The Needle and the Damage Done

I avoid Adam’s calls and texts until I have to go back to school. Obviously, he’s more than a little pissed that I left him without a ride at Steven’s party. And oddly enough, I don’t feel the need to apologize like I usually would. Maybe I was sick of playing second fiddle to Adam, or maybe it was because I’d had a better time with Drew and Brad than I’d ever had with Adam at one of those parties. Whatever the reason, I’m not in the mood to see him when I step through the halls on Monday morning. Within what seems like mere seconds, he’s in my face.

“Hey, so why’d you ditch me at that party?” he demands right away, falling into step beside me as I walk quickly and attempt to escape him.

“I told you,” I try to explain, “I had my mom’s car and she needed it back. I said that when we got there. Besides, I tried to find you and tell you I had to leave, but I didn’t see you anywhere.” That last part is totally a lie, but Adam doesn’t need to know that.

“Well, what’d you end up doing instead?” he asks, accepting this answer easily. Apparently he’s not as pissed as I thought.

“I just went home,” I lie again. “Watched a couple movies, read a little while. The usual.”

“Leave it to Dawson James to completely waste the opportunity to party even on New Year’s Eve.” He scoffs and shakes his head like this is some kind of travesty. And to be honest, I’m not even entirely sure why I’m not being honest with him about hanging out with Brad and Drew and his family. Maybe I just want something that I can keep for myself (that I actually want, anyway. I wouldn’t know how to start talking to anyone about Sylvia’s letters).

I need to divert his attention from me. “Well, what’d you end up doing? How was the rest of that party?”

I already know it was stupid. I don’t need him to tell me that, but I’ll let him fill me in on whatever ridiculousness occurred after I left. No one said I actually have to listen.

“It was sick,” he enthuses. I listen to him go on and on about it while we head to our lockers to get books for first period, which makes me thankful that we don’t share that class together. It sounds exactly like every other party we’ve ever been to together. As I’m slamming my locker shut, he finally starts saying something interesting.

“And oh, dude, the best part was I hooked up with Melissa Fifeman,” he tells me excitedly. “Bro, the best thing you’ve ever done for me is turning that girl down.”

“Nice,” I reply, even though it’s not really. “How’d that come about?” I can’t say I’m that surprised by this at all. I remember seeing them talking right before I left. I knew he’d be fine.

He explains for a little while about how they spent some time talking, and then he showed her how to play beer pong (which he then proceeded to beat her at, apparently getting her really drunk). He then went into what he described as “the juicy stuff,” which involved them going upstairs and making out up until she got sick and passed out.

“That’s all that happened though, right?” I ask, feeling my stomach twist. Please God, tell me the story ends there.

“Well, I mean, I fucked her,” he flat-out admits. “That’s what we were up there to do; she would have given it up anyway.”

I’m so stunned that I have absolutely no idea what to say to him. I fight to keep my jaw from dropping open, so I just shake my head at him.

He makes an annoyed face. “What’s the problem?”

My chest tightens and words finally start to form in my mouth, ready to yell at him right here in the hallway. The bell rings before I can get any out, so I just shake my head at him again in disgust. “I have to go to class.”

I walk away before he says anything else and I try to keep the image out of my head for the rest of the day. I intentionally dodge Adam anytime I see him throughout the day, purposely sneaking into the cafeteria through a different entrance and sitting where I know he can’t see me. The only class I can’t escape him is econ since we’re seated next to each other. He keeps trying to talk to me, but I only shoot daggers at him.

Adam attempts to corner me after class, but I completely brush him off, telling him that I have to go to work. This is of course entirely true, but I’m not due there for a little while, not that he needs to know that. I walk the long way to work, unable to shake the sick feeling in my stomach. I wish with every fiber of my being that Adam hadn’t done that, and that he hadn’t told me. I don’t know how much longer I can keep holding in these kinds of secrets.

The next day I decide to say something. If I couldn’t help Sylvia, at least maybe I can help Melissa. I’m on my way to the principal’s office the next morning before class when I spot her. She’s walking with her friends and laughing, all of them looking as beautiful as ever. Melissa’s eyes are light and happy, like she has no idea what happened. And hell, maybe she doesn’t. And if that’s the case, I can’t imagine ruining her life like this. If she doesn’t know anything happened now, maybe she’ll never need to. But still, Adam can’t go unpunished for this.

