“I like when you take charge,” Trent said, dipping his head lower and kissing the side of my neck.
His lips swept across my skin, dipping toward the neckline of my t-shirt. My hands wrapped around his biceps as I tried to force my attention onto the guy in front of me instead of the one who’d just left.
“Guys, guys, guys.” Duncan stumbled toward us, his eyes dilated wide. “Ashley is freaking out.”
“Whatever, tell her to chill,” Trent groaned.
“No man, it’s serious. She’s really bugging.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Duncan led us to the restroom Kimberly and Chase had left a few minutes prior. Ashley was sitting on the ground with sweat covering her forehead. Her dilated eyes matched Duncan's, and when I felt her forehead, she was burning up.
“Trent, go get some water from the kitchen.”
Ashley was clutching her knees and grinding her teeth. I tried to get her attention, to get her to focus on me, but her eyes were darting in every direction but mine.
“Ashley, are you okay?” I snapped my fingers. “Ashley, focus.”
“I don't feel good,” she murmured so softly I could hardly hear her.
“Do you think you can throw up?” I asked, trying to think of the fastest method to get all the crap out of her system.
“No. No,” she cried. “I don't want to throw up. Don't make me throw up.”
She didn't sound like herself and the way her eyes were darting around the room was starting to scare me.
Trent rushed back into the bathroom with a glass of water. I gripped the back of Ashley's head and forced most of the liquid down her throat. She didn't want to drink it, but her body was dehydrated and even if she wasn't my best friend, I wasn't going to let her die from being a complete idiot.
The water settled in her stomach for a moment, and then she twisted toward the toilet and threw it all up.
“Good,” I said, holding her hair back as a wave of déjà vu swept me back in time to my house before my mom had left.
When I was seven, there were a few months when my mother must have started to realize her addiction was no longer manageable. She tried to hide her increasing dependence on alcohol, but I'd come home from school and find her in the bathroom, throwing up and mumbling things I couldn't discern. I’d hold back her hair—the same way I now held Ashley’s—and wonder if this was what other seven-year-olds did when they got home from school.
“I got her some more water,” Duncan said, stumbling back into the bathroom.
I held the glass of water to her lips again so she could take small sips. If she could absorb some of it before throwing up, she’d start to feel better.
I’d been around people like Ashley in Austin, other kids who liked to push their limits. I’d even done it myself from time to time, hoping to find the same solace my mom had found. I wanted to feel what she’d felt. I wanted to know what was so appealing about getting so far out of your head you couldn’t recognize yourself any more. I was starting to think maybe she and I weren’t wired the same. To me, the high was never worth the fall.
The guys eventually abandoned us and Ashley leaned against the toilet dry heaving. I couldn’t leave her yet and I was tired of replaying shitty memories, so I scanned the bathroom for something to distract me.
There were crosses everywhere, the kind you find at small country boutiques with ribbons and bedazzled gemstones. A small collection hung directly behind the toilet, which seemed like an odd location to display faith, but I didn’t dwell on that fact. Instead, I turned for the medicine cabinet.
Medicine cabinets are a veritable trove of pharmaceutical secrets, but it takes a trained eye to discern the juicy from the mundane. A thyroid medication could treat an underactive thyroid, or it could be mommy’s favorite weight loss pill. The devil was in the details. I turned to check on Ashley, but she wasn’t watching as I popped the door open and peered inside.
Sasha’s parents had a twenty-acre ranch, a 6,000 square foot mansion, and a four-car garage, but they also had a neat little row of pill bottles lining their medicine cabinet.
Viagra.
Erectile dysfunction.
Ephedren.
Illegal weight loss supplement.
Finesteride.
Male pattern baldness.
Xanax.
A benzo for days when the four-car garage just isn’t enough.
Valium.
For when the Xanax isn’t enough.
It wasn’t until later as I laid down to go to sleep that I remembered Sasha’s mom was the journalist who’d written the exposé about my mother for our town’s newspaper. It was a page-long article highlighting the darkest points in my mother’s pitiful life, and it was printed in the same newspaper that later ran her abbreviated obituary.
I wondered if Sasha’s mom had come clean about her family’s own dependencies in that article, or if all 2,000 words had been reserved for my mother’s demons. Maybe she knew as well as I did that there’s power in shining light on other people’s secrets; it makes it that much easier to hide yours in the shadows.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lilah