Page 38 of Dirty Roulette

Chapter twenty-five

Ryder

I’m back to the same old boat, where insecurity is a never-ending cycle.

I know Payton wouldn’t run off to parties out of spite just to make me jealous like Brittni did, but she’s been ignoring my calls all day long.

This cold shoulder hurts just as much. This morning she didn't meet me at the coffee stand, and at lunch I sat by myself searching for her in the crowd of people swarming in. I took the time off my studies to help her with algebra, but she didn’t bother to show up for that either.

At practice her eyes didn’t meet my gaze once.

I have this one night off from work this week and want to spend it with her, but all I have is the little delivered receipts of my messages.

I stare at her name and check her social media for any activity, but she seems silent.

Laying in bed and talking to the ceiling isn’t my idea of how I want tonight to go. I need to get out and do something.

Ryder: Hey, please talk to me. You’ve been ignoring my calls all day. I can’t do this with you.

Payton: Sorry, I turned off my phone today.

Ryder: Why? I waited for you this morning and at lunch.

Payton: Idk. I saw you talking to Brittni, and I’m not an idiot. You aren’t over her.

Ryder: You can’t take what Charlie said seriously that night. You’re reading into it.

Payton: You were clearly having an intimate conversation with Brittni. I saw you two.

I can’t do this back-and-forth over texts. I run both hands over my face, rubbing the pain out of my eye sockets. We seriously can’t be having this conversation right now. I call her, hearing the phone ring several times, and I can already imagine her staring at my name contemplating it.

“Hello...” she says.

I swallow the bulge in my throat. “I told Brittni to stop, like you asked me to. That’s the gist of the conversation we had. You ran off that night before I could talk to you, and now you’re ignoring me. There is no reason for you to be jealous of her, I do not want her.”

“You asked her to stop? Why now? It’s been weeks, and I’ve been in hell!” Her words bite me through the speaker.

“Because I have feelings for you. This entire time I had feelings for you. I want you,” I say and she’s silent. It’s the white noise filling my ears and the little hints of static between us. “Go out with me tonight, I want to see you.”

I hear her sigh on the other end. “Okay, can you pick me up in thirty minutes so I can get ready?”

“I’ll see you then.”

***

Instead of a normal movie theater, Payton convinces me to pull into the drive-in where they show the oldies.

It’s a million times cheaper and a box of candy doesn’t cost fifteen dollars, including a severed arm.

The one they are showing is Fright Night, and the muse fits Payton perfectly.

The acting is terrible, and she giggles at every corny scene.

There is about fifteen minutes left of the movie, and it’s going on midnight.

My cell vibrates in the center console, and it’s Charlie’s picture on the screen.

I let it go straight to voicemail and continue watching the movie.

The phone goes off again. Charlie never calls me, it’s always a text message to drill into me. So I grab my cell and put it to my ear.

“Hey.”

“I need you to come home!” She screams into my ears, but it’s not the normal loving bitchy sister I’m used to listening to. Her tone is off.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Mom won’t wake up. She called me and... and she was crying and...” Charlie sobs on the other end, stuttering as she says, “I dunno what to do!”

“Calm down!”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!”

“Is she breathing?” I ask.

“She won’t stop puking! I can’t pick her up. She’s covered in... she’s covered in it.”

“Okay, Okay. I’m on my way. I’m maybe ten minutes from there.”

“Please hurry!” She sobs.

“Push her so she is lying on her side. If she’s not on her side, she can suffocate.”

“Okay... Okay.” There is a thump as if she dropped the phone to the floor.

“I don’t know what to do! Mom! Please, Mom, wake up!” Her voice is further away.

“Keep her on her side. I’ll be right there!”

Payton furrows her brows. The worry is clear on her face. “What’s wrong?!” she asks.

I can’t formulate any words. My heart muffles Payton’s mouth moving.

She leans over, her eyes scanning me with worry.

I shift the gears into reverse, peeling out of the drive-in theater and the bag of popcorn goes flying to the floor mat.

Dust kicks up underneath the tires and I speed off. I’m ignoring every red light.

Payton presses a palm on the ceiling as I weave in and out of traffic, cussing at anyone with breaking lights.

“What’s going on?” Payton asks and each sharp turn sends her throttling from one side to the other.

“Come on!” Someone slams on their brakes for no good reason. I flip on the blinker, cutting past them. My palm lies on the horn. “MOVE!” I’m drenched in sweat, my head heavy.

“Talk to me!” Payton hollers at me. The thing I call a heart thrashes as I swerve around people driving slowly, and hightail it when a light changes to yellow.

“It’s my mom!”

I peel into the driveway and don’t bother to turn off the Jeep. I throw the seatbelt off and run to the front door, hanging wide open. Charlie is on her knees, combing Mom’s hair back with mascara pooling down her cheeks.

