Saving Quinton

Chapter 7

May 19, day four of summer break

Nova

It’s been a long three days, filled with visits to Quinton that seem to be leading nowhere. We have the same conversations and he won’t open up to me at all and I’m not sure how to bring up to him that I know about the accident, so I just keep dodging around it, lying to him. But bringing up memories like that is complicated and painful. I know because every time someone would even mention Landon’s name after his death, it’d feel like a part of me died inside.

When I’m not over there with Quinton, I spend my time hanging out with Lea. We haven’t gone to the Strip yet, but we chatted about going out this weekend when it’s late and all the lights are on, just as long as her uncle doesn’t mind that we come home late. He actually just got home from his business trip last night and chatted with Lea and me for a little bit. He seems nice and even cooked us dinner while he asked us about our plans while we are here. Lea was vague about the details, telling him that we were here to see a friend.

It’s late morning and I’m sitting in the guest room at Lea’s uncle’s house with the computer screen aimed at me so I can see myself as I get ready to record before I head over to Quinton’s for my daily visit. I have the curtain pulled shut to avoid any glare. My brown hair is wavy and runs down to my shoulders and the blue studs in my ears match my tank top. I have shorts on and no shoes. “It’s been three days of going over to see Quinton and the time I spend with him feels so short and the time in between feels so long because I’m always worried about what he’s doing when I’m gone.” I lean forward in the chair, getting closer to the screen. “I still hate going over there, though, because it’s so terrifying…his place. I’m not even sure why. If it’s because there’s so many rough people walking around doing things that are bad and illegal or if it’s the fact that if I didn’t change paths, I could have ended up there.” I pause, considering my next words carefully. “What’s really hard is that sometimes I can see myself there, sitting beside Quinton on the shitty mattress in his room. I can picture myself there getting high beside him, connecting with him, and life is so different. Less stressful.” I make a guilty face. “Maybe that’s not the right word, because it is stressful in a different way, but it’s like you’re so wrapped up in drugs that you can’t register the stress until it’s too late and everything’s falling apart. I don’t want to get sucked into it again, but it’s so easy and even though I won’t tell Lea this”—I lower my voice and lean closer to the screen—“there’s been a few fleeting seconds where I think why not? Why not just join him again? What’s stopping you? Which makes me wonder if maybe I’m not the right person to save Quinton.” I raise my arm in front of the screen and get a shot of my scar and tattoo. “But then I look down at this and I remember that place, where I was so lost, drifting, drifting, drifting. I could have died and it wouldn’t have mattered,” I say. “But right now it does matter because I want to live.”

I sigh, knowing I’m rambling at this point. “Honestly, I don’t know what exactly I’m trying to say with this recording, other than to get my thoughts out.” I faintly smile. “Sort of like a diary.” I click the camera off and shut down the computer. I slip my sandals on and grab my bag, ready to head out, hoping that I can continually remember, never forget just how bad things can get, because it’s what keeps me going.

Later that day I pull up to Quinton’s apartment building. Even though I’ve been here four times, I still get extremely nervous just thinking about walking up to Quinton’s door. And when I get there, I always wonder about everything that could be going on on the other side of that cracked door. If he’s doing drugs right at this moment. If he’s okay. If he’s overdoing it. If he’s alive. I hate to think it, but he looks so bad, so scraggly, so beat up that I have to wonder if he’ll even answer the door or if one time I’ll come over here and he’ll be dead. I know it’s really messed up to go to the dark possibilities instead of the lighter ones, but when you’ve seen as much dark as I have, it’s hard not to automatically think of the bad.

Thankfully, today, when I knock on the door, I get a brief respite from the dark when Quinton answers. I feel even better when he quickly steps out, so I don’t have to go inside. He’s got a wrinkly black shirt on and cargo shorts that are frayed at the bottoms, and his hand is still bruised but not as swollen. His hair is shaggy and he’s starting to grow a stubbly goatee.

“Hey,” he says as he starts to shut the door, but then he gets this really weird look on his face, like he’s torn. Then he holds up a finger. “Can you hold on for a second?”

I nod, barely able to keep up with him as he rushes back inside, leaving the door wide open. The sunlight heats up my back as I stare inside the stuffy apartment, the air laced with smoke coming from a lit cigarette on an ashtray on the coffee table. Delilah’s passed out on the sofa in the living room, her arm draped over her stomach as she sleeps on her back. I haven’t talked to her yet and I’m sort of glad because I have a feeling that conversation isn’t going to go very well. Not just because she’s been a bitch to me on the phone, but because if she does decide to be nice to me, I know I could possibly be swept up in being her friend. And being her friend means getting high. And I’m still not sure how I’d respond if I were actually offered something.

As I’m watching the smoke snake around the room, Dylan unexpectedly strides out of the hallway and over to the coffee table. He looks like a skeleton, but they all do really: bony arms, bald head, his cheekbones shaded, bags under his eyes. He also seems distracted, oblivious to me as he hunts the room for something.

At first, anyway.

