“Look at yourself,” I repeat, because it’s important for her to see what she really is at this moment, when everything the drugs have done to her is showing. “When I was doing drugs I never really saw what I’d become until I was pretty far into it. I’d lost a lot of weight and my skin looked like shit. Plus my personal hygiene was nonexistent. This”—I gesture at her filthy clothes and matted hair—“is what you look like because of those pills. Can you handle that?”
“This is an exception,” she argues, glancing in the mirror. Her hair is all over the place, her makeup smeared, and her lips are chapped. “I usually don’t look like this. Last night was an exception… a minor slipup.”
“No, you look like this every morning that I’ve had to pick you up. I always thought it was a morning-after sort of thing, since every other time I saw you, you always look so put together, but now I’m kind of realizing that you just hide it well and that the mornings I had to pick you up were just slipups.” I take a deep breath. “And last night wasn’t a f**king slipup. You could have died if I didn’t find you. Do you realize that? How close you were to dying?”
Her eyes enlarge for a split second, but then narrow on my reflection in the mirror. “I hate you,” she says, her shoulder shaking under my hands.
“No, you don’t.” And I know she really doesn’t. She’s just furious, not even at me, but at the fact that whatever she was masking with the drugs is probably surfacing. “And FYI, that’s getting a little old.”
She glares at me, fire scorching in her eyes. “Then leave.”
I shake my head. “As your friend, it’s my duty to not leave you alone for a while, at least until we can get you down from the half doses to no doses.”
She laughs sharply and crosses her arms. “What? Are you just going to follow me around all the time then, until you get sick of me? Didn’t you get the hint the other night that I don’t want you?”
It hurts like a knife slashing into my skin, deep, violent thrashes, but I know enough to know that she’s desperate right now and will say anything to get me to leave. “If I have to.” I realize as I say it that I actually mean it and the feeling is bluntly real. “If that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes.”
She drags her hand down her face and then she notices the small blue-and-purple bruises on her arms. “Where’d these come from?” She touches them lightly with her fingertips.
I shrug, removing my hands from her shoulders. “I have no idea. You had welts there last night when I found you in the bushes. If you ask me, it looks like someone got a little rough with you.”
She winces and then glances at her reflection. “I’m going to take a shower.”
I sit down on the bed and cross my arms. “Okay, I’ll be right here when you get out.”
“What? Aren’t you going to come take a shower with me?” she asks derisively as she yanks open the dresser drawer.
I notice there are candy canes in it and it makes me mentally smile, thinking about when I gave them to her, but I quickly shake the thought away. “Nah, I’ll wait for you here.”
She scowls at me as she snatches a pair of black lacy panties out of the drawer. “Fine, but how do you know I don’t have any pills hidden in the bathroom?”
“I’m guessing you don’t since I’m pretty sure you would have gone after them last night,” I tell her.
Her face reddens with rage. “Whatever.” She storms for the door and I follow her out into the hall, staying at her heels, making sure she doesn’t try to make a run for the front door. She slams the bathroom door in my face and I sit down on the couch to wait for her.
I’m trying not to panic about what the future holds, but I can’t help it. Excluding the fact that I’m taking a big step with another girl besides London, I’m actually going to have to live with her, too, and I could barely stand living with Micha. I like my personal space and if I don’t get enough of it, I start to feel like I’m caged in. I mean, I like Lila and everything, but I’m not even sure if I’ve seen the real her yet, just the drugged-up illusion of her. Drugs are like that. They make someone a different person. With me, I was calmer on the inside, so on the outside I had an easier time talking to people. Lila’s always seemed happy enough, except for the last few weeks. What if she turns into a completely different person and I end up not liking her? I’ve enjoyed all the time we spent together, the bantering, even the sexual tension, the inappropriate touching, and I’ll even admit it, despite the fact of how it ended, that night on her bed made me feel things I never knew existed. But what if that’s all gone after this.
Chapter Eight
Lila
I’m a bitch. I’ve been snapping at Ethan and saying mean things even though he helped me out when he didn’t have to. He let me move in with him, and even went as far as helping me pack up my apartment. But I can’t help it. It’s like there is this foul thing living inside me, this famished monster that wants nothing more than to be fed, and Ethan is getting in the way of the feast, only giving me broken pieces of pills, and he’s giving them to me less frequently each day. I haven’t felt this shitty since my mom and her driver picked me up from boarding school after the incident. She wasn’t there to rescue me, though, like I hoped. She was there to talk some sense into me.
“Well, I have to say that I’m very disappointed in you,” she’d said, staring out the tinted window as we drove through the city, the tall buildings shadowing the streets and the car. “Although, I’m not surprised.” She angled her head to the side to look at me and slipped her sunglasses onto the top of her head. “As much as I hate to admit it, I expected nothing less of you.”