I change routes from the principal’s office over to the athletics department. I stop to make polite small talk with the secretary before I ask to be let back into Coach Landry’s office to speak to him. She says he isn’t there and that he’s already headed to his classroom to start his econ class. After a little convincing, she lets me back to his office anyway to at least leave a note for him. I glance around the slightly messy office and manage to find a notepad near the phone. I take one of the pens and jot down a quick note, suggesting that he administer another random urine test to the soccer team. There’s no way that Adam will be able to pass one if he doesn’t know it’s coming. I don’t leave a name, and I hope that the secretary doesn’t tell Coach that I stopped to see him.

Adam doesn’t even bother trying to talk to me today, which is a huge relief. In fact, he avoids contact with me for the rest of the week and doesn’t speak to me again until the next Monday, where he stops me in the parking lot as I’m about to leave for work.

“What’s your problem, man?” he asks, shoving my shoulder. “Are you like jealous that I got with Melissa or something? Because you had your chance, and you completely blew it.” He shakes his head and continues without giving me a chance to answer. “You’ve always been jealous of me, dude. Always.”

He starts to say something else, and I snap at him for the first time ever in all the years I’ve known him. “Can you shut the fuck up for two seconds, Adam? Jesus Christ.” I shove him back. “I’m not pissed because you were with Melissa. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that I don’t care about that. What I do fucking care about is that you raped her.”

“What are you talking about?” he argues loudly. “I didn’t rape her. God.” He looks like he’s ready to haul off and hit me, and I know I feel the same way. I’ve never been prone to violence, but I can feel anger flooding into my hands, a sensation I’m not familiar with.

“Well did she say she was gonna have sex with you?” I ask. I don’t give him a chance to answer. Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve got him by the collar of his shirt. “Because even if she said that before she passed out, that doesn’t mean you could still fuck her. She wasn’t even conscious, Adam. She couldn’t consent, she was drunk and completely out of it. What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“It’s just what happens at parties!” Adam yells in my face. “You would have done the same thing!” He tries to push my hands off of his shirt, but my grip only tightens.

“No, I wouldn’t have.” Does this guy even know me at all? And how the hell did Adam get to be this way? Have I been blind our entire friendship or did he just recently become a huge fucking douche? “I’m not a piece of shit like you.” I want to punch him with everything in me. Every bit of rage and disgust I’ve felt while reading Sylvia’s letters flows through me, anytime Adam’s pissed me off so badly that I can barely breathe. But I let go of his shirt and push him away. “I can’t be friends with a rapist. Don’t ever fucking talk to me again.”

I throw him one last repulsed look before I turn to walk away, though I don’t get very far. He jumps on my back and I fall to the ground beneath his weight, the knees of my jeans tearing almost immediately. He has me in a headlock and I struggle to get free from his grip, but Adam’s a pretty strong dude. I roll onto my back without warning, hoping that the blow to his head will make Adam let go. By now a small crowd of people has surrounded us and I catch the backside of one of the individuals breaking away, I hope going to get help.

Adam has let go now and I struggle to get up and elbow him in the face in the process, but when I do, I see he’s hit his head pretty badly. There’s some blood matting in his hair and he reaches up to touch it, frowning and breathing deeply. I’m trying to catch my breath as I look down at him, hoping that he’ll be smart and let this stupid fight end instead of lunging again. I extend my hand to help him up, but he smacks it away and sits up on his own.

Moments later the principal and vice principal are pushing through the crowd, ready to break us up if need be, but they’re too late and the fight has ended. Regardless, Adam and I get dragged to the office where they have to call our parents to let them know what happened.

My mother is definitely going to kill me.

When our parents arrive, Adam’s mom and dad cast dirty looks at my mother and me as the principal talks. We’re both getting suspended, me for three days and Adam for five because according to the girl who got help, he shoved me first, which is true. But still, my mother is definitely pissed off.

When we’re allowed to leave, she stalks ahead of me stiffly. She doesn’t say anything to me the whole car ride home, just drives angrily. The knot in my stomach is almost unbearable by the time we get back. I’ve absolutely never gotten in trouble at school before, especially not for fighting. I have no idea what to expect when we get in the house.

I follow her in cautiously. I’ve rarely ever seen my mother extremely angry, and I’ve luckily never been on the receiving end, because it’s not a pretty sight. When we get inside, I sit down at the table, waiting for her to go absolutely ape-shit, but she ignores me, going about making dinner as she normally would.

