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After a bunch of dead ends, I connect with an agency that helps with this sort of thing. Like a travel agency for treatment facilities. The woman on the phone is understanding of my situation, and she gives me tons of information I’m scribbling down as fast as I can on the back of a fast-food wrapper in my car.
After about an hour, we found a vacancy at a great facility in California. They have a high success rate, and they will provide a chaperone to essentially babysit her flighty ass and make sure she arrives on time and gets checked into the center. They have animal therapy, acupuncture, and it’s right by the ocean.
“So what’s the catch? Why do they have an opening?”
“It’s expensive as hell.” I appreciate that she doesn’t sugarcoat it for me.
“How much are we talking?”
“If you’re still wanting to go with a sixty-day program, you’re looking at a hundred and twenty thousand.”
Woof. It’s only sixty days, and there’s no guarantee it will even work? And if she gets kicked out, there’s no refund. The woman on the phone tells me they’ll only hold the spot for me for forty-eight hours, so she’ll need to fly out tomorrow.
“Let’s get her registered.”
I practice speaking calmly the whole way home, but everything goes out the window when I get back to my apartment. I slam the door shut. Hard enough to rattle the shit on my shelves.
“Guess where I just got home from?”
“How the fuck should I know?” She’s still trying to put the pieces of her phone back together. I’m sick of her attitude. “The police station!”
That gets her attention.
“Why?”
“Mom’s wedding ring, Anna? Her wedding ring?!How can you sleep at night?”
“What are you talking about? I told you I had nothing to do with that.”
I laugh without humor. She should be my brother with the balls it takes to say that to my face.
“You’re on camera. You know they have security cameras at pawn shops, right? They have footage of you pawning my shit from three different angles.”
I wait for her to apologize, confess, anything. Nope. She has nothing to say for herself.
“I’m an idiot. Freya was right, this is all you care about.”
“Oh, fuck youandFreya.”
“There it is!” Now that her mask is down, there’s nothing left of Anna in there. I had the wool pulled over my eyes. My girlfriend tried to warn me a hundred times, and for some reason I thought my sister was somehow more capable than other addicts. It’s so ridiculous now that I see it from her perspective.
“I don’t need this. I’m already going through this stuff with my dealer. Do you know what he’s going to do to me when I don’t get him his money?”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I’m going to have to find another way to pay him if I don’t have money.”
“Yeah? You gonna fuck them for money?”
“You’re one to talk. Isn’t that like what you do with Freya?”
My hands ball into fists. “That’s not the same and you fucking know it.” I get in her face. “Don’t you dare say her name again unless it’s coming with an apology.”
“Whatever, I’m outta here. I’ll have my friends come get me.”
“You don’t have any friends! None of those people are your friends, they’re in the same shitty position you’re in and you’re all just feeding off each other. Even if you did, how are you going to call them? They aren’t picking you up, and I sure as hell am not driving you. If you had a way to leave, you’d already be gone. You have no money. You’re here for the night, and tomorrow you’re gonna get on a plane and check yourself into a treatment program.”
She scoffs. “Fuck you.”