But as I instinctively take a step back, his eyes elevate to me. I’ve never been a fan of him. He was too intense and treated Delilah like shit. Plus, he always seemed angry all the time, no matter what was going on.

He looks calm now, though, which might be more frightening than when he’s angry. “What are you doing here?” he asks as he picks up a tiny bag off the table.

“Waiting for Quinton,” I answer quickly, stepping back until my back brushes the railing.

He winds around the coffee table toward me. “No, I mean what the fuck are you doing here in Vegas?” He halts at the doorway, staying in the shadows, clutching the bag in his hand. “Weren’t you like going to college or something?”

“Yeah, but it’s summer break,” I explain nervously. “So I decided to come down here for a while.”

“To see Quinton?” he asks, giving me a look like he thinks I’m a moron. “Interesting.”

I nod, not saying anything, hoping he’ll leave, but all he does is stand there and stare at me. It’s really starting to creep me out when Delilah sits up on the sofa. She says something, but her speech is so slurred I can’t understand her. Then she stumbles over to Dylan, her red hair tangled around her pale, thin face, her cheekbones hollowed out. She’s wearing a T-shirt that barely covers her thighs and, like Tristan, she has a few sores on her arms. She also has a massive bruise on her cheek, like she’s recently been in a fight. That’s when I notice Dylan’s knuckles are covered in scabs like he scraped the skin on something. Delilah’s face, maybe. I have to wonder.

“Baby…” She trails off as Dylan turns around and gives her a gentle shove toward the sofa.

“Go lie down,” he calls over his shoulder in an icy tone.

She keeps herself from falling by grasping the back of a chair. “I…need…” She blinks around the room and despite everything we’ve been through, all the crappy moments we shared, my heart twists inside my chest.

“What’s she on?” I ask, inching forward, preparing to help her.

Dylan turns around and slams a hand on each side of the doorframe, blocking my way in. “That’s none of your damn business.”

I stand on my tiptoes and glance over his shoulder at Delilah. “Delilah, are you okay?”

She stumbles over a glass pipe on the floor as she makes the rest of the short walk back to the sofa and then flops down on her back. “I’m fine…go…k…” She waves her hand at me, shooing me away.

“You don’t look fine,” I say, wondering what it would take to get Dylan out of my way.

Dylan leans to the side, shielding her completely from my view. “She said she was fine. Now back off,” he growls in a low voice.

I tip my chin up and meet his sullen eyes. I think about saying something like “Fuck off,” which is completely out of character for me, but at the same time being here isn’t really me either.

I never manage to find my voice, though, and instead Dylan just ends up smirking at me for a painfully long minute. When I see Quinton emerge from the hallway, I exhale deafeningly and Dylan seems pleased about the fact that he was making me nervous.

Quinton glances at Delilah, who’s lying on the sofa with her eyes shut, as he makes his way across the room. He doesn’t say anything as he pushes Dylan aside and squeezes between him and the doorway. Dylan glowers at him and Quinton seems edgy, even placing his arm around my back and hurriedly guiding me away from the door. “You ready?” he asks.

“Yeah…” I peek over my shoulder at Dylan, who’s watching us walk away, lighting up a cigarette. It creeps me out even more and I scoot closer to Quinton, feeling a little safer being near him.

Dylan stays that way until we’re halfway across the balcony and then goes back inside the apartment, shutting the door behind him.

I turn around and focus on walking. “Is Delilah okay?” I ask Quinton.

He shields his eyes from the sun with his hand. “She’s as okay as the rest of us.”

“She seemed out of it.”

“That’s because she was.”

“What’s she on?”

He hesitates, his hand on my back tensing. “You really want to know?” he asks, and I nod. “She’s on heroin.”

“Do you…” I inspect his arms, noting they’re sore-free, but I want to be sure. “Do you do it?”

He shakes his head with no hesitancy. “Not my thing.”

“Oh.” I’m not sure if that makes me feel better, because he still does drugs. “What about Dylan?” I ask as he guides me around a man standing in the middle of the balcony, smoking. “What’s he on?”

“His asshole-ness,” Quinton begrudgingly says.

“So he doesn’t do drugs?” I ask, astonished by the idea.

“No, he does,” he replies, slowing down as we approach the stairs. “But high or not, he’s always a dick.”

It’s a lot to take in—maybe too much. Everything around here is so dark and it hurts to walk around in it, even if I’m only visiting. I can still feel it taking a toll on me. The heaviness. The fear. The temptation. So much could go wrong just from my being here.

But you need to be here. You need to save him. Like you didn’t with Landon.

Quinton withdraws his hand from my back and we start down the stairs. “So where are we going today? Or are we just chilling in your car again?” He seems twitchy, his brown eyes really large and glossy and his nose red. It makes me sad to see it, how he’s hurting himself.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” I ask, holding on to the railing.

He shrugs as we reach the bottom of the stairway. “I’m down for wherever, just as long as I’m back by like five.”

