Luke rushed out of his mother’s two bedroom apartment, wearing his Domino’s uniform.
God-damn-it, he thought. Not today.
If he didn’t make it to work on time, it would be the third time this week. To his credit, it wasn’t really his fault. Sharing his mom’s 2001 Toyota Camry came with downsides. Bussing to work usually rectified the issue when his mom had irregular nursing hours, but the two hour trip to work for a four to six hour shift was its own kind of hell. If he could get rides from friends, he’d take them, but asking for such favors felt degrading.
Why do you gotta be such a bitch, sometimes? Overthinking his circumstances didn’t do him much benefit.
His mom’s Camry blew through a 25 mph zone at 47 mph. “Come on. Come on…”
He sped into the parking lot for the strip mall where the Domino’s was at, nearly hitting another driver trying to exit. The driver honked for at least five seconds. Luke was pretty sure the driver flipped him off too, but he declined to look.
Sorry, asshole.
Luke parked the car crookedly, deciding there wasn’t enough time to adjust.
Just gotta get in there.
He rushed out of the car and entered the Domino’s. Before arriving, he was sure his manager would be there to grill him at the front doors. Either that, or dozens of judgmental faces would be looking down upon him.
Paranoia, he thought. Fucking dumb paranoia.
Unsurprisingly, there were no such greetings, at least not at first. The three other visible employees, who Luke had not bothered to socialize with much, were busy working the front counter and making orders.
Luke ran behind the counter, tightening his apron as he did so.
No reason to worry. He began clocking in on one of the registers. You’re -
“You’re an hour late.”
Luke turned to the source of the voice behind him. His manager, Wiley, an out of shape, but imposing tall thirty-year-old, stood with his arms crossed.
“Hey,” Luke greeted awkwardly. “Look - I - I know, but here’s the thing -”
“An hour.” Wiley said, pausing a beat to let the words sink in. “No call. No notice.”
“I have to share the car with my mom, sir. I mean - it’s her car. Can you just cut me a break?”
“I did.” Wiley sighed, unfolding his arms. “I cut you three breaks already. I’m sorry, Luke. I like you, but I got to let you go.”
“Oh, come on! Don’t say that.” It wasn’t being fired necessarily that triggered the reaction, it was the embarrassment knowing he couldn’t cut it at a Domino’s.
“It’s not fair to the other employees if I let you work here. I got to set the standard.”
Luke thought for a beat. I need this job. “Look, I’ll work later if I have to. Whatever I need to do to make up for the missed hours, I’ll do it.”
Wiley shook his head. “I’m sorry, Luke.”
Luke suddenly felt angry. A warm feeling washed through his nerves. An impulse to knock Wiley’s face manifested into a visualization of doing so. Just as he balled up his fist, Luke looked around at the staff behind the counter and the customers waiting in line. Everyone was looking at him. Now the anger had turned to shame.
Just go. Don’t make it any worse.
Luke nodded, taking off his hat and uniform. He handed them over to Wiley and then left without saying a word.
The drive back home was as uncomfortable as any loss he had taken in a football game. The shame had turned into sadness, as the feelings usually did in any situation involving disappointment.
Back home, Luke went into his bedroom to isolate and let the emotions run their course. No one was home which he figured would make the recovery process a little easier, but the notion he’d have to explain the lack of employment to his mom later didn’t help. He grabbed a football and threw it against a wall.
“Fuck.”
Several medals fell down from the wall from the football’s impact. The floating shelves had luckily prevented his football trophies from falling, though they did shake. Upon closer inspection, Luke noticed the football hit one of his NFL posters which tore slightly from the football’s impact.
“Fuck.”
He opted to fix the tear and reorganize the medals after decompressing.
How much money do I have left?
He opened his wallet and looked inside. There was a five dollar bill and two ones.
“Fuuuuucccckkkkk.”
Similarly to the football, he tossed his wallet aside and began massaging his temples.
His father’s voice in his head began its usual belittling. You’re a fuck up from a long line of fuck ups.
“Shut the fuck up, old man.”
Then he remembered his mother saying, “I’ve raised you to be better than your father. You’re better than going to parties and doing whatever the hell it is all those other kids do.”
“I know, mom. I know.”
Stop lying to yourself. His father returned. You’re not better than me. You’re not even half of me.
“I said, “Shut the fuck up!””
