Molly

5

The sound of the rushing water from the rain gutter replicated tears I thought might shed from my face. I'd come home from some light grocery shopping, clutching the bag in my hand, and my fist only tensed up as my eyes drifted down to my doorstep.

Buried into her knees, was her head, with drenched golden-brown hair. Molly sat there. Molly slumped there, right on my doorstep. She tried to wrap herself in a shawl that certainly wasn't big enough to keep her warm against the chilling air. I felt water on my face. Not crying, to my surprise, just the drizzle that remained from the previous pouring.

"Molly?" I asked, breaking the silence that enveloped my doorstep. There was a consistent sound of water running through the gutter and some droplets falling off the roof, but my voice rang past them.

"Lottie?" She looked up at me with her big brown eyes surrounded by stains of runny makeup.

"Again?" I said quickly, not sure what else to even say.

"I'm a bad person, I know," Molly breathed out, clearly exasperated. I wondered just how long she'd been waiting outside my house. "I just don't know where I put those keys." She stood up, meeting me at eye level. Usually, I'd be the taller one, but her bedazzled heels helped her match my height.

"You know that's not what I'm talking about," I stated plainly, fiddling with the plastic bag of groceries in my hand.

"Look, I just wanted to relax a little. No big deal," she reassured, walking up to me and grabbing my hands. Her heels clicked on the pavement, and her hands were like ice on mine. "Can I have the spare key or not?"

Letting go of her hands, I looked down at the lanyard around my neck. I shuffled through my keychains. "Yeah, I guess. But why do you keep going back?" I mumbled out, finally finding the spare key to her place and pulling it off the lanyard.

"They don't call it an addiction for nothing." And there was that toothy smile again. Such a strange sentence to smile through. "And hey, at least I can make you feel like a saint. That's what you've always wanted," she chimed in as I handed her the key.

"That's a terrible thing to say," I replied hesitantly, walking past her towards my house.

"But it's true. You hate me, don't you?"

I stopped myself at the door, banging my head into it at those words. "I don't hate you."

Molly just shrugged off my frustration, turning around to face me as she played with the key. "I want to stop... most of the time."

"I know you do, but Molly, this is really bad," I said, flinging myself around. "I mean, look at you!" I exclaimed, gesturing to her with a fiery look in my eyes. That triggered that innocent, deer in headlights look of hers, making me slump back down.

"Just give me a little more time to try," she pleaded, grabbing my hands yet again and staring into my eyes. "I'll get over this. We'll look back and say, 'Remember when Molly was an addict?'"

"Yeah, we'll say, 'We thought it was very serious.'"

"'We thought she was gone for good,'" she mocked, waving her right hand out theatrically. "'But one day she straightened back up. When you look at her now, you can hardly even believe it.'" She gave me her signature tooth-filled smile, leaning down to the concrete step and picking up her dreamcatcher that I hadn't even noticed she had next to her. "And hey! I got you something!"

It was striking, to say the least, to see her pick up her dreamcatcher, no bigger than those video game controllers that were made to be shaped like a steering wheel. "Why are you giving this to me?" I asked hesitantly, my brain giving flashes back to our shared dorm.

She pushed it towards me, placing it over my heart. "I'm moving in with this guy and need to clean stuff out. Plus, I have all my dreams, and I really want you to have yours."

I sighed, blinking slowly to hold back tears I never dared to shed in front of her. All her 'dreams' must've had something to do with the guy that would spot her injections, feed her addiction.

"I can help you, Molly. Let me help you."

She seemed taken aback by my sudden desperation, her shoulders relaxing. Her eyes drifted to the ground. "I don't know how."