“No—it was.” He sighs.
I stand over him for a moment before sitting by him on the cave’s floor.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper.
His hand is on his knee. I see it trembling and move to put mine over it. That’s when he turns himself away. And there’s a choice for me to make. If I’m brave enough to touch him. But it’s not a choice. From behind him, I wrap my arms around him.
* * *
Declan
If there was one thing I could change, it would be the shaking. I hate the unsteadiness. The Red Sox hate it worse. Since my last detox—Alaska in November 2016—I’ve never quite come off the Valium. When I cut below a certain point, my hands just…shake. And I can’t throw. We tried some other stuff, but nothing stops the shaking. My fingers sweat and I can’t focus. Even months after.
The rehab before that—Connecticut in spring 2015—I cut everything and got completely “clean”…and nearly lost my starting job to fucking twitchiness and paranoia. So the board covered for me. Not the whole board…mostly just the chair. We worked together with a few others from the club to game “random” screenings. They weren’t frequent anyway, because the league had never really known. Before my draft, some people whispered, but it never was substantiated. Mostly due to school being in Switzerland. I never did rehab in college, stateside. Not a quitter.
I can’t tell if Finley heard me when I whispered, “Please don’t.” She doesn’t let go of me. I can’t stand her touching me right now. I stand up, forcing her arms off me, and she stands, too, looking like I just killed her kitten.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmurs.
“It’s fine.”
It’s not. Even my voice shakes. As I walk back to the sleeping bag, I hear this static kind of thing, like several voices talking at once. Spooky shit like that has always been a problem for me when I try to get off benzos. Makes my heart beat triple-time, and my head throbs so badly that I’m pretty sure I’m going to get sick again.
Thank God, I hold that shit off.
She doesn’t know how much I hate the blankets. Hate the softness of them. Hate the air without them. How I hate it on my side and on my back and on my chest. Everything…so uncomfortable and just…miserable. The way that feeling wraps around your soul. There’s no way for anyone to understand who hasn’t been here. I feel like I can’t take it, but I can’t will my heart to stop, so I just pull my hair. It’s something I can do that won’t scare her.
If I was at home…needles. Any needle does it. Rated PG, baby—no syringe required. I just need the bite to fake myself out. For a second after spiking something pretend, I can feel a little bit of relief.
I have a trail of sharp, white knife scars down the inside of my thighs. Before I started spiking shit, before it was about the needle, I’d come down from something snorted or swallowed and need something to…lift me. Lying here, I’ve thought of that; I could get a sharp stone.
But…Finley.
I don’t want to scare her. I don’t want her knowing…any of it. I have never wanted anyone to know. I got in trouble a few times at Carogue—shipped off once, my last year there—but all the other times, I detoxed in my room. Coke and pills and even Xanny back then—it was easy to come off it.
I stretch out on my back. Finley sits beside me. With my eyes shut, I can’t see how close she is…but I can feel her.
“I don’t want to crowd you.” I can feel the tension around us; tension that I’ve caused by being such a fucking freak. “Can I ask you a few things? If you don’t want me to—”
I nod, because I’ll do whatever she asks. It’s not her fault she’s stuck here with me.
She leans over—too close. Before I told her this shit, I kind of liked her soft hands on my face and in my hair. But now I don’t think I can stand it.
“I just want to understand, so I can help you.” She sounds nervous. “Does the word ‘benzo’ mean benzodiazepine? Like…the sort of tranquilizers?”
I nod, taking care to keep my face impassive. My eyes are still shut.
“What about subs. Could you tell me about that one?”
“Suboxone.” I put my hand over my eyes and force myself to say it. “It helps you stay away from heroin.”
I’m not looking, but I fucking feel her shock.
You can dissolve the strips and spike them, too, if you want.
“It’s not the good stuff, but it can keep you from the bad withdrawal and…keep away temptation.” I exhale slowly, turning my face away from her. “A lot of addicts end up on it.”
“That’s what you dropped into the tub, then? Suboxone and…what else?”