Set Free

Chapter 15: Victims of the Flames

Never in my whole fourteen years and three months of life had I ever seen someone overdose, well I never thought I would. For Eddie and Reggy this was rare, meanwhile for Yuza and I, we were scared out of our minds. The part that shook us all evenly is it happened to someone we lived with and cared for. It had been almost two months since Aydin overdosed and surprisingly he wasn't dead, but neither alive.

"I still can't believe it even though it's been so long," Reggy said over the phone to me as I hid in the girls' bathroom. "He can't die from this, he just can't."

My breath was shaky as I hadn't slept or eaten much in days now. Constant anxiety and stress of his possible death shook me to the core. "It's not our choice if he wakes up. He overdosed on meth." I said feeling my heart sink. "He's lucky to even be technically alive." It was quiet for a second and I wish I wouldn't have said that. "The coma will end whichever way it wants, whenever it wants to." I told Reggy trying to keep cool and refusing the tears in my eyes passage to fall to my cheeks.

I could hear a door open and close on Reggy's line, he must've left his classroom. I could hear his voice break with each step he continued to take. "W-what happens if he doesn't wake up? Who do I call my friend? What if I never get to say goodbye or tell him how much he meant to me? What if... what if..." He rambled on losing track of what he was trying to say but I knew anyway. "I gotta go." He said and I could feel his heartbreak even through a phone call. "I'll see you at home in the morning."

"Reggy-"

Beep beep beep

A week after Aydin fell into a coma Reggy instantly got a night job from eight in the early evening to two in the morning loading packages into trucks. Anything from drunk binge shoppers adding several impulse buys to their carts at midnight to mattresses and fridges that needed to be delivered the next day. He and a couple of other employees would get it all loaded into trucks to be taken out by morning. Even though it paid seventeen dollars an hour and helped us pay rent on time, Reggy's health and time for sleep were at an all-time low. Whenever he thought about Aydin, he asked for an extra shift that night. So far that had been four of the five nights this week, I was scared of what would happen if it continued like this for much longer. The only thing I knew is he would burn out quickly and dangerously just like his friend who was now on a thin tightrope possibly leading to the end of his life if he dared to trip.

Placing my phone back into my pocket I put myself together by washing my face and forcing the tears back into my eyes with a deep inhale. "Everything will be fine." I said to myself.

*

Everything was not fine. News of Aydin's coma spread like a wildfire. Even though he had only attended this school for one day, it was as if the fire of footsteps he left behind that one day had left permanent marks behind engraved into the tiles of our school hallways. People mourned his possible death as if they actually knew him. And as for each of us, it would be a lot easier to deal with our friends tragic maybe not-so-accident overdose if every single person around me didn't stare constantly to me and my friends silently asking us questions with their eyes as to what was happening with someone they might not even know the first thing about, well, besides his name and hair colour that had faded so much it was a pale yellow and dark brown mix rather than blue. The only thing these strangers knew is the first day of this school year Sana, Reggy, Aydin, and myself walked into this school together and the next day only two of us returned with grim circles under our eyes and agony in our minds while one of us would stay in the hospital with Aydin each day.

While the days rolled on in a fury of dark clouds and dark eyes we were all worse off. Yuza forced herself to work five days a week fighting against the help we all knew she needed. Her nightmares had gotten so bad Sana stayed awake to watch over her and protect her from herself when she woke up. Reggy had taken that terrible nightshift job that had given him the arms of a man who had been lifting for a year in just two months and enough money to help us pay for some of Aydin's hospital bills, but it had taken away the light in his eyes faster than I could tell him to quit. Meanwhile, I stood on guard each night outside our apartment door with a knife, waiting for the day Jamal or one of his dangerous children would strike us again wanting something more that we didn't have. Maybe even just to take our lives for fun.