Vicious Circles (22 page)

“Fallyn.”
She didn’t yell.
 

“I didn’t know you were coming by tonight,” I said trying to play off the fact that I was higher than a damned kite.
 

“Fallyn, stop,” she ordered and grabbed me by the elbow.
 

I shook her off and spun to look her in the face. “What do you want, Lynn?
If you came here to give me another lecture than you can save your breath and just leave.”
 

“Look at yourself!”
 Her eyes were wet with unshed tears and I felt like a dick. “I don’t know what you’re on but I know you’re not sober. Mason told me about the pills.”
 

“Wait, what? You talked to Mason?” She’d told him. That would be why he wasn’t answering my calls.
 

“What did you expect me to do, huh? I can’t watch you kill yourself and I can’t watch Mason tiptoe around you like it isn’t happening.” She was in a full blown cry by that point.
 

“Get off of me!” I withdrew from her touch and ran up the stairs the best I could.
 

“You’re going to kill someone driving around like that. You’re going to kill yourself! I can’t let that happen, Fallyn. So many people love you.” She wasn’t following me up the stairs. Instead she stood at the bottom and yelled up at me.
 

“I’ve got this under control. I can stop whenever I want. I stopped for Mason before, he knows that.” I could stop whenever I wanted and I believed that to be the truth.
 

Lynn wiped her face and backed off some. “I’ll be back in the morning. Don’t leave this house until I get here.”
 

I didn’t know if I would listen to her or not. It was possible that I would forget the whole thing happened, which was just fine with me.
 

The sun rose the next
day just like all the days before, but somehow it was different. There was still no word from Mason or Lynn, but there was a text message from Jill. She wanted to have a party and who was I to stop a good party? We would have it at my new house.

***

I watched the sun set off the coast from my front yard that night. I felt peaceful for the first time in quite a while and the easiness of my mood should have triggered something in my brain, but I was far too gone. The last rays of the sun crossed my bear arms and I shivered as the night crept in, whether I was ready for it or not.
 

The sound of a full blown party pounded behind me. I was hesitant to let the sun go completely. It was as if I was afraid of not seeing it again. I’d left Lynn a note at my place with my new address and invited her to come over. I knew that I’d been way too hard on her and I wanted to make things right. I would make things right.
 

“Fallyn!
You’re missing your own party.” Jill called to me from the stone steps leading up to my front door. “Come on.” She waved me in frantically.
 

I sighed and gave in. The house was full of people I didn’t know and drugs I’d never seen before. It was a buffet of things that could get me arrested, but I wasn’t concerned. I was relaxed and had been for most of the day. Mason had tried to call me from Dave’s phone earlier, which made the knot in my stomach loosen; although, I still felt like I’d lost him. He was lost to me or I was lost to him. I hadn’t quite figured out which.
 

That night I drank and I smoked. I inhaled and popped random pills. I didn’t pay any attention to what I was doing or how much. It wasn’t until Lynn showed up and found me, bent over a line of cocaine, did I realize what I was doing. I froze when I caught the look on her face out of the corner of my eye. She looked horrified and I knew
, I
knew,
that everything had come down to that one moment in my life.
 

Chapter 20

Lynn had run away from me. I’d called after her, crying and begging for her to stop, but she didn’t turn around. I’d lost her too.
 

I staggered back into my house and into the living room. Jill patted me lightly on the back, which was all I was going to get from her. We looked at one another and I finally realized that she was all I had left. She was right after all.
 

“Just forget about them,” she said with a small smile. “You don’t need her anyway.”
 

“Yeah.”
I started to sit but Jill grabbed my hand and pulled me upstairs to the master bedroom.

“Where are we going?” My words slurred and my feet kept getting caught up in one another.
 

“It’s time we graduated to something harder, Fallyn. This is a party after all.” She pulled me all the way into the room and sat me down on the bed. “Wait right here. I’ll be right back.”
 

I waited alone in the dark while she ran off. When she returned she had some random guy in tow behind her. He was cute and he looked like he had money. She whispered something in his ear and he grinned in my direction.
 

“So,” he said moving to stand in front of me. “You want to try something new?” His right hand slid down the front of my shirt and it felt fucking wrong.
 

I pushed him away the best I could in my wasted state. Jill crawled onto the bed behind me and moved my hair from my neck where she began to kiss me softly. I let her touch me because I couldn’t find the strength to stop her. The strange guy moved closer to me once again and kneeled. He kissed me rough on the lips. I couldn’t make him stop, so I began to cry.
 

“He’ll give us some heroin if we fuck him,” Jill said softly in my ear.
 

“No…what?
No I’m not fucking some guy.” My stomach was starting to knot and turn from lack of food and too many toxins.
 

