Saint Nicholas (10 page)

There’s something to be said for that euphoric feeling that comes over you the first time you shoot up. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before, and it carried me away to a place where nothing hurt. A place where there was no worries, no fear, just happiness. The best way I can describe it is…nice. It was a nice feeling, and it didn’t leave me run down and tired the next day. There was no hangover or vomiting. I went about my business until I could score some more.

The first dose was free. I’d gotten it from a guy down the block whom I didn’t know, but when I went back for more he wasn’t around, so I kept looking and looking until I found someone else who sold me a bag for ten bucks, which I’d taken out of my mother’s purse. She wouldn’t care. She didn’t care about anything those days, least of all me.

I told myself I could quit anytime. That if I could just get through this rough patch with a little help I’d be done with it, and Nicholas and I could go back to the way things were; maybe work on getting a place of our own once school was finished.

That’s what I told myself.

The reality is heroin is one of the most addictive drugs you can become attached to, and your body builds up a tolerance for it really fast, so soon that ten bucks turns into fifty to get the job done, and fifty winds up being a hundred, and before you know it you’re doing stuff you normally wouldn’t do just to score.

By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. Before it was just on weekends and the occasional night after school. Soon, it was every damn day, and I ended up dropping out before I could graduate, rather than face the humiliation of not passing all my classes. This way it seemed like I was the one in control. Like I made the choice to drop out, but really it was the drugs. They were all I could think about. Even Nicholas took a backseat to getting high. Shakes and Angie, they tried to talk some sense into me, but it was no use. Even Mrs. Rossi cornered me on the street one day to work on setting me straight, but I told her to fuck off.

That’s what drugs did to me.

But the worst of it? The really shitty thing, was that they caused the one person who loved me to back away.

TWELVE

-
Nicholas
-

“What the fuck is this, huh?” I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward me, running my palm up the length of it. Red splotches dotted the crook and Sarah had a vacant look in her eyes, like the lights were on but nobody was home. “Are you high?” I shouted.

She jerked away from me and stumbled back against the red brick of her apartment building, scratching at herself. “Just go away,” she mumbled.

“Where’d you get it, huh? Who gave you the H?”

She shook her head dramatically from side to side, folding her arms over her chest. “Not telling,” she said.

It pained me to see her like this. Sarah’s skin was naturally pale, but now she looked as frighteningly white as a ghost, and the dark patches under her eyes had only gotten worse as the nightmares about her father consumed her night after night. Her hair, once so shiny and full of life, was now a dull sheen of its former self, much like she was.

I’d suspected something like this was going on, but I’d never caught her in the act so I kept my mouth shut. I should have said something sooner, though. Maybe I could have stopped it. Could have helped her. She was desperate to end the nightmares. Kept looking for a way out of her own head, and since she didn’t have the pills her mom used to give her, Sarah looked elsewhere for release. She’d never been high in front of me before, at least not that I could tell, but now she wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore.

“C’mon,” I said reaching out to take her hand. “Let’s get you upstairs.”

She protested, so I did the only thing I could think to do so she wouldn’t be down there on the street higher than a fucking kite for everyone to see—I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her up to the apartment.

When we got inside I slammed the door and glanced over at her mother who was in the kitchen doing God knows what. “Don’t you even care?” I shouted on the way past to Sarah’s bedroom.

She didn’t answer me.

Sarah flopped down on the bed, saying, “I care,” in a wispy, whimsical tone. Then she started taking off her clothes.

“What are you doing?” I said, frantically grabbing for her hands so she’d stop.

“Don’t you want me anymore? Come on, let me suck your cock, Nicky.”

“Jesus, Sarah. Look at you.”

She stopped struggling after a while and laid there, her breathing become low and rhythmic as she fell asleep.

I sat on the edge of the mattress, looking at the girl who’d once been my everything. I brushed strands of hair off of her damp forehead, thinking about everything we’d gone through together, wondering if I was strong enough to get through this. My eyes swelled with tears and my throat closed up. She’d be eighteen soon, and I remembered days gone by when we used to talk about her getting out of here, how happy she’d been at the thought of finally being free. Now her father wasn’t around, but she was still a prisoner to her mind, and all the harm he’d caused, and it was wrecking her. Wrecking us.