He kicked his desk hard, knocking his backpack and most of his school supplies off of it.
Several quiet moments went by. Physically assaulting his room wasn’t a good practice, but it usually did the trick when he needed his head to stop tormenting him.
Ryan, he thought. I should talk to Ryan.
Hannah White woke up in her bedroom with a mild hangover at 12:34 pm. She was hesitant to open her eyes. Knowing that her blinds were open, she feared the sun’s light shining through her window would further agitate her headache. Fortunately, as was usually common with the winter weather, the sun was not shining today.
I’d be fine if it never shines again.
As she began to get up from her bed, an unusual thing happened.
Reflection. The fucking past…
From her early teenage years to her early twenties, Hannah rarely thought much about her life. But after her twenty-sixth birthday, which happened several months ago, reflection was becoming a common habit, albeit, an unwilling one.
Why do I think so much about this shit?
The answer wasn’t clear, but perhaps it had to do with a lack of acceptance or a dissatisfaction with how her life played out.
Fuck it. She went downstairs to make coffee as the memories began running their course. Let’s do this again…
Hannah’s upbringing was unusual. She was never abused or suffered any significant trauma, but her life was, put politely, complicated. Granted, she grew up with all the resources necessary to have an ideal life. Unfortunately, in her twenty-six years of existence, none of those resources led to an ideal outcome.
Ugh…
From a young age, Hannah sensed the distance between her father and mother. As much as she told herself their strange relationship did not affect her, she knew in the back of her head it caused some dissatisfaction. She never knew what genuine family time was. Every vacation felt emotionally vacant aside from having feelings of disappointment. The truth was no one, not her mother, father, or herself, spent much time with one another. The times they did share did not feel like they were together at all, at least not in any sort of emotionally satisfying or bonding way.
Hannah’s father was a self made man who lifted himself out of poverty. She knew little about her dad’s background except that he did not like to talk about it. Whatever hells he had gone through motivated him to the success he accumulated so he could never go back to where he came from. He amassed a small fortune owning and operating a trucking business that imported and exported dried goods to and from Canada. The profits he made were invested into small businesses in Barclay which included several restaurants and laundromats. With the earnings from those businesses, he expanded into real estate, flipping dilapidated properties in Barclay for huge profits which he then invested in stocks.
Hannah never knew how much money her father had, but she knew it was a substantial amount. She assumed by the time she was fourteen, which at that point her father owned several houses, two condos, six luxury cars, and a boat, he had to be worth at least eight figures. Money was never a problem for the family.
Mom’s the fucking whore bitch.
By the time Hannah was fifteen, her mother divorced from her father. From the get-go, the relationship seemed strange. Her father met her mother when he was thirty-seven and she was twenty-three. She worked as a waitress at a semi-upscale restaurant with dreams of marrying one of the wealthier patrons. She did not want to work for money. With her looks, she expected it to come her way and it eventually did in the form of Hannah’s father. It was common knowledge that she was a trophy wife more than a loving spouse. Sure, she was pretty, but not faithful and Hannah’s father was not an attractive man like the one’s her mother had affairs with. He was rugged and withered; the embodiment of a man who worked hard his whole life. Even on the days he dressed in a suit and a tie, he looked like he would be more appropriate in a dirty flannel, jeans and boots with a manhandled flat bill hat. His ex-wife was flawless and well manicured; the archetype of women who never knew what hard work was. She belonged in garments from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Dior. To her mother’s credit, she knew what poverty was and it motivated her to find some sucker who would fall for her looks. At least that was what Hannah assumed as did many of her friends and acquaintances.
Fucking whore bitch. You know what you did. You used those lips, tits, and ass like a vacuum sucking up all his money.
Hannah grew up living in a McMansion off Lake Whatcom. She spent her childhood tubing on the lake, smoking lots of weed, and hooking up with hot guys. Initially, the house was her father’s dream home where he could give his daughter more than he ever had as a child. But after the divorce, Hannah’s mom took the house. Her mother was rarely home and often traveling, usually with a handsome boy toy. In her mother’s absence, Hannah threw large parties at the house. Through her massive shindigs, Hannah made connections with the wealthy sons and daughters of other prominent families in Barclay who all had similar stories like hers.
“My dad’s an Adderall fiend.”
“My mom drinks a lot.”
“My cousin and I fucked when I was thirteen.”
