Chapter 8
In the morning I came into consciousness without really waking up, aware of my surroundings but still drowsy enough that I didn't think I could move if I tried. I heard something to my side and rolled my head to look. A man with skin as white as ice stood in the doorway, red eyes glaring at me. His smile was rimmed with blood, and I wondered if Charlie was okay, horror feeling like a lead weight on my chest. I waited, but he never approached, only looked away and wandered down the hall. I stared at the doorway for a long time, long enough for the sun to fill the room and Charlie to walk past without glancing in. I surmised that the man I'd seen hadn't hurt him.
When I finally sat up and tossed my legs over the edge of the bed, trying to remember the night before, my mind was largely uncooperative. Half of my face felt like it'd been torn off. Anxiety filled me, sure and powerful.
I saw a packet of pills on my bedside table. I picked them up slowly, reading the label. I knew why I'd seen the man in my doorway, just as I knew where I must have gotten these. I turned to look at my backpack from Phoenix. Sure enough, though it had been largely unpacked except for a couple of items all these months, the contents were now dumped across the floor. I groaned. Jesus, had I actually been stupid enough to take those with alcohol? I tossed the pills angrily into a drawer, threw on some sweatpants and a t-shirt and unsteadily made my way to the bathroom.
Halfway down the hallway, I froze. It wasn't the first time I'd had strange visions in the morning after taking those pills, but my breath came more shallowly as I realized that it might not have been a drug-induced dream. What if there was someone in our house? But Charlie was fine, and I hadn't been hurt. It must have been a hallucination, I told myself. The things I had seen in the mornings when I tried using Zopiclone to sleep- usually when I was too riled on blow to pass out or even sit still- were often strange, but it was more disturbing now that I knew vampires weren't make believe.
My reflection in the mirror looked like a zombie. I was pale and the bags under my eyes were black. Most alarming, though, was the giant gash on the left side of my face. It looked like I'd had several layers of my skin roughly peeled off.
"Holy shit," I breathed, touching it gently. A spasm of pain raced across my cheek. "Fuck."
What the hell had I done?
I quickly began running the tap, splashing the water on my face despite the pain that caused me. I wondered if Charlie had been awake when I'd gotten home last night. He hadn't even glanced in my room when he passed it this morning. Did he suspect nothing or did he just not want to see?
I went downstairs though I didn't want to, knowing I would have to face Charlie soon enough.
"How's your face?" he asked without looking up from his paper, and I knew that he must have been awake when I got back.
I didn't answer immediately, scuffing my feet against the floor in the entryway to the kitchen.
"It hurts," I finally said.
"Hm. Big surprise that is."
I waited. Charlie obviously wasn't happy, and I knew I'd be getting lectured sooner rather than later. Or thought that, anyway. Maybe it would be worse than a lecture. Maybe Charlie would send me to live with my mother, or maybe he'd arrest me himself. Charlie didn't say anything, rustling the pages of the newspaper and paying me no attention.
Eventually I grabbed some cereal and sat down across from him, eating slowly. Chewing pulled at the scabs on my cheek, and the pain was unbelievable. Charlie finished his paper and set it aside.
"So. What am I supposed to do?" he asked me.
I hung my head, completely out of my depth. Renée had never actually lectured me, only fretted about on the periphery. Phil had on occasion tried to discipline me. But Phil wasn't my father, and I had sneered at him until he left me alone.
I opened my mouth to answer, but didn't know what to say.
"Jacob Black shows up at 3 am with you in tow," Charlie begins, and I can hear the anger building in his voice. "Completely drunk, violently lashing out at everyone you see. You got in a fight with some boy from La Push twice your size because he apparently touched your shoulder-"
Hearing Charlie say that made my stomach clench in horror. Of course, drunk, stupid me would react that way to someone casually reaching out, probably nothing more than to clap me on the back.
Charlie wasn't done.
"-And punched Jake's friend in the throat while they were trying to get you home. That was only what Jacob saw after he found you getting your face smashed into a brick wall. Who knows what you were up to before that."
I dropped my head into my hands and instantly regretted it, pain flaring up against my cuts. I hissed and pulled my hands away quickly, resting them on the table. I still couldn't bring myself to look at Charlie.
"Char."
The tone didn't broach argument. I looked up, and was surprised to see that Charlie's face wasn't angry.
"I don't want to see you go down the same path you were on in Phoenix."
