Cross My Heart

I won’t bore you with every scrap of detail about my life for the next 11 years. I’m sure all you want to hear about is Josh. Joshua Ramsay.
But you need the story, so I need to bore you a bit. Not long though.
Well, Trish and I really did end up being amazing friends. She was my new Shaun. I could talk to her about anything, and she was there to give me the best advice she could.
And when neither of us wanted to think, she was there with some drugs and a wild sleep over party.
Her boyfriend, Sam, was nice. He reminded me a lot of Matt. He was awkward and never really talked to me but I felt like he could see into my soul. Sometimes his awkward would make him seem like an ass hole but I knew he was just afraid to really say something.
Trish was my only friend – other than Sam – over the next 11 years. She convinced me to stay with the Jacobson’s. They were okay but I never really became part of they’re family. I was always out, and they considered this normal. They never officially adopted me but I stayed with them until I turned 18 when Sam lent me the money to buy a little run down house.
I was forever grateful to Sam for doing that for me, and will admit I did some trafficking in return. I lived there until I turned 25, when I moved back to Vancouver.
In Vancouver, I lived on the streets. Going to shelters only when I really needed to for fear of my heroin being lifted.
Oh yeah, never got off that. I came so close to ODing some times.
And if it wasn’t obvious I dropped out of school two months into my senior year. I couldn’t handle school and drugs all at the same time. One had to go. At the time it wasn’t a question.
As for boyfriends…I never had one. One-night-stands at party’s is all I got for action, but I never stopped loving Josh. I couldn’t commit when Josh was all I thought about…Josh and heroin.
Actually, Trish had a name for the times when I got so high I was gone. It was Joh’s J&H. My Josh & Heroin time. I was not to be spoken to or reasoned with during my J&H time.
And I know your all wondering this…I did infact listen to Marianas Trench. Almost every minute of every day. I carried around CDs. One at first, a ratty picture of a first aid kit on the front. Then joined it a cardboard case with a beautiful view from a stage. Soon came a blue inverted of that. My arms craved for a forth to join they’re ranks. A long with the EP that mocked me with its online order forms.
I was so happy for Josh. His dreams came true. I cried when I opened the Fix Me program and Matt’s face looked back at me to. And Ian. I barely remembered him but he was there and he was perfect. And Mike…I knew that name…the name of the guy who threw the party.
I was so happy for all four of my beautiful boys. Even when Josh mentioned Amanda in the acknowledgements. At least he was happy. Dammit, he probably assumed I was dead via over dose.
As for dreams of my own…I only really had one. And it was stupid, I never followed it.
It was Trish who inspired it. I was sitting alone at my house with a Green Day song blasting as loud as it could go, singing along at the top of my lungs.
“I WANNA BE THE MINORITY! I DON’T NEED YOUR AUTHORITY!” Trish snuck up behind me and scared me. She told me I had an amazing set of lungs and should follow them out of this hole and make something out of my voice.
I considered it for a time, but figured I could never make it anyways.
I had a few appearance changes to. I couldn’t stay little red head. I dyed my hair a pitch black. Darker than Josh’s was when I left. I pierced my lip – snake bites, of course – and stretched my ears out to 00. (Author: google it dammit) I got a few tattoo’s as well.
My first tattoo was a sun around my belly button – which I also had pierced. Second, the initials JKR twisted into an intricate vine design around my ankle. Third, Fix Me on my neck. Forth, My Masterpiece Will Fall Apart, It Was Over Before The Start on the back of my right shoulder.
As for the past eleven years, I think that’s all you need to know. I was a druggie skating by on what Sam gave me and Trish fed me. I caught a bus all the way to Vancouver and lived on the streets with nothing but my three CDs and the Green Day shirt on my back for six months.
Six months down that road, I was walking out of an empty convenience store at 3 AM, when some jerk in some sort of weird 3 AM hurry knocked into me. My CDs went flying along with the bottle of Coke Zero I had bought with a toonie I found on the ground.
“I’m so sorry!” The jerk said in a rushed voice. “I didn’t see you –“ He stopped talking and I felt his eyes on me as I picked up my stuff. “P-phoenix?” He stuttered. “Phoenix Hanson?”
I looked up into his face. I hadn’t gone by that name in eleven years.
Those crystal blue eyes made my head spin, and my past come crashing back.