I want to ask him why, but at the same time I fear the answer, so I keep my lips sealed. We climb in the car and I start up the engine and crank the air, trying to think of a safe place to go. “There’s this good restaurant my friend Lea told me about,” I say. “We could go get something to eat there.”

He waves me off. “Nah, I’m not really hungry.”

“Okay.” I try to think of somewhere else, but I don’t know Vegas very well.

“I know somewhere we can go,” Quinton says with a thoughtful look on his face, his honey-brown eyes temporarily lighting up. “But you’re going to have to trust me.”

It takes me a minute to respond, because even though I want to trust him, I’m not sure I can. “Okay, but where is this place?”

“It’s a surprise.” He gives me a smile, but it’s difficult to see it because I don’t think it’s real, rather created by his high. But I play along, because it’s all I can do. Pretend that it’s real. Pretend I’m okay with everything. “Okay, but you got to give me directions.”

He motions to me to drive forward. “Get going and I’ll guide you there.” He winks at me. “Just relax. You can trust me, Nova.”

Even though every single part of me screams that I can’t, I force myself to drive forward, letting him guide me, hoping I’m not going to do something stupid and make a wrong turn. Because one wrong turn can lead to a lot of damage.

Quinton

Dylan’s been acting strange lately, even though we managed to pay him back with some money we stole from a house the other night. He seems more violent and erratic than he has in the past. I think all the smack is starting to screw with his head a little bit, so I don’t like it when I walk out and he’s paying so much attention to Nova. I shouldn’t have left her out there alone, but the moment I saw her, my heart leaped in my chest, way too excited to see her. Such a wrong reaction and I had to go back and get enough crystal for a hit or two if I need it, if I get to feeling too much while I’m out with her.

I’m actually probably way too high to be doing anything, yet somehow I find myself out and about. It’s like one minute I’m back in my room, absorbing as much intoxicating crystal as I can, feeling my heart rate speed up to the point where I feel like I’m flying—feel like I could do anything, and then suddenly I’m driving in the car with Nova, flirting with her like we’re on a date.

Stupid.

Stupid.

Stupid.

Yet at the same time I’m perfectly content with being stupid—with being near her, because I’m soaring.

High.

Confused.

After I get her away from the apartment and Dylan, I tell her to drive and she does, trusting me, which she shouldn’t, yet it pleases me in the most fucked-up way possible. By the time we’re pulling up to the building, I can tell I’m going to mess this up badly. I can feel it, yet I’m too spun out of my mind to care.

“So this is where you wanted to take me?” Nova asks, with a baffled look on her face at the sight of the dated motel that I found one day when Tristan and I were looking for a place to crash after we got caught shoplifting and had to find a quick place to hide. The thing is I’m still not even sure if we were ever being chased or if paranoia set in.

I take off my seat belt because she always makes me wear it whenever I’m in the car with her. “Yeah. I know it looks a little sketchy, but we’ll be okay,” I tell her, and when she still looks skeptical, I add, “Trust me, Nova.” My thoughts laugh at me, deep down knowing I’m not trustworthy, but it’s like I can’t get my emotions to link with my thoughts and my thoughts to link with my mouth, so I’m just saying stuff, cruising through the motions without thinking of the consequences.

She swallows hard, but then unbuckles her seat belt, and we get out of the car. I meet her around the front and I don’t know why but I slip my arm around her waist and again I don’t know why, but for some reason she lets me. It’s so hard being near her when I feel this pull toward her, yet I also feel this push away from her, driven by my guilt.

“You seem in a really good mood today,” she notes, glancing up at me with those gorgeous eyes that I’ve been sketching every day despite the battle of my inner thoughts.

I shrug and pull my hand away, giving in to the push and the guilt. “I’m just in a normal mood.”

She doesn’t say anything else as she follows me through the door that’s marked as an exit. She instantly stiffens as she steps into the dust and the darkness and the debris on the floor. The walls are caving in and there’s spray paint on the wall and I get her reluctance, but at the same time I know she’ll appreciate why I brought her here.

“Just follow me.” I slip my fingers through hers, surrendering to the pull. “I promise when we get to the top, it’ll be worth it.”

Her eyes widen as she angles her chin back and looks up at the hole in the ceiling that stretches through five floors. “Is it safe to get to the top?”

“Of course,” I say, but I’m not really sure. “Just follow where I walk.”

She nods and then moves to the side when I do, tracking my footsteps, clutching my hand, her skin damp. It briefly registers through her nervous touch that she’s trusting me to keep her safe and so when I reach the place where Tristan and I climbed up through the holes in the walls to get to the top, I instead go to the right to the stairway, because it’s safer.

“So this place used to be an old hotel?” she asks as she takes calculated steps, making sure to stay close to the wall.

I put my hand on the wall as the stairs creak below our feet. “I think so. At least that’s what the sign said outside. I’m guessing, though, that it was probably a casino, too, since most of the hotels here are.”