I finally can’t take it anymore, sighing. “Can you please just tell me if I’m in trouble or not?”

She sets the knife down that she’s using to cut up the cilantro with. “I don’t know. I’m just trying to figure out what the hell is going on with you lately. You’re so secretive, you spend all your time in your room, and now all of a sudden you’re fighting your best friend.”

She’s not around enough to know if I’ve been secretive or not, but I’m not about to tell her that. “I’ve just been busy with school and college applications, I’m not trying to like isolate myself or anything. And Adam and I are just growing apart. It kind of just came to blows today. We got in an argument and I didn’t mean for it to come to that. He shoved me and I tried walking away, all I did was defend myself.”

I’m thankful that my mother at least tries to let me explain, even though I know she doesn’t get it. “I’m just disappointed in you.”

That definitely hurts worse. I’d much rather her be mad than disappointed. “I’m sorry it happened.”

“So am I,” she says and turns to finish making dinner. This gives me an opening to retreat to my room, still waiting to find out if she’s going to ground me or something. Over dinner we talk about things a little more, though I lie and say the fight started about something else. She decides to ground me for three days, the length of my suspension. This basically means I can’t use the car and can’t go anywhere besides work, which is fair enough.

I spend the rest of the night working on homework and go to bed early. My mom’s already gone by the time I get up in the morning, so I spend the day watching Fight Club for umpteenth time and start reading The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult, which ends up being surprisingly interesting. I get absorbed in the book, completely skipping lunchtime in order to get through some of the longer points of view. By the time I’m almost done, it’s after the mail truck has come by so I throw on a coat and boots, heading out to grab it.

When I get out to the mailbox, I notice that there are footprints leading up to it, incredibly fresh looking. The mail guy never gets out of his truck, and the prints definitely don’t look masculine. That could only mean one thing: Sylvia has been here.

I glance towards the direction that the prints came from, hoping that maybe I’ll catch the back of her or something, but she’s gone. I tear into the mailbox, ripping the mail out with such force that it’s almost embarrassing. I slam the mailbox closed and rush inside.

After I place the rest of the mail in my mom’s specified area, I settle back onto the couch where I’ve been parked for the last six or seven hours. I open the letter and start to read.

Dear Dawson,

When I was a kid, I always had a lot of trouble sleeping. Eventually my dad bought me a clock that played white noise. I always stuck to the ocean wave setting, and as I got older, I started to explore piano music and thunderstorms. I kind of hoped to outgrow the need for background noise while I was sleeping, but alas, I still need the TV on to sleep at night.

I used to have to do the same thing. I went through a brief period after my dad passed that I had to have the TV on to fall asleep, but now only usually have to do it when I’m completely stressed.

You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this, because I would be wondering the same thing. It seems totally irrelevant, I’m sure. And it is, but also kind of not.

I used to be very close with my grandmother before she passed, and as a kid I spent a lot of nights sleeping over her house. The problem was that where I used to sleep in her house, there was no CD player or TV. I had no way to play my white noise. One night when I couldn’t sleep, I went digging through one of the closets and found some old tape player and pulled out some meditative tapes to go along with it. Those had to be relaxing, right?

I mean, yeah, they’re for meditating. If they’re not relaxing, what the hell’s the point?

The woman on the tape started talking about slowly relaxing each part of the body slowly, which is pretty typical of those tapes. I got bored pretty quickly, but it sparked my interest again when it started talking about balls. As an eight year old kid, of course that word would be hilarious. “Ha-ha, she said balls and she’s describing them bouncing, and now I’m laughing hysterically and never going to sleep.”

But I remember the next section of the tape pretty well. The woman said to imagine a golden orb in the pit of your stomach, and then imagine it expanding and filling your body with a warm glow. You feel content and at ease, fully relaxing.

And that is what it feels like to shoot heroin.

Wait, what the fuck? What the hell happened between that last letter and now? I can’t imagine shooting heroin would feel anything like what she described. I almost want to stop reading right now, but I can’t. My eyes are drawn to the page like magnets.

That probably came out of left field, huh? Or maybe not totally. I did talk about it in my last letter. And during that last letter, I know I was pretty vehement about never using it. It’s kind of crazy how things can change so much in such a short amount of time.

Yeah, like how she can go from a pot smoker to a heroin user in like a week, and how Adam can go from being my best friend to someone that I can’t even bear to look at in that same time frame.

