Kick (Songs of Perdition #1)(18)
Author: C.D. Reiss

I shrugged. “They’ll set bail. I’ll go home, and then we’ll see.”

Split pea soup with hand-cut bits of ham. Grilled vegetables. Marinated tri-tip. All the meals had been like that, and by “like that,” I meant the very worst of what I’d ever had in my life, unless I was deliberately slumming or in a neighborhood south of the 10.

I pushed my tray away. “This food sucks.”

I wanted something, but it wasn’t on my tray. The roil of anxiety built in my chest. I had no relief for it, at least not in the pills they were feeding me. Not in the therapy or hypnosis. I had ways to manage myself, and they had all been taken away.

“They’re going to expect me to be sober when I get out, aren’t they?” I asked.

“Probably. But whatever. Just get someone else to drive, and they’ll never know the difference. No one gives a shit what you do as long as you’re not hurting some middle-class honor student. Then you’re up shit creek.”

The way he rubbed his bread around his bowl, as if he was just flipping off some commentary, should have told me he didn’t mean it personally. He wasn’t trying to jab at me. He wasn’t trying to twist my sore places. But he did, and I decided it was careless and cruel.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

He barely stopped eating. “Means we can get away with self-destruction until we hurt someone who doesn’t have anything. Then it’s off with our heads.” He drew his finger across his throat. “Seriously, I’m in here because I sold an ounce of sky gum to a teacher. The news was all about how much my dad made versus how much she made. And I’m like, seriously? I sold four grams to Rolf Wente, and I got crickets.” He stopped chewing. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“People cared about Amanda.”

“No. You cared. The rest of them were slowing down to see the blood on the road.”

There had been plenty of it. Rich blood. Blue blood if you counted Charlie’s cut head. Amanda’s flowed with the webbed lines of windshield cracks as I sat in the passenger seat in a half daze. I thought she looked like a cartoon character sticking her head through a wall, and she’d just pull it out and make a goofy face. I put my hand on her ass and patted it, whispering, “Tight and sweet, baby. Tight and sweet. You’re going to be okay.”

“You’re not going to cry,” Jack said, incredulous. “You’re not allowed to have problems, sweet tits. Sorry.”

I didn’t know what was going on with Jack. Something must have been happening in his world, because he was ornery and defensive, but I didn’t care. The thought that no one had cared about Amanda dying, even though it had been in all the papers and her parents turned people away from the funeral, pulled at my heart. He was right. No one cared about her.

And how did you make people care? Amanda Westin died in a drunk-driving accident, and the driver walked away because his dad was a duke in some tiny European backwater, and the news vans came, and the flowers were imported from India, but how could I make them care? Tell them who she was? That she made me laugh when I was sad? That she loved her dogs? That she gave me the last of her flake when I needed it? Or that she stood by me the million times I bailed on her to get laid?

“She was a good person,” I said. “One of the best.”

“Sure.” He shrugged.

That little knot of anxiety grew into something bigger, something without boundaries. It was larger than me. Wider than the expanse of my chest, with an energy all its own.

It was that force inside me, but not me, that flung my tray. Flinging it felt good, because it made a little room inside me, a tiny corner without anxiety. I flung Jack’s tray. I swept my hand over the table and knocked over the condiments, and then I got up on the table. When I flung myself off it, the motherfuckers were already there to catch me. Bernie, good old Bernie, looked intent on not letting me fall, and Frances already had a needle.

thirteen.

I woke up strapped to the bed. Elliot sat by me, marking something on a chart.

“Oh, God,” I said, trying to put my hand over my eyes and failing.

Elliot got up and turned off the overhead, flicking on the soft table lamp over my photo of Snowcone. “Do you have any muscle pain or weakness?”

“What drugs did you give me? I can’t feel anything.”

“Do you promise not to get violent?”

“Fuck. You’re never going to let me out now. I’m stuck here. Why did I do that?” My face crunched up. I was going to cry right there in front of Elliot, every tear another nail in the coffin of my sanity. When he freed my right hand, I put it over my face.

“I’m not an MD, so I don’t dispense your meds, I only suggest. But it looks like you got a little too much slap and not enough tickle,” he said.

“What?”

He laughed. “I’m sorry. It’s late. My sense of humor shorts out when I’m tired.” He freed my left arm and went to the foot of the bed.

“Nice you have one that’s wired at all.”

He smiled as he unstrapped my feet. “I’ll contraindicate the Paxil.”

He got my ankles free, and I sat up. The world swam a little, and I gripped the edge of the bed. The room righted itself.

“Are you going to let me go?” I asked.

“I have another day of observation. You want to go?”

“Please.”

He sat next to me. “Deacon Bruce, by his own admission, fell on the hoof knife.”

“He what?”

“Fell on the thing twice, apparently.”

Any relaxation I’d gotten from the meds molted off me like a skin I’d never owned. “He’s protecting me.”

“The district attorney doesn’t believe him either. But in the end, it’ll be hard to make a case. You’re a lucky girl.” His green-grey eyes looked at me as if they were peeling me open. “You don’t look relieved.”

“I’m relieved.”

“Don’t start packing yet. Okay?”

“I don’t have much to pack. A picture, and I guess there were clothes? I mean, who knows with me, right?” I held my hand out for the picture, and like a father intuiting what his toddler wanted, Elliot gave it to me.

“You’re going to have to continue some sort of program once you’re out,” he said. “I know you guys have ways of getting around it, but for your own good, I hope this is the bottom for you.”