taking her Altoids with her, but even though I’ve been here longer than her, no doctor has come to explain to me how the boy’s doing.
And that’s exactly what he is.
A boy.
I suck in my bottom lip as I think about this morning. All I had planned was just a regular day at school. Then, on my walk in, I’d seen a foot.
Nothing more, nothing less.
A foot.
But the way it had been tilted was weird enough to make me investigate.
Of course, I shouldn’t have. Even though we’re supposed to help the vulnerable—cue eye roll, because it seems like charity doesn’t matter anymore—I should have walked away. Even the receptionist here gave me an ‘are you for real?’ look, but if I can help someone, I will. I’m not going to turn a blind eye.
So, anyhoo, I was walking along, minding my own business, then I saw the foot. When I saw the kid the foot was attached to, I knew something was wrong.
He wasn’t dead. Not yet. His skin was this weird blue color, which made me think he wasn’t getting enough oxygen to his system, and from his barely moving chest, I figured that confirmed my supposition.
I’d have moved him, put him onto his side as I waited on the ambulance to get to him, but he had a needle stuck in his arm, quivering there obscenely.
My lips turn down at just the memory, because it looked uncomfortable. Yet the boy hadn’t cared. I know whenever I get my shots, I’m always grateful when the damn needle is out of my skin, but he’d been too out of it to even notice if it was causing him any pain.
Drugs... they always talk about them in school. The egg in the frying pan? ‘This is your brain on drugs,’ yadda, yadda, yadda? They always speak about gateway drugs and peer pressure and how we need to say no. But as I stared at the kid, waiting on an ambulance I wasn’t sure would come because I highly doubted the boy had insurance, I wondered what on Earth would lead anyone to crave this.
Was it worth it?
I don’t think I’ll ever get an answer unless I take drugs myself, but seeing the kid rammed something home for me this morning—the next time Judith Foster tries to get me to smoke weed at one of her dumb parties? I’m going to tell her to go fuck herself.
And after four hours of being stuck in this waiting room, that belief has only grown more powerful.
I’d been tempted last week. So tempted. All my friends had been doing it, and they’d all started being mean to me when I said no. But I just knew I’d like it, that I’d like the escape, and that made me distrust it.
And what I distrusted, I avoided.
Which is one of the reasons I never speak to Kieran Laugherty. Sure, he might be beautiful, sure, he might be the quarterback of the varsity team, but his eyes?
Shifty for sure.
The priest’s eyes? Definitely not shifty. He looked like he’d turn the other cheek, he looked like he’d approve of my huffing at the woman who’d been sitting beside me. I’d just bet he wouldn’t have teased me for saying no to the pot Judith had waggled under my nose last week.
Feeling a little self-righteous, I fold my arms under my boobs, and grumble to myself about weed and Judith and quarterbacks who have grabby hands. But then images flash of the war-torn country once more, and my heart starts to ache.
It takes me a few moments to realize a doctor has entered the waiting room, and though his scrubs are clean, they’re wrinkled, and his eyes are tired and his face is a little worn. He has a blue cap on his head, made out of the scrub material, and it’s wonky, like he rubbed his hand over it, and it had resettled at the wrong angle. He’s at my side, where the old witch had been sitting, and his elbows are on his knees as he stares at the screen.
It’s such an informal move that my heart starts to pound with unease.
Because he doesn’t say anything, my nerves have me trying to think of something to utter to break the ice. “Tragic, isn’t it?” I whisper, staring at the TV screen.
“Yes. It is.”
For a second, I just let the images flicker through my mind, then, I build up the courage to ask something his position alone told me,