Nicky was hardly ever surprised anymore. And she hardly got mad. Her mother, Joan was a junkie, an addict and she was used to seeing almost everything by now. Nicky was used to her mother never having rent or grocery money because she spent it all on drugs. So, she got a job and paid for the groceries and the bills.
Nicky was used to the inebriated men and women coming in and out of their place at random increments throughout the night. So, she always kept her bedroom door locked and kept her taser on her bedside table. But earlier tonight, Nicky's mother had done something rare, she had surprised her.
Her mother couldn't find a vein to intravenously inject her dope so she called Nicky's name from her bedroom. Nicky followed her mom's voice and walked into her mom's room to see what was going on. A needle was on her bedside table, with heroin in a spoon, and a lighter. Her arm was in a homemade tourniquet, made from a shoelace.
Nicky looked at her mom in the detached expression she had perfected over the years and asked her what she needed help with. And her mother had then chosen to ask her to help her inject the heroin. Her mouth gaped open like a fish out of water as she assessed the damage her mother and inflicted on herself over the years.
Prior to that moment, Nicky had never seen heroin before. Nicky always knew her mother was high around the house. She'd seen her mother smoke weed since she was a kid. She'd seen her mother pop pills in the kitchen, and come home with pupils the size of quarters which she chalked up to her mother trying harder drugs, but she'd never seen this extent of her mother's addiction. Her mother must have kept the hardest drugs to the confines of her bedroom.
It hit Nicky right then and there while staring at her mother's pale skin, hallowed in cheekbones and deathly skinny form, beside heroin that she wanted her daughter to help her inject, that her mother was never going to change. Her mother's twenty attempts at Narcotics Anonymous have all been followed by a relapse. Her mother's hundreds of apologies for being a bad mother were never met with changed behaviour.
Nicky's mother was just a shell of the woman she knew as a kid. Her mother used to be a gorgeous, free-spirited, kind woman. She'd cook pancakes for Nicky every morning and help her with her homework. She used to take Nicky to her softball games and camping every summer. And as a kid, her mother used to smoke weed but she'd say it was all natural and made from the Earth so Nicky never complained about it because she was a good mother.
Now her mother was just a frail junkie made out of empty promises and loads of narcotics. Walking in on her own mother asking her to help her intravenously inject her heroin really played a picture of where Nicky's life headed if she stayed in Toronto.
She accepted that her mother did some drugs. But not this. Nicky realized that she couldn't be a caregiver forever. She needed to go and live her own life.
Nicky told her mother she wouldn't help her with what she needed after closing her gaping mouth. Then she turned around in a huff of anger. and decided that she was leaving in that moment. Leaving home. Going to find her dad. Her biological dad, who lived in LaPush, Washington.
Nicky lived in a small two-bedroom, public housing apartment in Scarborough, Toronto, Canada. Just two hours north of Buffalo, New York. She lived in the most ghetto part of the city. Half the people who lived in her apartment building were in gangs, dealt drugs, did drugs, stole, or scammed. The other half were just like Nicky, just trying to get by. Trying to survive the cold, concrete jungle that they called home.
Nicky had never met her biological dad. Her mother had told her that he had lived in LaPush, a small reservation in Washington State. Her mother had grown up in LaPush, gotten pregnant in high school and then ran away to a small town in North Dakota so she could hide the pregnancy from her parents.
In North Dakota, while pregnant with Nicky, she had met and fallen for a tourist named Daren who had later asked Joan to marry and move in with him in lower Canada where he lived, and she had accepted. There, Nicky's mom Joan, Nicky and Daren lived together and the two were married for seven years before he divorced her. They just had opposing views, Joan had told Nicky when she'd asked.
Daren had been a pretty uninvolved stepfather to Nicky. He worked six am until close at a law office five days a week. After work, he'd hang out at a bar with his co-workers and was home every night by midnight, or later. And Deran would spend his weekends out playing golf or locked in his study. At least that's all Nicky remembers about him. He remarried just months after divorcing Joan, so Nicky now at a mature age, assumes that Deran was cheating on her mother throughout that relationship. Especially with all the late nights he spent out.
That's when Nicky's mom started smoking weed, and five years later when Nicky was twelve, her mother started doing harder drugs. Nicky was perceptive. Although she wouldn't outright ask what he mother was taking, she saw her sneakily popping pills and leaving home with just cash and coming home shaking or with massive pupils. The signs were enough. Nicky didn't want to ask questions that she didn't want to know the answers to.
The only good thing Deran did was buy stuff for Nicky. While Nicky lived with him, he'd pay for all her softball equipment and sports programs. He paid for her to attend private school all these years, even after the divorce between him and her mom. He paid for Nicky's credit card, which he put four hundred dollars a month on, so she didn't have to work so much, he had said. And Daren had bought Nicky her first car when she turned sixteen.
