The Last String

Chapter20

Third-person P.O.V

Gingerly, she walked across the colossal hallway with hands stiffly in her pockets. She was unable to meet eyes with her brother or anyone else.

"Jesse," Conner called.

"Yes, father?"

Jesse (now blue-faced with guilt) looked up. Sluggish.

Conner asked, perhaps demanded, to know what was odd. He was suspicious for some reason.

"Empty your pockets," he asked unexpectedly.

The atmosphere around the room was now intense. Filled with unorthodox suspense. Andrew too was now suspicious.

Jesse stiffened her upper lip, reached out for her pockets, and to their surprise, pulled out a transparent bag. Absent of colour, and displeasing to the eye: Drugs.

Little Andy was hurt. 'How could she?' he kept asking himself.

He remembers giving her that "talk" weeks ago after seeing her so called friends who looked like they'd bring up no good. He also remembers her promising him not to fall into whatever phase they're going through or do something stupid. He felt pathetic as he was too clueless to see through her lie.

She had so many signs of drug abuse. She had become withdrawn, her personality sunk in dark thoughts. Money was disappearing from purses and items of value had vanished.

She'd lost so much weight, and wasn't the same girl anymore, like all of her sunshine had been stolen by the drugs and locked tight in a cage of anger.

She was always the smart one, the one who outshone him. In any room, she would be the one who was admired. Currently, he can barely think of her for a second without frightfully seeking a distraction. He misses his sister.

..

"Jessy?" Andrew called his younger sister softly as he knocked on her door for the seventh time in less than two minutes.

She figured that he won't go anytime soon so she got up from her bed grumpily. Scratching her runny nose and rubbing her red eyes that had very large pupils now, she slumped to the door. The door knob was freezing when she touched it. Her hand wobbled weakly and somehow she managed to open the door.

At the sight of her only brother, an excessive yawning fiasco had begun.

Sitting on the bed beside his sickly-looking sister, Andrew started a conversation. With himself as she didn't utter a word in reply or even seemed interested.

"Talk to me." He would say but she'd just fumble with the comforter.

"Say anything. Describe your addiction."

She gave him a flat look, "I'm not one of your patients Andrew, stop it." And then they sat in silence.

Sickening silence.

He was almost going to give up.

Until she spoke up.

She looked at him with those dead eyes and said, "Imagine a rat gnawing on your living flesh.

"Now imagine you had a magic stick to poke that rat away with in your hand, and if you poked that rat you would be filled with the most glorious feeling of contentment and warmth. Imagine using that stick would bring you to a level of happiness you had never achieved before, a personal nirvana that you never wanted to leave.

"Now imagine you are told not to use that stick and to let the rat keep on gnawing. That's my addiction, that's why all these therapies and groups will never work. You can detox me all you want but that rat is going to come back one day and when it does I'm going to be reaching for my magic stick. Nothing will stop me."