“My brother’s in rehab for coke. Again.”
Eventually, the stories from others became so consistently fucked up that their emotional impact stopped affecting Hannah. Truthfully, even when others talked about their messed up lives, they did so with such casualness that Hannah figured they felt the same way she did.
It’s all just rich shit. They’re still apes with cash. At least we all have money.
At first, Hannah’s parties were usually expensive, wild events. Popular kids from the local high schools and colleges flooded the parties with alcohol, pills, and soft drugs which in turn fueled their crazy, frat-boy like antics. People were so desperate to come, Hannah had to hire a security guard for a number of them which sometimes caused verbal confrontation followed by brief violence. Cops would show up in the middle of night, only to give out soft disciplines. They knew whose house they were showing up at and who donated to their union.
Rich shit.
Even with the popularity of her parties, Hannah grew bored of their limits. Not all her peers were willing to push boundaries as much as her. In her was a burning desire for more. She figured the feeling came from her father and, to some extent, her mother. The only difference was she had nothing to work for. All the things she could ever want, financially speaking, were already available to her. But there had to be something out there; something that would drown the emptiness she felt deep inside her.
“Something to plug up the hole,” she’d explain.
“Like a hard cock?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
As Hannah’s appetite for drugs grew, the atmosphere of her world changed. By the time she was a senior in high school, her social circle became experimental. Instead of large events, her parties became intimate, private affairs. Hannah and her friends would take mushrooms or LSD or both and watch surreal movies, go on hikes, camp or have orgies. Other times they would experiment with their prescriptions. Anything new and enticing Hannah could try she would do. Unfortunately, many of the more experimental peers would draw themselves into money problems and trouble with the law. Hannah’s closest friends could be with her one day and then in jail the next. Others were sent to rehab or disappeared off the face of the earth.
They can’t hang.
During Hannah’s change, her mom bought a condo in Cancun with her separation money which made her stays in Barclay even more rare. She hated Barclay, never wanting to live in the Pacific Northwest.
The only words Hannah’s mom used to describe Barclay were, “It’s too depressing… It’s too cold… There’s never any sun!”
Go swallow another dick in the sun then.
Occasionally, Hannah’s mom would call her daughter to see if she wanted to come down to Cancun for a week or so. “It’s so nice here! You should come! Get a tan. You’ll enjoy it.”
“Uh-huh…”
The invites felt more like empty gestures than touching invitations. Hannah and her mother were never close and Hannah suspected the relationship would stay that way. To Hannah, she was just part of the bargain for the marriage; a way for her mother to weasel into her father’s life and take what she wanted. After a while, Hannah blocked her mom’s calls and avoided seeing or hearing from her whenever possible.
As Hannah’s friends came and went, people became less significant and only as valuable as their resources. The most significant of these new people was a guy in his late twenties who could synthesize 3, 4-Methylenediozymethamphetamine or, as it is more commonly known, ecstasy. Larry Prior was his name. He was a college dropout who studied chemistry. His parents were no stranger to drugs. They were both sales reps for a prescription opioid company. Larry had a scrawny physique, pale skin and he wore waspy looking glasses. His introverted personality came with an intellectual aggression which made himself unappealing to those he wanted to be unappealing to. He also had a Glock-19 on his person at most times.
“Just in case,” he explained. “I don’t trust people.”
With Hannah’s money and Larry’s knowledge, they set up their own lab in Hannah’s house. The lab was in the basement which was originally a large TV room. They took out the couches, foosball table, some old arcade games, the extra large flatscreen TV, and other furniture and replaced it with a sterile, state of the art chemistry lab. Much of the equipment that was either bought on the dark web or stolen months prior from Larry’s college.
For six months, Hannah and Larry had a three-way relationship with themselves and the ecstasy they made. Their pills had a light blue color and a pressed on logo which showed a heart with the initials “H+L”. Sex on ecstasy was their passion and selling the ecstasy was their hobby. They did not do it for the money or so they said.
Larry described the lifestyle as, “A way for them to express themselves through art.”
If only I knew it was bullshit.
The ugly truth was they were both bored, privileged kids with too much time on their hands, not enough self control, and no real job prospects.
Fucking bullshit.
