Page 3 of Close to Falling

Mascara runs down my best girl’s face as I hug her goodbye. I know I won’t see her anymore because I have to get away from here, and she is a small-town girl. She will never leave, and I will never come back. I know that now.

“I love you, Maddie B. Callaway,” she tells me as she wipes the makeup away from her cheek.

“I love you, too.”

“You get better and come back.”

“I don’t know if I can do that, Cali. This might be the last time we see each other.”

She bites her lip and looks away from me. A strange feeling of nostalgia passes over me as thoughts of my childhood run through my mind—glitter makeup, chipped nail polish, red-lipped kisses, and doing things we were too young to do. I take a deep breath and look to the waves. They are big today, and Cali grabs my hand in hers.

“You’ll be more than all of this,” she tells me, and I look over at her. She smiles sadly, and I look away again. The wind blows as she lays her head on my shoulder.

“You’ll be free like the ocean, B.”

“Yeah,” I say solemnly and look to the sky when I hear the birds above us. We stay like that until the sun goes down, and then we part ways.

***

Blue plastic metal-like chairs from old school science classrooms surround me on both sides, curved and filled with people a little like me. One shifts across the dotted tile floor and makes a loud screeching sound, causing me to clench my back teeth. The smell of propane hits my nose as the small heater in the corner of the dank basement kicks on, and my eyes look around the once white walls. Aged and stained, yellowish from too many cigarettes, time and people have made them dirty. The wobbly, gold-chained ceiling fan above me moves a mixture of cool air and smelly heat across my bare knee, and I pick at the fray around the hole in my faded blue jeans. Brown eyes like my father’s look down at my dirty untied shoestring, and I wish I had kept my Chucks cleaner. My thumbnail gets demolished as my teeth chew anxiously at brittle keratin. I’m just passing through until they get me checked into my room at a nicer place than this, but strangely, I feel okay here and not judged. The dirtiness isn’t below me. I am dirty, full of filth, which will be cleaned out soon.

And the people here don’t make me nervous, but that’s the thing about a place filled with people who took the wrong path in life. They can’t judge you, because they’ve done the same or worse than you. Or not quite as bad as you, but they were smarter and got help sooner. I look over when the tall skinny man calls on me to say who I am and why I’m here. Brown blazer, white button-up shirt, and some age around his eyes. I can tell he has been down that wrong path also, and I hope I can look through clean eyes like him one day, without the twitch in my shoulders and the monsters in my head. One ankle over his knee, he loosely holds on to his clipboard, and I hear the heater kick off behind me. I stand up because everyone else did. Wringing my hands and clearing my throat, I try to get my mind to wrap around that second question.

Why am I here?

Because I’m messed up. I’m a drug addict. Because the one person I thought would always be by my side decided he no longer wanted to be. Love is nothing but pain and suffering. Love is nothing but useless hopes and futile dreams. Pointless conversations about the future and wasted time thinking it will all actually happen. My once full heart is now empty, and the craving of something to numb the pain tries to claw itself out from under my skin. A cold sweat breaks out across my forehead, and I feel a tremble in my fingers as my body begs me to give it what it wants.

What it needs.

But I suck it up and take a shaky breath as I slide my hoodie off my head and hide my twitching from withdrawals, hands into the black pockets of my pullover.

“My name is Maddie B. Callaway,” I say. “I’m an addict, a loner, and scared shitless.” A few people chuckle, and I lick my dry lips as my chestnut eyes go to their drawn-in faces. They aren’t laughing at me. No, they are laughing with me. Because they know, and half of them look just as bad as I do.

“But you’re here, Maddie, and you’re not a loner anymore.”

My eyes go to the man with the clipboard, and for the first time in months, my smile isn’t drugged.

Chapter Two

Cold sweat covers my body while razor blades swim through my veins. Anxiety spreads inside my chest, and I feel how off my heartbeat is.

“I just need one more,” I call out to whomever the fuck is listening. “Please!” I yell as my stomach cramps harder than it did yesterday. They say it will get better, easier, but hell if it is. I grab my knees, curling up into the fetal position. The sheets feel like sandpaper against my skin, and I kick them off the bed. “Fuck!” I scream, turning and kicking my food tray across the tiny room. Bouncing off the wall, it flips upside down, spilling all the shit I didn’t eat onto the floor. I hear a beep, and my door clicks open.

“Maddie, you have to stop. We know it hurts, but we promise you, it will get better,” the nurse who has been in my room more times than I care to keep count tells me. She’s in black and gray scrubs, and red-framed glasses sit on top of her long strawberry-blonde hair.

“When?” I cry because I’m so tired of this already.

“I understand what you’re going through.” She hands me a tissue and sets a cup of pills down on my bedside table. I look up at her face and take the tissue from her reached out hand. Silky soft brushes across my cheek, removing the tears, and I sigh.

“If you knew what I was going through, then you would give me one more,” I say.

“It’s because I know what you’re going through that I won’t,” she replies, getting up off the white cotton fitted sheet. She picks up my other sheet off the floor and begins folding it. I close my eyes and lay my head back down on my too hot one minute, too cold the next pillow. “Here, take some of this for your stomach cramps,” strawberry blonde tells me, and I open my eyes and sit up as she tries to hand me the pills.

“I don’t want those,” I say, running an irritated hand through my knotted-up bed hair. They know what I want, and it’s the one thing I can’t have. But my body yearns to be numb again. A tremble moves from my shoulders, down my arms, and into my hands.

“I’ll leave them here for you. Don’t throw them,” she says, putting the small cup back down that’s filled with drugs I don’t crave. I lie back down, and my eyes drift shut. I hear her clean up the mess my foot made, and I slowly pick at the skin beside my thumbnail, trying to stop the shakes. Small steps toward the door tell me she is leaving before I hear the sound of the door clicking open and then shut. I’m left alone again. Sleep drifting, I roll from side to side too many times, and now the unfolded sheet is on the floor again. Tired isn’t the right word to describe how I feel. Broken on the inside and out, my body is working hard to repair itself, scrambling with my brain to regain balance after relying so long on a chemical interference. It makes me feel heavy and weak as hell. I wish I could sleep forever.

Tossing and more turning, I give up on trying to find sleep again and lie on my stomach. I watch the sunlight stretch out across the white tile floor, my eyes slowly blinking as it moves, showing me time is passing. Eventually, the orange-yellow light disappears, and it's replaced by moonlight. My door opens several more times as I get checked on. I’m told to take this and to eat that.

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