She glances at an open room that still has orange shag carpet and brightly painted yellow walls with a rainbow pattern down them. “Yeah, they even have slot machines in the gas stations. It’s weird and noisy. Plus, everyone’s always smoking,” she says, and when I pause, she quickly adds, “It doesn’t bother me, but my friend Lea can’t stand the smell of cigarettes.”

I start walking again. It’s amazing how a single sentence can remind me just how far apart we are, even if part of me doesn’t want us to be that way. “Is Lea the girl who was with you the first day you showed up at my place?”

She nods with her head tipped down, hair veiling her face, her attention focused on the floor as she chews her lip, and all I can think is how perfect she is and how much I want to draw her. As soon as the thought surfaces, it makes me feel like I’m cheating on Lexi, thinking about doing that with someone else, and I seriously almost turn around and bail out, wishing I could go back to my room and do more lines.

“I met her at the beginning of the school year,” Nova continues as she sidesteps a large chunk of Sheetrock. “She came up to me and introduced herself when I went to this center for people who’ve lost a loved one to suicide.”

I look over my shoulder at her. “She’s lost someone, too?”

“Her dad,” Nova explains as she holds on to my hand and the fingers of her other hand wrap around my arm. “Even though it’s not quite the same as what I went through, we really connected, sort of like I did with you for a while there.”

I stop walking, moving, breathing. Time stops. She ends up nearly running into me, stumbling over her feet, but catches herself by jabbing her fingertips deeper into my arm and putting her hand on the wall beside us.

She grips my arm as she stares up at me. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean you connected with me?” I ask, my voice coming out a little sharper than I planned.

“Last summer,” she says timidly. “That time we spent together—I thought we sort of connected. Not like in a hey-we’re-best-friends way, but…” She releases my arm to drag her fingers through her hair. She must have gotten dust on her hand from touching the wall because the movement leaves a streak of it in her hair. “But I could talk to you about stuff that I wasn’t able to talk to anyone else about. Stuff about my dad and Landon.”

I reach up and brush my hand across her hair, trying to get the dust off her head, and I hate how excited my heart gets when her breathing speeds up, all from me touching her. “Nova, I’m pretty sure that was the weed that let you talk openly like that, not me.”

She shakes her head, her tongue slipping out of her mouth to wet her dry lips, and all I want to do is back her into the wall, pick her up, and devour her. But the wall would probably crumble under the slightest pressure and I’m not sure we’d survive the fall.

“I don’t think that’s what it was,” she says. “And I’m going to prove it to you.”

My face contorts with confusion. “How?”

She motions me forward. “Just get us to somewhere where the floor doesn’t feel like it’s going to give out and I’ll tell you.”

I’m not sure what she’s up to, but I’m curious, so I start up the stairs again, holding her hand, guiding her around the holes in the floor, trying to focus on the bigger picture of all this, but I can only see three steps ahead.

When we reach the top of the stairway, I open the door and sunlight spills over us like warm water. Stepping to the side, I hold the door ajar and let Nova through.

She steps out into the sunlight, glancing around at the massive signs on the rooftop. Ones that I’m guessing used to belong to casinos that are closed down now. Some are made up of light bulbs and others are just painted. Some are cracked, others are warped, and they all sort of create this maze.

“Wow…” She pauses as she takes in everything. “There are no words. This is amazing.” She glances at me, her big eyes making me feel like I’m falling into her. Part of me wishes that were really happening, but I think I’m tripping out.

“Yeah, it is,” I agree, nodding, then point to a stack of bricks near a large VIVA LAS VEGAS sign. “Can you go get one of those bricks? Because if the door shuts, we’re locked up here.”

She pulls a wary face, but then zigzags around the signs, ducking and maneuvering around them as she crosses the length of the roof and picks up a brick. I try not to smile at how much she struggles to carry it, either because it’s too heavy for her or because she doesn’t want to get dirty. She sets it down in front of the door and I gently let the door go, holding on to it until I know the brick is going to hold. Then I hop over a smaller sign that’s fallen over in the way and head over to the ledge of the roof and climb up onto. I sit down, hanging my legs over the side. Nova doesn’t follow me right away, so I pat the spot next to me and tell her to come over without looking at her, wondering just how much she trusts me. I secretly wish she’d just run away, but at the same time I want to hear what she has to say—why she thinks we connected last summer.

Of course she sits down because she’s sweet and innocent and sees some sort of good inside me. I honestly don’t get it, because whenever I look into a mirror, which isn’t that often, all I can see is a skeleton, the remains of a once-good person, who ruined everything and who will always ruin everything. Kind of like the view in front of me of old buildings, stores, houses, that I can tell used to be beautiful before things changed—life changed—and they were all forgotten, lost like the sand in the wind, left to crumple in the shadows of the city, the area no one wants to see, yet I prefer it.

“You think you’re not good enough,” she says, situating herself beside me, her legs dangling over the edge. “But you are.”

“What?” My head snaps in her direction as I try to rewind and see if maybe I was really thinking my thoughts aloud.

“When you’re in that dark place,” she says. “At least that’s how it was for me. It was almost like I thought I didn’t deserve to be happy.”

