, and I give up, shaking my head at both myself and him. I have to stop engaging with him when he’s completely out of it. The problem with that is, it seems like he’s out of it a lot.

Antonio’s words echo through my head. “Julian’s never there.”

“What’s on your forehead? It looks like some kind of indent.”

One of his tatted hands reaches up, feeling the wrong side of his forehead, and I bend over, guiding him to the correct spot. It’s a red misshapen oval, about three inches long and one inch wide.

“The table.”

The table…on his forehead?

“Did you fall asleep on it?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Couldn’t find your bed?” I try to laugh but he says, “They were all taken,” cutting it off at the start. What?

The fingers with the word MAMAS go limp on his face and his breath begins flowing through them audibly as he passes out. In this moment he doesn’t look like the tough guy that raps about “killing his enemies” and poses with his hand in the shape of a gun. He looks…helpless. I need your help, he said to me last night, confirming my original suspicions.

I push my hood back and remove my sunglasses, tossing them aside and wondering how I’m supposed to move him. I’m not waking him, but he can’t just sleep on the floor, can he? It’s better than being hunched over a fucking table.

I could go over to his bus and get Bare, except the idea of leaving him alone on here makes me uneasy.

I don’t want him to…steal anything.

Sighing, I grab a pillow from my bunk, and get it under his head as gently as I can without disturbing him. I drape a blanket over his body next, and when I pull it up to his chest, I depress my middle finger against the side of his throat, waiting until his pulse pushes back. The tiny flickers do nothing to appease my racing mind though.