Page 10 of In the Stars

Everything hurts. My head, my body, my heart, my soul. It all aches. I need something to make me forget. My mother has more pills, so I head to her room, opening the door on creaky hinges. I wince at the noise, but she doesn’t stir. Her and Perry are stretched out across the bed, both naked and snoring.

I don’t pay attention to their nudity. I’m here for their drugs.

My eyes ping-pong around the room until they land on the foil packet with two small pills visible. I tiptoe inside and take the entire packet. I’m not sure when I’ll need more, and I don’t want to depend on my mom to give them to me.

As soon as I get back to my room, I push three pills into my mouth and sigh when they ease down my dry throat. Just a few minutes, and I’ll feel better. I won’t be broken, weak, alone.

I can forget.

It takes less time than last night—maybe because I swallowed three pills instead of two—but soon, that feeling of weightlessness overtakes me. My mind empties of thoughts, and all I can focus on is breathing in and out. I grab on tight to the sensation, holding it close to the vest.

Lying on my bed, I pull my tattered blanket around me, clenching the pills in a tight fist. Even though I’m warm all over and don’t need to be covered, I like how the material ofthe blanket feels against my skin. Like zaps of electricity flowing all over me. I wish I had known pills would affect me like this. I would have taken them sooner.

Closing my eyes, I let euphoria settle over me as I drift off to sleep.

A bootto my ribs wakes me up, and I roll over and cry out before I’m fully aware of my surroundings. “Fuck,” I groan, the pain dull but still intense.

“You stealing from me, motherfucker?” Perry roars.

I try to run, but he climbs across the bed, pulling me back before I can take more than a few steps. “You took my fucking stash!” He holds up the empty foil packet. I woke up an hour ago and swallowed the last two before I went back to sleep, not wanting the pain to return.

Perry straddles me, putting his hands around my throat and squeezing hard. I try to fight him off, but my movements are blundering and awkward. The pills have made me sluggish, and for a moment, my heart races, fear lancing through me.

He removes one hand, then swats me across the face. My head kicks back, and blood fills my mouth. I grunt around his tight hold, tears filling my eyes.

“You fucking owe me for those pills, bitch!” he screams in my face.

With all the strength I can muster, I roll to my left, catching Perry off guard. He topples over, falling onto the floor. I lean to the side and vomit, the force making my eyes bulge. I purge my stomach until there is nothing left, and it clears my head from the effects of the pills. I can’t behigh while Perry is after me like this. I need to protect myself.

Once my stomach is empty, I clamber off the bed, weaving over to the door. Perry catches me by my ankle and pulls, making me fall on my face. A crunch in my nose has me howling, blood dripping down my mouth and chin.

He climbs onto my back, putting his elbow against the nape of my neck to immobilize me. Leaning close to my ear, he says, “I’ll have to take that payment out on your ass. Then maybe I’ll get some of my friends to get some too. Run a train on you until I get my money’s worth. I know you like what I do to you. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t flaunt your ass around me so much.”

Bile rises in my throat, threatening to choke me. I try to buck him off me, but he’s too heavy, his body weight distributed so he can’t be dislodged. “I don’t.”

His chuckle sends fear skittering down my spine. He means it. He already makes my mom use her body to get a fix—I’m just her annoying son that just stole from him. He wouldn’t hesitate to have his friends come take advantage of me.

I fight against him as hard as I can as he uses his free hand to lower my pants enough for my ass to be exposed. He grinds his disgusting crotch against me, laughing when I start to cry. The pills are gone and so is the high. All feelings of disgust, panic, and terror well up inside me as his fingers sliding into my crack and push into me.

No! This shouldn’t be happening. He can’t do this to me. I won’t let him. Not anymore.

Rage gives me strength, and I knock my head back into his mouth, making Perry yelp in pain and collapse beside me, holding his own nose as blood oozes between his fingers.

I only have seconds to act before he has me on mystomach, raping me until he feels like I’ve paid him back for the pills I stole. I don’t know where my mom is, but even if she was in the room, she wouldn’t lift a finger against him. She’d let me deal with Perry on my own so she wouldn’t have to swallow his fists herself.

Frantically, I look around forsomethingto defend myself, then my eyes land on a snow globe that Jaxon got for me when he and his family went to an amusement park last year. It’s the only thing my mom let me keep since she couldn’t pawn it or sell it for any money.

I snatch it up just as Perry’s bloody fingers grab the back of my shirt. Whirling around, I crash the snow globe against his skull with so much force it breaks, the liquid spilling out over my hands and all over Perry.

He doesn’t even cry out; he simply topples to the floor, blood leaking from his head wound.

I scramble back, tossing the broken snow globe away from me. My chest rises and falls in quick pants as I stare down at Perry. Is he dead? Did I kill him? Fuck. Fuck!

Banging sounds at the door, and I turn wide eyes in that direction, wondering what?—

“Police, open up!”

My breath freezes in my lungs. Oh fuck! How did they get here so fast? Who called them? Did they know I just killed somebody? How do they know? It just fucking happened!

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