I relax a little, understanding that she’s just thinking aloud. “And that’s why you did drugs?” I ask.

She shrugs. “One of the reasons. But honestly there were many…like that fact that I wasn’t dealing with my boyfriend’s death…what are your reasons?”

She expresses herself so easily and I’m not sure how to respond. There’s no way I can explain to her why I do it—all the dark reasons. “Why would you think I even have a reason?” I ask. “Maybe I just do it because it feels good.”

“Does it feel good?” There’s a challenge in her eyes that makes me fear what she’s going to say after I answer.

“Sometimes, yes,” I tell her straightforwardly. “I mean, I don’t know how it was for you, but it helps me forget stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” she asks interestedly as she tucks her hands under her legs.

“Stuff I’ve done.” I pop my neck and then crack my jaw. “But why are we talking about this?”

She plays with a loose strand of her hair, twirling it around her finger as she gets lost in her thoughts, staring down at the abandoned stores and houses five stories below us. “Is this why you brought me here? To show me the view?” she wonders, eluding my question.

I look her over, wondering what’s going on in her head. Is she seeing the same view as me? Does she find it repulsive? Or can she still see what it used to be? “Yeah, I stumbled across it once and I liked it.” I tear my eyes off her and focus on the view. “It’s like Vegas used to be out here, before all the madness took the city over.”

“Was it ever not full of madness?” she asks, pointing over her shoulder at the city gleaming against the sunlight and stretching toward the hazy sky. “Because every time I think of Vegas, I can only see that.”

I shrug, swinging my feet back and forth. “I’m not sure, but I can picture it, even if it’s not true.” I put my hand up and motion at a cluster of single-story homes kitty-corner to our right. “Imagine, just a bunch of normal houses, no casinos, no people packing the sidewalks. Everything is painted in warm colors, the grass is green, the fences straight. Trees grow in the yards, bright flowers surround the houses, and people are just hanging around outside and taking life slow.” I point to the left at an oddly shaped stucco building with old signs hanging on the side. “Imagine the stores and shopping areas were like that, instead of crammed so close together, all carrying the same overpriced souvenirs. Imagine the quiet, ordinary, simple life. A place that’s not busy and where your thoughts don’t have to race to keep up with it.” I shut my eyes and savor the scent of freedom in the air. “Imagine breathing again.”

She’s quiet for a while and I wonder if my tweaker rambling has frightened her off, but when I open my eyes she looks relaxed as she observes me, turned just at the right angle so the blue sky and sunlight are her only background and her hair is dancing around her face in the gentle breeze. A strand of her hair falls from behind her ear and lands near her chest and I remember what it was like to touch her there, feel her, do whatever I wanted with her.

Beautiful. That’s the word that pops into my head and for a fleeting moment I just want to hold her and for her to hold me and for me to not have to think about Lexi and Ryder and what I did to them.

“You paint a beautiful picture,” she says, interrupting my thoughts. “It makes me want to live in this place.”

“Well, it might not exist,” I utter quietly. “I was just making up what I see.”

“You should draw what you see sometimes,” she suggests with a faint smile at her lips. “I bet it would turn out beautiful.”

“I’m just rambling,” I mutter. “It doesn’t really mean anything.”

Intensity burns in her eyes. “You’d be surprised what your words can mean to someone.”

“I never say anything important,” I state truthfully. “Everything I do or say gets forgotten quickly.”

“That’s not true…you said a lot of stuff to me last summer that meant something. Like when you told me I was too good to be doing drugs.”

“That’s because you were—are.”

“Everyone is,” she insists, scooting closer to me. “But you were the one to actually say it aloud.”

“It still doesn’t mean that what I said mattered,” I argue, wanting to inch away from her, but I can’t seem to find the willpower to do so. “You just remember it because it happened during an intense part of your life.”

She studies me momentarily and then looks back down at the scenery below us. “Do you remember the pond?” she asks.

That question hits me straight in the heart and makes it slam inside my chest. “How could I forget?” I say, grinding my teeth. “It wasn’t one of my finer moments.”

Her attention whips back to me. “Are you kidding me?” she asks in shock, which seems so out of place that I have to look up at her to see if she’s being real or joking.

“No…I’m being serious,” I tell her, fighting the emotions buried inside me—the guilt I feel for leaving her that day. “I should have never left you there like that. I was—am such a douche.”

She gapes at me like she can’t believe what she’s hearing. “You are not in any way, shape, or form a douche for leaving me there. You pretty much saved me from doing something I’d always regret and that probably would have kept me in that dark place a hell of a lot longer.” She says it with so much passion, like she’s been thinking about this a lot, and I don’t know what to say to her, so instead I stare silently at the ground. Finally she places her hand on my face and cups my cheek, forcing me to look at her. “You helped me so, so much, whether you want to believe it or not.”

Emotions I’ve worked hard to bury clutch at my heart and it hurts like needles are lodged in my skin, all connected to my guilt. “I didn’t do anything but watch you do stuff you shouldn’t.”