The indignity and mortification of what happened at school still burned inside me and yet I still couldn’t control my tongue. “And why’s that, mother?”
“Watch your tone,” she snapped. “Just because your father isn’t here doesn’t mean you can disrespect me.”
“Why? You let my father.” I was sitting on the opposite side of the backseat, looking at her with such animosity for making me come to the city and the school. If I’d been in California then maybe I would have made better decisions. I wouldn’t have felt so lonely and therefore wouldn’t have gone looking for something to fill the emptiness inside me. I would have never met him and never have done things, disgusting, unimaginable things that I’ll forever regret.
Her eyes snapped wide and before I had time to register what she was doing, she slapped me hard across the cheek. Heat and pain ignited across my face and inside my heart, too. But I didn’t cry. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of crying in front of her.
I cupped my cheek with my head hung low so she couldn’t see the hurt in my eyes. “You’re acting like this was entirely my fault, but I didn’t even know what I was doing. I didn’t understand… I didn’t…” I shook my head, discouraged at myself, but still able to will myself to sit up straight. “It really hurts.”
“Hurting and crying over something a guy did to you is pathetic, Lila Summers,” she said and I had to resist an eye roll because she was seriously one to talk about being pathetic. “And it is your fault. You made the decision to be with him, even though you knew he was older, and now we have to deal with the consequences.”
“We?” I questioned.
“Yes, we,” she said in a calm voice as she tugged off her leather gloves. “Everything you do is done to this family. Your father has family here—you know that. You have cousins and some of his business colleagues’ kids go to the school. How do you think I found out about this to begin with?” She tossed her gloves onto the seat, then reached for her purse. She took out a prescription bottle and read the label. “And the outburst in the middle of class… you’re making us look like we’ve raised some kind of lunatic.”
I’d balled my fists. “The other kids are tormenting me, though. Those stupid Precious Bells told the entire school, and now everyone keeps saying what a little slut I am and how I threw myself on Se…” I trailed off, unable to utter his name. “A-And I haven’t been sleeping very well… I’ve been having nightmares about waking up underneath… underneath him.” I summoned a deep breath, wishing she’d hug me or something, or try to make me feel a little better. She used to give me hugs when I was little, but then my father got a mistress and she got her pills and wine. When she was taking them, which was almost always, they became the most important things to her, and everything else, including me, didn’t seem to matter.
She stared at me with a little bit of sympathy as she twisted the cap off the pills. “Take one of these a day until you’re feeling better.” She grabbed my hand and dumped a pill into my palm.
“What is it?” I held the tiny white pill warily.
“It’s something that’s going to make this all better,” she insisted, screwing the cap back on. “For everyone. You, me, and your father.”
I knew it was wrong, yet she was watching me expectantly, and all I really wanted to do was make the heavy, humiliating, filthy, self-loathing pain vanish, so I tipped my head back and swallowed the pill.
“Good girl,” my mom said like I was a dog who had just done the correct trick and had been rewarded with a treat. She handed me the bottle and then pulled her sunglasses back over her eyes and crossed her legs. “And if you run out, let me know and I’ll get you more.”
And she did. Every time I’d run out, she’d get me a refill. Sometimes when I was visiting at home, she’d share her stash. We’d take the pills and then go shopping or something, the only visible thing inside either or our bodies were the shallow, materialistic, shadows of our true selves.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Micha’s old room, which is my new temporary room. And a lot of that time I spend staring in the mirror, not in vain or anything, just looking at my reflection and trying to figure out who I am without pills in my system. The blue eyes that stare back at me are not recognizable, too wide and confused, instead of blank like they’ve been for years.
As sobriety starts to seep in with each passing day, I try to figure how I got to this exact moment when it felt like I’d been okay just a few days ago. In four days’ time it feel like a thousand bricks have tumbled down on my chest and are pinning me to the bed. And I wonder if I’ll ever be able to stop them from crushing me.
Ethan
What the hell am I doing?
I’m not looking for a relationship. They’re ugly, raw, brutal, painful, life destroying. They exist only in the hearts of the needy and I don’t need anything from anyone. I’m perfectly content being alone, hiding in the desolate place inside myself. It’s what I need to exist because I don’t think I can handle anything else. Even with London, I made sure to keep as much distance as I could and I’m glad. If I hadn’t, I might have broken apart that morning when I got the news. But instead I felt numb, barely feeling a thing about it, almost like it never happened. And being in that place is a great place to be. It’s quiet and still and peaceful. There’s no yelling inside my head, no commotion, no anxiety. I don’t have to worry about being walked all over by someone, being controlled, or losing myself, or trying to take away the identity of another person, pretending to love them, when really I just want to own them.