Heroes...And The Rest Of Us.

I come alive quickly when I hear what this person has to say on the other end of the phone.

"Who the fuck is this?" I say. Adam gives me a startled look.

"It doesn't who I am. I was told that you and your husband have a personal interest in this kid, so I thought you would like to know that he's at my place and he's not in a good way." My heart drops into my stomach when he says this.

"Where?" I say after I take a deep breath. He gives me an address for somewhere in St.Louis and hangs up the phone. I quickly jump out of bed and run around the bed into the walk-in closet to get dressed.

"Babe?" Adam says. "Who was that? Something about Jack?" I stumble out of the closet with just my jeans on, trying to clasp my bra.

"It was a guy who said that Jack was at his place right now in St.Louis. It doesn't sound good, Adam, but it's all we've got. We have to go now." He jumps out of bed and runs out to the living room. I clasp my bra and put on a fitted white zip-up hoodie and a pair of high heeled black boots. I grab my purse and run out to the living room where I see Adam waiting for me. He's still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Black jeans, charcoal gray t-shirt over a long sleeved black thermal with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, a thin black beanie, and boots. He has his sunglasses in his hand even though its raining outside.

"Ready?" I ask.

"Yeah, you?"

"Yeah, lets go." He tosses me his Tahoe keys.

"You can drive." I nod and we walk out the front door together.

When we get in the car, he grabs the GPS and punches in the address that I wrote down. I back out of the driveway. The rain is coming down pretty steadily, not like a downpour just a steady rain. I hit the wipers on and glance over at Adam, who's thumbing through the contacts on his phone.

"Dammit." He says under his breath, putting the phone up to his ear. I unconciously reach up and grab the single gold cursive letter "A" charm thats hanging from a short gold chain around my neck, and wrench it back and forth on the chain.

"Yes, Chicago Illionois, please." Adam says into the phone. I grimace when I hear the number he asks for. I'm leaned up in my seat with both hands on the wheel now, listening to the ringing coming from the other end of Adam's phone until a woman finally answers.

"Center for Addiction and Mental Health, this is Michelle, how may I help you?"

"Hi Michelle, my name is Adam, and I was hoping you could give me a little assistance."

I bite my lip and dangle my wrists over the steering wheel, turning one of the three rings I wear on my right hand around my finger. I can't hear what the woman says to Adam, but it's a short answer.

"Well, I'm on my way to St.Louis from Peoria to potentially pick up a friend of my wife and mine, who I think is probably on something, and I was wondering if you could maybe give me some sort of advice on how to go about doing this, you know? I've never really dealt with this situation with someone else before."

St.Louis is about an hour drive from Peoria, and it's just two hours from Chicago where the rehab is. I can barely hear the woman talking, but I can't tell what she's saying.

"The thing is Michelle, I know how to get myself out of situations like these, I've been clean for a year. But, I don't know really how to go about getting someone else help like this." Adam says and I can hear more talking on the other end.

"He's been clean for a month and a half, but I have a feeling that he's not...um clean anymore. I haven't talked to him since lastnight at about nine o' clock, he dissapeared." I reach into one of the cupholders and grab Adam's cigarettes and his lighter. I stick one in my mouth and take my hands off of the wheel to light it. Adam motions to me to give him the cigarettes, so I take one out of the pack and hand it to him with the lighter. He cradles the phone in between his shoulder and his ear while he lights up.

"We were both going to meeting once a week, uh... we did that three times, I think." Adam says after taking the first hit off his cigarette. He blows smoke out of his mouth and holds it in between his fingers.

"Turn right." The GPS tells me. I hit my blinker on and realize that we're pulling into the suburbs of St.Louis.

"So, whether he's on something when we find him you want me to bring him in for a ten day in patient program." Adam says looking out his window at the rapidly deteriorating part of town that we're driving in.

"OK, thank you Michelle. You've been a big help." He hangs up and takes another hit from the cigarette. I must look like a trainwreck in slow motion. I'm leaned up in my seat with one hand clenched on the steering wheel, and the other on my necklace.

"This is not a good part of town, babe." I say.

"I know, I've been here and done this same thing that Jack's doing. It's probably the most scared I've ever been in my whole life. I didn't know if I was going to be shot just for walking down the street looking for what I was I looking for, or if I was going to be arressted, ya know?"

