Unraveled

Playing Games

In the weeks that followed my interaction with Keys, my relationship with my father began to deteriorate again. It'd started over the drugs I'd taken from Keys and the lack of evidence that I had actually disposed of them. I hadn't taken the drugs out of my car. My dad did random sweeps of my room and while I knew where to hide them, I wasn't going to risk it.

A visit from my mom hadn't helped the situation. She'd brought her two youngest kids with her. They'd been loud and were messing with Dad's things. The visit had ended shortly after a screaming match between the two of them and me escaping to the backyard until Mom had gone home and Dad had gone to the church.

I'd missed my curfew one night when I had been meant to be at a meeting but had ended up sitting in my car in that same spot I'd met Keys seven months before. I'd hit traffic on my way home from night construction. Dad hadn't been a yeller before, but he'd turned into one since I had started using. He'd started shouting at me as soon as I had walked through the door fifteen minutes late. If I hadn't had cravings before, they would have been there then.

It wasn't advisable, Will had told me, to move out while I still needed to focus on graduating and figuring out where I was going to go after high school. I was supposed to focus on the big obstacles that were important now. Living on my own wasn't important when I had a place to live.

Jase, being one of the only people I was able to be truly honest with, had introduced me to the new group of friends he'd started hanging out with after I'd started using. He was moving to Vermont for college in a little over a month and he knew how much I was going to need someone in my corner once he was gone.

I had friends from my meetings, but they weren't people I could call at three in the morning because I was in the middle of a panic attack and didn't want to bother my sponsor. While they were people who would come to talk me down, they weren't people who would have a profound effect on me. Jase had come and I didn't know what I was going to do when he left.

The people he hung out with now weren't the big partiers we used to hang out with, but they were still known to have a good time occasionally. Which people were completely entitled to. I didn't trust myself yet to not stay on the path I was meant to be on.

One night, we sat around Jase's pool. They were all drinking—not drunk—and talking about their plans. Some already had internships lined up and jobs. The majority were going to college in the fall; none of them were going to the same one.

I worked on tearing the label off my water. Normally I didn't feel out of place. They were easy enough to get along with. We'd had a lot of fun over the summer. There was just something about that night, with them all talking about their futures and me not knowing where I was going to be since I was behind on finishing my classes, that had caused the anxiety to build worse than it had been before.

"You ever hear from your boyfriend?" Billie, a girl with blonde hair, freckles, and glasses, asked as she sat down next to me.

She had a photography business that she had started when she was in middle school and had started to really flourish when she was in high school. And she was nice. She was the first one of the group that Jase had introduced me to.

I shook my head. "No. I don't think I want to, either."

"He's going to college here, though, isn't he?" she asked.

Billie went to the prep school that Jase had gotten kicked out of. That was probably the best thing about her. She knew about my history and Jase's, but she wasn't as vested as some of the assholes we'd gone to high school with.