It really does go the way they say it will, a Just Say No cliché all the way. In middle school, there was this acting troupe that came to perform sometimes, a bunch of hammy college kids who did Afterschool Special–style skits about drugs and sex and all of the other things that are supposed to be scary but end up being mind-numbingly boring since they happen in middle school assemblies. A girl would be sitting on a stoop with her friends, and some popular guy—it was always the popular guy, who you could tell was a total asshole, just based on his preferred wardrobe of leather jacket and jorts—would offer her a joint and she’d be tentative but then everyone else would act like it was no big deal, and by the next scene she’d be blowing rails off the seat of someone’s motorcycle, needing something, anything, to make her feel good.
Obviously some of the details didn’t apply to me, like I would never listen to anyone wearing jorts, not even Drake, and my first joint came from my dad—well, from his sock drawer, anyway. No one was around to pressure me to light it. If anything, I became the instigator, the girl whose parents let her do whatever, who could always throw a party and who never judged. And it was just parties, for a while. I mean, I always smoked, with Jasper and by myself, but harder stuff was strictly social. I’d shroom or take ecstasy . . . I only did coke a few times, because I’d seen way too many celebrity noses cave in on themselves, and I liked mine too much to risk it. But pills were different. They were so easy, so quick—now you see it, now you don’t!—and they didn’t leave a mark or make my hair smell or inspire me to eat an entire can of Pringles dipped in ketchup.
Ironically I started using pills to make me feel less like I was dying. My mom had some Vicodin way back in the medicine cabinet from an old surgery, and the day after Jasper dumped me, when all I could do was lie motionless, crying until I couldn’t breathe and then dry-heaving over the toilet, I took one just to see if it would make me feel less like the entire world was a sucking black hole—and it did. That worked for about a week, but I had to stop taking them when she noticed how empty the bottle was getting. Painkillers in general were harder to get, but I convinced my therapist to prescribe me Xanax, and to balance that out I started taking Adderall or Ritalin, or whatever smart drug I could get my psychopharmacologist to prescribe by phone when I complained that I still had trouble focusing. Those ones made me manic and wired, so I always needed booze or weed to sleep. And since Jasper was gone, I had called Dante, and he had delivered, literally.
But that kind of customer service didn’t last. I’d texted him that morning and he’d said he was busy, that if I needed it so bad I could come to him, or else he’d hook me up Monday night. I ran down the subway steps two at a time. I could hear the train coming, and if I moved fast enough, I thought I could make it on before the doors closed. Maybe. Maybe.
? ? ?
He met me on 110th, at the top of the park, wearing a big puffy jacket over a hoodie and carrying a heart-shaped Russell Stover box, which was conspicuously missing its cellophane wrapper. When he saw me, he held out his arms and broke into a big grin.
“Got you something, honey,” he said with a wink, holding out the box. “Sorry I’m a little late.” An older couple passing by smiled at us, thinking they were witnessing a sweet moment. They didn’t know he was giving me a different kind of candy.
“Clever,” I said.
“Right?” Dante looked proud of himself. “Did you bring something for me?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t put it in anything.” I started to reach into my purse, but he stopped me.
“Yo, be discreet, please.” His smile disappeared. “We’re not at your house anymore. We’re gonna sit on a bench and talk, and then I’m gonna hug you goodbye, and you slip it into my pocket.”
I followed him to a nearby bench, where we sat side by side. He draped an arm over my shoulders. I figured it was just for show, like the candy box, but I couldn’t tell, and I couldn’t shove him off like I did with Ethan.
“So listen, this stuff is a little different from what I gave you last time,” Dante said, squinting at a traffic cop writing a ticket across the street. “It’s better, though.”
“What is it?” I asked. The pills he gave me at the party had been big and white and unmarked, probably homemade. They’d felt like a mixture of molly and Percocet, turning my heart into a DJ and my brain into a swimming pool.
“Nuvigil,” Dante said. “It’s like a souped-up Adderall. It’s for narcolepsy or some shit. It’ll get you nice and buzzed, but you can get work done, too. I tried some yesterday and was mad productive. I even fixed the copy machine.”
“You work? Like, in an office?”
“No, I just stand on a random corner all day whispering and handing out baggies.” He rolled his eyes. “Yes, I work.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“Anyway, it’s basically a pharmaceutical-grade amphetamine. But listen, that means it’s potent. You shouldn’t be taking more than one a day.”