The first thing Marcy did when she woke up the next morning was fall to the floor. Her head throbbed at the sound of the bus engine. It was thrumming away to it's own beat. As she lifted her hand to rub her forehead, Marcy lost her balance on the edge of the couch. She tumbled right off the side and landed on the floor with a loud thud. The impact knocked the air from her lungs and she found herself gasping, both out of fright and her need to breathe.
The bus was moving. Rocking and rolling. It made Marcy's insides stir uncomfortably. She could feel every little jostle as they went over bumps in the road. They must have been somewhere between cities because they hadn't turned any corners in the time she'd been awake. Marcy was grateful for that. She didn't think her stomach could handle any more jostling.
She lay there for a while. Wondering if her headache would go away if she waited long enough. Marcy squeezed her eyes shut. The bright morning sun fought through the darkness. It found a way to burn her mind. Everything hurt. Sounds. Movement. Light. She had a textbook hangover.
Marcy had always wondered if other junkies felt the same way after being high. Nobody ever spoke about the morning after. They never mentioned the wave of shame and regret that washed over them as they remembered what they'd done the night before. They never spoke about that nearly overwhelming urge to throw oneself off a bridge because anything would be better than dealing with the aftermath. Saul never looked the way Marcy felt when he came back down from a high. Neither did Duff or Gilby or Matt. Marcy thought she might have been the only one. Maybe she was right.
It was always at about this time when Marcy wondered why she was still doing this. Why she was still alive. What was the point? Her life was an endless cycle of making all the same mistakes over and over and over again. She couldn't break free, no matter how bad she wanted to. The lust always won her over. It was like a constant nagging. Never to leave her alone. Unless she gave her body what it wanted. Heroin.
Marcy felt like a slave to substance. She had no choice about it. In fact, she never really did. A friend of Marcy's got her started on it, you see. Peer pressure at its finest. When Marcy arrived back in LA she had nobody. Apart from Selena, a not-so-close friend of Aubrey's. Marcy had stayed with her a while. At the time she'd been going through a change. Character development so to speak.
Because her trip back to LA hadn't been easy. Durning that time she'd had a lot of firsts. She'd met a truck driver who said he could take her across the country. He was surprisingly attractive. Dark hair, dark eyes, tall, sculpted features. Marcy had been taken aback by the offer but agreed, because she doubted another opportunity like that would arise. On the first night he pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the lights. He unzipped his pants as he spoke. The trucker gave her two options. Fuck him. Or get out, right then and there, and find another ride to LA. Marcy knew she didn't have a choice. She said no anyway, testing her luck. The trucker just leaned over and locked her door. He had sex with her. If you'd even call it that. It was not consensual. Marcy never stopped saying no and for the first time in her life she understood how Aubrey felt. She'd been violated. The trucker did the same thing every night. After the first time, Marcy worked out 'no' was useless. She learned to lay there and take it.
So as you might be able to imagine, Marcy was in an incredibly fragile state of mind when she was staying with Selena. At first she wasn't willing to let anybody in. But there'd been this really nice guy, Mark. Selena's boyfriend. He was so good to Marcy. In less than a month or so they became rather good friends. He introduced her to ecstasy and soon after, he gave Marcy her first hit of heroin. Mark made it seem so normal. He made her happy. Marcy didn't want to say no. It was a useless word and it only ever made men angry. She didn't have a choice. Selena found them sleeping together and kicked Marcy out onto the street. Marcy thought she loved Mark. It turns out she only loved the drugs.
