The Orion Star

About Simon

**TRIGGER WARNING** This chapter revolves around a character that is a drug dealer. If that is a trigger for you, DO NOT READ THIS CHAPTER.

Medicate, suffocate, agitate, supplicate

Concentrate, annotate, complicate, castrate

Rabbit bait, cannot wait, magistrate 

Ice skate, schoolmate, nameplate

I don't know who I am anymore

--From the song Spin

Lyrics by: Orion Bauwens

"So I got a call from Simon..."

Ben has taken me out to lunch. Between him, Jake, and Tristan, I never eat alone now. I hate it, it's embarrassing. I shouldn't have to be babysat for something as natural as eating. It makes me utterly despise myself.

"Yeah?" I say as nonchalantly as I can muster, stabbing my salad with my fork but not actually putting any in my mouth. "How's he doing?"

"Orion."

I look up and Ben is frowning at me.

"What?"

"He told me you bit his head off."

"Well I want nothing to do with the guy anymore!"

"Okay, but you could've told him that a bit nicer."

"He asked me if I needed anything."

"Okay," Ben replies evenly, "and he didn't know you've been in rehab."

"Well, now he knows," I reply angrily.

Ben glances at my bandaged hand and wrist. "Is that what happened?"

Self-consciously I shift my arm beneath the table. "Maybe."

He narrows his eyes. "Orion."

I shove salad in my mouth. "Sorry. Yeah, yeah it is."

"He didn't deserve that, Orion."

"You're right--I should've called the cops on him and turned him in for being a coke dealer and pill pusher."

Ben scowls at me. "You and I both know you wouldn't do that. If you were going to do that you would've done that years ago."

I frown and eat more of my lunch. He's right. We've known Simon since High School. We were all friends. He started dealing weed back then. Instead of it being a phase though, his reputation grew and he started dealing pills and Ecstacy in college.

I know it's horrible that I supported his illegal ventures. Honestly though I couldn't not help him. He was my friend. I didn't want him to flounder. Once I found fame, I started bringing him to parties so he could deal. The business was good. If he was going to be a fuck-up, I at least wanted him to be a successful fuck up.

Simon to me is like a horse that's drowning in a deep river. You don't want the horse to go under. You feel bad for the horse. So you keep trying everything you can to save it--you keep throwing the rope out even though it's too short. And you feel guilty because you don't have a boat to save it with.

Even so, it was a shitty thing for me to have screamed at him. I know Simon better than that. I just panicked. I don't want anyone to know I've been in rehab. Because once it's out there then everyone--everyone, the world--will really know how much of a pathetic screw up I am. They'll know how much I don't have my shit together. They'll know how badly I've been fucking up lately.