“Come on.” Jill begged.
 

“Just let her be, Jill.” The strange guy must have been someone Jill knew because they pushed me aside and had sex right there on the bed in front of me.
 

I curled myself as tight as I could into a corner of the bathroom where I eventually passed out.

The sounds of drunken passion faded as did my consciousness. As with many other moments in my new life, I woke not knowing how long I’d been out and it took me a minute to get my bearings. I vaguely remembered Jill kneeling in front of me and putting a latex band around my left arm. My voice and strength was nowhere to be found as I watched her draw liquid from a
spoon into a needle and hold it up against the light to admire it.
 

“No…what’s-“
 

“
Shhh…it’s OK. You’ll feel so much better after this. I promise.” She smiled at me and poked the needle into my arm.
 

I felt the pinch and a burn like I’d never felt before. My body immediately reacted and I was terrified. I didn’t know what she’d used but I knew she’d just shot a drug into my arm. I stood and forced my legs to walk as soon as she backed off. I looked back once and saw her inserting the same needle into her own arm. I was confused and sick.
 

I reached the top of the stairs and lost the ability to swallow. My house was quiet and empty. I didn’t know what time it was. The walls and furniture began to swirl. I thought about Mason and the way he looked at me the last time we were together in that cheap motel. I tried to concentrate on his green eyes and the way they burned right through to my tortured soul. When I knew I couldn’t hold the vision anymore I let those eyes go and slowly everything went black.
 

Lynn POV
 

“
Mason, I don’t know what to do. I can’t call the cops.”
 

“Fuck, don’t do that. Fuck! OK, I’m getting on a plane.” Mason began yelling out orders to whoever was around him.
 

I was still crying. I could deal with an expensive house in Malibu and a minor drug problem, or at least I thought I could. I couldn’t deal with the facts that I’d been faced with that night. Fallyn was far more lost than I had originally thought.
 

“Mason, I’m sorry to call you like this. I didn’t know who else to call.”
 

He sighed. I could still hear the guys talking wildly in the background. “No, Lynn. I’m glad you called. I just, I didn’t know it was so bad. How didn’t I see this coming?”
 

I knew him well enough to foresee that he would shoulder the guilt for the entire messed up situation. “She had us all fooled. Just call me when you get your flight details, alright?”
 

He agreed and I tossed my phone back into the cup holder between the two front seats. I was headed back to
Fallyn’s apartment to clear out whatever I could find just in case the cops did get involved. She would lose everything if she were to be arrested. Mason had made the suggestion and I wasn’t entirely comfortable getting involved, but I felt useless.
 

I let myself in and turned on all the lights as I went. There was clothes thrown all over the floor and the fridge was empty. The whole thing was surreal and it made the tears rise up in my throat once again.
 

Slowly, I began to empty drawers. I didn’t find much until I reached
Fallyn’s bedroom closet. In the box for the shoes I’d gotten her for Christmas, I found the mother load of drug paraphernalia.

The realization shocked me completely. There was too many pills to count. They were all different sizes and colors and I couldn’t even begin to guess what any of them did. I dropped the bag and continued to dig.
 

On the very bottom of the box was a picture of what I assumed to be
Fallyn’s sister. In faded red ink the word London was scrawled on the back in someone else’s handwriting. I stared until my phone rang. I emptied my hands to answer because I knew, without looking, that it was Mason.
 

“I’m here,” I said. “She had a box full of shit and I don’t know what to do with any of it. I’ve never even seen illegal drugs before Mason. I am really uncomfortable with this.”
 

“What does she have?” His voice was weak and he sounded very tired.
 

“I can’t tell. Most of it is pills and I’m pretty sure that there is some cocaine in here too.” I poked at the bag, afraid to touch it.
 

Mason took a deep breath. “Just flush whatever you can down the toilet. Look, Lynn…I never meant to get you involved. I didn’t know she had that much.”
 

“No one knew and I was already involved. She’s my best friend, I love her.” There was sadness in my voice which matched the tone of Mason’s own words. “When are you flying in?”
 

“I checked in for a flight about ten minutes ago. I had to charter a flight…” He trailed off and I let it go.
 

“Call me when you get there, Mason. I can’t go back, I hope you understand.”
 

He laughed and it wasn’t a pleasant chuckle. “You don’t want to go down with us…I understand.”
 

I closed the phone and pushed Mason from my mind so I could finish what I’d started. I grabbed all of the narcotics I’d found and one by one flushed them all down the toilet. I was numb the entire time and for good reason. My mind hadn’t processed what all of the events that night meant for Fallyn. After the last flush I backed away to lean against the bathroom wall. I stared at the swirling water and cried.