“I wish you’d have just let me stay in my daze,” I tell the guy. Then his name comes back to me—Zack, the person who lives here and offered me the joint. “I was enjoying myself.” But now I’m not. Now reality is creeping back in and there’s a ton of noise.
“Well, here then.” Zack picks up a joint from an ashtray on the cracked coffee table then he takes a hit and roams to the corner of the room to open the window. “Come take another hit and you should drift off again.”
I hesitate. I know drugs are bad, know that I’m not supposed to be doing them, know better. It’s the same thoughts I had when I took the first hit. But then comes another stream of thoughts. What does it matter? No one cares. Just check your phone. Besides, you’re welcome here.
I stand up and join Zack in the corner, gazing out the window at the stars as I put the joint up to my lips. I practically hack up my lungs with the first inhale just like I did the first time. It’s not quite as intense the second time around, though.
Zack laughs at me, but then takes another drag himself. The cycle continues again, until I’m so far gone I can barely feel the people in the room around me. There’s a ton of them, I know that, but it feels like I’m the only one. That no one can see me. That I barely exist again.
Maybe I do.
Maybe the last few hours were just a façade.
Zack turns around when some girl walks up to him. He starts chatting to her about a stereo and I can tell by his flirty tone that he’s attracted to her. I can’t see through all the fog in my head to tell if she’s hot or not though. All I can see is hazel eyes that subtly notice me and for the briefest second, I think maybe I do exist. That even though most girls don’t notice me, this one does. But her fleeting gaze is the only detail I can pick out about her and then I’m swimming in nothingness again.
I become nothing again.
Finally, my mind gets so cloudy, I go lie down. The room quiets, along with my thoughts. The routine continues. A pattern is formed. Take a hit. Zone off. Check phone. Nothing. Take a hit. Zone off. Check phone. Nothing. Over and over again. In the end, my parents never call and when morning rolls around, I’m so out of it I feel like shit, barely able to move. I try to tell myself that if someone would have just called—showed me they cared—then I would have stopped. But I know that’s a lie. Deep down, I know that the moment I chose to take the first hit, not only did my life standstill, it crumbled, taking whoever I was with it. That my life was never going to be the same again.
Six years later…
(Present day)
Chapter 3
I feel so old.
Avery
Life is confusing.
Life is hard.
Life is… life.
But life is also living life and even though I struggle every day, I try to stay positive that I’m breathing and my heart is beating.
Stay positive that I’m still alive and able to breathe.
Tonight is a little more difficult than others to maintain this mindset. I have beer on my shirt, a welt on my cheek from some guy clocking me in the face with his elbow, my jeans are torn and my entire body is achy. Usually, I’m more tolerant during Sunday night outings, but tonight, the music is too noisy, the crowd too rambunctious, and I’m exhausted from the all-nighter I pulled the night before to study.
At twenty-two years old, I feel more like thirty-five. Whether to act my actual age or act the age I should be based on the responsibilities I have of being a single mother is always a constant battle within me. This is something my friend Charissa doesn’t understand.
“Avery, where the hell’s your enthusiasm tonight?!” Charissa calls out from over the cheering crowd while bouncing up and down with an amount of energy I envy. We’re at The Golden Element House, at a concert. Only one band has played and we still have three more to listen to, but I’m yawning already. “You’re usually more energetic than this when we go out.”
That’s because I’m not fun Avery tonight.
I’m worried Avery.
I’m mother Avery.
I just had to leave my invisible supermom cape at home.
Which I feel guilty about.
Always do.
“Sorry! I’m just super tired tonight!” I check the time on my watch and sigh because it’s exactly one minute later than the last time I looked. “And I look like shit,” I say. “I really should just go home. Mason’s sick and my head isn't into this anyway.”
She aims a manicured finger at me. “No way, Missy. You aren’t bailing out on me tonight.” She smiles brightly. “And you look great.”
Easy for her to say. With her body-hugging black dress, curly blond hair that probably took two hours to style, and flawless makeup, she looks like she just walked off the runway. Me, I’m in jeans and the same black tank top I’ve been wearing for three days straight because I can’t find time to do laundry. I can’t wait until summer semester is over, then I only have two more to make it through before I get that little piece of paper that will hopefully give me the future I’ve been planning on having since I was sixteen, even if I got off the path for a while.
I’m back on it now though.
“Sorry, but I warned you I wasn’t going to be much fun.” I inch in my elbows as a guy squeezes by me. He ends up spilling beer on my boots and then offers to buy me a drink as an ‘I’m sorry.’
“Yeah, I don’t drink,” I tell him, hoping he’ll take the clue that I’m not interested—that I’m not interested in any guy here.
He doesn’t pick up on my offish vibe though, instead grinning. “Well, how about a glass of water, then?” He stares at my breasts when he says it.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Sorry, but you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
He glances from Charissa to me than his grin expands. “Oh, are you two…”
This isn’t the first time someone’s thought I was a lesbian, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. “Yeah, we are.”
Charissa chokes on her drink, spitting some onto the floor. “No we’re not,” she sputters, sending the guy an apologetic look before narrowing her eyes at me. “Why do you do that?”
I shrug as the guy stalks off, muttering something under his breath. “It keeps them away.”
She sighs. “All guys aren’t bad, and if you don’t stop thinking that way, you’re going to end up alone.”
There’s no point in responding. Charissa hardly knows anything about my past nor do I feel close enough to her to explain why I will end up alone, at least when it comes to having any kind of a relationship with the opposite sex. If she did know everything about my past, the truth about Conner, how my father abandoned me, she wouldn’t be trying to convince me that all guys aren’t bad—she’d be trying to convince herself. Besides, I decided that day, when by some miracle I got another chance at life, that I was going to do better this time. That I had to. Not just for Mason and myself, but because I felt there was a reason why I came back. Saw something waiting for me in the darkness of the stars.