"Do you think Jack's scared like that?" I ask and he kind of shrugs. A crease forms in between his eyebrows as he looks out the window at the houses.

"I don't know. I don't know what he's done, or if he's feeling anything right now."

"Your destination is on the left." The GPS says. I park on the street across from the house. It's a two story with peeling white paint, and black shutters that are falling off of some of the windows. The screen on the front door is ripped and there are two garbage cans tipped over in the middle of the driveway. The lawn is small and doesn't look like it's been mowed in a while.

"I don't want you to have to go in there because I know what we're going to find," I start.

"It's a drug house." He says. Both of us are staring across the street at the house.

"But, I don't really want to go in there by myself, either." I finish.

"I'm not letting you go in there alone. That's just the way it is, babe."

"Lets do this then." I say, getting out of the car. I wait on my side of the car for him to walk around to me, then we walk together across the street without touching each other in any way. I hear thunder as we stand under the small roof thats covering the front steps. Adam knocks on the screen door. He stands to the side of the door, and puts a hand across the front of my body moving me behind him slightly so I'm not standing directly in front of the door.

A guy with long dark curly hair opens the door and looks through the screen at us. He appears to be in his late thirties or early forties, of cuban descent, but its obvious to me when he speaks that English is his first language.

"May I help you?" He asks. It's the same soft spoken guy that I talked to on the phone earlier.

"You called my wife and I about an hour ago to pick up Jack Peterson." Adam says.

"Oh yeah, come on in." He opens the screen door for us and we step inside cautiously. My fears about this place are instantly confirmed when I look around. There's a bunch of drugs and needles in the living room area, scales, money, and a couple guns on the coffee table. The smell is horibble, a mix of drug vapors and eurine. Adam's face is pale as he looks around.

"Where is he?" I ask the guy. I don't see anyone in the living room at first glance.

"No idea. Probably upstairs."

"How long has he been here?"

"They got here about one lastnight."

"They?" Adam asks.

"Yeah, him and Kari-Ann."

"Of course." I say under my breath.

"Well, you guys are welcome to walk around and look for him. Just don't steal anything." He laughs. Adam and I glance at each other. He takes my hand and leads me up the stairs carefully to a hallway where there's a bunch of kids that appear to Jack's age laying around, stoned out of their minds.

"Oh my God, Adam."

"I know. Lets just find him and get the hell out of here."

We pick our way around the people and go into a bedroom. We find Kari-Ann laying on a queen sized bed in the middle of the room, wearing only her bra and underwear staring at the ceiling in a stoned state. Adam leaves me standing in the doorway and walks over to her. He shakes her shoulder gently and she looks at him and smiles.

"Hey Sugar, who are you?" She says.

"I'm not your sugar. Where's Jack?" He snaps at her, dragging her up so she's sitting.

"Who?" She's fucking out of it, talking all dazed, looking around the room with wild eyes.

"Jack! I know he came here with you, now where is he?!"

"I don't know where he is, OK? Stop yelling at me." She whines. Adam rolls his eyes and walks back over to me.

"We're obviously not going to get anywhere with her." He says. I nod and we move on to another room. It's another bedroom with a bathroom attached. Adam goes into the bathroom to look around and I look around the bedroom. At first glance, it doesn't appear that anyone is in here.

"Unh." I hear someone say quietly. I walk around and look on the other side of the bed. I find Jack laying in the space between the wall and the bed, with his eyes half closed and his breathing shallow.

"Jack! Oh my God, Adam get in here. I found him." I run to where he is laying and take his face in my hands, trying to get him to wake up. I feel Adam come up behind me and put a hand on my back.

"Jack, wake up." I say.

"Come on, lets get him up on the bed." Adam says to me. I stand up and together we lift him up onto the bed.

"Jack, look at me." Adam says, hitting the side of his face lightly.

"I'm awake, you can stop hitting me, Adam." He finally says. Adam stops hitting him and takes a step back. I sit down on the edge of the dirty bed.

"Hey, mama." He says, looking at me.

"Hey, baby." I wipe a tear from my cheek.

"Please, don't cry for me. I'm fine, you know?"

