Page 5

5

HAVOC

H ere I am again, at the most familiar part of Slaughters. The very street I lost myself to as a teenager, the very street my parents fought tooth and nail to pull me out of, yet it was Asha who succeeded. I look down at my empty prescription bottle and squeeze it tight in my hand.

This is fine.

I just need a little more to wean off, and then I’ll be back to normal. I pull my phone out of my pocket and text one of the few numbers I still know from memory.

I’M OUT HERE

I don’t know why I bother; the man never looks at his phone. I unbuckle my seatbelt, anxiously looking around as I pocket the bottle and feel for the wad of cash. The door opens before I can reach it, and a brunette in a black pantsuit combo looks me up and down before sliding past the half-shut door.

I put up my hand to stop her from closing it behind her and push it open the rest of the way before I walk inside.

“He—Hey, squirt.” It comes out almost like laughter, amusement for sure in seeing me again, no doubt surprised I’m still alive.

Ditto, motherfucker.

“Ryan fucking Lee.” I grin, finding him sitting on the same torn up leather recliner I’d spent many teenage nights sleeping in.

He’s only six or seven years older, but he carries with him wisdom from being on his own for so long, and at times, it appears the same as old age. When I was seventeen, he was twenty-three and running an ecstasy operation right out of Slaughters.

The first time we met, a friend convinced me to skip school to trip on acid. I had never done LSD before, nor had I any idea what it would do, what to expect. Clueless, I followed, and I spent the majority of the day rolling around in the grass, staring at the clouds in Slaughters Skatepark. Our dealer had been Ryan Lee, and he soon became one of my best friends.

Now, the skatepark is a parking lot, and the skaters have nowhere to go be kids at.

Ryan Lee still looks the same, maybe a few lines around the corners of his eyes that weren't there before, but the overall image hasn’t changed. I’m nearly thirty now, and he, thirty-six. He’s donning the same shaggy, mousy-brown hair that some beauty school dropout probably cut in exchange for a teener of coke and wearing the classic cargo pants with just enough pockets to hide everything he needs.

Not bothering to take my shoes off at the door, I run to him and jump into his lap, gracing his cheek with a sloppy, wet kiss.

“Motherfucker,” he grumbles, wiping it off with the back of his sleeve. “Where’ve you been, squirt? You disappeared.”

“Ryan, it’s been five years. I moved to California, remember?” I laugh, pushing off him and walking toward his kitchen.

Cups in the second cabinet to the left, plates on the right. Bread in the drawer for some reason, and pills under the microwave. Hard drugs in the bedroom, of course—the cocaine in a fake version of Little Women , the hard stuff in the A Scanner Darkly VHS. Those are only his personal stashes; the stuff he sells, he keeps in the walls, inside safes hiding in plain sight, disguised as paintings and family portraits.

“Could have called.” He huffs, propping his foot up on the opposite knee as he watches me open the fridge and grab a can of soda.

I’m probably the only person alive with the balls to walk this freely in his house, the only person who can do it without being accused of stealing.

“Could have called a lot of people,” I try justifying with a shake of my head, “but I didn’t. Was wrapped up in family shit.”

“I’m not family?” he taunts, a disingenuous, hurt look on his face.

I deadpan, unblinking as I pop the tab on the can, “I texted you a million times without an answer, and you know how I feel about rejection. I wasn’t going to do more than that.”

He furrows his eyebrows, the line in the middle growing deeper by the second before he pulls his phone out to prove me wrong. As he scrolls, the wrinkles on his nose soften, and he bites his lip, trying to mask any sign of defeat.

“Told you.” I chuckle, dropping to the couch across from him and propping my feet up on the coffee table. “I thought you were in prison, honestly.”

He gives me a scolding look, like the insult actually hurt him.

“What? You didn’t answer me! What was I supposed to think?” I set my can down.

“That I’m a better dealer than some shithead who’d get caught and go to prison.” He crosses his arms over his chest.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend, buddy.” Batting my eyelashes, I try to charm my way out of a tussle between old friends. “But you never answered.”

“You know I hate losing touch.” He grabs his glass off the table—whiskey, neat, probably something standard like Jack, but if someone was visiting, he’d tell them it was Johnny Walker Gold Label.

No one in this town can tell the difference anyway. He doesn’t bother spending money to impress others. It’s not his style.

“Ass.” I chuckle, reaching across and grabbing the remote from his hand to switch the show.

“Family shit?” He asks it quietly, like he’s not sure if it’s an okay thing to dig into.

Weird relationship to have with your drug dealer, but if I’m good at anything, it’s forming inappropriate bonds with the wrong people.

