I don't know why, but it just seemed like everyone was suddenly walking forward in a straight line while I was moving against them in an unsteady and crooked path that no one else could see. And the more I stayed on that path, the more my family, and everyone else, didn't want me around anymore.
I became invisible.
I'm not certain how long I stand in the hallway, observing my family eating dinner but it's long enough for my mother to glance up and look right through me.
Guess I really am invisible.
After another couple of laughs, I decide it's time to leave. I backtrack to my room to grab my wallet and car keys then head for the front door.
"Be back by ten," my mother calls out without looking in my direction. "I mean it, Tristan. If you're late this time then..."
Then what?
She never finishes.
I jerk open the door and walk outside. Then I drive and drive and drive until I end up in a town over an hour away. I'm not even sure what compels me to go there. I know why other people go there--to get high. I used to fear places like these but my fear's been dwindling lately.
I can't feel very much fear anymore.
In fact, I don't really feel anything.
I end up parking at a gas station and climbing out of the car when a few guys stroll by, heading inside. One of them I know from school. I say hi and they wave back. And just like that, everything changes.
"I know you, right?" A guy named Clayson says it. He's in the same grade as me, but the other two are older I think.
I shove my hands into my pockets. "Yeah, I go to school with you. We're in the same English class."
"Oh, right," He nods his head, but clearly he doesn't remember who I am.
One of the older guys reaches into his jacket and retrieves a bottle of alcohol. He twists off the lid, takes a swig, then passes it to the next guy. When they've all drank from the bottle, Clayson offers me a drink.
"You cool?" he asks as he extends the bottle to me.
I've been drunk a couple of times and have gotten high on my mom's pills she keeps stashed in her purse, so I barely hesitate before grabbing the bottle and sipping from it. I fight not to gag from the burn as I hand the bottle back. Things start moving in a different direction after that.
We end up going to a party out in the middle of a dilapidated neighborhood. I'm drunk by the time we arrive and am more chatty than usual. The night seems to get darker the later it gets, alcohol turning to drugs.
"You want a hit?" the guy having the party asks me as he holds a joint in my direction, the pungent smoke funneling through the air.
I haven't caught his name yet and I'm so drunk I can barely tell what he looks like, let alone where I am or what's going on around me. I should hate the feeling. I really should.
But I don't.
Hate it.
Just like I don't feel.
Anything.
I end up taking my first hit without too much thought. For the briefest moment, when the smoke singes my lungs, I swear my life stands still. There is no future, no past, no worry, no hate, just motionless darkness and me in the center of it, like a star in the universe.
I just took my very first hit.
I've officially done drugs.
What does that make me?
Bad?
Good?
Nothing?
Rowdy music plays from a stereo, shrieking lyrics that mix with my thoughts.
Why can't I figure out who I am?
Another toke then another, wishing I could stop feeling the damn emptiness and loneliness eating away at me. Maybe that's why I keep going, keep taking hit after hit. Maybe I'm searching for a way to fill the void. Or maybe I'm just trying to speed up the dying process. Who really knows at this point since my mind is too far gone.
Suddenly, the music stops and cursing takes its place.
But I don't move.
Why am I here?
Time is endless.
I am endless.
Life is endless.
I'm an endless disappointment.
Where am I even going in life?
"Dude, did you hear anything I just said?" The voice jolts me out of my thoughts.
I'm sprawled out on a tattered plaid sofa, straight out of the seventies, with the hood of my jacket pulled over my head and my eyes fixed on the stained ceiling. Smoke filters the room and saturates my lungs and the drugs burn deep inside my chest and veins. I'm not sure how long I've been there, how many minutes have ticked by since I've dazed off, but nothing seems to have changed since then.
"No." My voice is an echo and I wonder if I even said it aloud. Maybe it's just me having a conversation with myself.
But then a guy with bloodshot, bleary eyes and shaggy hair appears in my vision. He has a smile on his face that says his life just stood still for a moment too. "You've been lying there for like three hours."
"What?" Through the haziness inside my brain, I realize there's a fuller meaning. It's been three hours. I glance at the clock and then jump from the sofa. "Shit, I was supposed to be home like two hours ago."
The guy laughs at me. I don't get what's so funny, just like I can't remember his name.
"Just chill, okay," he says. "You're already late, so you might as well make the most of it."
I should care. Why don't I care? What does that say about me as a person?
I check my phone for messages and see that there's not so much as a missed call from anyone. As the loneliness crawls under my skin again, I sit back down, deciding to stay.
The first call or text from my parents is when I'll rush home.
The guy sinks down on the sofa across from mine as I put my phone away and blink around at the room crammed with people. Beer bottles litter the floor and from somewhere in the house, I hear people shouting about turning the music back on.