“And you kept reminding me that I shouldn’t—you kept trying to make me see what I was doing.”

“But I didn’t stop you.”

“Because you couldn’t.” She traces her fingers across my scruffy jawline. “You were—are still—obviously going through some stuff and you did the only thing you could for me at the time. You kept me out of getting into too much trouble, you listened to me ramble, and you didn’t take advantage of my vulnerability when a lot of guys would have.”

“A lot of guys would have kicked you out of the house in the first place, before you did anything,” I snap. “Just because I didn’t fuck you when you were sad doesn’t make me a good guy.”

She flinches but then composes herself, slanting closer to me, her hand firmly in place on my cheek. “Yes, it does. It makes you a great guy.”

The more she says this, the angrier I get, and the sharper the needles become. She needs to stop saying good things about me. I’m not good. I’m a terrible person and she needs to accept that just like I have and everyone else has.

“No it doesn’t.” I lean into her, our breaths mixing and creating heat, eyes so close I can see her pupils dilating.

She nods, whispering, “Yes, it does, and I’m going to think that no matter what you say.”

I want her to shut up, be afraid of me, so I don’t have to feel the emotions she’s triggering. All the work I did today, all the shit I shoved up my nose so I wouldn’t have to think the thoughts racing through my head, and now she’s saying shit that’s making me think them anyway.

I’m not a good guy. I deserve nothing. I deserve to be rotting under the ground. I deserve pain. I deserve to suffer, not sit here with her, being touched by her, loving being touched by her.

“Quinton, I’m sick of this,” my dad says. “It’s time for you to move out…I don’t want you around anymore. Not when you’re like this.”

“Nova, stop talking about shit you don’t get,” I growl, and it should scare her, yet it seems to fuel her with determination.

“But I do get it,” she snaps, equally harshly, and I swear to God it seems like she leans in, too, giving in to the pull like me. Our foreheads touch and I can smell the scent of her, vanilla mixed with a hint of perfume. “I do get how much it hurts.” She pounds her hand against her chest. “How much you think about all the other paths your life could have taken if you would have just done this or that. I get how much you want to forget about it all. How much you hate yourself for not doing things that would make it so they were still here!” She shouts at the end, her eyes massive, her breathing ragged, and my body is trembling from the emotion emitting from her and being absorbed into my skin, like I can connect with everything she’s going through.

We’re so close that our legs are touching and there’s only a sliver of space between our lips. I could kiss her, but I’m too pissed off. At her. At myself. But dear God I want to kiss her, just to get a small taste of the life flowing off her, to feel her, breathe in her warm scent. It’s an amazing feeling, like for a moment she’s become more powerful than the meth.

But then she says, “You and I are so alike.”

That makes me jerk back and her hand falls from my face. “No we’re not and don’t ever say that again.” I swing my legs back over to the roof and get to my feet, bumping into one of the signs. “We’re not the same, Nova. Not even close.”

She rushes after me and cuts me off halfway to the door with her arms out to the sides. “Yes, we are. We were both using drugs and this life to escape our feelings—the stuff that happened to us. The terrible stuff that happened to us.”

I shake my head, my buzz flying away in the wind like loose powder. “You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” I say, looking away from her. “You did weed for like what? A couple of months. Weed’s nothing, Nova.” I encounter her gaze. “You have no idea how dark stuff can get.” I pause, rage erupting inside me, and for a moment I think about saying it aloud. What I did. How I killed my girlfriend and cousin—the entire story about how I killed two people, so hopefully she’ll realize the full extent of it and leave me.

She swallows hard, but manages to keep her voice even. “So what? Just because I haven’t done anything harder, doesn’t mean I don’t get things—don’t get death. I get what you’re going through.”

“No, you don’t.” I get in her face, hoping to scare her back, but she stands firm. “You lost your boyfriend because he chose to leave. I crashed a goddamned car and killed my fucking girlfriend and cousin—Tristan’s sister—I took their lives. And everyone fucking hates me for it.” I wait for the disgust in her eyes to appear, the disgust I’ve seen countless times, whenever anyone hears my story.

But she completely blindsides me and looks at me with sympathy. “Everyone doesn’t hate you. How could they, when it was an accident?” She stands firm and her voice is loud but it cracks. She’s not even shocked. Yeah, I told her I killed some people but I didn’t tell her who, yet it seems like she already knew. “I know it wasn’t your fault…I read the newspaper article.”

Suddenly it makes sense that there was no shock factor for her. She already knew about my messed-up, twisted past, what happened that night. How I was responsible for two people’s deaths. She probably even knows I died.

Something about the idea of her digging up my past elicits a dark and sinister feeling inside me. It makes me furious and not I-just-need-to-get-another-hit furious. She was the only one who didn’t fully know my story and now she does—now she knows what I am, down to the very last details.

