The Storms Of August

Chapter Thirty Three: Keep An Eye Out

I shouldn't have been surprised. What else would Demi ask me to get during her withdrawal? A stuffed animal? I'm no dealer but there had to be a couple grand worth of coke sitting on my dresser. I closed the box quickly, pretending I didn't flash myself with drug paraphernalia. I didn't know what to do with drugs, where do I put them? Should I keep them? It seems like a waste to throw thousands of dollars of illicit drugs away. But if I kept them who would use them? How would I keep them without there being a chance Demi found it and couldn't resist? I didn't have the answers to any of these questions and I wasn't going to find them in the powder bags so I closed the lid to the box gently before sliding it to the corner of my room under my bed. The things we do for love.

My room was pitch black when I awoke to the phone ringing somewhere in the sheets. I fumbled around looking for it, knowing it was close but I just couldn't release it from the grip of the sheets. Frantically, I stood up and shook my covers. I almost had it too. Then it stopped ringing. It could wait.

It could not wait.

The phone started ringing again. This time I found it tucked between layers of bedding. Through my squinted eyes, I found the accept button and groaned into the phone.

"I'm sorry." And then it was silence.

"What's wrong, Demi?" I asked quietly. I know she wouldn't be calling it if it wasn't necessary. Otherwise she'd be tapping on my window by now.

"Can you come over? I finished my vacation bag a few hours ago and-"

"A few hours ago Demi? What else do you have over there?"

"Please come over." The pleading in her voice softened my approach. She wasn't calling for a lecture, she called because she needed help. A large part of me knew that her honesty was very much an intentional confession. Demi only did drugs without reason, every other piece is calculated.

"I'll be there in half an hour."

The door was unlocked for me when i arrived. The cold, dark house just as eerily quiet as always. A low light was starting to blossom outside in a distant sky. The sun was waking up but wouldn't rise for another hour or so. Maybe it knew I would need all the light I could get. I winded my way through the house, past strangers and expensive furniture. I slide up the wooden stairs with my coat and backpack slung on my shoulder, gripping it tightly as if it would vanish off my back.

I could hear her before I could see her. Soft footsteps hurried in short bursts across the floor, mumbled arguing ensued around the corner, as if to tell her own feet they were too loud. The slightly open door frame to her room flashed the hallway with a river of a pale yellow light, only interrupted by a constant shadow crossing its path. 

I hesitated just a moment before lightly knocking and making my appearance known. When I popped my head in, she just sat there; staring at the opposite wall as if it had her biggest fear growling back at her. That was the least of my concern. She was paler than when she was at school, wearing nothing but a visibly damp tank top and damper shorts. Even from fifteen feet away I could tell she was shaking, from withdrawal or fear or something else I don't know, but the look in her widened eyes put a pit in my stomach.

I'm sure if I hadn't been staring so intensely that she would have continued on as she was, but the tunnel vision I had on the sweat running down her brow pulled her focus to me.

"You look like shit," I smiled.

She didn't smile back. Her face didn't soften as it usually did. Instead, she blinked ever so slowly and nodded silently, as if to declare herself on her way to her grave.

My smile rolled off her shoulder into the pile of dirty clothes beside her bed. I walked over to the hollow girl and sat beside her, taking her cold shaky hand and putting it to my chest. She watched me, the silence between us multiplying like a virus between us. The only thing that told me she was still there at all was the slow, shallow breaths she took while staring intently at her own nimble fingers. I watched her for a moment, trying to read a book in a foreign language and hoping what I was trying to say was tunable to her ear.