Heroin(e)

Chapter Sixteen

I wouldn't break my promise. I wouldn't.

The Blondie record I played on the night I got the phone call was playing again. I sat on the floor hugging myself. Scout watched me from his bed, concern on his canine face. 

What Bon had said the other day kept replaying in my head. How he had taken heroin before. He was fine. There was no addiction, no problem. He could stay away from it just fine and that meant that I could too. 

But he could also take the heroin and end up fine. Maybe I could too.

No, I refused to break my promise. I promised myself years ago I wouldn't relapse after quitting. I quit for good and that was that. Mom would be so disappointed if she knew I was tempted to start up my old habits. 

But Mom wasn't here, was she?

I was still here. And I was in pain.

Bon had been gone a lot lately. His band was busy touring around England and Europe for a bit and I hadn't seen any of them in a couple weeks. When Bon was here I felt less of an urge to give in to my cravings. Now that he was gone, so was my distraction. Even work was starting to tax me. Rent was going up by the minute.

The old, dusty violin case lay on the floor. I was so close to opening it the other day and playing something. Surely I had forgotten how. It had been so long since I'd even seen a violin I just knew I forgot everything I learned. 

And Dad wasn't here either, so what would he care?

I took a glance at the drawer sitting right there, just a few feet away from me. It slid open again, just as I knew it would. Part of me knew it had been long enough that my tolerance was much lower than before, and I could easily slip into a fatal overdose. The other part knew how much to take the first hit so that wouldn't happen. There might not have even been enough in there for me to take too much of. 

Did I still remember how to do it?

Of course I did. It's like riding a bike, you never forget. Your brain doesn't allow you to forget in case you ever want to take it up again after you quit.

My mom's neighbor's voice haunted me. The hollow sound over the phone as she relayed to me all that she saw. My mom lying in bed holding an empty pill bottle....her eyes open like she was still awake and alive....staring at nothing....her skin a light shade of blue....it was far too late to save her, she had said. The paramedics didn't even try. 

And now I was all alone. 

**********

"Please join me in congratulating the graduating class of nineteen seventy five!" The attending families in the bleachers cheered for us as we ignored the rules about throwing our graduation caps. They fell all around us and we ducked or caught them to take back home. As long as I had my diploma I didn't care where my cap and gown had gone. 

Mom and Nana wanted to take a million pictures of me after the ceremony and I relented to a few. Pose after pose with about ten different cameras at their insistence and I was getting impatient. I had friends to visit later and I didn't want to miss out on the party. 

Mom was in tears when she hugged me. "You did it, Esther!" she sobbed. "You graduated! How does it feel to be out of school?"

I shrugged. "I'm not really out of school, am I?" I asked. "I mean....I'll just be attending community college in the fall..."

Mom and Nana exchanged looks and changed the subject. "We'll celebrate at home," Mom said. "Nana wants to cook you whatever you want for dinner, we went food shopping for everything you might want." I was tempted to ask for something so bizarre that they wouldn't have the ingredients it needed. But that wouldn't be very nice. I hated to spring the truth on them. Neither one of them approved of most of my friends. But what did they know about being eighteen in this day and age? Every generation hates the next one. My friends weren't bad people. "So what would you like?"