“Sebastian!” Charlie uses my first name, and she’s legit a mess – her fingers soaked in vomit and drool. “I’m sorry... I dunno what happened... I just answered her phone call... all I did was answer it!” She heaves in a sob.

A wrenching gurgle climbs out of mom’s throat and vomit pours out of her mouth. She’s choking on it.

“Mom, no, you’re not doing this to me.” I pat her on the cheek, her eyes fluttering open and her pupils are pinpoint falling back into nothingness.

“Mom!” I pull her up to a sitting position, and she gags with vomit running down her chin.

“Mom, wake up.” She’s pale, cold, and clammy, her breathing shallow.

I pick her up, throwing her arm over my shoulder.

Mom mumbles, but I can’t make out the words.

Her head swirls around like an unstable spring with too much weight on the top.

When I kick the bathroom door open, I see it on the floor.

The empty orange pill bottle with the blue lid underneath the groove of the bathroom sink.

“No... no... no! Charlie!”

When I get her to sit on the tile floor, I throw up the toilet seat.

I have no idea what to do. They don’t teach this to you in high school, or college, or anywhere.

If she devoured an entire bottle of medication, all I can come up with is I need her entire stomach drained.

I jam two fingers into the back of her throat until she hurls straight into the bowl.

Payton stands in the doorway wrapped in my football jacket, sitting above her bony knees.

A hand comes up to her mouth. The most painful expression I’ve ever seen manifests in her eyes.

The fear carves scars right into my skin.

It’s crawling up from my chest to my throat.

I don’t cry, I don’t shed tears, I’m swallowing the saliva saturating my mouth.

She stands there like a statue, staring at me through the mirror.

“I... I don’t want you to see this,” I manage to say. “Get someone on the phone, please!”

“Okay, I’m sorry... I’m sorry.” She scurries off.

Mom lays an arm around the seat of the toilet.

Snatching the pill bottle, I read the cracked and faded label.

It’s an old oxycodone prescription and it might be expired.

I pull out my cell, typing it into the search engine about overdosing, and all it gives me is the poison control hotline.

Knowing Mom, she will shut down even more the second I dial a crisis call center with a person on the other end pretending to give a damn about a stranger having a mental breakdown.

I keep typing in other keywords until the one I need comes up.

Naloxone. I’ve seen the pink box before.

Dad was paranoid about overdosing. He hated this shit, but my brain is beyond a blur. I can't think of where it could be.

“Charlie!” I shout and pry open the bathroom cabinets, throwing out boxes of bandages, a brown bottle of peroxide, Tylenol bottles.

What I need isn’t there. “Charlie!” I shout again.

Footsteps come pounding down the hallway and Charlie rushes over, digging her nails into the doorframe, with Payton behind with a phone wedge against her ears.

“I need Naloxone. I think there might be a box in her bathroom. I think Dad bought a box.”

Charlie flutters her eyes, visibly swallowing hard. “You need what?”

“Naloxone! The shot, the nasal spray, do you know what that is?” She stands there still like deer in headlights. “Do you? It’s in a pink box.”

“Mom’s bathroom, go to mom’s bathroom!” They both race off down the hallway, and there is shuffling and muffled yelling coming from the room.

“Don’t do this to me, please Mom.”

I’ve sheltered Charlie and Payton from it since last Christmas.

I always came home on nights when mom sounded worse than usual.

When the crying spells were too intense and Mom wanted her life to end, I drove home and called it a homesick visit.

I dunno if Mom liked the extra attention, but she would ramble that she didn’t belong on this planet and belonged somewhere up in the sky.

I always talked her off the ledge and calmed her down.

Got her something to eat. Charlie and Payton were so interested in each other that they didn’t notice I cleaned the house, tackling the week's worth of dishes, and laundry. I’d take out the overflowing trash while Charlie and Payton were jumping into the pool.

Those two didn’t need to worry about the adult shit I’ve burdened myself with.

They never saw it. I cooked for them, logged into Charlie’s school account, and made her do the homework, so she graduated on time.

Dad didn’t step up to help; he was never home. If he was, he would merely say he wanted nothing to do with Mom during one of her meltdowns. He’d find a hotel and stay there for several days on end. I guess that’s where he met the home wrecker.

Charlie comes back in with a pink box and she pries it open with her lion-sharp nails, pulling out the nasal spray. She’s trembling like she has Parkinson’s. “I got it!” I take it. At least Dad was good for something.

“It says on the box that it wears off,” Charlie trembles with a hand covering her mouth as I spray it into Mom’s nostrils. I pat Mom on the cheeks, and within seconds her breathing starts to normalize.

“How long do we have?” I ask. At this point I’m shaking all over, my blood cold and I can’t even feel my heartbeat anymore.

“Maybe thirty minutes.”

“They’re here!” Payton goes racing down the hallway as I pick my mom off the floor, carrying her out of the house.