The syringe was still three-quarters full, and Johnny came toward me after Trent collapsed back out of the way.
“You’ll like this, Wendell,” he said. Johnny never calls me Wendell. He calls me Weasel, like everyone else.
I started to inch back, but stopped. It was that voice again, or maybe just my body freezing up.
But I didn’t stop him. He pricked my skin and tilted the needle up, and I watched as the clumpy red liquid swirled inside the syringe. Then Johnny hit the plunger and I was gone.
It was incredible. It was perfect. There was warmth inside my veins and I could feel it, I could fell it moving inside me. It was like I was mainlining comfort, like stuffing a down blanket into my arm. When it hit my brain… I don’t know, it was indescribable. Not an explosive energy and confidence, like meth, or a mellow, numbing euphoria, like H. It was something else. It was like nothing I’d ever done before.
I fell back on my ass and braced myself up with my hands. In my palms, pressed against the ground, I could feel the city beneath me. It was like this… again, it was like comfort. Really, words fail me, and that’s all I can say. It was comfort. Comfort and happiness, the warmth of the womb, radiating up through my body. It sounds stupid to say I felt at one with the world, but I did feel part of something larger. The city, maybe. I was not alone.
And Taylor didn’t matter, the way she looked at me—hope or disappointment—the understanding and sympathy I never saw anywhere else. At that moment, I didn’t miss her, I didn’t feel ashamed that I’d forced her away. I was part of something bigger, and I couldn’t see those small things anymore. No matter how large they might look back in the real world, back down in that place where I was nothing but a tiny, weak failure, a loser sporting big thoughts and small resolve. Here, all of that was nothing.
Trent giggled again, somewhere in the dressing room. I couldn’t see where he was and I didn’t want to move my head to look around. I felt my own laughter bubbling up inside my chest and I understood him, I totally understood his braying, moronic glee. A hand grabbed my arm and pushed me down to the floor. It might have been Johnny. Or it could have been that kid, that skeletal, shivering kid with gold in his veins. I couldn’t see and I didn’t really care.
The dressing room was empty when I regained my senses. Johnny and Trent and the thing with the golden veins were all gone, and the room was dark. The sun had almost fully set.
I still felt high, and I staggered out of the store. I made my way back to the Homestead. I’ve been living here for several days now, but I’m always surprised when they let me back in. They shouldn’t. They have no reason. And, really, I don’t think anybody wants me here, just Johnny. I’m a fucking disaster. I don’t know why Terry agreed.
Johnny seemed confused when I asked him about the stuff we took. I wanted more, but he just shook his head and stared at me like I’d lost my mind. He offered me some H, but the thought of heroin made me feel queasy, like I was going to throw up right there.
“Yesterday,” I said. “You and Trent met me at Mama C’s and we went to that place, that store, right? In the dressing room?”
He shook his head. “No fucking way. Wasn’t us. We were here. We had Bailey go out and get us food. Trent couldn’t fucking move!” Trent was sitting on an overturned milk crate on the other side of the room and he started to laugh. Johnny shook his head and shot me a look, a private look, mocking Trent.
“But you pulled blood from his veins,” I said. I was getting agitated and confused. This happened, right? I didn’t hallucinate all of that shit, did I? “We shot it. It was, it was…”
Johnny gave me a really strange look, like I’d just unzipped my pants and started peeing on the floor. He actually inched away from me.
“Take this, man,” Johnny said, holding out a baggie of H. “You need it.”
I looked at the bag and suddenly I found myself vomiting, splattering acid bile across the floor, across my shoes. Just looking at that stuff and I felt queasy and off-balance, like the whole room had just tipped over the edge of a cliff.
“Fuck man,” Johnny said. “You’re cleaning that up. If you can’t hold your shit together, I’m certainly not holding your hand…”
I tried to see Taylor again last night. I made it through the front door this time, but there was no one inside. Then I heard music coming from the backyard. They were all back there, gathered around Floyd and his guitar.
I stood in the kitchen for a while, watching them through the sliding glass door. They looked so happy. They looked so far away.
I could only see the back of Taylor’s head, but she looked comfortable out there. And that new guy was sitting across from her, wearing an idiot grin. Just like Trent. I’d be surprised if there were even an ounce of brain behind that smile.
But I would have apologized to him in a second. I would have begged his forgiveness, begged Taylor’s forgiveness, if it got me out there, into that semicircle. But it wouldn’t. There was simply no way out there, no path I could take. They were just too far away.
My veins have collapsed. They’re flat as a pancake now. Just a minute ago, I was flexing and trying to work blood into my arm, but there was nothing there. I’m empty. The pinhole from my shot in the dressing room is turning dark, and I started working it with my finger and… fuck! I don’t know. It opened up. That tiny hole opened up and my finger slipped inside. There was no blood in the wound and it all felt very, very strange.
My stomach flipped as I watched my finger moving beneath my skin. All the way up to the second knuckle. I could feel suction in there, like my heart was trying to suck my finger into my circulatory system. And as I sat there, with my finger inside my arm, my vision started to dim, and my heart grew loud inside my ears, beating, beating, beating. It was a heavy, distant sound, and the beats started to fall farther and farther apart. Gray spots gathered in the corners of my closet.
I pulled my finger out and immediately I started feeling better.
There was no blood on my finger. None. Instead, it was sticky with some type of mucous or bile. Slimy. Chunky and gelatinous. Is that what’s in my veins now? Is that what my heart is pumping?
Fuck. None of this could have happened, right? It’s not possible. There’s just no way. I’m just hallucinating, right? Fuck, next the walls will start to pulse and my balls will disappear. The sun will rise in my closet and I’ll go blind.
But. But the wound is bigger and darker now, and the vein leading away from that spot is turning black. It’s like someone drew on me with a fucking Sharpie. No, it’s like someone drew inside of me with a fucking Sharpie.
I want some more of that shit. I need it! The boy with the million dollar veins. Is he still out there? Is he looking for me?