I wanted to scream and punch and kick everything in sight, but instead I held her hand, squeeing it tightly in mine. “I love you,” I said, tears now falling freely down my cheeks. “I love you so much.”

She stirred and rolled over, her back to me. I stayed there for a little while longer, thinking, praying. When I got up, her mom was in the doorway to her bedroom, watching us. We just stared at one another for a few beats until she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” I said, then I brushed past her and went home to think long and hard about what I was going to do.

THIRTEEN

-
Sarah
-

I hadn’t planned on getting high the day it happened. I’d woken up hungry and went to the kitchen to grab some cereal, and Mom’s purse was sitting on the counter. I’d turned eighteen and Carmine had given me five hundred bucks as a gift so I had some dough of my own, but snatching a few bucks here and there from Mom had become a habit, just like the drugs. The temptation was overwhelming, so I grabbed a fifty and forgot all about the bowl of cereal I’d left on the counter.

By the time I got down to the corner it was wicked cold. Winter hadn’t even started yet but the frigid air coming off the Hudson was enough to make my teeth chatter inside the plush confines of a jacket that was two sizes too big for me. All my clothes were like that now. I’d lost so much weight that I resembled a coat rack rather than a person.

I bought a few bags off a dude who called himself Pesto. No idea what his real names was, and I had no desire to ever find out. All I cared about was what he could give me.

“You know, I got a sausage discount for you if you want?”

“What’s that?” I asked, shivering.

“You suck me off for a twenty percent reduced price, leaves you room to buy more.”

I rolled my eyes after entertaining the idea briefly. I’d done it, once, but not with him. A junkie will do anything for a fix. Word must’ve gotten around.

“Thanks but no thanks,” I said, handing him some cash in exchange for the H.

“Offer’s always open, baby.”

I flipped him the bird on my way by and found a nice little alley to duck in to.

The thing I like about Pesto is he gives you a disposable needle with every purchase. Sealed and everything, so you know you’re getting something clean. I took off my jacket, fiddled through my purse for a spoon, lighter, and thick rubber band, and sat behind the dumpster to do my thing. When the H was ready I sat there, staring at it in the needle for a moment, telling myself that I didn’t need it, but that I wanted it. Like I had a choice. Then I stuck myself with it and was off to la-la land feeling pretty good about things. I packed up my shit and headed back for home, since I didn’t know what else to do.

When I got there Nicholas was inside the apartment sitting on the couch.

Fuck.

“Your mom let me in,” he said, “but she had to go out again.”

“Good for Mom,” I said, passing him by go to my room.

“Sarah, come on. Talk to me.”

He followed me in and shut the door. I dropped my purse on the floor and cringed when the used needle and spoon fell out of it.

Nicholas took one look at it and I thought for sure he was going to lose it like he had been doing lately when he discovered me high, but he stood there, quietly shaking his head. A heavy sigh escaped him and he raked his fingers through his dark hair looking as disappointed as I’d ever seen him. Probably because the last time we spoke I told him I wasn’t going to do this anymore.

“What do you want from me?” I asked angrily. “This is who I am now. I can’t help it. I like it. I like the way it makes me feel.”

“You know, there was a time when I was all you needed to feel good about yourself, you remember that?”

“Jesus, we’re not fucking kids anymore, Nicky.”

I couldn’t do this. He was spoiling the high I’d paid good money for. I tried to open the bedroom door and shove him out, but it was no use. He wasn’t the same scrawny kid I’d fallen in love with. He’d filled out. Gained muscles and mass, while I stood wasting away to nothing.

Nicholas slammed the door shut, keeping his strong hand on the handle. I reached for it, but he swatted me away and pushed me toward the bed.

“You my father now?” I yelled.

“Don’t ever compare me to him,” he said, pointing a finger in my face.

