Saving Quinton

Chapter 15

June 30, day forty-six of summer break

Quinton

Time is becoming nonexistent. Even major events, like the apartment building burning down a couple of weeks ago. Such a big thing, but I barely remember stumbling out of the apartment in the middle of the night, while flames engulfed the building.

No one really knew what happened. Someone said they’d heard gunshots coming from where Dylan and Delilah were living. I’d seen them a couple of times since the whole thing with Trace. Dylan and I even got into a fight. But he was too high to really do anything and so was I.

I wondered if maybe one of them started the fire, but I didn’t stick around to find out—I couldn’t. The cops and fire trucks showed up and that was Nancy’s and my cue, along with everyone else’s who was doing illegal shit there, to bail out and take to the streets.

And that’s where I’ve been living ever since. Sleeping behind Dumpsters, in vacant buildings when we come across them. We sometimes crash at people’s places when we have the opportunity, but that’s rare.

All we really have left is the clothes on our backs and a limited amount of drugs that we buy after stealing stuff when we can, and sometimes Nancy prostitutes herself out, when we’re running really low.

I’d hate my life at the moment, if I could feel hate, but I can’t feel anything except the hungry monster living inside me. He’s taken over every part of me and almost killed off the old Quinton entirely.

“Don’t shoot up right here,” I warn as I pace the alley between a strip club and a pawnshop. There’s a stack of crates at the back, concealed by a Dumpster, and it’s where Nancy I spent last night after the cops showed up at the vacant warehouse we’d been staying at for the past week.

“Why the hell not?” Nancy asks, glancing up at me with starvation in her eyes as she searches her backpack, looking for the one thing that can feed her hunger. Just seeing the look on her face—seeing the need—makes me salivate.

“Because first off, the last thing you need to do is pass out in an alley,” I tell her. “Then I’ll have to stay awake and keep an eye on you.”

She laughs at me from the ground, this hysterical laugh that she gets when she’s super sleep-deprived. “Is someone a little greedy?” she asks. “Afraid you’re going to have to watch instead of taste?”

I stop pacing and glare at her. “Can we please just go somewhere more private?” I glance nervously down at the end of the alley, at people walking by. Always looking over my shoulder, worried someone might show up. I’m not even sure who I think will show up or maybe deep down it’s that I want someone to—a blue-green-eyed girl I still think about no matter how much numbness I put into my veins. I don’t even know if she’s in Vegas anymore or if she went home. And that’s how it should be. I should know nothing about Nova Reed. “Somewhere we can just lie down and enjoy getting high?”

Nancy sighs and then zips her backpack up before getting to her feet. “Where the hell are we supposed to go?” she asks with irritation as she glances up and down the alley.

I rub my hand down my face as I start pacing again. It’s been too long since my last hit. I can feel emotions surfacing, sharper than the needle, more potent than heroin. I need to silence them. Now. Before I melt into the ground. I need somewhere quiet and away from all these people.

I lower my hand to my side, getting an idea. “I think I know a place.”

She nods as she puts her backpack on and doesn’t even ask questions. She just follows me, hoping that I’ll lead her to a place where she can pump her veins full of drugs in the hopes that she can escape whatever she’s running away from. Just like everyone else. Just like me.

Escape.

It takes us a while to travel across the city and toward the less populated side of town. Hours or maybe even an entire day. It’s hard to tell. I know it’s daylight when we leave and the sun has set when we arrive, but sometimes I lose track of time because I become so focused on getting to that one place where I can fly and soar through my past without having to feel it—without having to feel the guilt of everything that’s happened in my life. The guilt of death. The guilt of love. The guilt of existing.

When we step inside, I’m blasted with memories of the last time I was here, with Nova, and I almost turn around. But then Nancy nudges me in the back.

“Hurry up,” she says, heading for the stairs. “I’m dying here.”

I move forward, stepping over the rubble and debris, trying not to think of Nova, but it’s hard. The only thing that keeps me stable is the fact that when I get to the roof, it’ll only be minutes before everything filling my head right now vanishes. So I keep moving, going through the motions of walking, and when we reach the roof I feel like I can breathe again.

Nancy eagerly drops her backpack to the ground beside one of the massive signs and starts taking the spoon and syringe out. I don’t help her. I can’t. Despite how many times I’ve shot up, I still can’t inject myself. The memory of needles and injections bringing me back to the life I didn’t want to live is still too strong. But I always get over the phobia the moment she shoots me up. So I lie down on the ground and stare up at the stars like I did with Nova—like I did that night I died. I keep my eyes on them, waiting with zero patience until the needle enters my vein and slowly makes its way through my body, erasing everything inside me. My guilt briefly goes away and thoughts of Nova leave my mind. It feels like everyone in the world has forgiven me. I feel so much lighter as I float up to the sky, feeling closer and closer to Lexi. And I swear to God that if I could reach my hand out, I could touch her.

Almost there. Almost within reach.