He even used to pay for Joan and Nicky's rent, following the divorce. Until he found out Nicky's mom was smoking pot. Then he had stopped. And the role went to Joan until she stopped coming home with money or groceries. And then at fourteen, Nicky started working after school to pay the bills.
Nicky's first job was at a local convenience store. At fourteen she couldn't legally work, but she asked her neighbour who ran a convenience store if she could clean the place for some cash each day after school and he had slowly caved to the fourteen-year-old's big doe eyes as she asked for work at such a young age. Nicky proceeded to get a cashier job at a local grocery store at the age of fifteen. A place where she still works now, at sixteen.
A job that Nicky was in the midst of texting that she needed two weeks off of, due to a family emergency. The family emergency being that Nicky was planning a road trip to LaPush to see if she could find her biological dad. And if her trip didn't pan out, then at least she'd have a job to come back to. If she ever decided to come back.
Nicky left her mom's room, texted her boss that she needed time off and then proceeded to pack her clothes into her gym duffel bag. Nicky had a passport, although she hadn't left Canada to go to the States since she'd been seven years old, so she didn't have a suitcase. But her worn gym bag would do. It was big enough.
Once she finished packing her clothes, health essentials and her passport. She looked around for any keepsakes she wanted to bring. She found an old photo album and packed that. She ended up needing to fill up her backpack as well, seeing as she'd be going on a road trip, she couldn't have enough stuff with her. In it, she packed stuff she'd need on the go, like the cash she'd saved over the years, her toiletries, and her phone charger a speaker and earbuds. And, she was ready to go.
Nicky grabbed her car keys from her bedside table as she thanked god it was the beginning of summer so she wouldn't have to worry about missing school or having to pack winter attire as she made her way out of her room. As Nicky passed her mom's room, she peeked in to see her one last time.
A needle was sticking out of her arm, and she was passed out cold. Nicky went over to her and checked her pulse and breathing. Still alive, she thought. Her mom was still alive. Regardless, she couldn't watch her mom's health go down the drain any longer.
Nicky couldn't look after anyone anymore when she was the one who was supposed to be looked after. She gave her mom a kiss on her forehead and told her she loved her and then made her way towards the front door and left her apartment.
Since Nicky got her car out of the underground parking lot, she'd driven for approximately six hours. She had just passed Cleveland, Ohio. She still had forty-one hours until she reached LaPush according to her GPS. Two thousand, six hundred and twenty miles to go.
Getting through the border was a breeze. The agents pretty much just waved her by. A minor going to another country was allowed as long as a note was written by her mom. And Nicky had been forging notes for her mom for years.
But driving the past four hours through New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio have been long and tiring. She wasn't just tired from the drive but from her draining afternoon with her mother. She'd had hours to calm down while driving and recognize the decision she'd made. She didn't regret it but the stress of potentially meeting her father was stressing her out.
And she still had forty more hours to go until she got to LaPush. Nicky needed to find somewhere to crash soon. It was starting to get dark and Nicky didn't want to be driving in the dark too much, although she might have to tomorrow. Being between Toronto and LaPsuh felt scarier than actually getting there because it was all unknown territory to her.
She'd never been this far from home alone, before. At least once she got to LaPsuh, she'd be around potential family. At least in LaPush Nicky would have a plan. Here, in the middle of nowhere, Nicky was just alone with her thoughts and the image of how her mom last looked kept creeping it's way into her thoughts.
It was a warm summer night so instead of spending money on a motel room in the boonies, she thought she'd find a rest stop and just sleep in her car. She found one about an hour later. And she was so exhausted, as soon as she rolled down her seat, she crashed immediately, into a dreamless sleep.
.
.
.
Nicky had woken up at five in the morning for the past two days, and driven for seventeen hours each day. She'd rarely stopped except to pee and she decided to stay at rest stops in her car instead of in motels, to save money.
Nicky was on her fourth day of driving. She had left the rest stop that morning, with four hours left until she arrived in LaPush. By now she was used to driving long hours. It started to become second nature on day two. She'd play her music, sing to her favourite songs, and before she knew it, it'd be dark.
But what she desperately needed was a shower. She had been using dry shampoo and layering on deodorant for the past couple of days, and with the scorching summer heat she was starting to reek. Nicky considered that she should've paid for a hotel room at least for one night so she'd be clean when she met her bio dad, but she hadn't used forethought, it was too late now.