Larry would run the ecstasy up to the Canadian border in Hannah’s 2012 Mustang GT. Her father gifted the car for her seventeenth birthday which she celebrated several months before meeting Larry. It hauled ass and had lots of trunk space. An engineering friend of Larry customized the trunk to have a secret stash spot underneath the spare tire. Once in Canada, Larry would sell several ounces of ecstasy and come back with around three grand. After several months of increasing their operation, the three grand became ten grand, the ten grand became thirty, and then finally got to as high as seventy. They were making more money than they knew what to do with.
Except fuck on it.
After nearly a year of selling the ecstasy, Larry and Hannah’s relationship had a falling out. Larry wanted to move to Seattle to be with a new model he had recently started seeing. It was not the money that got to Larry’s head, but the lifestyle that came with it. He found himself in a position where he could get anything he wanted. Unfortunately for Hannah, she was not one of them.
The fucking prick! I made him!
Without Larry, ecstasy was harder to come by, at least for a time. Eventually, someone new came into the picture.
Someone with more balls.
At first, Hannah fluctuated from missing Larry to hating him. There were times she felt like turning him in, but that meant she would have to go down too. She was his accomplice and financier after all. Sometimes she thought of suicide as way to avoid prison if she did rat on him.
“Fuck him,” she told herself once as a razor blade hovered over her wrist. “He’s not worth it.”
Still not worth it.
Shortly after Hannah ran out of Larry’s last batch of ecstasy, her father made a surprise visit to the Lake Whatcom house. He discovered the ecstasy lab in the basement. Disillusioned by his daughter and his wife’s lack of oversight, he sold the house, retired, and moved to Florida. His ex-wife’s lawyer threatened to sue for the sale of the house, but his wife withdrew after her ex-husband gave her one of his houses in Malibu, California. To Hannah, it was just another confirmation of her suspicions about what her mother prioritized.
Just another nice place to get her legs spread open.
To see if Hannah could turn over a new leaf, her father opened a bank account for her with five hundred thousand dollars. His hope was that she might use the money to start her own business like he did or at least go to college. After months of not speaking to his daughter though, he gave up on his hope.
It’s what he wanted. Not what I wanted.
The family her father envisioned never came to fruition. Hannah assumed it must have broken him to some extent. At first, she did not care about the lack of communication and connection between her and her parents. It was something she was used to her entire life. But after weeks turned to months and months turned to years, the lack of a family dynamic started to weigh on her. Perhaps it was exasperated by the people consistently coming in and out of her life. Perhaps it was because she lost the love of her life. But, really, it was because she knew in heart she wanted a normal, happy family. Her father’s distance was the final nail in the coffin for ever having the hope realized.
Enough. Move on to something else.
Hannah saved nearly a million dollars from selling ecstasy with Larry, but she was never able to use much of it at a time or put it in a bank account for obvious legal reasons. Even though she was richer than ninety-nine percent of her peers, she had little to no assets besides her car, which was in her father’s name. The bank account her father opened for her was the only reason she was able to rent a home. She opted for a house out in the county with another big basement. Making ecstasy was too complicated for her, but she set up a grow room for marijuana and mushrooms and dedicated her time to making the best product she could grow.
It’s not bad. Could be worse.
Over the next couple years, Hannah’s friends continued to slip in and out of her life. The ones with any common sense grew into adults with nine to five jobs, families, and normal social lives. The ones that stuck around slipped in and out of her life until they needed something or wanted to party.
Whatever.
The money she saved dwindled as she spent lots of her cash going to Seattle, traveling to Los Angeles and New York, and getting wasted. She partied and abused drugs more times in almost a decade than most people do in a lifetime. Now she was mostly alone, growing her weed and mushrooms, and selling the product to Ryan.
Fuck. What time is it? She checked her Apple watch as she poured herself a cup of instant coffee. He should be here soon.
The house Hannah rented was deep out in the county on a long stretch of road. The neighboring properties were old farmhouses where crops were grown and harvested and livestock was raised and butchered. Like many homes outside Barclay in the rural parts of the county, most of the farms were dilapidated or abandoned altogether. Only one out of every five or six homes looked well maintained. Driving past one was like seeing a well groomed Poodle in the middle of a pigsty.
Better than most people’s places though.
Hannah’s house was large, but certainly not an expensive, modern estate like the lake house she grew up in. The house fit in with the surrounding farmhouses because it was old and in need of some cosmetic repair. Faded paint and crabgrass were the first things people noticed about Hannah’s place other than its size. Her Mustang was still in her possession, but the check engine light had recently come on so she was refraining from driving it.
