Through her tears, Nessa watched Marlon struggle to refrain from throwing out more AA sayings.
“It wasn’t long before we were shooting every day. Since it was summertime, Candy said she’d just do it until school started again, because she was going into her senior year and wanted to keep her grade point average so she could apply for scholarships. Because we were eating into Candy’s college savings, we started telling each other, We’ll just do it on the weekends. Which then became only after dark and finally, just until I start college, and then we’ll never do it again.”
Marlon was nodding his head vigorously with obvious recognition of the addiction pattern.
“Then it became the first thing I thought of every morning. Just a little taste. It circled my brain like a catchy but horrible song that looped and looped with no way to stop it.”
More crying, more nose blowing, more water gulping. When did the feeling better part start?
“My eighteenth birthday came up, and Candy and I discussed for hours that we were going to quit right after that. Just one more time. So that night, we were going to go downtown and score, then go shoot up. But that morning, my brother, Brandon, gave me a little gift--wrapped package, which he said was from Hoover, this guy who gave me my first hit. After that, he became my mom’s boyfriend, but that’s another story. Anyway, I opened it because I wanted to see what kind of shit he was bribing me with this time. He had a thing for me, see, and I used it to get drugs and booze and whatever else, while my mom looked the other way.
“I locked myself in the bathroom and opened it. Inside was a brand--new works kit—-syringe, cotton, spoon, lighter. And a bag of beautiful black tar heroin. I couldn’t wait to show Candy.
“So we had the H and at sunset we trespassed and got into the atrium under the Seventh Street Bridge, which is just disgusting—-trash, graffiti, and all kinds of crap. But when you’re a junkie, it’s a wonderland. We were getting ready to shoot heroin for the very last time. We’d promised each other that this was it. We were done with drugs.”
As with describing the rape, Nessa began to tingle as if it was all happening again. She could picture the maze of pipes, the brilliantly colored graffiti, the smell of rot, and garbage, and death.
“We settled in and I said, ‘Happy birthday to me.’ And Candy said . . .” Nessa’s throat closed up again. She cleared it and went on. “She said, ‘You first. It’s your birthday.’ ” Nessa cried silently for a while, folded in on herself, the psychic pain nearly unbearable. “But I always went first. I sat there thinking, I’m eighteen today. I need to not be so selfish. I need to act more mature, so my first act as an official adult would be to let my best friend go first.”
She could see Candy sitting against the concrete wall, her shining eyes, the love she had for Nessa, the kind of love she’d never experienced before that.
“I tied off Candy’s arm and we hunted for a vein. I saw the one I wanted, a fat, blue, virgin. I filled the syringe and flicked the bubbles out of it, then slid the needle into my best friend’s arm.”
Nessa stood, desperate to be moving, to shake the memories loose and spit them out and examine them. She walked to the window and looked out so she wouldn’t have to face Marlon.
“Candy’s eyes rolled back and her face turned to the ceiling. I watched and released the tube from Candy’s arm. As I slid out the syringe and tied my own arm off, from the corner of my eye I saw Candy go stiff. I thought maybe she’d seen the cops, but I looked around and saw no one. But when I looked back at Candy, there was foam on her lips and coming out of her nose, and she’d bitten into her bottom lip.”
Nessa was shouting now, wailing the words. Her saliva flecked the window before her. “The syringe fell out of my hand. She began to convulse and fell over, her back arching, her head banging over and over on the ground. I grabbed for her and looked around for something to jam in her mouth, but I couldn’t find anything. Candy kept on biting her lips and her tongue, and there was blood everywhere. Everywhere.”
All Nessa could do was watch until Candy stopped convulsing just as quickly as she’d started. Her skin was gray and her lips were blue. Her eyes were open, but she couldn’t see anything anymore.
“I slapped her face. Her breathing was shallow, and I tried to sit her up. Candy needed to walk around to metabolize the junk. I tried to stand her up. I really tried. Her breathing got slower and slower, foam and blood dripping from her mouth and her nose.”
Nessa had screamed at Candy to quit being such a selfish bitch and wake up. She kept dragging Candy back and forth, the toes of her worn tennis shoes scraping along the trashy cement.