She passed the 'Welcome To Forks' sign about thirty minutes ago, and her Camry was just about to hit the start of LaPsuh. Nicky was giddy with excitement. But also unbelievably nervous. Nerves, the kind of which she had never felt before, crept up the back of her, and Nicky had to choke down her rapidly increasing fear. She started to grip the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white.
Nicky saw the 'Welcome To LaPush' sign as she approached a steady influx of trees. She was in awe. Back home the only view out of her bedroom window, as far as she could see, were grey buildings lining her horizon. Here everything was green, brown and blue! She could see the ocean on her left as she drove further into LaPush.
That's where she could get her shower in, she thought as she appraised the view. Nicky drove towards the ocean and parked beside a picnic table in front of the beach that lined her view. She grabbed her duffel bag, pulled out a bikini and towel she had packed and climbed out of her car.
It was just reaching midday, and the beach had a few people on it. So, Nicky quickly changed into her bikini beneath her towel and threw a shirt on over it because there was a bit of a wind chill. A sign said that this was First Beach. She locked that in for future memory in case she wanted to come back.
She stepped onto the beach with her towel and phone in hand. Her dark hair was flying everywhere with the wind as she strolled over to find a spot to place her towel down. She held her towel down on the sand with her phone and a rock. She stepped away and decided she'd need a running start to enter the frigid water. She looked around at the view one last time before setting her feet up for a running start, and she dashed into the water.
The water surrounded her vision, as the waves pulled her towards the shore. She popped out of the water, took a gulp of air and dove back under the waves. Using her arms, she pulled the water behind her as she swam further from shore.
Nicky felt fearless. There was no ocean near her home, nowhere to swim but indoor pools. Here, under the water she had no messy images in her head, she felt unburdened by her mom. She felt free. She swam for a couple more minutes before she made her way back to the beach.
Nicky came out of the water and walked along the sand, grabbing her phone, and wrapping herself up in her towel, keeping the wind away as she cocooned herself in the cotton fibres. She walked back to her car shivering and haphazardly pulled dry clothes out of her duffel bag and just threw them on over her wet bikini, hurling her wet t-shirt into the back of her car.
She was still cold with her pants and shirt on over her wet bikini. So she pulled a grey quarter-zip out of her duffel and put it on, giving her an additional barrier to the wind. Nicky then proceeded to hop into the driver's seat and it was there that she decided to collect her thoughts.
Swimming, Nicky had a few moments of pure relaxation. Pure bliss. Now, her head was spinning in a million different directions. She honestly didn't know where to start. How can she find her dad with just a name? Her breath hitched as she started to freak out. She looked out towards the waves and took some stabilizing breaths. Nicky slowly began to calm her nerves.
She kept breathing in and out as she peered at the waves, and then she surveyed the beach. People-watching was always comforting. She watched a mom and her kid play in the sand. She watched two kids run up and down the beach. And then she saw a group of five dark skin men, maybe a couple of years older than her walk down the beach.
They were gorgeous. Neither of them wore shirts but despite the wind, they didn't seem cold in the slightest. They all looked like they were in their early to mid-twenties. Perhaps even late twenties. They all wore jean cutoffs or sweat shorts. They all had to be six feet tall at least. Their choice of attire was definitely eye-grabbing, and so were their abs. They must work out a lot. Nicky broke off her stare as she heard her phone chime.
She checked the text message. It was from Joan. Another 'where are you' text. Nicky's mom had only started texting Nicky to see where she was, three days after Nicky had left. Nicky surmised her mom must have been in a stupor for three days and only just recently realized that Nicky hadn't been staying in her room. And Nicky bet that she was probably only looking for her, so she could ask to borrow some money. Junkie bitch.
Nicky opened her phone and texted that she was at work, and then staying at a friend's house for a couple of days. That would get her off her back for a couple of weeks because she'd probably beg someone else for money and then as soon as she had her next fix she'd forget about Nicky completely. Drugs did that.
A knock on her driver's side window brought Nicky out of her thoughts. She turned her phone over so the screen was facing her dashboard as she peered over to her window. One of the shirtless Quillute boys she'd seen earlier was on the other side of the glass, glaring at her.
Instead of rolling down her window and talking to him like he was a cop pulling her over, despite the fact that he had the perfect angry facial expression of a cop on patrol and would fit right in. Nicky decided to ignore the man's angry gaze and open her door and speak to him normally.
A girl with a normal mom would already be in trouble for running away from home for four days so the least she could do is speak to the man like she wasn't being interrogated. She didn't want to get into trouble here too.
She unlocked her door and pushed it open, and as she stepped out, the man was instantly a couple of feet back although she could've sworn she'd never heard him move. She pushed the door closed behind her and faked a smile as she looked up at him.