Tweaker

v. empty words

v. empty words

     I DON'T WANT to see anyone.  I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave.  Whatever is happening to me is my own fault.  I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me.  I am inadequate and stupid, without worth.  I might as well be dead, I read to myself, a quote from my English teacher in an email that he wanted me to use as a writing prompt.

     I couldn’t help myself; I thought of Finn . . . and the more I thought of Finn, the more I couldn’t help myself but to write about Finn.

     While I was getting clean off of the meth, before Finn even moved to Oaktown, my English teacher had been my mentor.  He was practically a father to me for those months that I was going through my own kind of rehab, because my parents didn’t see the point in sending me away to a place they couldn’t afford, since they’d been told that relapse is a part of recovery.  They didn’t believe it’d be worth it and that, in turn, made me realize that my parents didn’t see my life was worth a few thousand dollars worth of treatment to get me better.

     That’s when the real cut off between all three of us happened.  I knew my parents wanted another child, but I’d overheard them talking one night; they didn’t want me around their baby.  They didn’t want my “bad influence”, my “bad reputation” in the town to affect their second child growing up -- even though they called it their child, speaking as if I was some kind of alien from a foreign planet, some kind of monster from under their bed, some kind of devil from Hell that was known more formally to me as my mother’s uterus.

     So, as I sat on the floor of the public library during the time I should’ve been at school, I began to type and type and type away at a word document that was pulled up.  I wrote about Finn, though I changed his name in my prompt to Scotland, who had a friend named Cayden, who was supposed to portray Preston.  I wrote about drug abuse; I wrote about drunken parties; I wrote about cigarettes and bridges, about suicide and birth, about life and death . . . and by the time I was done writing, it was already three in the afternoon and I only had fifteen minutes to get back to school, slip in without being noticed, grab my stuff and meet Finn out on the curb.

     It all seemed relatively easy compared to the other things going on in my life, so I pushed all my worry about it off.  That’s usually when I did my best at things; when I wasn’t worrying or stressing or thinking constantly about it; when I just let everything happen; when I just went with what other people called “the flow”.

     It took me just under ten minutes to get to the school and when I looked over at the curb, I didn’t see Finn, which stressed me out.  I wanted -- needed -- to see him . . . and this was the first time in a long time that he hadn’t been at school to walk home with.  This was the first time ever that I worried he was strung out or high somewhere, unprotected, cold . . . and I wasn’t entirely sure if that was because I knew he was dying and I wasn’t ready to see him go yet or if it was because of the complications we had last night with Preston about his brother and meth.  Regardless, I was actually scared and I don’t get scared easily.

     Without another look at the curb, I made my way quickly up to the school and slipped in through a set of already opened doors.  Closing my eyes for a moment as I walked down an empty hall, I quickly made a left and headed to my locker.  As I reached my locker, I fished into my pocket and grabbed out my key, swiftly unlocking it and grabbing my brown satchel, slipping my thin laptop into it, along with my newest reading material, and my sketch book.  Shutting my locker door, I turned back around towards where I came and ran right into someone’s hard, warm chest, nearly knocking them over.