"I know. I'm sorry," I said, my voice wavering and pathetic. I sounded like a 12 year old, I thought disgustedly.
"No more leaving the house on weekends," Charlie said.
"But-"
"No."
I breathed deeply, telling myself that Charlie was doing the intelligent thing by stopping me.
I nodded. "Okay."
I could take no more of Charlie's quiet appraising stare, so I went back upstairs to my room and laid down in bed. Despite my pill-induced sleep, I felt exhausted. I wondered why I'd even taken the pills. I'd bought them long ago because falling asleep after taking cocaine could be close to impossible, but I never took it very often, only when I was really desperate. They were strong enough to cause dependence on their own, and I'd never been fond of the hallucination-like dreams they caused when I was half awake. Thinking of my past made a familiar craving bubble up in my throat. I wanted coke, needed it, feeling so incredibly shitty about everything that was happening around me. I slowly uncurled myself from the tiny ball I was in. I recognized the way I felt, anxious, tired, and most of all desperate. But it was the anxiety, hot and pressing and so familiar, a physical anxiety, that made me wonder what had happened. I found the jeans I'd been wearing the night before on the floor.
I found nothing in the first pocket, and felt at once relieved and angered. I checked another and was disappointed again. In the third pocket my hand met the crinkle of foil, and I pulled out a tiny, folded piece of it. I slowly pulled the tinfoil apart, heart accelerating at the first flash of white within. My phone was sitting on my bedside table. Half of me wanted to toss the tinfoil pack out the window and do the same with my phone, but a considerably more vocal, and much, much more promising half hoped that in my drunken, high state I'd had the brains to get what I needed.
Sure enough, halfway down the list of my contacts was a name I knew hadn't been there before.
I bit my lip, a voice in my head that was infuriatingly like Glen's telling me to go talk to my father and not give in to this. I sat down on the edge of my bed, cradling the foil packet in my hands like it was a living child.
I stared for a long time at my phone and the silver-wrapped powder in my hands. Finally I set them both on my pillow, and got up. The door shut with a gentle click.
I had forgotten, almost, what it felt like when you took a hit, the inevitable rush of euphoria and the pulse of strength in your veins. It didn't take long to remember why this had been like breathing for me, necessary as oxygen, maybe more so. I felt like I could take on a SWAT team, or a herd of elephants. Or a vampire, I thought, with a smile that felt very queer on my face.
I thought of Edward and didn't wonder why he'd kissed me, and didn't care. I didn't need Edward Cullen. I didn't need anyone or anything, only myself and my drug.
I hadn't felt so happy in a long time. I got up and paced around my room. I wanted to do something, I felt so energetic and just ready and I couldn't stay in my room all day. I looked out the window facing our driveway. Charlie's car was still there. It probably would be all day. He wouldn't leave after last night- but there was a tree by my other window, the one overlooking the side of our lawn. I didn't want to do anything crazy, I just needed to go for a jog or do something with the surge of energy I felt inside me.
I tore the window open, balancing on the ledge. The tree was far. I was sure I could make it, and I leaped from my window with my hands outstretched. I barely found purchase on the branch nearest our house, grasping it tightly. Soon enough I had scrabbled down the tree and rushed into the forest. I didn't even mind the occasional rain that made it through the foliage. I ran for a long time, barely noticing where I was. I knew I'd never felt more secluded, but I didn't care. I was glad to be alone with myself. I had never felt more alive, either, and when I finally made it home it was just in time to sneak in the back door while Charlie was watching television. Just in time to get upstairs to my room, collapse on to my bed, and crash like the world was shaking apart and taking me with it.
The next day, I met Christopher- Kit, he called himself- after school, by the woods on the outskirts of town. Charlie wouldn't notice if I was a few extra minutes getting home, and it was apparent that my partying days were over. I didn't remember ever meeting Kit, but his number had been in my phone. All I remembered was the boy in the bathroom, who'd kissed me and terrified me, and I remembered wandering through the house lost and on the verge of crying again, until I found a room full of people. And after that? I suppose I must have gone inside. I must have met Kit. And as easy as that, as easy as stumbling drunkenly into a back room at a party while trying to forget Edward Cullen and the gaping hole he had left in my life, I had tapped into the Olympic Peninsula's coke supply.
I had money from working at Newtons' for the summer, but I didn't know how long it would last. I guess it depended on how quickly I blew through my stash.
