A Girl Named Drool & A Pack of Kools|| Book I

Chapter 1: Narcotics Anonymous

I sat on the concrete curb outside of the local corner store down the street from my new home in a foreign area. My knees were hugged to my chest as the brisk winter breeze continued to brush back the loose long black strands of hair out of my face. The tip of my small cold nose was kissed by the chilly touch of air causing it to become a rosy red. The wet streams down my damp cheeks drying away with the wind.

I let my half-smoked cigarette dangle loosely from between my two pale fingers. My black painted nails were chipped from hours of anxiously gnawing away at them until they were rigid and short. My mind was throbbing from continuously replaying those memories. My thoughts are muddled and I'm unable to process the whole traumatic event that befell hours before.

I zone out to the desolate traffic light in the distance every once in a while silently changing colors. Very few cars passed by on the latent pot-hole-covered street in front of me. My body abruptly jolts in pain and I wince, sucking my teeth. I looked down to see the ash from my cigarette had broken off and landed through the rips in my tattered jeans onto the oozing raw gashes on my knee.

I gulped gazing at the bloody open wounds that now stung underneath the gray ash scattered on it. The atmosphere around me felt thick and suffocating as yesterday floods my head, everything felt all too surreal. I did it, I thought. I finally did it. I broke free from the shackles that place chained me in, for once in my life nothing was holding me back there.

My old life was suddenly set ablaze and burnt down to nothing but ashes right in front of my eyes. Old life. That sounded bittersweet even in my head. I let the rest of my unsmoked cigarette slip out of my grasp and into the dead patchy grass beside the sidewalk. I turned my hands over staring at the cuts and rough scraped skin on my palms and it brought me right back.

My black scuffed sneakers hit the dry dirt creating a cloud of dust as I stepped down from the last bus step. I was the only one to get off at this stop, all the way out in the middle of the boondocks. It was as far as the bus could take me for the amount of money I had stolen. I stay still watching as the night bus I took from Chaldean Town Detroit secures its doors, driving away into the dusky night until it's out of sight.

I bite the inside of my cheek nervously peering around at the murky grove of trees encompassing the bus stop on the side of some straight eerie backroad. I peer at the desolate wooden bench with a small patch of concrete underneath with grass and weeds sneaking through the cracks. Slithering up the sides of the bench.

The bleak moonlight peeking out from behind the cloudy night sky causes something to glimmer in the corner of my eye. It lures my attention towards the rickety payphone a few feet away. I sigh, sluggishly dragging my feet through the patchy grass and over towards it.

I listen to the crickets chirping ominously in the wooded area all around me and behind the payphone and fragile ruinous bench. I dig into my black denim shorts pocket grabbing what's left of the change I stole out of my mom's boyfriend's wallet. I finally had enough, tonight was the night I left everything behind. I took my chances while they were doped up in the back room of our trailer.

Only I got greedy and took a little extra for cigarettes and it bit me in the ass when he noticed. I raised a hand to lightly touch my swollen left eye, which I had partial vision out of. I couldn't see myself but I could only imagine the deep reddish-purple-tinged bruise beginning to form from the throbbing feeling in my swollen and tender eye. I take the last two quarters to my name and insert them into the payphone.

I peer down at the scribbled sharpie on my left palm. My ridged hands tremble as I dial his number and wait anxiously as the dial tone rings in my ear. I look over my shoulder cautiously into the dark of the night on high alert even though I'm the only person out here for miles. Finally, on the last ring, I hear a groggy voice pick up the phone.