I guess shit kind of just hit the fan, emotionally. I was stressed about the regular stuff, like applying to college and trying to keep my grades at an average level – I gave up on getting As after the first interim report went out first quarter (which of course pissed my mom off to no end). I keep thinking about the future, and I know that’s what we’re all doing right now with graduation around the corner, but I just don’t see one for myself. I can’t picture myself going to college, or traveling, or ever having a family or career or anything like that. So that kind of throws me and it makes me feel like someone is stealing my oxygen away.

Just as much as I have been thinking about the future, I have been thinking about the not so recent past with John and everything. My dad has been working extra hours, and without Sarah, Cammie is my only friend and I can’t expect her to always drop everything for me even though I know she would. I’ve been stuck in my own head a lot and it’s making me feel crazy. And so last night when I was feeling really extra shitty about everything, I ended up calling Harley.

He showed up within minutes after I called him and he picked me up, the two of us just driving around for a while. He asked me what was wrong since I’d sounded upset on the phone. We smoked some pot as we talked, and I started babbling like an idiot, eventually dissolving into tears. The last time I’d seen Harley, I’d given him a very brief overview of the whole John situation but this time I give him the whole story, right down to all the gritty details that I’ve only ever told you (Cammie got the short version when I’d told her).

I was kind of hoping that actually saying what happened out loud would help me settle down a little, but I just kept getting more and more worked up despite the pot we were smoking. For the first time ever, it wasn’t doing anything for me. I couldn’t calm down and I started to have a panic attack.

I’ve only ever had one panic attack before, shortly after my dad had passed away. I was completely freaked out and had no idea what was going on which only made it worse. I thought for sure I was dying. My mom calmed me down, getting me to take deep breaths - in for seven seconds, out for three. When I was finally okay again, I was exhausted so I can’t imagine that that was a wonderfully pleasant experience for Sylvia.

Harley rubbed my back and breathed with me, getting me to calm down finally. He didn’t say anything about what I had told him, but he told me he had something that would make me feel better, but we’d have to stop at his place. So he drove to this area of kind of rundown condos, pulling outside one of the shabbier ones (okay, they’re actually like super rundown, but I was trying to be optimistic).

When I went inside, I was immediately hit by some sort of odor that I couldn’t accurately describe, but was vaguely damp and heavy, almost in a sickly sweet way. Did that make any sense? Probably not. I guess it’s not important. But the kitchen was small and dirty with mouse droppings on the floor, which was pretty gross. He led me through the family room which was almost totally empty and to his bedroom. The only things there were a mattress on the floor pushed up against one wall, a backpack beside it, and the window on the opposite side covered by cardboard, glass still on the floor.

“You live here?” I’d asked, a little more than slightly surprised.

I really can’t imagine living somewhere like that, especially with mouse shit on the floor. I can almost picture the area of condos she’s talking about, but there are more than a few clusters of condos in Brunswick that could fit that description. So that information isn’t going to get me anywhere at all.

Harley kind of laughed and said that he’d just bought the place to fix up and that he was actually staying with some friends of his elsewhere. Then he sat down on the mattress and leaned up against the wall, yanking the backpack over. He patted the spot next to him and motioned for me to sit down. Almost everything in me was screaming to just ask to be taken home, but I sat down anyway.

He started digging around in his backpack, pulling out some shirts and tossing them on the floor. Whatever he wanted was really buried in there. After about thirty more seconds, he found what he was looking for and he pulled out this small packet of powder. He set it on his lap and started pulling more shit out – some cotton balls, needles, a spoon, and a lighter. Then he turned to me and asked, “This is what you’re looking for to help you feel better, isn’t it?”

Goddamnit, Sylvia, you should have just asked for a ride home or left by yourself.

I started to protest at first, but before I could actually get a sentence out, he started sprinkling the powder onto a spoon, waving the lighter underneath for a while to heat it up. I watched in awe, and when I said nothing, Harley looked up and practically scoffed. “What, you didn’t think I was bringing you back here to smoke more pot, did you?”

Well, yeah, I’d told him. That was kind of what I’d been thinking. I’d figured that after our last conversation he would have dropped the whole heroin thing.

“Look, you’re feeling fucked up,” he reasoned, dropping a cotton ball into the spoon once the powder had melted into an amber liquid. “So why not get fucked up?”

Because there’s a huge difference between wanting to relax and have a little fun as opposed to ruining your Goddamn life.