Kit was a tall, shifty, white guy who lived in La Push with his girlfriend. He didn't mind the drive to Forks once a week, but I knew I couldn't be pressing my luck and asking him to deliver too often. He was, unfortunately, far too aware that I was Chief Swan's son, and not at all interested in being implicated in anything involving Charlie. I suspected that the only reason he trusted me enough to sell to me was my obvious desperate behaviour at the party the weekend before- and it had been bad, if the things I heard at school were any indication.
I was lucky enough that no one in Forks seemed to realize I had been anything but drunk, but I was skeptical of that. The stories they told me of what I'd done made it obvious to me that I had been under the influence of something much more powerful- to me, at least- than alcohol.
And cocaine was far more powerful for me than alcohol ever could be. It controlled me, no matter how long it had been since I'd broken off my addiction. The two times I'd done it that weekend pulled my body back to its previous dependency, and I knew I was lost again. I'd just have to be careful, I told myself.
I could do that. I couldn't do much else. I was useless, and the most disappointing son Charlie ever could have had, no doubt, but I could protect my habit. I had to, or else I didn't know what I'd do. I didn't let myself touch the coke, which I shoved to the bottom of my bookbag as I drove home. There was still some left over from the weekend, buried deep in my drawer. I told myself it had to last, a week at least, and I was scared what might happen if I used it so soon after the last time. I needed it, but I needed to pace myself too. I couldn't let myself get out of control, because then I'd be caught.
Charlie wasn't home yet, so it was clear his only concerns revolved around me partying on the weekend. To distract myself I attempted homework- it was impossible to concentrate on. I put on music, and tried to listen to it. Many of the songs reminded me of Edward... either I'd suggested the band to him because it was one of my favourites, or I'd heard of them from him. I couldn't listen to anything that made me think of him, so I disgustedly shut off my stereo and picked up a book from the shelf. I hadn't finished this one, though I'd started it sometime in the summer. Glen loved it, and I'd been meaning to read it for so long because it was a classic- but it was depressing, and the extensive cast made me confused.
I tossed the book aside angrily and stared at my ceiling. It didn't seem to have any answers to my unspoken questions.
I looked outside. My window was still open from the day before, and rain had gathered in a puddle on the floor beneath it. Cold air gusted in, and I felt as if I was pressed up against a ghostly, icy body.
"Why did you kiss me, Edward?" I asked out loud, not caring that I was talking to myself. "You knew you were leaving."
I wondered if that was true. Would he have stayed, if I had reacted differently to his touch? If I had reacted at all? Something made me doubt it. I didn't think anything could have made Edward stay with me.
I brought my knees up and pressed my forehead into them, self-hatred consuming me. I felt lost without Edward or any of the friends who'd brought me through the dark times in my life. And I shouldn't have. In Phoenix my friends had been there for me during my darkest moments, the time of my life that would always haunt me. Edward had protected me from James- and he's dead for it, my mind whispered. But I would never need that protection again, and I could make new friends. Why did I care so much? The tiny packet that I knew was sitting in my bookbag called my name, and I tried to resist it only because I knew I needed it to last.
I pulled up the blankets to my chin, and watched the rain pool onto my floor.
My dream was different that night.
I heard the ground beneath my feet, twigs snapping as always, and I knew, I sensed that there was something in the forest with me. I waited, walking slowly, for the familiar voice, and that grip on my wrist.
I turned around, searching the darkness for him.
"Edward?" I asked. "Edward? Hello!"
There was no answer. I wrapped my arms around myself, afraid. I heard something shuffling in the woods behind me, and knew instinctually that it wasn't Edward. I hurried away from the noise, pushing myself to a run.
"Wait." Someone grabbed my wrist. I twisted painfully in his grasp. "Come on, Swan, it's just one little thing."
I knew that voice. "Let go, let go of me," I protested, but he was too strong.
"Don't be like that," he said. He gripped my chin in one of his hands, forcing me to look him in the face.
My pillow muffled my scream as I was jolted from my sleep. But not enough.
"Char?" I heard Charlie call from downstairs. "Are you alright?"
It was barely past nine, I saw, looking at the clock.
"I'm fine," I shouted down. "Bad dream."
Once again I found myself staring at my ceiling. Soon enough Charlie appeared hovering over me.
"Alright?"
"Yeah," I told him, my voice sounding... empty. "Nightmare. I'm okay."
He looked like he disagreed, but finally he left. I got up, shut the door behind him, and began rummaging through my backpack.
