Page 155 of Life of the Party

“You did it, Mackenzie.” He’d say, his voice velvet in my ears. “I’m so proud of you. You did it, you’re clean…”

The vision made me ache inside. It was just so empty without him.

I was moved from the Detox centre into the rehabilitation wing that day, into my room for the next three long months. I had to share it with another girl, some stranger I’d never met. I trudged along after the orderlies because I had to. I felt no excitement, no enthusiasm. None of me wanted to be there, even with the hard part over.

I sighed as I stepped inside my room—plain, beige, mass-quantity type furnishings adorning the space. There were two twin beds, two dressers, two nightstands, a little adjoining bathroom, and a solitary window in a beige brick wall facing the courtyard, giving me a dismal view of the grey, frozen wasteland beyond, crusted in ice.

The orderly set my suitcase on the bed closest to me, gave me a polite smile, and left.

I sank on the bed and shut my eyes. So, this was sober living.

So far, it sucked.

Since there was nothing else to do, I opened my suitcase and unpacked my things. Two packs of cigarettes sat on the top—a gift from Charlie, no doubt. I was grateful, tearing into them. I missed her. I missed everybody.

I missed Grey.

With a shaky sigh, I moved on to the rest of my belongings. The familiarity of them brought me some comfort but brought me sadness as well. Every one of my possessions had a memory attached to it. I picked up my favourite jeans first; they were old, and threadbare, and comfortable. Grey had doodled on them with a ballpoint pen one day when we were laying in bed and he was working on his lyrics.

That was hard to see. I stroked my finger over the ink, biting my lip as the familiar tears flooded my eyes. I pressed my face against the denim and cried for a little while, but the tears gave me no relief. There was nothing that would fill the emptiness inside me. I was being forced to quit the one thing that could.

Quickly, I unpacked the rest of my stuff, shoving my clothes roughly into drawers, looking at them as little as possible. My diary, the one Marcy gave me for Christmas, was also in the bag. I tossed it into the nightstand, threw my suitcase beneath the bed, grabbed my bag of toiletries, and headed into the bathroom for a long, hot shower.

It felt better to be clean. The pressure wasn’t much, but the water was hot, and I stayed beneath it for as long as I could. The whole time I thought about heroin. There may not have been any left in my system, but that didn’t stop me from craving it. I remembered the feeling, the rush of euphoria it gave me—the numbness, the apathy, the delicious…nothingness. I shut my eyes and pictured myself mixing a batch, sucking it into the needle, feeling the sharp sting as I injected it into my body…

I could leave. I could leave there. I could run out the front doors and catch a cab. Did I have any money? There had to be some around. I could hitchhike home, or just somewhere, anywhere in the city. Some dark back alley. There was sure to be heroin there. In less than an hour, I could get my fix. Riley wouldn’t have to know; he’d never find me. I’d never have to go to jail. Everything would be good again…

Almost breathless with excitement, I towelled off, got dressed and ran a brush through my tangled, wet hair. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be clean. Nothing mattered to me now, nothing but the heroin.

I rushed quickly out of the bathroom, my cheeks flushing nervously. It shouldn’t be too hard to run away. I’d throw on a few sweaters, go for a casual walk down the hallway and sprint out the front doors before anyone noticed. I hadn’t seen a huge amount of security, it’d be hours before anyone realized I was missing. And by that time, I’d already have a needle in my vein…

“You’re thinking of running, aren’t you?”

I whipped around in surprise, slamming my drawer shut as I did so, my cheeksblushing guiltily. “N-no.” I lied.

The girl on the other bed in the room, the one near the window, smiled at me. “Mackenzie, right? I’m Allison. Want to know why it won’t work?” She pointed up at a corner of the room. “Cameras. In the hallways, too. And the front doors are locked from the inside.”

I sat down on the bed, sighing heavily. “How many times did you try?”

“Twice.”

“Stubborn.”

“That’s me.” She grinned.

Alison was pretty, in a hard kind of way. She was the first person I’d ever met—besides Jack Turcotte—who actually looked like a heroin addict. Her short, pixie-cut blonde hair framed glittering blue eyes lined by thick, dark eyeliner. Both her arms sported full sleeves of colourful tattoos. She grinned at me wickedly, and had I met her in different circumstances, I knew we would’ve had a ton of fun together. I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley or something, though.

Allison was a wonderful distraction from the constant burning pain in the pit of my soul. She gave me a tour of the facility, showing me the therapy rooms, the cafeteria, the TV and the games room. There was ping-pong and pool and shuffleboard and a huge flat-screen TV surrounded by faded old couches.

It was an odd atmosphere, like summer camp gone horribly, horribly awry. The air seemed gloomy, thick with struggle, almost. There were people of all types, all ages—every one of them fighting their own battle, everyone with their own story.

Allison told me hers, as we walked.

It started when she tried Oxy at a party. One time, and she was hooked. She did everything she could to get more, going from doctor to doctor, begging for meds, stealing car stereos to afford the pills on the street. When it got too hard to find, too hard to afford, heroin entered the picture.

“Heroin, the poor man’s Oxy. We started sniffing it, and it was good. Really, damn good. Then we started injecting.” Allison sighed fondly. “And never looked back.”

“How old are you?” I wondered. I was desperate for her to keep talking. We made it back to our room and she sprawled out on her bed, cuddling the pillow. I sat on my saggy old mattress, my back against the wall, and looked at her expectantly.

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