I shrug, staring at the can of soda and using the tab as my newest distraction. “It’s just me now.” The words are barely a whisper, the first time I’ve said them out loud myself. No one prepared me for the day I’d go from being an only child to an orphan. No one warned me what it would be like to be all alone in this world.

Acknowledgment flashes through his eyes for a brief moment, “You did everything you could for her.” He remembers the way I fell apart when my mom’s biopsy came back malignant. “I’m sorry, squirt.”

Crying in my drug dealer’s arms was the one bad country song I couldn’t stop writing. He’d been there to dry my tears just months after we first met, when my father had died in a car crash. Now here we were again doing the same dance with my mother. Guess I’d long trained my brain that Ryan Lee held the solution for my grieving. Maybe in the end, it wasn’t Asha who brought me home.

“Don’t be.” I snort. “Why do you think I came to see you?”

He sighs, not acknowledging me, yet somehow not ignoring me either. Reaching under the coffee table, he pulls out a mirror about the size of a book. On it already are four lines, measured out perfectly equal alongside a small pile of the powder.

It’s coke, and I have no interest in going anywhere but down from here.

“What’s your poison these days?” he asks, knowing my first addiction has always been escaping reality.

“I just ran out of Roxys,” I confess, always feeling icky when we interrupt personal shit for business.

“The fuck for?” He grimaces, his disdain for prescription pills still stronger than ever.

“Um…” I clear my throat uncomfortably, lifting my right foot up and then the left as I try to remember which one it’s supposed to be. “It’s an old injury; it just gives me problems when I get hit too hard.”

His expression says he knows better, but yet he grumbles out a “Yikes” anyway, putting the mirror back under the table and walking into his room. In just a few minutes, he’s out again, holding the A Scanner Darkly VHS in his hand.

“No way, dude.” I wave him off, knowing damn well I don’t want that shit. “Just give me some narcos to take the edge off, something with codeine.”

“That shit is bad for your liver.” He shakes his head. “Just take tiny bumps, never more than enough to get rid of the pain,” he instructs.

“Ryan, it’s all drugs,” I muse, never tired of the way his brain processes things.

“Yeah, and one favors big pharma. The other supports the local economy.” He grins, opening the VHS and pulling out the clear bag.

The powder is a light beige color, looking more like something I’d cook with than something I’d put up my nose.

“I don’t know,” I drag out my words. “I feel like, once upon a time, I had a hard limit, and this was it.”

“Hard limits are for people whose drug dealers don’t know them by their full names, Vera Havik. If I remember correctly, your birth certificate’s original copy is still in my safe.” He gives me that damn look that says if I’m alone, he’s gonna act like a brother then.

Yet, I’ve never bothered to ask him for his last name. Ryan Lee always felt like enough, and maybe by not telling me, he protected me, in his own way.

You never want to know too much . That’s one of his many rules. In typical Ryan style, the rules are for everyone but him.

“Are you kidding me? I’ve been looking for that thing for years, Ryan! I blamed my mom for losing it in the move.” I get up, running to the black and white framed photo of this very house that hangs above the fireplace.

“You were still in high school when that thing first got here. You brought it over after the homecoming dance fight,” he reminds me. “You were gonna start over, remember?”

I exhale all the air out of my lungs, an autonomous response to the memory. Some immature teenage argument between me and Asha had escalated into threats of me moving as far from Slaughter as possible at the first chance I could. It had always been my goal, and at one point, it was both of ours. Then right before the homecoming dance she called to say she got a loan from her grandfather to purchase an old factory in Slaughters, and I lost my shit. We had spent our entire sophomore and junior years dreaming about our future, about trying out for skate leagues in big cities together after graduation, and there she was, buying buildings in this fucking nowhere town, chaining herself to it further. She was already planning Skatium, but all I could see was the road out of here.

I was so angry, I ran straight to Ryan Lee, who eventually talked me down from the ledge after enough lines of Klonopin. I left my birth certificate for safe-keeping, to make sure I couldn’t impulsively pack up and leave, no matter how badly I wanted to. Staying for my best friend was a priority and the reality was, Asha didn’t know how to leave. For her, it made more sense to figure out how to make this town a place she could live in than it did to start over somewhere else. So, I locked my feelings in a box, and as soon as we graduated, we opened Skatium together.

It has been over twelve years since I left it here. Guess you don’t really need your birth certificate for much.

I lift the frame from the wall, entering the numbers I know by heart.

Thirteen, thirty-one, thirteen. The guy is some weird sort of genius, but he’s oddly obsessed with the number thirteen. I can’t fight his logic; when he breaks it down and tells the chronological tale of every thirteen that had brought him blessings, it gets hard to argue that it truly isn’t his lucky number.

