I know what I’m doing is dangerous, but I don’t care. It’s better than feeling the razors. The needles. The unhealable hole in my heart.

The water is cold but not very deep and I reach the bottom quickly. I let myself sink to the ground, my knees pressing against the muddy bottom. My arms float to my side, my hair in my face. Above my head, the moon glows distortedly and beautifully through the ripples in the water. Everything is silent. The water. The night. The emotion inside me. I shut my eyes. I let myself start to drown. I stay as still as I can until my lungs ache to burst. Until I become light-headed. Until I feel myself start to leave reality. Until I’m at the point where I’m about to no longer exist. Then I push upward. Bubbles float from my mouth as I rise, kicking my feet. I stretch my arms up and moments later I burst through the water, gasping for air. Adrenaline is drowning the inside of my body as my lungs fight to breathe—fight to stay alive. Water drips down my hair into my face as I lie back and float in the water, staring up at the moon, my chest rising and falling, up and down, my body half above the water and half below.

Chapter 6

Luke

I was seven when I realized that there was something really wrong with my home environment. It wasn’t something I’d slowly discovered. It was suddenly forced on me when my mother showed up in the middle of the night after being gone somewhere for hours. She was freaking out, chattering about being sorry. I think she was high out of her mind and it looked like there was blood on her hands and clothes, but when I asked her about it—even though I was scared shitless of her answer—she only hugged me for hours, rocking me like a baby, and told me everything was going to be okay. The thing was nothing was ever okay from that point on. It’s still not okay, but livable, as long as I have enough alcohol in my system that the fucked-up parts of my life don’t feel real. As long as I have control over the things that I do I’m fine. The problem is that lately the control I’ve worked so hard to get is slipping from my fingers.

School ends in a few days and it’s getting close to the day when I should be heading home, back to the hellhole where nothing feels right and I feel like a God damn kid again. Kayden’s already got most of his stuff packed, his side of the room covered in taped-up boxes. He is over at Callie’s dorm helping her out right now and I haven’t even gotten started on my side, the bed still made, my clothes still in the dresser. I’m seriously contemplating lighting it on fire and living in my truck. I haven’t even bothered talking to my father since our last conversation. He’s called a few times, but hasn’t left any messages.

“Look I’m sorry I’m breaking your heart or whatever,” I pace the length of my small dorm room between the two beds with the phone pressed up to my ear, shaking my head at pretty much every word she utters, “But I’m seriously going to stay here.” I’m so full of shit. I officially have nowhere to stay. All the apartments for rent cost too much money. At this point I’ve been searching for a roommate, but I can’t seem to find one. It’s just the wrong time or something and I fucking hate it because I don’t want to go back to my hometown, Star Grove.

“Lukey,” she starts. I hate it when she calls me that and even now it makes me feel nauseous. “You need to come home and take care of me. I’ve started taking my medications again and I need your help.”

“Which ones?” I say disdainfully, kicking at the leg of my bed, the need to pound a hole into something rising in me like a flame burning toward a pool of gasoline. “Your heroin? Your crushed-up pain meds? Coke? Whiskey? Which one is it, Mother?”

“You act like I don’t need it,” she says, sounding hurt. “I do. I need it, Lukey. I need it more than anything otherwise I think too much and bad stuff happens when I think too much. You know that.”

“Bad stuff happens regardless of what you’re on.” I slam my boot into the leg of the bed over and over again, the bed slamming into the wall, and my foot starts to hurt. Fuck! “And you know I’m too old to believe that shit, Mother. I know you’re just doing drugs for the same reason that everyone else is in the world and that’s to escape whatever it is you’re running from. It’s not some doctor prescription like you convinced me it was when I was six.”

“But it is, sweetie.” Her voice is high-pitched as if she’s talking to a child. “The doctors just haven’t realized I need it yet.”

I hate her. I hate myself for hating her so much. I hate the hate inside me and how out of control it makes me feel. I hate that every time I get even remotely close to anyone, I think of all the horrible things she made me do—the hell she put me through. “You know what I think,” I say and storm over to the wall. “I think you’ve done too much of it and now you’ve lost it.” I pause, wondering how she’s going to respond. I’m usually not so blunt with her, instead avoiding her at all costs. But the moving back is getting to me.

“You think I’m crazy?” she asks in a subdued voice. I hear rustling in the background and I don’t even want to know what she’s doing. “Is that what you think? Does my little boy think his mother is insane?”

I press my fingertips to my temple, the muscles in my arms tightening with my frustration. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“You’re sounding like all the rest of them,” she says and something loud bangs in the background.

“All the rest of who?” I ask, rolling my eyes.

“The neighbors,” she whispers and then pauses. “I think they’ve been watching me… And there’s this car parked out front… I think it’s the police watching me again.”

“The police aren’t watching you again—they never were. They just questioned you once for God knows what, you never would tell me.”

“They are, too, Lukey. They’re after me again.”

I shake my head and the list of what “medication” she’s been taking becomes shorter because there are only a few of them that bring out her paranoia. “No one’s after you and you want to know why? Because no one cares.”

“You care about me, though.” Panic fills her tone. “Don’t you, Lukey?”

I sink down on the bed and lower my head into my hands. God, I wish I could just say no. Tell her I hate her. Rid my life of her. But I can’t seem to bring myself to say it aloud, always bound by that stupid little kid that lives inside me, the one that always helped her, felt like he had to because no one else would. “Yeah, sure.”

“That’s my good boy,” she tells me and I feel the burn of approaching vomit at the back of my throat. “Always taking care of me. I can’t wait for you to come home. We’re going to have so much fun.”

I know what her version of fun is—cleaning the house together, having me help her with whatever drugs she’s taking, sit with her, listen to her sing, be her best friend and enter her insane world of drug-induced ranting. I can’t go back and live with her. In that house. In my room. With the insanity. Her telling me she needs me. Needs. Needs. Needs. Just going back for Christmas was enough and I wasn’t even there that much. If I end up with her there I can probably get a job and party a lot just to avoid going home, but in the end I’ll have to go home. I never want to go back. I ran away from all that shit when I was sixteen and I can’t go back. I need to get out of going home no matter what it takes. “I have to go.” Before she can say anything I hang up.

I toss the phone aside on the bed and rock back and forth, breathing back the impulse to scream and hit something. I know if anyone walked in and saw me like this they’d think I’d lost my mind, but I can’t stop the wave of anger and panic once it surfaces like this. Only three things do it for me. Sex and alcohol and violence.