"I wish you'd have just let me stay in my daze," I tell the guy. Then his name comes back to me--Zack, the person who lives here and offered me the joint. "I was enjoying myself." But now I'm not. Now reality is creeping back in and there's a ton of noise.
"Well, here then." Zack picks up a joint from an ashtray on the cracked coffee table then he takes a hit and roams to the corner of the room to open the window. "Come take another hit and you should drift off again."
I hesitate. I know drugs are bad, know that I'm not supposed to be doing them, know better. It's the same thoughts I had when I took the first hit. But then comes another stream of thoughts. What does it matter? No one cares. Just check your phone. Besides, you're welcome here.
I stand up and join Zack in the corner, gazing out the window at the stars as I put the joint up to my lips. I practically hack up my lungs with the first inhale just like I did the first time. It's not quite as intense the second time around, though.
Zack laughs at me, but then takes another drag himself. The cycle continues again, until I'm so far gone I can barely feel the people in the room around me. There's a ton of them, I know that, but it feels like I'm the only one. That no one can see me. That I barely exist again.
Maybe I do.
Maybe the last few hours were just a facade.
Zack turns around when some girl walks up to him. He starts chatting to her about a stereo and I can tell by his flirty tone that he's attracted to her. I can't see through all the fog in my head to tell if she's hot or not though. All I can see is hazel eyes that subtly notice me and for the briefest second, I think maybe I do exist. That even though most girls don't notice me, this one does. But her fleeting gaze is the only detail I can pick out about her and then I'm swimming in nothingness again.
I become nothing again.
Finally, my mind gets so cloudy, I go lie down. The room quiets, along with my thoughts. The routine continues. A pattern is formed. Take a hit. Zone off. Check phone. Nothing. Take a hit. Zone off. Check phone. Nothing. Over and over again. In the end, my parents never call and when morning rolls around, I'm so out of it I feel like shit,
barely able to move. I try to tell myself that if someone would have just called--showed me they cared--then I would have stopped. But I know that's a lie. Deep down, I know that the moment I chose to take the first hit, not only did my life standstill, it crumbled, taking whoever I was with it. That my life was never going to be the same again.
Six years later...
(Present day)
Chapter 3
I feel so old.
Avery
Life is confusing.
Life is hard.
Life is... life.
But life is also living life and even though I struggle every day, I try to stay positive that I'm breathing and my heart is beating.
Stay positive that I'm still alive and able to breathe.
Tonight is a little more difficult than others to maintain this mindset. I have beer on my shirt, a welt on my cheek from some guy clocking me in the face with his elbow, my jeans are torn and my entire body is achy. Usually, I'm more tolerant during Sunday night outings, but tonight, the music is too noisy, the crowd too rambunctious, and I'm exhausted from the all-nighter I pulled the night before to study.
At twenty-two years old, I feel more like thirty-five. Whether to act my actual age or act the age I should be based on the responsibilities I have of being a single mother is always a constant battle within me. This is something my friend Charissa doesn't understand.
"Avery, where the hell's your enthusiasm tonight?!" Charissa calls out from over the cheering crowd while bouncing up and down with an amount of energy I envy. We're at The Golden Element House, at a concert. Only one band has played and we still have three more to listen to, but I'm yawning already. "You're usually more energetic than this when we go out."
That's because I'm not fun Avery tonight.
I'm worried Avery.
I'm mother Avery.
I just had to leave my invisible supermom cape at home.
Which I feel guilty about.
Always do.
"Sorry! I'm just super tired tonight!" I check the time on my watch and sigh because it's exactly one minute later than the last time I looked. "And I look like shit," I say. "I really should just go home. Mason's sick and my head isn't into this anyway."
She aims a manicured finger at me. "No way, Missy. You aren't bailing out on me tonight." She smiles brightly. "And you look great."
Easy for her to say. With her body-hugging black dress, curly blond hair that probably took two hours to style, and flawless makeup, she looks like she just walked off the runway. Me, I'm in jeans and the same black tank top I've been wearing for three days straight because I can't find time to do laundry. I can't wait until summer semester is over, then I only have two more to make it through before I get that little piece of paper that will hopefully give me the future I've been planning on having since I was sixteen, even if I got off the path for a while.
I'm back on it now though.
"Sorry, but I warned you I wasn't going to be much fun." I inch in my elbows as a guy squeezes by me. He ends up spilling beer on my boots and then offers to buy me a drink as an 'I'm sorry.'
"Yeah, I don't drink," I tell him, hoping he'll take the clue that I'm not interested--that I'm not interested in any guy here.
He doesn't pick up on my offish vibe though, instead grinning. "Well, how about a glass of water, then?" He stares at my breasts when he says it.
I cross my arms over my chest. "Sorry, but you're barking up the wrong tree."
He glances from Charissa to me than his grin expands. "Oh, are you two..."