Anyone smarter than me would have just left at that point, but I felt like my feet had grown roots and attached themselves to the floor. I wasn’t going anywhere. I watched as the cotton ball absorbed the liquid, dampening. He took one of the needles and used it to draw the liquid out of the cotton ball, looking almost darker within the syringe. He offered it to me. “So do you want to or not?”

I should’ve said no. And I know that. But I started to think about my life again, just how hopeless everything has felt lately. That pit sized hole in my stomach feels like it’s growing every second, every time I think about John, like my body is trying to eat itself from the inside out, maybe cleanse itself or something. At this point, I’d say I was self-destructive. Correction, I am self-destructive. Things already sucked, and besides, he’d raised a pretty valid point – I was feeling fucked up, so why not get fucked up?

I squeeze my eyes shut for a second, feeling a mix of sadness and anger. I’ve had dark times, but I can’t imagine being so depressed that I was that hell-bent on self-destructing and ruining potentially the rest of my life.

I told him that I didn’t know what to do, so Harley offered to shoot me up this time and show me how. He took off his belt, tightened it around my upper arm a little, and told me to make a fist. My veins started to appear almost immediately and with a pinch, he inserted the needle into one of the veins and pressed down on the syringe, letting the liquid flow into my body slowly.

Momentarily, I was feeling very relaxed, like a great wave of pleasure was washing over me. I breathed out a sign of relief. Harley sort of smirked as he took the needle out of my arm and took his belt back. “I told you that was exactly what you needed.”

And I couldn’t deny that at that moment, it really did feel like something I needed. I just wished that I didn’t have to feel that way. I started to get very tired, so I asked Harley to drive me back home. During the ride back, I could feel myself fighting to stay awake.

“You didn’t say this was going to make me so sleepy,” I’d said. Of course I’d read that and learned that from movies and shows, but I’d severely underestimated the power it would have over me.

“You didn’t ask,” he’d replied.

What a fucking douchebag.

My dad still wasn’t home when we got back, so Harley walked me into the house. I lay down on my bed, cuddling up into my pillows. Once I was situated, Harley started to leave but then paused in the doorway of my bedroom. “So I guess I’ll be hearing from you soon.”

“Huh?” It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about. “Oh. No. This was a one-time thing. But thanks.”

He scoffed. “Right. See you.”

I crashed for a super long time, sleeping through my alarm entirely. I had an intense stomachache when I woke up, so I curled up and just held myself for a little while before I decided that I needed to make myself sick to feel better. I was nauseous, so shoving a finger down my throat would probably help. (Gross, I know. Sorry.)

It did, but didn’t, if that makes any sense at all. I found a note from my dad on the counter in the kitchen when I left the bathroom. Apparently he’d tried to wake me up, but I was mumbling really groggy and incoherent things. He figured I was sick and called me off school, and said to call him when I woke up.

I still felt sick, but I called him. I didn’t have to use my fake-sick voice since I still felt heavy and thick. I told him that I thought I had a stomach bug of some sort, and to account for the sleep of the dead, I lied and said that I’d taken a bunch of sleeping medicine before bed. He told me that he hoped I felt better and instructed me to go lie back down and take a bucket in my room (sorry, I’ll stop. I was sick, you get the point).

Instead of going back to sleep, I decided to sit down and tell you about all of this. You’re the only one I can tell it to; Cammie would never understand it. I can’t speak for you as to whether you get it or not, and I’m still not even sure you’re reading my letters or throwing them out without a second thought. But I guess it doesn’t really matter. I just needed to get this off my chest, so thanks for listening, I hope.

Fucked up but yours,
Sylvia

I feel frustrated, reading the letter over a few times more. I wish I could put myself in her headspace and try to understand why she thought drugs were the answer. I don’t know, I guess her life feels so empty to her that she has to try to fill it with artificial happiness or something. Except I truly can’t imagine getting any enjoyment out of sticking myself with a needle, going to sleep, being sick to my stomach, and oh, yeah, ruining my life in the process.

It’s as I read the letter through a fourth time that I realize that Harley didn’t use with her. If he was so keen on trying to get her to use with him the last time they’d seen each other, why didn’t he take advantage of the opportunity when they were at his shitty condo? Or was he planning on taking advantage of her?

I shudder at the thought. I don’t think Sylvia could handle anything like that again, and if it happened to her a second time, I’m truly afraid of what she could do to herself. I close my eyes and pray that Sylvia can be the one person I’ve ever heard of who can use heroin once and not go running back to it. Please.