Addiction (Book One of the Addiction Series)

Chapter 13

I don't go home after I leave that house in the woods. I walk to the end of the first road I come to and I hitchhike back to the city proper. I don't call the police even then because I can't give them an address to go to, and I don't think "there are two kidnapping drug dealers in a shack somewhere off the main highway" is a very useful tip.

I don't call home either. I don't call anyone. I go directly to the St. Kolbe Rehabilitation Center and check myself back in. They put me in a blank white room by myself with no windows, and they give me half an hour to drain myself of all the magic I have collected. They shut the door behind them, and I scream as I create the world's biggest electric purple fireball with my hands. I scream because it hurts – I want to drain every last iota of Adam's magic from my body – and I scream because I am putting all of my frustrations, all of my hopelessness, all of my guilt, resentment, and hatred for myself into that one last burst of power.

When it is all out, I fall to my knees, completely empty, completely exhausted. Then I sob until even my sadness is drained from my body, and I lie down on the cold floor. It is over. I am free.

A nurse comes in a little while later and picks me up off the floor. She is gentle, and she wraps a thin, white, crocheted sweater around my bare shoulders, covering the even thinner white hospital gown they gave me when I checked in. She leads me to a small room that I will be sharing with another girl named Felicity, who isn't here. A normal person would wonder what her roommate will be like (the nurse says she is sixteen too, but blonde), but not me. I don't care. I am not here to make friends, I am here to kill my demons once and for all.

This time I will be staying in rehab for a month or more. I checked in for the long stay, the resident package. I wish I could have hugged Lily and maybe my parents goodbye before I came, but I couldn't risk it. I didn't want them to see me like that anyway, hopped up on magic, thirsting for more.

That thirst might never fully go away, but I want to learn how to control it. I want to learn how to live without that thirst being my driving force, without it being the reason behind everything. When I feel sad, I want to just feel sad, not hungry. When I am happy, I want to think that it's because of something I did or something someone else said, not because I'm drunk on magic. And when I fall in love with a boy, I want to know that it's real, not an illusion caused by what amounts to secondhand smoke.

Did I really ever love Adam? I think maybe I did, but I can't really know for sure. Not in my current state, not now. Maybe one day I'll know. Maybe one day I'll love him again, or maybe I'll find someone else to love, someone I don't have to forgive for so much.

I want to take these thirty days, maybe more, to find the real Danika Rose, the one I was always supposed to be, the one I could never quite reach after Lily was born. That Danika doesn't have to be special or powerful or great, she just has to feel like me. That's all I want.

I talk to my family on the phone that evening. My mom and Lily both cry, but my dad says he is proud of me. He says he isn't happy that I let myself slip again, but he is glad I am taking control of my future. He says this time will be better, that this time I'll get "straightened out for good."

He also says he is going to kick Adam's ass for putting me in that situation, and my protests against that are only half-hearted.

After eating dinner in a half-empty cafeteria populated by men and women in various stages of uncleanliness and jitters, I head back to my room. I fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits the cool white pillow, and my slumber is heavy. I am too strung out to dream.

Around two in the morning, the first of the shakes start to hit me and I try not to freak out. This detoxing could take a while, as I learned last time, and letting it scare me will only make things worse.

I doze on and off until four, feeling the bed vibrate beneath me as I shiver and ache, then I get up to go vomit in the tiny bathroom off to the side of the room. I try to open the door but it's stuck. I can feel the bile rising up the back of my throat so I push harder on the handle, pressing my shoulder into the white wood until finally it gives way.

I am weak from the tremors and my legs give out, sending me down onto all fours. I wretch but hold back the vomit, feeling my way to the toilet in the dark. When my hand makes contact with the cold porcelain bowl, I feel a surge of relief as I pull myself up onto my knees and hurl out my dinner. The mashed peas and cinnamon applesauce taste about the same coming out as they did going in, and I am relieved when this first round is over.

I sink back on my knees, sliding down onto the floor. It feels cold on my bare legs, and I find myself wanting to feel that coldness on my face too. Knowing it's disgusting, I stretch myself out to lie on my stomach. Just as I am pressing my burning cheek into the freezing tile, my hand brushes something at my side.

My first thought is that it is a bathmat, since it is just outside the small shower stall. But the more I feel it, the more I realize that the long, soft fibers I'm touching don't feel like fabric. They feel like hair.

My stomach swoops again, but this time I'm not going to vomit. As quickly as I can, I slide myself backward across the tile and sit up when I reach the wall. I lift my hand high over my head, searching for the light switch I didn't have time to flip before. My fingers are fumbling, growing ever more frantic, until finally I find the small switch. I flick it upward and there is a loud thud as I bang the back of my head against the wall.

I am not alone in the bathroom.

There is a boy around my age or a little older lying there on the floor, curled up in the fetal position as if he has just been kicked in the stomach. He is rocking back and forth, and I can hear him muttering something under his breath. His big, dark grey eyes are wide and rimmed with red as he stares at the arms wrapped around his knees. His face is the color of melting candle wax.

"Who... who are you?" I ask. My voice is a tiny croak in the small room; the vomiting has made it rough and the fear has made it weak.

I don't expect him to reply, but he does. "Ambrose McCoven," he says immediately. Then he looks up at me through a veil of dark, sweaty, greyish hair and adds, "and we're both going to die."