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I’ve losttrack of time. My body is shaking so hard, I can’t lie still. I’m burning up and in the next breath, I’m freezing. I can’t sleep. I can’t rest. The TV is broken, so I’m left with my own thoughts and I think I might be dying.
My time in the room has bled into one long, torturous haze of existence. My sweat has soaked through the sheets, but I turned off the fan long ago, the air feeling like needles on my over-sensitive skin. The only thing keeping me half-sane is the intermittent visits from the other side of the door. Food and water are brought to me. I think it’s Kenzie. Could be anyone else. I wouldn’t know. Then I’m locked back in and barely touch the food, nausea a continuous malignant pulse inside of me.
Give up, give up, give up.
When the hallucinations arrive, I let them in. Like being haunted by ghosts past, my father sits at the edge of the bed, flickering in and out.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
But he doesn’t listen. He’s never listened.
* * *
Ten days.
Ten miserable fucking days.
The lock is finally removed and I’m allowed to leave the room. Someone comes and cleans my sheets, airing out the room as I sit on the rocking chair outside, smoking a much needed cigarette. I thank them and they nod. I’ve lost so much weight, I can barely keep my jeans up.
Taking my black leather-bound notebook out of my bag, I rest it on the armchair beside me. I’ve been jotting things down in here ever since the overdose. It doesn’t seem to mean much—just a nonsensical stream of consciousness—but it doesn’t stop me from writing it down nonetheless. If I would allow myself to be honest, I’d admit that whatever I’m writing down, seems like it’s attached to a feeling… a feeling evoking a sense of arrival, like finally reaching my destination, and being exactly where I was meant to be all along.
It feels warm—loving even.
Whatever the fuck that means.
“You look like shit,” Kenzie says with a small grin while walking up to where I’m sitting and taking one of the smokes from my pack.
“Feel like it too,” I answer quietly, closing the notebook with the pen tucked inside.
I watch his eyes close for half a second on a long inhale, his rusty brown hair glinting in the afternoon sun. “Does anyone know you’re here?” His Scottish lilt curving around every letter.
I let the silence stretch before answering. “Not necessarily.”
His gaze slides to mine and he chuckles. “Not necessarily,” he repeats, shaking his head. He then falls serious, studying me while he takes another drag. “I hope this time it sticks.”
Looking down, I flick my cigarette to the ground and crush it with the heel of my boot.
“It will.”
Not quite a promise. How can I keep that promise when addiction has no expiration date? It just stays dormant, waiting for the day I raise it from the dead. But going cold turkey is a hell of a deterrent. I’d rather stay away from that shit if only to avoid ever feeling like this again.
“I’m holding you to it,” he says.
I shoot him the smallest of grins. “I know.”
1
Fourteen years later
“Lucy is going on a cross-country road trip and you’re going with her.”
I’m in Connor’s study, sitting across from him, wondering if I heard him right. But he doesn’t add anything more, trying to intimidate me in his thousand-dollar suit and a glare that would make most people fold. Good thing I’m not most people. When I realize he’s not joking, I stand up and turn to leave.
“Wait!” Lenix yelps. She swats Connor on the shoulder, standing up from the arm of his chair she was resting on. She’s my cousin’s wife and Lucy’s sister. “Why did you have to say it like that?” she scolds, rounding the desk and approaching me. “Look, Bastian.” She wrings her hands, looking nervous. “I know this is way below your pay grade, and, well—”
“I’m not a glorified bodyguard,” I say with my usual bored tone.
She sighs in defeat. “Iknowthat,” she says with a slight eye roll, tucking her black chin-length hair behind her ear. “But I don’t trust anyone with my sister, other than you three.”
