to have to deal with.
But she was my little sister and, at the moment, I was all she had.
Stepping into my bedroom, I found Lulu in bed, an unshaven, scraggly-haired guy by her side, listlessly watching television. Except the television in question was currently spitting out static snow and neither party seemed to notice. Their blank expressions made the scene more chilling than if they’d been in the middle of some dirty deed.
“Lulu, what the hell is going on here?” I demanded. Lulu started, coming out of her trance with a guilty, red-faced look. “Maddy!” she cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh, I live here?”
“Er, right. I know, I’m sorry,” she amended quickly. “I just mean, well, I thought you were coming back later, that’s all. I would have … cleaned.”
Right. “Um, I’ve been gone more than twenty-four hours,” I reminded her. “And I tried to call your cell about fifty times on the way home.”
“You have?” She scrambled out of bed, thankfully fully dressed, and started racing past me to the other room. “Wow, I must have lost track of time.”
“I’ve already seen the drugs, Lulu,” I called after her, realizing exactly what she was headed to do.
She stopped dead in her tracks. Turned around slowly to face me. “Drugs?” she asked, her eyes wide and innocent.
“Oh, please. Save it. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Oh, you think—” She laughed. A brittle laugh that sounded more hyena than human. “That’s just Ritalin.”
Ritalin? As in, the medication used to treat ADHD? Did she think I just fell off the turnip truck or something? “Since when does Ritalin come in a white powder?” I asked, raising my eyebrows in my best skeptical look. I felt kind of like my mother and tried to remember all the tricks I used to use when I was lying, in case Lulu tried to pull any of them on me. Not that I would have ever lied about something like this.
“It doesn’t. Drummer’s doctor prescribed the pills. But he’s been on them so long, he’s like, um, immune to swallowing them now. And his jerk doctor won’t up his dosage. So he crushes them up and snorts them to get the medicine directly into his bloodstream.”
She actually thought I was going to buy that? That her buddy Drummer was simply self-medicating? Would Mom have considered that a good excuse?
“It’s true,” the guy (Drummer?) said, also crawling out of bed. To my horror, all he was wearing was a pair of ratty flannel boxers with massive holes in some pretty distasteful spots. His legs and chest were pasty white and overly hairy, like those of a scrawny wooly mammoth. How could Lulu be attracted to such a disgusting creature? She was so pretty. She could get any guy. Did she sleep with him? And if so, how could she? In my bed, nonetheless?
“You must be Maddy. Lulu’s told me lots about you.” Drummer (and while we’re questioning, what the hell kind of name was that!?) strode over and shook my hand. Complete confidence. As if he weren’t standing nearly naked in my bedroom. As if he hadn’t just admitted to bringing drugs—prescription or otherwise—into my house.
I could barely control my fury. “Get out of my house. And take your drugs with you.”
“Well, hell, it’s not like I’d leave them here,” he drawled, grabbing a pair of dirty jeans from the floor and hoisting them over his scrawny hips. “Damn, Lu, you were right.”
I could only imagine what he was talking about, what Lulu had said about me behind my back. But at that moment, I didn’t care. I’d be the biggest bitch in the world if I could save my baby sister from trash like that.
After he left, Lulu flopped on the cushionless couch, a sullen expression on her face.
“So, are you mad?” she asked.
I stared at her. “Are you joking?”
“Okay, fine. You’re mad. Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?”
“Lu, this isn’t like being caught sneaking a beer,” I cried in exasperation. I replaced a cushion—the lone unstained one—back on the couch and sat down beside her. “I don’t want to be responsible for anything happening to you.”
“Oh, I see. You don’t care if anything happens to me. You just don’t want to be responsible.” Lulu snorted. “Typical. Just like the ‘rents.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” I scolded. “Stop trying to twist my words.” Man, I hated being the disciplinarian. “Now how long have you been doing Coke—or meth—or whatever