Beautiful Casualty

Chapter Four

I woke up in the middle of the night and snuck into Dave's room. Good, he was asleep.I grabbed his wallet and opened it to see how much he had. Seriously? A hundred bucks? Come on, man, you're a fucking drug dealer! That's when it hit me why he wanted Tammy so bad. She took his money, much like I was doing now. I set his wallet back where I found it after taking all the money inside and snuck to the living room.

I made sure no one saw me leaving, there were all either passed out or too doped up to know what I was doing. I had to step over a couple of people to get to the front door. I didn't bother to tell Ray goodbye, I honestly didn't think he'd care anyway.

I slowly opened the front door and shut it behind me, careful not to make too much noise. I walked down the street and turned into a dark, abandoned alleyway, just in case Dave woke up and realized that both me and his money had disappeared and made the connection.

It started to rain on me. I didn't really mind it much because it was just a little drizzle and I still had my hoodie, but when it started to come down harder, I found myself rattling door handles of every empty car I passed, searching for an unlocked one to hide out in. When I finally found one, I was already soaked. I got in the backseat, shivering.

I was right back to where I started. Out on the streets with nowhere to go but back to where I came from, which was not an option anymore. My mom would probably kill me for being gone so long, even if she couldn't have cared less about it, and I knew my father would still be passed out.

I wasn't always like that at home, though. I vaguely remember the time my parents were sort of loving and caring and sort of wanted me, we were never the perfect family. When we fell on some hard times, the only way Tiffany could afford to pay the bills was by prostituting herself, which led her to drugs, which led her to abusing me. That was around the same time my dad started heavily drinking. I was never really sure why he never divorced her and took me with him. I mean, we probably would've been a lot better off.

The rain didn't stop for hours and the couple whose car I was in had threatened to call the cops if I didn't leave. They didn't even offer me one of the two umbrellas they carried.

So, I walked around the almost vacant town with my damp clothes and hair. I started searching around for a store to buy me some new clothes, since I'd left all my old one's at Dave's. I found one not too long after. The cashier stared me down the entire time I looked for clothes that would fit me. I took the ones I'd found up to the counter and gave the woman a small smile and she tried to return it, but couldn't quite do so. She ran the tags under the scanner and told me the price: "Twenty-four eighteen." I could tell by the look she gave me that she thought I wouldn't be able to pay--you know, because I looked like a stray dog who had fallen in a sewer, but when I handed her the one hundred dollar bill, her eyes widened. I gave her a little smirk as she pulled out my change. As she handed it to me, her warm hand touched my freezing cold one and she almost immediately pulled away after I got a hold of it.

"Um, thanks," I said, starting to walk away. Before I could push opened the door, her voice stopped me.

"Hey," I turned around to look at her, eyebrows raised. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," I lied.

"You're sure?"

"Yeah, it's just been a long day, that's all." I smiled at her. I wanted to tell her everything that had happened to me--that I was a homeless, drug-addicted runaway who also happened to be a victim of rape--but I couldn't. Mostly because I didn't want her to pity me. Plus, that's not really the type of conversation I needed. I needed someone to hold me and tell me they loved me, like Ray. I missed him so much already, he kept me strong.

I walked around the town for a couple more minutes, searching for a place to change, sit down, and eat. I found an old restaurant just a couple of miles down from the store. Opening the door, I had expected it to be much more crowded than it was, but there were only two people sitting down and eating: a father and a daughter. They had made me wonder if I had ever done anything like that with my father; going out to eat alone with him, maybe I just didn't remember it. I'd liked to think I have, though. I felt sadness wash over me as I realized he probably wasn't missing me as much as I was missing him--he probably hadn't even realized I was gone. If he had, then he probably just washed me away with all of his other mistakes. I sighed and walked into the bathroom.

The bathroom was dirty and disgusting, but I wasn't really one to judge. I sat the bag that held my clothes down beside the toilet and reached into my hoodie pocket in hopes that what was in there wasn't damaged. I pulled out a clear, small, plastic bag of cocaine. I took a deep breath and poured the powder on the edge of the sink. I pulled out a twenty dollar bill and rolled it up. I reached back into my pocket and retrieved a blade that I'd also stolen from Dave's bedroom and started cutting the cocaine into a few fat lines and snorted them all. I rubbed my nose then changed into a new pair of clothes, putting the old ones back into the bag.

I stared at myself in the mirror for a minute for leaving, then started to search around for the blade. Where'd the damn thing go? Luckily, I found it on top of the soap dispenser. I wet my nappy hair in the sink and brought the blade my to it and started to cut. I made it stop just a couple of inches below my ears and added bangs. I put the blade in the pocket of my brand-new hoodie, then shoved my bag of old clothes in the trash bin and headed out the door.

I went up to the counter to order my food. "Um, I would like a, uh," I could barely think straight because of the cocaine. "A ha-amburger with a large," I started to feel dizzy. "A large, um." Then, everything went black and I passed out.