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I guessed Mom was right. The apple really didn’t fall far from the tree.
But then … I thought about Billy.
His mom was perfect. She was everything a mom should be, and his dad was as cool as they came. They had done nothing to push him to do what he did, and yet he did it anyway.
And that was when I realized that it didn’t always matter what tree the apple fell from.
Sometimes, it was just rotten.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE LAST PILL
Age Twenty-One
The rent and electric bill were both due, and it wouldn’t be long before the cable bill was late. There was nothing to eat in the kitchen. And Mom had, of course, forgotten to do anything but buy her precious pills and booze with the little money she’d gotten at the new salon in town.
She had worked there for a promising two months before Gordon asked me to open the grocery store for a week. Apparently, Mom needed me to wake her up in the morning, and she had failed to show up for work that entire week.
“Mom, youneedto get another job,” I said with a sigh, holding my head in my hands at the kitchen table we could no longer use for eating.
I hadn’t seen the surface of that table in years.
I had six hundred expendable dollars in my wallet. That could cover theelectric, groceries, and part of the rent, but it wasn’t enough for everything. And while I could maybe beg the landlord for a couple more weeks to get the rest of the money together, that would only solve the problem this month. What about the next or the one after that?
“Maybe you can pick up more hours at the grocery store,” she suggested, slumped in her chair.
She was taking more pills than usual these days. She could barely keep her eyes open on a good day—and today wasn’t one of them.
“I can’t work more hours. They have laws against that.”
“Since when do we care about laws?”
She might not care about laws, but I did. Maybe I didn’t always do the right thing, maybe I didn’t live my life by the book, but that didn’t mean I didn’tcare. And all I wanted was to get myself to the point where I could afford to live life by the rules.
Unbeknownst to her, I had been working on it. I just needed to stuff a little more money into the envelope I kept taped to the underside of my bed, and I’d be good to get the hell out of this shithole. All I needed was to convince her to come with me. Life would be better elsewhere;wewould be better. We just needed to get away.
“Don’t you have any more money?” Mom asked, her unsteady voice teetering toward begging.
She didn’t want to be homeless any more than I did. She just didn’t have the willpower to look beyond her next high to do anything about it.
“No,” I lied.
If we absolutely needed it, I could tap into my escape fund. I wouldn’t let us starve. But I would sell some more pills before I did that.
I was already thinking about maybe heading over to The Pit. It was cold outside—a dreary Friday in February—but I knew there’d always be the usual suspects, not wanting to go home after school even if the ground was frozen and the air was bitter. They’d be looking for me. And while I never pushed anything on them, they knew who I was and what I did, and I hated every bit of the reputation I’d built for myself.
But, man, when you dug a hole that deep, how the hellwereyou supposed to climb your way back out if you hadn’t thought to bring a ladder down with you?
It’s never too late to turn shit around though.
Just dip into your savings. Take out enough to pay what yougottapay.
Don’t go down there. Don’t go to The Pit. You can change.
I blew outa breathand nodded to myself, suddenly ready on my twenty-first birthday to turn to a fresh, new page in the story of my life. I wouldn’t go to The Pit. I wouldn’t fill my former classmates and the current wave of high school students with my peddled poison. I would do better.
Standing abruptly, I barreled toward my room with determination, then dropped down beside my bed and felt around the underside of the bedframe until I found the envelope.