Thirteen has kept Ryan Lee from prison many times.

The safe clicks, and inside is nothing but a thick manila folder. Opening it up, I find every single conviction this charlatan would dare try to convince me doesn’t exist. Thumbing through a few Webster County misdemeanors from the last three years—no doubt discharged by whatever judge he paid off—I eventually flip right past it, the Havik catching my eye before I flip back to find my full name.

I smile victoriously, folding it in half and sticking it back into the pile of papers. I don’t know why, but it’s been safe here for this long. Why move it? It’s not like I know where I’m going next anyway. I tuck the rest of his trophies back into the folder before I close the safe once more.

“Keep it here for me until I figure out where I’m going? I don’t want to lose it.”

He smirks like he knows I can’t be trusted with my own shit. “You good to go then?” He's obnoxiously irritating for a man his age with so many felonies.

“Don’t be annoying.” I slump back onto the couch. “I’m just not sure I’m ready for that ,” I confess.

“I’m not the Devil on your shoulder. I’m just the facilitator.” He clicks his tongue, putting the bag back into the VHS.

“Wait.” I bite my lip, and he lifts his chin up, raising his eyes to look at me. “Maybe just to try it?”

“I don’t know, squirt. I don’t think you’re right for this shit.” He stands again, grabbing the Keanu Reeves movie as if he’s going to put it away.

“Ryan…” I growl. “Don’t be a dick.”

I know his methods well, the dark psychology he uses to get addicts from one thing to the other. It’s kept him rich, regardless of whatever product he might be low on at any point in time. The man’s a mad genius. Borderline terrifying, but he’s undeniably good at pushing drugs.

“No, I’m not playing, Vera.” He shakes his head, a severe expression on his face. “This shit isn’t for you. I have painkillers under the microwave,” he says, as if I need reminding.

“Are you kidding me?” I’m insulted and don’t care to hide it.

He’s treating me like a fucking kid, and I’m not looking for a new mom.

“I’m just looking out for you,” he says softly, walking into his bedroom.

Getting mad at Ryan Lee serves me nothing except the guarantee that if I throw enough of a hissy fit, he won’t be selling me anything tonight. So, I huff internally, putting away all my feelings of resentment and accepting the pills as my consolation prize.

I walk toward the microwave, lifting the countertop unit just enough to slide out a flat wooden box. “Which ones?” I ask, looking at the different clear baggies and the plethora of pills they hold.

“Blue, the ones with the thirty on them,” he shouts from his bedroom.

They’re hard to miss, the other blue pills clearly ecstasy, with their fancy little imprints of robots and flowers on them.

“How much do you want for these?” I ask, turning around to find him right behind me.

“Hmm.” His breath is hot on my shoulder as he prowls over me from his towering height behind me. “My tub’s real dirty, kiddo.” He gives me a dark smile as I look up at him.

I sigh. “I’d say I need to hold on to what little pride I have, but I could honestly use the free shit.” Reaching under the cabinet of the kitchen sink, I rummage for whatever cleaning products I can find.

That had always been his thing. I never bothered to inquire whether there were girls who fucked him for drugs, or if there were people who owed him to the point where it was dangerous. When it came to me, his expectations were always clear, always innocent. A task, a chore, in exchange for what I needed.

There were many times over the last five years when I thought back to Ryan and how I’d made it through some of the most turbulent times of my life unscathed. High as fuck, almost always deathly out of it, but never in danger. Because for some reason, he was, in his own way, always looking out for me. If I blacked out from drinking, I’d wake up tucked safely in his bed, clothed. If I was up too long rolling, he’d kick out any strangers to make sure I didn’t get taken advantage of during the night.

It’s taken a lot of years to realize the privilege that came with our friendship.

Privilege that extends far beyond free drugs.

“Can I ask you something?” I can’t keep it in anymore. My brain is doing the thing it does, and I have to know for myself, have to process it outwards and not just in my own head.

“What?” He puts on the tired big brother act.

“Why did you keep me around so long?” I ask, and a confused look spreads on his face. “You know what I mean. You never tried anything, never took advantage of me when you very well could have, never asked for more than I was willing to give.” The word vomit flows out easily, like the rehearsal in my own mind was enough preparation.

“I don’t rape women, Vera. There’s plenty around who give it to me for free.” He takes that same annoyed tone as when I made the prison joke, like he’s not happy about his morals and ethics being called into question. As if he’s not a fucking drug dealer.

A good-looking one at that, with all his teeth, which is fucking rare for this town.

“Okay. My bad.” I raise my hands, one wrapped firmly around a bottle of cleaner and the other, a scrubber.

