Page 88 of Wicked Me
Behind the piles of multi-colored yarn, she pulled out a rainbow stocking cap thing and folded it over her head. “Ta-da.”
“A hat?”
“Not just any hat, dork. I made it. I’ve been learning to crochet, and I’m actually kind of good at it.”
“Let me see that.” I swiped it off her head, making sure I messed up her hair in the process, and studied the cap. It looked sturdy and well-made, but I knew jack about hats. “Since when do you crochet?”
“Since I got here.” She sank down on her bed and pulled on knitted, fingerless gloves over her hands. “Oil painting, too. It’s therapeutic. It helps keep my mind off...things.”
My gaze snapped up to meet hers. “And how’s that going for you?”
She shrugged and looked down at her duck slippers. “Some days are easier than others. Some days...”
I clicked the snap on my jacket to count the seconds until she continued.Eight. Nine.I cleared my throat. “Rose?”
“Sam?”
“Don’t ever do heroin again.”
Her chin wobbled as she dug her heel into the blue carpet.
“You hear me?”
She nodded once. “I hear you.”
“I mean everything, Rose. Even what you might think is just an innocent drag on a joint. Don’t doanyof it.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice small.
Her blue eyes connected with mine for a second, full of questions I knew I’d have to answer sooner or later.
“I’m done with pot,” I said. “For good. And I haven’t taken a drink for several weeks.” Hell, I hadn’t even thought about it since that time I got wasted after getting shot at during the delivery to Slim. I stood and rubbed my hands through my hair. “If I had known, Rose...”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You wouldn’t be here in this place knitting hats if it wasn’t for me.”
“Sam, stop. It’s not like you forced it up my nose.”
But I might as well have. Memories of that night flooded back to me on a curl of skunk weed smoke. Riley had invited some guy over to our house before we went to the movies, and I knew right away I didn’t like him. He’d brought pot, though. While our parents attended a political fundraiser, we lit up in the backyard. Rose, who was just barely eighteen, came home early, caught us, and demanded to be let in on the fun.
“Fuck no,” I’d told her. “There’s not enough, and you wouldn’t like it anyway.”
As soon as the words left my mouth, her and the new guy—Ben, I thought his name was—were tearing each other’s clothes off with their eyes. I didn’t like it, thought about ending Ben right there and then, but a car full of girls pulled up in the driveway. Serious doubt raged inside my gut at the thought of leaving her with him. Riley was there, though, lying on the concrete on his stomach and staring into the swimming pool. I didn’t realize at the time how high he was.
I’d left Rose there, and I shouldn’t have. I’d been thinking with my dick instead of using my head to look out for my little sister. By the time I rounded to the back of the house with a train of girls behind me, it was already too late.
Rose was hardly able to keep her head up. Her glassy eyes seemed to quiver inside her head while they tried to focus. Later, I’d found out Ben had given her ‘something to make her feelrealgood’—her first hit of heroin. When I saw her like that, wasted, my little sister already so far gone because of my stupidity, I lost it.
I couldn’t even explain what I did because I didn’t remember. I broke Ben into little pieces just like he broke Rose’s plans to change the world. She was going to do something that actually mattered with her life, not like Riley or me. The next thing I remembered were a bunch of cops pinning me face-first to the sidewalk. I had no idea who called them—still don’t—but there was blood everywhere. I later found out I’d busted Ben’s nose and two of his ribs.
That was nowhere near the damage done to Rose, though. That first hit addicted her. All she could think about was getting the next and the next until...
She found Hill. Or Hill found her.
Rose’s light touch interrupted the memory. I let her pull me down next to her on the bed, gladly trading this reality for that nightmarish one.
“I’ve been reading a lot of business books from the library we have here, and that’s what I want to do,” she said. “Start my own business.”
