I blink, blink the world in and out of focus—trying to remember just where the hell I was going with all this.
“Anyway,” I stammer. “It’s gotta feel pretty good knowing how goddamn right you are.”
Jason runs his fingers through his overly gelled, greasy-looking hair. “I don’t have to listen to this shit,” he tells me.
For once I actually agree with him.
“All right, then, thanks for everything,” I answer. “Why don’t you go process this shit in group, or whatever? I’m sure they’ll tell you just exactly what you want to hear.”
I slam the door in his face—my whole body trembling. My heart all sped up. My breathing strained. A pain in my stomach makes me double over as if a knife’s been buried in there. I crawl back into bed under the rough cotton sheets.
Sue Ellen must’ve slept through the whole goddamn thing.
I press up against the warmth of her bare skin, feeling the steady rhythm of her lungs contracting.
Expanding.
Contracting.
I close my eyes.
Her body twitches and stretches and turns and turns again.
I pray for sleep.
It still won’t come.
Ch.14
The plane lurches to one side, and I hear someone a couple of seats ahead gasp real loudly, shrieking, “Oh my God!”
Looking through the thick, scratched plastic window, I see nothing but perfect square parcels of desert flatland. The window across the aisle shows only cloudless sky.
The plane bucks—convulsing—racked with bursts of seizure.
Different passengers start yelling and pleading and whimpering.
I hear their desperate breathing all around me.
The plane shakes and drops a bunch of altitude all at once.
Honestly, I’m just praying the fucking thing will go down.
I mean, how amazing would that be? To have the decision made for me by some act of fate. No more struggling. No more trying to decide whether life is actually worth living anymore. No more holding on to that stupid, completely unrealistic, tiny parasite of hope that won’t stop spawning in my blood—driving me forward when I should’ve ended it all a long-ass time ago.
The plane stutters, lurches, kicks, and stalls.
I’m waiting for the fall, praying. A chance at a good death.
No ODs, sexual violence, suicide, or disease.
Me and all the other passengers, the same—innocent.
But, of course, we’re not the same at all.
I hear them panicking—praying for life—both aloud and silent.
“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”
The two people sitting next to me are grabbing their armrests, faces gone colorless, sweating, heads bent back toward the sky—eyes closed—the veins and tendons in their necks all bulging out.
Someone yells, “Fuck,” a couple of rows up as the plane hits a mass of tremors—the overhead compartments bursting open all at once, so our luggage and coats and things are dumped out into the aisles.
There are tears and sobbing all around me.
I hear it. I hear them screaming. And it’s no good.
I don’t want to die like this—with all these frightened people clinging to their lives like they really do have something to live for.
And who am I to say otherwise?
Most people want to live and, honestly, I’ve really never been able to figure that one out. I mean, most people are lonely and lost and broke and frightened. Most people are deep in debt, with shit jobs or no jobs and no health care and no shot at the future. But yet they still wanna live. I don’t get it. I don’t. Somehow they’ve found a reason. Somehow I’ve never found mine.
Maybe I never will.
I stare out the scratched window—trying hard not to look at anyone—imagining how my family will take the news of my death. Hell, they’ll probably be relieved. I mean, no more worrying. No more disappointments. No more borrowing money to pay for my rehab. No more dealing with my bullshit.
The plane drops a couple hundred feet, and a bunch of overhead compartments open all at once.
I’m ready—fucking ready.
But then, suddenly, inexplicably, the shaking stops. We’ve leveled out. We’re flying straight. The sobbing and praying came through for them. We’re going to live. Or, at least, the airplane’s not gonna kill us. The captain makes an announcement over the loudspeaker apologizing and reassuring us—trying to keep us calm with some dumb pilot-talking-over-the-loudspeaker humor. The passengers laugh hesitantly. They sigh and wipe their faces and start nervously half whispering to one another. Hell, I guess I’m happy for them. I mean, I’m probably even happy for myself—in spite of everything. ’Cause, yeah, that stupid hope is inside of me, too. I’m just like everybody else. Everything has fallen apart, but I still don’t have the common sense to just give up already. Instead, I boarded the plane—not to Charleston, South Carolina, but to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The goddamn head of the Gallup House is gonna meet me at the airport. I fucking gave in.
Honestly, though, I was outta options. Aside from trying to hitchhike clear across the goddamn country, Gallup House was the only shelter I was gonna get.
Sue Ellen’s mom wouldn’t go for the whole rental-car idea, and she wasn’t gonna pay for my flight, either.
I asked to borrow money from some old friends in LA—and, of course, from my mom and dad—but I knew I wasn’t gonna get a fucking penny.
The days of people bailing me out are gone forever. Everyone’s tired of my shit. And they’ve all but given up on the possibility that I might actually change. To them, man, I’m done. Lost and not coming back.
But there is one person who still believes in me—probably just ’cause I haven’t had the chance to hurt her yet.
Sue Ellen wants to help me. Too bad she’s got no money of her own.
Still, she did manage to convince her mom to pay for a room at a Super 8 motel near the airport, so at least we didn’t have to separate immediately. We holed up there for