He lets out an exhaustive sigh. “I kept you around cuz you made me look good. Because I trusted you more than I trusted my runners,” he confesses anyway. “Every other chick coming in here was blown out of their minds, trying to fuck me or fuck me over. Half of them didn’t even make it to my bed, just Xanni-ed out on my couch, head in another universe with drool pouring out of their mouths. Dealers were coming in and out of the house back then, but there you were, pretty little Vera. My golden trophy, sitting on the chair, doing just the right amount of the good stuff to be sweet and social. Making a great impression. Maybe not directly, but you’re part of the reason I’m king here now. Remember that year before you left, when I had you in charge of weighing my blow?” He chuckles at the memory. “That was hot as hell. Every minor league pusher was jealous of me, and every major leaguer was impressed.”

I hold back the smile, the compliment doing more than it probably should, but I’m feeling fragile as fuck at the moment, and my vulnerabilities are starting to leak out.

“I’m not upset by any means.” I tuck my hair behind my ear, trying to laugh it off. “Just something I thought a lot about over the years. How lucky I was to have had you in my life and never get caught in a situation where I got hurt or had to fuck my way out of something or deal with your advances.”

“My advances? First of all, you remind me too much of my little sister.” That confused look appears once again. “Second, why would I hit on a gay chick?”

I bite the inside of my cheek. “I didn’t realize it was that obvious. I never really talked about any girl?—”

“Do you not remember the night Big Ricky brought his lady over and we blasted through an eight ball in an hour? The two of you made out for half the night. I thought he was going to kill you for trying to steal his woman.” He grabs the cleaner from my hand and then the scrubber.

I laugh, unable to pull that memory from deep within the dungeons of my mind. “I do not remember that night. How is she?”

“Dead, I think. Ricky went to prison for assault.” He walks around me, placing the cleaning products back under the sink.

“Fuck,” I whisper, never getting more than a moment to forget just how easily life took from us.

“You smell like shit, and you look even worse, Vera. Pay me back another night.” He closes the cabinet doors and walks over to the bathroom door, as if to tell me to shower.

“I can just shower at my hotel.” I shake my head.

“Stay the night. You can have my bed.” He’s not joking.

“Miss me that bad? I’m not even high yet. I can drive home.” I walk past him, back to the living room.

“I can’t have my neighbor thinking this is exactly what this is. Sarah Prichard is enough of a bitch without being suspicious of my daily activities,” he finally explains.

“Sarah Pritchard? I think I went to school with her. She lives next door now?” She was a nosy little clarinet player who always snitched on me for smoking cigarettes in the bathroom.

“Sure fucking does.” He seems annoyed just thinking about her.

“And what do you mean? How are you making money if all your customers are spending the night?” I cross my arms over my chest, trying to figure out what the hell he was doing for money.

“I upscaled. Signed on with some heavy hitters. Now, I just liaison the product between them and some big timers.” He emphasizes liaison like there’s a lot more to it than what he’s letting on. “More or less, anyway. None of the product except my personal shit makes its way to my home now. Had to make changes to the game once they gentrified the fuck out of the neighborhood.”

“Wow. I’m impressed,” I admit, walking over to the coffee table and swiping my keys. “Don’t get in over your head,” I warn him, like I’d done a million times before. It makes no difference; Ryan Lee only listens to himself. “I gotta grab my bag out of the car.”

“Pull your car into the driveway. Looks less suspicious,” he clarifies.

“Jesus. That paranoid? You’re almost as bad as Ritch,” I joke, rushing out the door before he can react to the insult.

Ritch was a low level dealer who did way too much of his own product and always came up short when Ryan needed to collect. He ended up switching to meth and developed a twitch after enough time, and the nickname Ritch the Twitch stuck. He wound up in prison not too long after for selling meth at a school playground. Anytime he came around, he’d ruin Ryan’s blinds, fingering them to death to make sure we weren’t being watched by the feds.

That kind of paranoia is unavoidable when staying up three to four days at a time.

I used to like the feeling. It made me feel productive, like I could get everything done for the first time in my life. Now, I just want to sleep every feeling away like they don’t matter. Back inside Ryan’s, I’m in the bathroom, undressing in the mirror. My reflection is just another routine I avoid.

I don’t even know who that girl is these days.

The shower is hot and everything I need to feel better after the unexpected beatdown my muscles received today. Less prepared for the hit of losing the person I loved most, but still unprepared for my speed test today. Somehow, my body managed to pull it off anyway. Muscle memory or something of the sort. I push the thought of Asha back down into the dark recesses of my mind and go back to the twenty-seven laps I skated.

Maybe it was the sixty milligrams of Roxy coursing through my veins that made it somehow doable.

I’m not going to overthink this one.

Not tonight, anyway.