Shit. I need to get that fixed soon.
Hannah lit a cigarette as she sat outside on her porch and drank her coffee. She didn’t bother changing out of her pajamas or putting on any make-up.
What’s the point? I’m not going anywhere today.
She had been smoking a pack a day for the last six years. The years of substance abuse and tobacco use had made her age a bit with the recent emergence of crows-feet. Her youthful energy made her seem young though, younger than her actual age. The only exercise she got was the yoga she did every-day for about forty-so minutes. She barely ate, limiting her food intake to around fifteen hundred calories a day. Her arms and legs were long and lanky and her body fat percentage was lower than what it needed to be. She took pride in the fact she did have a bit of an ass and that her tits were not sagging. Depending on who you asked, she was a solid seven or eight out of ten in terms of attractiveness.
Fuck that insecure shit. I still got looks.
Ryan’s Subaru drove up her driveway. Out of the car stepped out Ryan and Luke, both of whom had gotten out of school twenty-five minutes prior.
“Well,” Hannah said as she put out her cigarette. “Look who finally showed up.”
“Hey, Hannah.” Ryan gave her a quick hug. “I called you several times, but you didn’t answer.” He reached into his sweatshirt and handed her eight hundred dollars in random bills folded and held together by a thin rubber band.
She smiled mischievously. “Are you telling me you want to take me up on my offer?”
Ryan nodded. “That’s the idea. I know a lot of people who would want some.”
She looked at Luke. “What are you? His new business partner?”
“He’s my friend.” Ryan responded.
“Uh-huh.” She seemed skeptical of letting this stranger into her home, but she trusted Ryan. She motioned to her front door. “Well, come step into my office.”
The downstairs grow room was a clean, well-sealed set up. There was one door that led downstairs to the basement and another door built in at the bottom of the stairs with a thick steel padlock around the doorknob. Once past the second door, whoever entered would have to take off their clothes, except for their underwear, and apply hand sanitizer before entering through the zip locked grow room.
Several fans set up in each of the corners blew a slight breeze over the smelly plants inside the grow room. There were dozens of fully budded Slurricane plants. The buds were crystal coated and the leaves had a fascinating mix of purple and light green colors. The other half of the room had empty pots where the OG Kush and Granddaddy Purp plants were harvested. Another room, also padlocked, had strings attached to the walls that held up the drying branches full of harvested buds.
Luke walked through the room in his underwear. Hannah let him hang out in the grow room while she and Ryan did business upstairs.
“Fuck a pizzeria.” He took a deep whiff of the plants’ smelly aroma. “Fuck Domino’s.”
On the football field, Luke was the star running back of his team and someone they considered as their leader. But Luke knew all too well that, despite his social status, he had nothing special going for him. Many of his friends came from stable two parent households and did not have jobs, aside from occasionally working for their relatives. They had allowances, their own cars, and funds set aside for them to go to college. Luke had none of those resources. He knew he was not going to go to college without a scholarship which at this point seemed unlikely. No matter how good he played on the field, he never saw anyone scout him.
His father’s voice in his head said, That’s because you’re a fuck up from a long line of fuck ups.
“Shut up, old man.” Luke replied.
Ryan was making some good money selling weed and Luke wanted to try his hand in it. Hannah proposed to Ryan that he could sell ecstasy from her that she got from a dealer she didn’t name. Seeing the opportunity as something that could help him make more money and also help out his buddy, Ryan offered Luke the chance to sell the party drug. Luke was more of a social go getter than Ryan and knew far more people that would be willing to buy ecstasy. Both agreed that Ryan would help out where he could and that Luke would get sixty percent of their profits. It was not a bad deal especially considering Hannah was selling her ecstasy for dirt cheap.
Even though Luke knew he wanted to get in the drug game, there was hesitancy about taking on the endeavor. He was certain Ashley was certainly going to chew him out. If he was caught, there was no way anyone would help him out of the situation.
“I’ve raised you to be better than your father,” his mother’s words reminded him. “You’re better than going to parties and doing whatever the hell it is all those other kids do.”
“I know, mom.” Luke said to himself. “I know.”
You’re not.
“Shut up, old man.”