"You're not fine, Jack. You need help, that's why we're here." Adam says to him.

"No. I'm fine, trust me on this, man. "

"Jack, let us take you home. Let us help you." I say.

"No, I already told you, I'm fine." He's looking more awake and alert now.

"This isn't up for discussion, you're coming home with us."

"I'm not going home, there's nothing for me there." He says quite loudly. He sits up and coughs. Adam looks at me with a pained expression on his face. Jack gets up out of bed and starts to walk out of the room.

"Where are you going?" Adam asks him.

"I'm going downstairs. I already told you, I'm not going home with you guys. Thanks, but no thanks."

"What do you think is here for you, Jack? A girlfriend that fucked you over? A bunch of people that call you their friend as long as you're buying drugs from them?" Adam yells following him.

"Fuck you, Adam. You sit on your high ass horse and act like you're better than me. You're not better than me!"

"Is that what brought all this on? You think I act like I'm better than you? Fuck that, all I've ever done is try to help you." Jack walks into the living room area and grabs a drug pipe of some sort and a lighter. Before he can get it up to his mouth, Adam grabs it from him and throws it across the room. The guy who owns the house is nowhere in sight. Jack just glares at him.

"You wanna throw your life away go right ahead, I won't stop you. But don't drag my wife's name through the mud with you. If you forgot, her name is the only reason that you're not in fucking jail right now." Adam yells at Jack, who looks at me for the first time since he talked to me upstairs.

"Please don't do this to yourself, Jack." I say. He looks down at the floor and thinks for a minute.

"Fine, I'll go." He says and turns towards the door. Again, Adam and I follow him out into the now pouring down rain. Adam is in front of us, leading us across the street to the car.

"This is so fucked. I can't even fucking believe this is my fucking life. I already had parents, I don't need another set telling me how to live my life." Jack spits to me as we walk side by side. I've had enough of his drugged up attitude and head games. I stop walking and grab him by the back of his shirt, forcing him to turn around and face me. I slap him hard across the face. We're both drenched by the rain.

"You know what Jack?" I scream in his face. "Adam and I have given up a hell of a lot for you. We got you out of going to jail, we took you to Vancouver and put up with your shit up there, and then we brought you home and put a roof over your fucking head!"

"No one asked you to do that!" He screams back at me.

"You can fucking turn this around, Jack. And you want to give up what you have at home for what? This? A ramshackle fucking drug house and a useless ex girlfriend that cheated on you with your bandmate? Are you fucking kidding me?" He doesn't say a word to this. Adam comes over and stands beside me.

"I don't want you to come with us if you don't want to, because you won't commit to getting better if you do that. I want you to want to get help, and if you can't do that, then fine. I'll let you stay here and I'll go to your probation officer's office tomorrow and take my name off of your bond, and they'll come get you and take you to jail. What happens after that is up to you." I say. I look over at Adam for support and he nods his head.

Jack just stands there staring down at me, drops of water dripping off of him. The three of us are all soaked. I can't tell if I'm crying or if its just rain on my face.

"Lets get out of here. We look like fucking idiots out here in the middle of the street in the rain." Jack finally says. I let out a sigh of relief and Adam puts his arm around my shoulders, turning me towards the car. We all get in the Tahoe, Adam driving this time. I light myself a new cigarette and look out the passenger side window at the rain.

"I thought you quit smoking." Jack says from the backseat.

"I picked up a lot of bad habits when you left, babe."

"So what happens next? Where are we going?"

"We're going to take you to Chicago to the CAMH, and you're going to detox for ten days. Then you'll come home and go through an out patient program for twenty days." Adam says to him.

We drive the rest of the way to Chicago in silence and drop Jack off at the rehab. Then, Adam and I go back home to Peoria. When we get home, we both shower and change out of our wet clothes. I order us some food to-go from the bar I used to work at and send Adam out to pick it up.

When he gets home, after we eat, we go into our bedroom and I change into my pajamas. Adam's laying on our bed in his boxers waiting for me to come to bed. I straddle him and he puts his hands on my hips.

"I think we should just stay in bed until it stops raining." He says.

"And when will that be?"

"I think the weather guy said monday." I laugh at him.

"It's saturday night, babe." He pulls my face down for a kiss, and whispers in my ear.

"I know."