You could call it an obsession with revenge. Like with Lester and Patti in the final days I spent with them.
37
Financially strapped, Lester and Patti moved onto manufacturing their own meth. That was the darkest time for me. Can’t remember too much about it. Only that I barely made it to school much for a month or two, preferring to hang around the apartment sucking up the remnants of any junk the Flatts left when they crashed out of their meth high. Anything to deaden the ache of being completely alone. To stop myself asking what’s the point of living? I’d smoke to get jacked up with enough energy to do homework, make crazy plans to change the world, find Birdie and whisk her away. I don’t remember sleeping or eating then. My reality was a buzz of voices and color and twitching limbs that jerked and flickered in a fast-forward motion.
My world was in chaos, but I do remember what happened before the explosion, though my memories are always blurred at the edges and colored with a yellowy tinge. Like old home movies over-exposed to the sun.
Linda Martin said I was there. I must have been. But Birdie wasn’t.
Where was she? Selling herself to the highest bidder? Screwing crewmen on a cargo ship in Duluth? Working a strip club in Vegas?
By that time I didn’t care. Time slipped back and forth. One day overlapping another.
I remember old rock music blaring in the background. Janis Joplin. Me sitting against the hallway wall, crouched on the edge of the action. I imagined I was her. Shook my long, crazy hair. Tipped back a beer. Fuck the world and everybody in it. Lester and Patti and friends were in top form, all hell breaking loose as usual. The place reeked of burning plastic, everybody jerking around like crazy old puppets.
Then some old crone with a drooping stomach and skinny legs decided to mess around with Lester. Patti caught her straddling his lap, legs twined around his back like a fleshy vine, so Patti grabbed a handful of her hair and dragged her backwards onto the carpet. Thumped her in the ribs once she was down. Called her a two-bit whore. Everyone yelled. Cat fight, cat fight. Then another guy, Todd with the glass eye, flipped out on Tray, claiming he was hogging the pipe. Elbowed him in the throat, wrestled him onto the floor next to the crone who was sucking in air like a fish out of water. Wrapped himself around Tray. Chewed on his ear then spat out blood.
And I thought to myself how weird that this was all going on next to the counter with the boxes of macaroni cheese and the spoon collection on the wall and the framed picture of Elvis against the wallpaper with its sickly orange and yellow flowers.
And Janis screamed. You say that it’s over baby.
It’s never over.
That’s when I planned to get myself out the next night.
Put an end to being stuck in this miserable hellhole with these dangerous, useless people. My plan was drastic, but in my frenetic state seemed totally reasonable and logical. They’d graduated to using the “shake and bake” method to make their stuff, so next day, all it took from me was to convince them to use a heat gun to dry out the meth in a plastic water bottle.
I had the sense to throw myself behind the kitchen door before sparks shot up. Three – four – five blasts of scorching light, like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Patti screeched to Lester, Don’t throw it, shake it and the bottle blew up like a bomb in their scabby faces. They were rolling on the floor, their clothes blazing with toxic chemical flames when I called 911. I jammed a dishcloth into my mouth to keep out the smoke, and crawled back to the bedroom in time to curl up under the blankets like an innocent victim.
The firemen burst in and hosed Lester and Patti down until they blubbered like mad chimps. I covered my eyes when the paramedics led me away through the smoke and burning stench of flesh, though I squinted at my soon-to-be ex-foster parents through gaps in my fingers on the way out. I heard their moans and saw their swollen, bloodied faces and arms, the tatters of clothing still sticking to their blistered skin.
Outside it was raining. A fine sheet of drizzle soaked my hair. I tipped my face upwards to taste the clean, fresh droplets. Dew from heaven sent down to tell me I’d never go back to the hell I’d left behind. Ever.
So the Flatts were the first to pay for their sins, but I wouldn’t forget the others who wronged Birdie. Like Earl Rafferty, his henchman Jimmy and, worst of all, the main man, the rotten piece of scum that robbed her of her innocence and all her dreams, then took her away from me.
I’d pay him back. I’d take him down – destroy him by taking everything he had.
38
We always dressed up for our school grad. Just the same as if we were teachers in some ivy-covered prep school in the suburbs. Robin dutifully trotted out his one and only suit, a navy, double-breasted, pinstriped number with shiny, bare patches under the arms. Probably a genuine vintage piece straight from the streets of sixties Carnaby Street in swinging London. From before his beach bum hippie phase. Everyone else did their best.
I’d shopped long and hard for my dress. Spent nights at the mall trying to calm the turmoil inside me. Walked around sucking in the fruity, tropical scent that reminded me of everything clean and safe. That’s how I’d felt as a kid. Sloping around the polished hallways in my hoodie, chewing on my hair, breathing in the aroma of clean and happy and bright things. The scent of
