Prisoned - Marni Mann Page 0,38
on her wrists, waiting for her to change her mind, for the look on her face to lighten, for the tears to return.
None of that happened.
She wanted nothing to do with me?
She’d change her mind. The second I let her go, she’d take it all back, and we’d walk home together. She’d ask me to kiss her like I had the other night, and all would be good again.
I lifted my hands and waited.
With her eyes still pointed toward the ground, she pushed herself off the brick wall and said, “Good-bye, Garin,” as she passed me.
My mouth opened, and not one fucking thing came out of it. I watched her walk out of the alley, turn at the sidewalk, and head toward her place in The Heart.
I didn’t move because she was going to come back. She was going to rush into my arms and kiss me, and this whole thing would be behind us.
She was going to come any second.
So, I waited.
I waited until it turned dark. I waited until the streetlamps flickered on.
I waited until I knew she wasn’t coming back.
And then I ran to Billy’s apartment. I didn’t talk about Kyle to anyone. She wasn’t just some girl I fucked in the bathroom behind the gym or some chick who gave me a blow job in between English and Trig. Kyle was my best friend. She was the girl I’d cared about my whole life. The one I wanted to take things slow with when I’d never taken things slow with anyone before.
“Quit the racket, will ya?” Billy’s ma shouted when I banged on their front door. “He’s upstairs, for fuck’s sake.”
I took the stairs two at a time and burst through Billy’s bedroom door without knocking. He was on his bed, his shirt off, lying in just a pair of ripped boxers. His belt was tied around his bicep, and there was a tarred-up spoon and needle right next to him. His head was leaning back against the wall, a line of drool coming out of the corner of his mouth.
“Billy,” I said, standing beside the bed. I shouted his name again when he didn’t answer, shaking the arm that wasn’t being squeezed by the belt.
“What?” he groaned. As he woke up, he scratched his chest and his stomach and his thighs. I’d heard the last batch of dope that had come in made everyone real itchy. He looked all around his room until he saw me. “What did you wake me up for? I was just catching a good nap.”
“You were fucking nodding out, not napping.”
“Whatever.”
I knew he was shooting a lot, but I hadn’t realized things had gotten this bad. He usually came to my place, so I hadn’t seen his room in a while and all the shit that was lying around in here. There were wax paper packets all over his dresser and covering most of the floor along with orange needle caps all over the rug in his closet.
It was a junkie’s fucking paradise.
And my best friend was the junkie.
“I need to talk to you. Shit is all messed up with Kyle, and I need some advice and—Billy?”
His eyes were closed again, his head starting to lean forward.
“Billy, wake the fuck up.”
“Mmm,” he groaned, scratching his forearms.
He was too gone to talk. Too high to even give a shit.
Fuck.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Billy.” I shut his door, ran down the steps, and let myself out.
Some of the old-timers were hanging out in front of my place. That probably meant my ma was home, banging one of them for a hit while the others waited their turn.
I couldn’t see it.
I sure as hell couldn’t hear it.
So, I walked right past my place, past Kyle’s apartment where I saw her bedroom light on, past the Stop sign at the end of the street, and I turned down the next block. I was still in The Heart, but I didn’t know many of the guys who lived on this street.
If it was even possible, this block looked worse than ours. There were needle caps all over the sidewalk and empty balloons of junk. Broken crack pipes crunched under my sneakers as I stepped on them.
If hell had dirty siding, chipped paint, leaky roofs, boarded up windows, and paraphernalia lining the street, then I was fucking in it.
Every row of two-story buildings that made up this neighborhood was the same. I heard it and saw it as I walked past—screaming on the inside of the