“The newspaper doesn’t know jack fucking shit. Yeah, maybe the police report said it wasn’t entirely my fault, but ask fucking anyone.” I cup my hand over my upper arm, because I swear to God I’m feeling the pain again of when I put the tattoos there, sharp pricks, the burn, the pain I deserve—I deserve so much more. “Ryder’s parents, Lexi’s parents. You can even ask my father and they’ll all tell you that it was my fault…he even blames me for my mother’s death…” I trail off, losing my voice, as I remember all the silence between my father and me—how, growing up, I could always feel the distance between us, because every time he looked at me, he probably thought about how my mother died bringing me into this world. It makes me realize just how long I’ve felt this blame, just not as bluntly. “They’ll all tell you I’m a piece of shit that should be fucking dead instead of everyone else.” I’m on the verge of tears. But they’re tears of rage more than anything and I need to find a way to get them to stop. Find a way to get Nova to stop looking at me like I’m an injured dog that she just kicked and gave more pain to. Find a way for her to stop pitying me and get on the same page as everyone else.

I know what I do next is so fucked up there are no words to describe it, yet I can’t find the will to care inside my junkie body, which only sees life from delusional angles created by substances that let me see things how I want to. So I reach into my pocket and take out a plastic bag.

“You want to see how alike we are?” I say, opening the bag, watching her and her reaction. “You want to see what you’re trying to save?”

She tries to remain calm, but I catch the flicker of fear in her eyes and I think, There you go. Be afraid. Finally. I dip my finger into the powder, coating it with just enough to give me a bump, and then I put my finger up to my nose. I expect her to look away, but she doesn’t. Her gaze is relentless, confused, disgusted, curious. All sorts of messed-up shit. And it should be enough for me to put the stuff away, because I’ve obviously gotten my point across, but now that it’s out, I want it. So I breathe it in like it’s heaven, or a make-believe version anyway. Once it crashes against the back of my throat, it makes hurting Nova the slightest bit easier, and when she walks away, I feel twistedly satisfied, like I accomplished something, when I didn’t. I haven’t accomplished anything in a very long time. But the thing is, it doesn’t matter. None of this does. And when I walk back to my place—because I’m sure she’s going to leave my sorry ass—I’ll take hit after hit and barely remember or feel anything at all. At least not in a way that matters.

Nova

I have to walk away while we’re on the roof because it’s too hard to watch and he follows me down, staying a ways behind. I think he thinks I’m going to leave him because as soon as we step outside, he starts off toward this back area that leads to a stretch of desert, instead of toward my car.

“Where are you going?” I call out, taking my keys out of my pocket.

He stops just short of where the asphalt shifts to dirt and glances over his shoulder at me. “I thought I was walking home.”

I shake my head, backing up to the car. “Quinton, I can give you a ride.”

A puzzled look crosses his face. “Even after what I did—even after I yelled at you? Even after what I just said…?” He trails off, like his emotions are getting the best of him again.

I need to make sure to do my best to keep him calm, because he seems pretty irrational right now and with drugs in his system, things could get ugly—even more than they are. “Nothing you said on the roof affects our relationship. Things are still the same. Although I wish they were different—better. Now would you please get in the car? It’s hot as heck out here and I don’t want you walking in the heat.”

He sniffs a few times, rubbing his nose, as he glances in the direction he was heading and then at my car. “Okay…yeah. I’ll get in the car.”

A small weight lifts from my shoulders as he climbs inside, but it’s back by the time we’re back to his place and he hops out before I even get the car to a full stop and without saying good-bye. I hate when people don’t say good-bye, yet it happens all the time and sometimes I don’t see them ever again.

I’m worried about never seeing Quinton again.

I start to drive back to Lea’s uncle’s house but I can feel a meltdown coming on as I keep picturing Quinton on the roof, shoving that stuff up his nose. Finally I have to vent, get it off my chest before I explode, so I pull the car into a gas station parking lot and take out my phone. Aiming the camera at myself, I hit record.

“I had to back off, even though I didn’t want to. What I wanted to do was slap him, then steal that damn bag out of his hand and throw it off the roof. What happened was intense, but it was partially my fault. I was pushing him and I knew he was high—easily breakable. But I was so determined to make him see the real picture, the one he can’t see, that I kept going. I tried to force him to admit things that clearly he can’t admit—that sometimes accidents just happen. But then I let it slip out that I’d read the article about the accident and that only seemed to piss him off…and then he…” I trail off, wincing as I recollect him putting that crap up his nose like he was inhaling a piece of chocolate. “He doesn’t even see what he is right now and it sucks because I’ve been in that place and I want to get him out of it, like I got out, yet I know that he’s got to be on the same page—realize things. And I’m still not quite sure what’s going to do that for him.”

