Point Me Towards Tomorrow

Queenie was the first to notice; the first to care. I know I was terrible to her, that she just wanted to help. Too bad I was beyond salvation before I even needed it.

***

Stella didn’t want to go to school that Monday. She had always hated Mondays, and thought that “Mondayists” were really just escapees from the local loony bin. The only thing that made her wake up was her hunger. Her mother knocked on the door as the alarm clock started going off for the third time.

“I should kill whoever invented the snooze alarm. Honey, you need to get up,” Anastasia crooned to her daughter. “You’re already running late.”

Estelle rolled over onto her back to look at her mother and grinned. “I’m glad I didn’t get daddy’s nose.”

Ana rolled her eyes. “Ah, it must be Monday – you’re saying things that might make me think you’re insane, so you don’t have to get up.” She giggled and left the room.

***

Estelle walked down the mini set of stairs into the kitchen less than five minutes later. A pain had erupted in her left temple, and the part of her brain that wasn’t focused on that pain was focused on the cause of it. Her lack of the white, powdered gold.

Her step-father sat in the small kitchen, reading the paper. He put it down when Estelle came in, but watched her go and get a bowl and then the box of Cheerios from the cupboard.

“Would you mind getting me a bowl for some of those, while you’re up, Stell?” He asked her as she was walking to the small coffee table where they sat to eat. She smiled, nodded, and got him his things, as well as a banana to put in her cereal.

Before she unpeeled the banana, she felt her urge for that white powder grow suddenly. She quickly gave her mother a dumb excuse and walk-ran up to her room. When she got there, she searched. Searched her bedside table, inside and out for the newly filled baggie of powder Ally had given her on Saturday.

Estelle was starting to get scared that she had lost the baggie when she saw it sitting atop her dresser. She let out a sigh as she got up, rubbing her knees from having been squatting for a while, and strode to the only thing that mattered to her. Her feet gently squashed the off-white carpeting and carried her to the baggie. Taking it with shaking hands, she didn’t waste time opening it and pouring the white gold onto the wooden surface of her dresser.

She used her fingers to move the powder into four thick lines, hastily wiping her hands on her blue jeans before leaning down to do her duty.

***

Stella had a hop in her step as she quickly took the stairs back down to the kitchen. She passed the bowl of cereal she had been preparing before, not feeling the need to eat anymore. She sat down at the table, looking at her mother eating a big slice of baked oatmeal.

“Honey, aren’t you going to eat your Cheerios?” Anastasia asked her daughter, noticing how Estelle’s hunger had disappeared.

“No, I’m not hungry,” she replied, looking at the clock on the wallpapered wall behind her mother. “I should be leaving for the bus now, anyway.”

Estelle got up from the table, picked her backpack up off the floor by the door, and left the house for her bus stop at the corner of the walk.

***

Stepping off the bus to the school’s parking lot, Estelle immediately saw Queen getting out of her bright red sedan. The two made their ways toward each other and hugged when they met.

“I didn’t see you all weekend, I felt as if I was missing a part of me,” Queenie joked as the pair started walking towards the closest door to the school.

“It was dad’s weekend for me, remember?” Stella replied. Her tone was much more perky than normal, and Queen took notice.

“Did he give you happy pills or something? You sure seem happy,” she was joking still, and, though Estelle knew this, she tried to not show anything on her face. She didn’t realize that she was still up on the powder. She discreetly checked the back pocket of her jeans to make sure that the tiny bag she put a small amount of the powder in was still there.

What can it hurt, she thought, I can’t get in trouble for having it in my pocket. It’s not like we have professional pick-pockets here for that.

“What’re you looking for back there, Stell?” Queen asked her best friend. It was pretty easy to feel someone looking in their back pockets if your arms are linked with theirs.

“Oh, nothing, I thought I had something there when it’s not,” Estelle answered, unlinking her arm with Queen’s, as they went inside the door.

They walked in silence to their locker and got the books for their respective classes. With a brief goodbye, Estelle went to her Health class.

***

By lunch, Estelle’s headache she had had that morning reared its ugly head again. Instead of meeting with Queen, Holly, and Zachy, like she usually did, she went to the bathroom and waited for everyone else in there to leave.

Thank God we don’t have cameras in here, she thought as she took the bag out of her back pocket and opened it slightly. She tore a hanging piece of paper toweling off of the dispenser and wiped one of the sinks dry. Then, she poured two thick lines onto it and let herself give into her growing addiction.

After she was done, Stella started her way to the cafeteria. She got a small salad and some applesauce, but when she got to the lunch table with her friends, she didn’t eat a bite.

“Hey, why didn’t you meet us before lunch?” Holly inquired to Estelle.

“Oh, Mr. Pales needed to tell me something,” she lied quickly. She hated lying to her friends, but her judgment of such things wasn’t as sharp as usual right then.

They had their normal lunchtime conversations, but afterwards, Queenie stopped her best friend.

“Stell, is something going on? You’ve been acting weird all day, and you didn’t eat anything at lunch.”

Estelle denied all of the allegations like an immoral politician, but that didn’t fool Queenie at all. She knew something was wrong, and made a mental note to find out just what it was.