Page 24 of Puck
“That’s . . . not an easy story to tell, nor a short one.”
“SparkNotes?”
I shook my head. “Wouldn’t do it justice.”
“Come on, Colbie, you gotta give me something.”
“You told me a lot, so I kinda have to, don’t I?”
Puck blew a raspberry. “You don’thaveto tell me shit, Colbie. But I’m interested.”
“I got hooked on heroin.” I blurted it out, a dirty secret known only to me, till now.
“What? How?”
“I got a job as a parking lot attendant. Had a spot in a homeless community, under an overpass, near some people who’d look out for me at night. Thought I could save money, you know? Get an apartment, make ends meet, figure things out. Build a life. Well . . . I made friends with some people, a couple girls who were in a gang. They looked out for me, protected me, got me a better job at a Footlocker . . . and they also pressured me into trying heroin. It was the thing, you know? What they did. They sold it, as distributors for another guy. And I got hooked. It nearly killed me. I OD’d once, got arrested a few times, started living for the next hit, that whole cliché.”
“Goddamn.” His gaze was sharp as it swiveled to mine. “How’d you get clean?”
“A counselor at a homeless facility. After the OD, I went there because I knew my friends in the gang wouldn’t help me get clean, and if I went back to them, I’d keep shooting up. The counselor, Miss Lewis . . . she took an interest in me. Somehow, she found out that I’d done well in high school, and as a way to keep me busy, convinced me to study for the SAT. So I lived in the homeless shelter and studied at the library, took the SAT, aced it.” I smiled at the memory. “Miss Lewis then convinced me to apply to a bunch of universities, just for fun, she said. What if, you know? Like, what did I have to lose? So I applied to like twenty universities, Ivy League places and state colleges all over the country. And then Miss Lewis talked me into applying for grants and scholarships, had me write a million essays about why I wanted to go to college and whatever. For me, it was about not being homeless anymore, it was about the idea of a future. When I OD’d, I realized that . . . I had two paths in front of me—death or jail with my friends from the gang, or something else, a path that led to a future, a path that led to me being something, being someone . . . worthwhile.”
“So you got into a college?”
I grinned. “I got into Harvard. And I got a scholarship, not a full ride, but a pretty big one. And Miss Lewis showed me how to take out school loans, and I got a job to cover the rest.”
Puck stared at me. “Harvard?” He sounded suitably impressed. “You went to Harvard?”
I nodded, still grinning. “Sure did. Got a masters from the Harvard Business School with a double minor in Chinese and Russian.”
“After being a homeless heroin addict.”
“Damn straight,” I said, with no small amount of pride in my voice; I figured I’d earned the right to be proud of that.
He shook his head. “Colbie, that is impressive as hell. For real. You deserve major fuckin’ props for that shit.”
“Wanna know how I supplemented my spending cash when I was at Harvard?” I asked.
“How?”
“Poker.”
Puck gaped at me. “The hell you say.”
I shrugged, and then winked at him. “I’ve always had a head for numbers. Some friends from my dorm talked me into playing poker one day, and I discovered I had a talent for it.” I hesitated, because this was another little thing nobody knew. “And, um, I also figured out that I could keep track of who had which cards. Made it easy to make sure I won.”
Puck’s eyes narrowed as he cut a glance at me. “You count cards?”
I bobbled my head side to side. “Yeah?”
He was quiet for a minute. “Hmm. Did you cheat a lot?”
I shook my head. “That’s how you get caught, doing it all the time. The trick to getting away with it is to make sure you lose frequently enough that no one suspects you. If you win every hand, they’ll figure it out pretty quick. I only really counted the cards when the stakes were high enough that I couldn’t afford to lose.”
“So if we played poker…”
I laughed. “It would depend on the stakes. I don’t gamble anymore, but—”
“Bullshit,” Puck interrupted.