I lower my head onto the steering wheel, still aiming the camera at myself. “How do you get through to someone who doesn’t want you to get to them? How do you save someone who doesn’t want to be saved? God, he reminds me so much of Landon…and I’m worried that one of these days I’m going to show up a few minutes too late again and all I’ll have left is a video.” The breath gets knocked out of me as I choke on my emotions and have to pause to catch my breath. “But Quinton has to want to be saved, since he hasn’t given up yet…I just don’t think he can admit it yet. I need to make him somehow…need to make him realize that not everyone in the world hates and blames him like he thinks they do.” My voice wobbles as I recollect how he looked when he told me that everyone blamed him for the deaths. The self-hatred burning in his eyes. “What I need is a better plan—help maybe. Because what I’m doing right now isn’t working very well…I just don’t know where to go to find it.”

I take a moment to gather myself before I sit up and turn the camera off. Then I drive down the road back to Lea’s uncle’s house, listening to “Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis,” by Brand New, and the memories of the last time I listened to the song almost cause me to bawl my eyes out. It was the first time I got high and Quinton and I kissed. It was a kiss so full of emotions that were—still are—practically indescribable, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never experience a kiss like that again and I’m not even sure I want to.

By the time I get to the road that leads to the house I’m bummed out and the urge to count the mailboxes on the road is becoming uncontrollable and I give in. I make it to eight before I tell myself to shut up and be stronger, but that only makes me feel more anxious and helpless. I feel drained and Lea instantly knows something’s wrong when I walk inside the house.

“Okay, what happened?” she asks from the kitchen. She’s cooking something that smells an awful lot like pancakes and it makes my stomach grumble.

I drop my bag on the sofa and head into the kitchen. “It was a rough day,” I admit to her.

She’s standing over a griddle and there’s batter on the counter, along with eggshells and a bowl. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I plop down on one of the stools around the island, prop my elbow on the counter, and rest my chin in my hand, breathing in the scent of pancakes. “I don’t know…maybe…but I already kind of talked about it to a camera.”

She flips one of the pancakes over with a spatula, steam rising in the air. “Yeah, but it might be better to talk about it with a human maybe.” She smiles at me.

I note how quiet the house is. “Where’s your uncle?”

“He went out on some business dinner or something. He called and said he’d be home late. Why?”

“Just wondering.” Honestly, I didn’t want to talk about Quinton and was going to use that as an excuse, that her uncle was here and I didn’t want him to hear. But I guess I can’t use that excuse so I lower my head into my hands, confessing my day to her. “Quinton and I got into a fight and some stuff happened that’s confusing me.”

“Like what?”

“Like…like he did drugs in front of me.”

“Jesus, you didn’t do any—”

“Do I look high to you?” I cut her off as I raise my head back up.

She assesses me with wariness. “No, but I’m not an expert.”

I sigh. “Well, I promise I’m not. You can even take me to get a drug test if you want to.” I don’t really think she will, but I say it hoping it’ll make her feel better.

She relaxes a little, turning back to the pancakes. “Well, I don’t think you should go over there anymore. There’s too much temptation at that house.”

“He didn’t do the drugs while we were at his house,” I clarify, but stupidly, because really it doesn’t matter where he did them. The fact is he still did them. “And it wasn’t like how you would think. He didn’t do it because it was all fun and games and he wanted me to join him. He did it to piss me off so he could prove that we weren’t like each other and that I don’t understand him. He wasn’t offering drugs to me—he wouldn’t even let me take any if I asked.”

She frowns, the pan sizzling. “Are you sure about that?”

I nod, but I’m not 100 percent sure. The Quinton that I saw today, the one at the end of the conversation, wasn’t the same as the guy I first met, who always told me I should stay away from drugs. “Besides, it’s not like I want to do them,” I say, omitting that I have thought about it a few times because she’d probably flip out and make it a bigger deal than it is, because I haven’t done anything yet. “I was just being honest with you about what happened. If I wasn’t telling you this, then we’d have a problem.”

She slips the spatula under a pancake and flips it over. “I honestly don’t know what to say to you because I don’t understand any of this.”

“And that’s fine,” I say, sitting up straighter. “You don’t have to say anything. Listening helps a lot.”

She turns off the heat and reaches for a plate in the cupboard. “I think you should go down to this clinic that helps people who have people in their lives that are struggling with drugs.”

“Where is it?”

She sets the plate down on the counter and begins piling the pancakes on it with the spatula. “Down on the east side of town.”

“Okay, maybe I’ll drive down there tomorrow,” I tell her, figuring it can’t hurt. “Do I need an appointment or something?”

“I’ll give you the information after we eat.” She sets the spatula down on the counter. “Completely off the subject, but do you want me to cook some bacon and eggs with these pancakes?”

I force a grin and just trying to be happy makes it feel almost real. “Bacon sounds good…God, it’s like I have my own little housewife, cooking dinner for me.”

“That means you need to be a good little wife and go bring in the bacon.” She snaps her fingers and points at the fridge. “It’s in there in the bottom drawer.”

I get up from the stool and cook the bacon while she washes up the pan and bowl she used to make the pancakes. Then we sit down and eat at the table and it’s so normal. By the time we’re done I feel a little better and it worries me because feeling better allows me to realize just how down I was. I wonder how far is too far. How far do I allow myself to sink to get to Quinton?