Page 1 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name
PROLOGUE
Addison hurried down Emerald Street,her breath hitching with each step. Damp scrubs clung to her back, the fabric sticking to her skin. Every step sent a dull, crawling pain through her bones, but she couldn’t stop.
Not now.
Ahead, the sidewalk lay deserted. Most businesses along this stretch of road were shuttered, their roller doors heavily tagged. Missing persons posters were tacked to the windows. A ribbon of yellow crime scene tape fluttered from a nearby utility pole like a grisly party streamer. To the north loomed the elevated tracks of the Market-Frankfort line.
Addison stumbled on, growing ever more desperate. Finally, she spied the light at the end of her tunnel. The Emerald Street underpass.
The empty sidewalk became dense with people. They were huddled under sleeping bags and slumped down in plastic lawn chairs along the damp wall of the underpass. Some lay curled up in sagging tents.
She slowed her pace, frantically searching their faces. Most looked through her, pupils blown and empty. But then, a pair of lucid eyes met hers. A man hunched forward in a wheelchair, a black beanie pulled low over his ears. Ricky Somes. Her breath left her in a shaky exhale, her knees nearly buckling with relief.
When he spotted her approaching, he nodded like he’d been expecting her. He rummaged in the pocket of his hoodie and produced a glassine baggie. It contained a single glorious gram.
Just the sight of it made the knot of anxiety in her stomach loosen.
He held it out to her, gesturing with his other hand for the cash.
Addison swallowed and tried to adopt a casual tone. “Yeah, uh, I’m a little strapped for cash right now, Ricky.”
The corner of Ricky’s mouth twisted up like she’d said something funny. “You know the deal, sweetheart. No freebies. No samples. No credit.” The baggie disappeared from between his fingers like magic. “I feel like I should get that tattooed on my fucking forehead.”
“Please,” she said. “You know I’m good for it.”
Ricky wheeled his chair back and angled it away from her. “Look, lady, I don’t know shit about you. So pay up or fuck off.”
Addison let the desperation show in her voice. “I’ll pay you back Ricky, I swear. It’s just been a terrible week, you know? My landlord’s about to kick me out over the rent. And it’s my kid’s birthday tomorrow?—”
He interrupted her in a tone that made it clear he didn’t want her life story. “Yeah, we all got problems, sweetheart. The difference is, I’m not making mine yours.”
His face showed no signs of softening, and she knew it wouldn’t. Ricky didn’t do feelings. He was numb from the waist down and, apparently, the neck up. And she could understand why. Kindness wasn’t a currency. And in this world, anything you couldn’t spend wasn’t worth shit.
She hesitated for a moment longer, then pulled the wad of cash out of her pocket. It was money she was supposed to be spending on Noah’s birthday present. She’d promised him a Harry Potter Lego set and had been putting a few dollars aside for months now. She pictured the look of disappointment on his face when he woke up tomorrow to nothing. It felt like a needle stab to her heart.
But the pain was insignificant compared to the agony awaiting her if she didn’t get the contents of that baggie into her bloodstream right now. She’d rather saw off her own arm with a dull knife than go through the torment of withdrawal again.
So, with trembling fingers and a pit of guilt in her stomach, she handed over the money.
Ricky made a big show of counting it, passing the singles from hand to hand like he was shuffling cards. Satisfied she wasn’t short-changing him, he finally parted with the packet. She buried it deep in the pocket of her scrubs and hurried away from the underpass.
A light rain was falling. It cooled nothing down, just made the sidewalks steam and heightened the stink of diesel fumes and uncollected garbage.
As she moved east down Emerald, the back of her neck prickled.
She glanced behind; a man, nearby, wearing an Eagles jacket, pushed a shopping cart. It was loaded with electrical junk: old microwaves, a cracked computer monitor, and a stack of dirty keyboards. His gaze was fixed on her. She quickened her pace.
A few yards on, she crossed the street and headed east down a narrow lane. On either side were crumbling brick row houses. Most looked abandoned, with rusted metal bars over their ground floor doors and windows. Their upper windows were boarded over like they caged in violent animals. The only fresh paint was graffiti. She was no expert on gang tags, but she recognized the spray-painted symbols of LMN-13: an all-seeing eye topped with a crown. That gang ran all the streets east of the railway tracks and south of Kensington Avenue, right down to the expressway.
It had stopped raining. She looked behind her again, but the Eagles fan was no longer following her. He’d probably never been following her; it was just her paranoia kicking in.
She stopped, unslung her backpack, and sat on the steps of a vacant building. Her whole body ached, like someone had injected acid into her bones. She clenched her teeth against a rising tide of nausea. She reckoned she had about ten minutes, tops, before she got so dope sick she’d wish she’d never been born.
A dirty white sedan cruised down the adjacent street, rap music blaring out its windows. It set off a dog barking somewhere in the building behind her.
She glanced around to check she was still alone. Then she slipped the glassine baggie out of her pocket. It bore a black ink stamp of a hand print with the number thirteen on its palm. Even drug dealers prized good product branding.
She opened her backpack and pulled out a plastic Paw Patrol lunch box. It was an old one of Noah’s that she’d repurposed for her kit. She opened it and took out its contents: rubber tourniquet, syringe, foil, cigarette filters, lighter. First, she prepared the dose and drew it up into the syringe. Then she tightened the rubber strap around her upper arm and let her hand hang down against the concrete step for a minute to let the blood pressure build up. Then she took the needle and rolled the skin of her forearm, searching amongst the scabs for a usable vein.