This isn't the first time someone's thought I was a lesbian, and I'm sure it won't be the last. "Yeah, we are."
Charissa chokes on her drink, spitting some onto the floor. "No we're not," she sputters, sending the guy an apologetic look before narrowing her eyes at me. "Why do you do that?"
I shrug as the guy stalks off, muttering something under his breath. "It keeps them away."
She sighs. "All guys aren't bad, and if you don't stop thinking that way, you're going to end up alone."
There's no point in responding. Charissa hardly knows anything about my past nor do I feel close enough to her to explain why I will end up alone, at least when it comes to having any kind of a relationship with the opposite sex. If she did know everything about my past, the truth about Conner, how my father abandoned me, she wouldn't be trying to convince me that all guys aren't bad--she'd be trying to convince herself. Besides, I decided that day, when by some miracle I got another chance at life, that I was going to do better this time. That I had to. Not just for Mason and myself, but because I felt there was a reason why I came back. Saw something waiting for me in the darkness of the stars.
"You know what you need to do?" Charissa leans in and lowers her voice as she peeks over at a group of guys near us. "You need to get laid and I'm betting one of them could help with that."
"No, I don't." Yeah, my vagina hasn't been used in so long it's probably dusty, but sex isn't a priority--can't be.
I know arguing with Charissa is useless, though. She is twenty-three, works part time at the same bar as me called The Vibe, and it's her only job other than going to school. That's about it for her responsibilities and I'm happy for her. Envy her even. But it makes explaining my life problems to her complicated.
"Oh, come on, Avery, you can't shut every guy out," she says. "For all you know, one of them could be the one."
"No, they can't."
She shakes her head disappointedly. "Look, just relax, okay? If you're still not feeling it by midnight, you can leave and I won't utter a word." She glances over at the tallest of the frat guys. His hair is combed, his face freshly shaven, his jeans and button shirt obviously clean. He's clearly checking me out, yet I feel zero attraction to him.
"I have a feeling you're going to want to stay all night," Charissa muses with assurance.
"Doubtful." But I decide to tolerate Charissa and attempt to be cheery Avery tonight, despite my exhaustion and worry. "I'll stay for one hour." I check the time. Only fifty-eight more minutes to go.
About two minutes later, Charissa's friend Alyssia joins us and I feel like even more of a slob standing by the two of them. But I attempt to be as fun as I can and try not to check my phone every two minutes because I'm worried about Mason and the fever he had when I left tonight. I jump up and down while the band plays and do this awesome vanishing into the crowd act when Frat Boy gets the balls to head in my direction. I decline all drinks aimed my way because it's a necessity these days. I'm a recovering alcoholic for over two years and plan on making that number increase forever.
I put on a great show for Charissa, convincing her I'm having a blast, which in a way I do. But only half my mind is at the concert, the other half back at home with the bills and finals and my son. At midnight on the dot, I turn away from the fantasy world I know can never fully be mine and head back to reality.
"Wait, you're seriously leaving?!" Charissa hollers at me, fanning her hand in front of her face, her cheeks flushed with sweat.
I offer her an apologetic look then shrug as I mouth, Sorry, but I have to go.
She folds her arms, pissed off as she reels back around toward the stage. She'll get over it, though, by the time we both are at work on Monday.
I shove my way through the crowd and out the front door, heading for my car at the rear of the parking lot. As the humid summer air soaks my skin, I inhale the freshness while I light up a cigarette. A bad habit of mine, but I do it when I'm really stressed, which is every day.
"Nice night, right?" A gangly, thin-faced guy asks as I pass by him. He's leaning against the trunk of a car with his arms crossed, his gaze drinking me in like an alcoholic does with a bottle. Moments later I recognize him as one of Conner's buddies.
"Actually, it's pretty shitty," I say without missing a step as I fumble for my keys.
"Hey, wait," he calls out, striding after me.
My fingers drift to my pocket, just to make sure I hav
e my mace on me.
"I know you, don't I?" he says. "You're Conner's chick."
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I jog to my car and unlock the door, trying to disregard the nauseating feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"I'm no one's chick. Never was." That's a lie, more directed to myself than the guy. Because it's hard to accept what I was--what I became.
He sneers as he slows to a halt just behind me. "Clever, but you get what I mean. You and Conner Wellings, you're married, right?"
I jerk open the door then scowl over my shoulder at him. "Isn't it pretty obvious I don't want to talk to you?"
"Hey, I was just being friendly," he snaps, the friendliness in his tone vanishing. "You don't need to be so bitchy about it, Avery."
The fact that he knows my name bothers me. The last thing I need is for word to get back to Conner that I was hanging around at The Golden Element House because he'll start assuming things just like he used to do all the damn time while we were married. He just got out of jail for the second time and sooner or later he's going to show up--always does. I just hope it's later rather than sooner this time.