I shook my head. He was right, that was a low blow, but I didn’t care anymore. About anything.

“Just leave,” I said. “Please.”

“I walk out that door and I’m not coming back,” he said.

It hit me like a slap in the face. It was the first time he’d threatened such a thing, and once I’d gotten over my initial shock, rage roiled in the pit of my stomach and I let it explode in a burst of cursing and screaming that I didn’t know I had in me.

“Fucking go then if that’s what you want. Leave me, just like everyone else does. Probably just pissed off that I won’t give you any, huh? Is that what you fucking want? All those promises, all those times you told me I was fucking beautiful, it was all just to get in my pants, right? Now I won’t give you any so you’re gone.”

“Is that what you think?”

I collapsed on the bed in a mess of tears. I didn’t know what to think. Nicholas stood there, his chest rising and falling in angry breaths after what I’d accused him of. My heart told me to stop, that there was no reason for the hurtful, spiteful things I was saying, but my brain was so doped up that I didn’t know any better. The one person who’d done more than anyone else to try and help me, and this is how I was treating him. It was fucking awful.

“I can’t do this anymore, Sarah,” he said. “I can’t. We’ve all tried. Me, Ma, Shakes, Angie—fuck, even Helena asked me the other day what she could do to make you all better. She’s twelve, Sarah. Twelve!”

“So go home to her then, maybe she can get you off.”

He stormed toward me, and I cowered back against the wall, shuffling my feet up onto the bed as fast as I could. When I realized what I’d said, I apologized profusely, but Nicky just stared daggers into me, and I felt every single one of them pierce my heart.

“Please don’t leave me,” I sobbed. “Please. You’ll take care of me, remember? Remember what you said? I’ll take care of you. That’s what you told me that day on the roof.”

By then his own eyes were swelled with the tears of heartbreak. I could see every part of him breaking from the inside out. All he’d done, everything he’d given me, and for what?

I felt like a piece of shit, and the only person I had to blame was myself, but I didn’t see that. This was everyone else’s fault. My father, my mother, Nicholas. They were the ones who were supposed to be responsible for me, and they’d failed.

But I still didn’t want him to go. I truly believed that if there was one person who could pull me out of the depths of hell, it was him.

“Please,” I whispered again and again as the heroin coursed through my veins.

“I can’t, Sarah. This is too much. I can’t watch you do this to yourself anymore.”

“I’ll stop. I swear, Nicky. Stay with me and I’ll stop.”

It was the same promise I’d made last time. An empty, heartless promise to keep him where he belonged: with me.

Nicholas shook his head, tears spilling down his cheeks, and before he could even say it I knew what the next words out of his mouth were going to be.

“Goodbye, Sarah. No matter what I’ll always love you.”

A guttural cry escaped my lungs. It felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside. He leaned in and kissed me one last time, on the cheek, and then I watched him go. Watched as he opened my bedroom door, listened as his footsteps echoed down the hall, and I got up to try and stop him before he could reach the front door, but I tripped over my own feet and fell to the floor with a hollow thud as my fingers dug into the plush carpet and I let loose a scream that had been building up in me for two long years.

FOURTEEN

-
Nicholas
-

“You did what you had to do,” Shakes said. Helena sat next to him on the couch resting her head on his arm. Opposite her was Angie, and she nodded, echoing the sentiment.

“She needs help, Nicky. More help than you can give her. If she can’t see that then there’s nothing you can do. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves.”

My mother told me the same thing several times. I didn’t want to believe it, but after seeing first hand the way Sarah clung to that H for dear life—like it was the only thing she had left to live for—I knew they were right. It was her life support system now, and nothing I or anyone else said would change that.

I sat stoically picking at a loose thread on my jeans. My face a blank slate of emotions. Inside, I was ripped to shreds, but I couldn’t let myself feel that. If I did, I’d break down and run back to her, and if there was ever a time to be strong this was it. Giving her what she wanted wouldn’t help her kick the habit. She had to lose something precious to her so that maybe it’d open her eyes to the person she’d become.