Despite his father’s voice sporadically talking to him in his mind, Luke knew little about his dad. He was aware his father was an alcoholic who on rough nights would occasionally beat up his mom. Luke had not seen his dad since he left when he was only five years old. But even with his father’s absence, Luke was consistently reminded of his old man. The rage he inherited from his dad was all too well known. He would never hit a woman, but hearing rumors like Ashley getting “Cozy” with other guys while she was drunk gave him an idea of what it would be like.
It’d feel good putting her in line.
“I said, “Shut up, Old Man!””
Upstairs, Hannah was filling pill capsules with ecstasy powder while Ryan sat on her bed smoking a joint. She did not mind smoking in her house even as the ashes Ryan tried to tap into an empty red plastic cup fell onto her carpet. Her bedroom was where she smoked a majority of her cigarettes. It left her house constantly smelling like a casino, but she was so used to smell that she barely smelt cigarettes anymore.
The batch of ecstasy Hannah picked up came in traditional pill form. The night prior, Hannah crushed up the pills in a food processor with her prescription Adderall as well as caffeine tablets and a little coke. For a year, she had been getting large quantities of Adderall through her doctor, but she never took them aside for special occasions. Instead, she had been saving up her medication so that she could use it to increase her volume of ecstasy. She figured Ryan’s high school buyers would never know what was actually in their ecstasy.
They’ll still be getting purer ecstasy than whatever they were buying. Hannah thought. She turned her attention to Ryan while still prepping the capsules. “You still with that girlfriend of yours?”
“Uh - yeah.” Ryan was taken aback by the question. “We’ve been together for four years.”
“I heard she got punched in the face.”
The comment took Ryan further aback. “You heard about that?”
“It’s a small town, Ryan.” A long, snake-like smile formed on her face. “And I’m a big time thug, bitch!”
“Uh-huh.” He was not amused.
“Chill the fuck out.” You turned her face away from him, focusing back on prepping the ecstasy. “You think I don’t hear about Barclay’s drama? Seems like everybody knows something. Shouldn’t be that surprising that I know some things.”
“Sure.”
Hannah was a fishy character to Ryan. A part of him suspected that she could not be trusted even though she had always been fair to him. Ever since he first met her at a college party he snuck into with Dalton, she felt like someone too big for real life.
Through their unintended encounter, Ryan sold her some mushrooms he picked from a park.
“That’s decent quality,” she said, examining the fungi. “You actually dried the little fuckers out.”
“I’m not a dumb high schooler.”
Impressed, Hannah offered him the chance to sell her weed. She had tried having other dealers work for her, but most of them were assholes that either stole from her or never paid her back. Fortunately, her replacement ecstasy dealer for Larry was able to sort out these kinds of problems, but it still left her with the issue of who could reliably sell for her.
“There’s a lot of wannabes that think they can do this,” she told Ryan. “What are you?”
“Definitely not a wannabe.”
Ryan had tried selling weed for college students, but, similarly to Hannah’s experiences, they were unreliable. They either could not keep up with Ryan’s re-ups or stopped contacting him after some time.
“I’ll give you a chance,” she told him. “Just don’t fuck it up.”
“I won’t.”
He didn’t. Ryan made her more money than any dealer who ever worked for her. But despite their close relationship, Ryan never grew any ease around her, especially now. She was too knowledgeable about current high school gossip for someone her age. Ryan knew she liked to stick her nose in people’s businesses, but her knowing about Cindy’s assault was triggering him a tension headache. At first, he thought the headache’s source could have been the excessive second hand smoke in the house or the paranoia from the legal ramifications of being in a drug dealer’s house. The truth was she was making him nervous. She was like being around an unpredictable friend, never knowing what he or she would do.
It’s that goddamn smile, he thought. “Where did you get all the ecstasy? You never said who the supplier is.”
“A friend.” She brushed off the question. “So what happened to the guy who punched her?”
“What do you think?” Ryan replied guardedly.
Hannah walked to the bed with a large zip-lock bag of capsules full of ecstasy. Ryan reached for the bag, but Hannah recoiled her arm.
Off her judging look, he asked, “What?”
“Your friend. He’s not going to be a problem is he?” The way she asked the question sounded more playfully insulting than concerning. Even though she was in her twenties, Hannah’s personality sometimes made Ryan feel like he was talking to a spoiled five year old.
“Why would he be?” He asked.
“He’s a jock.”
“I’m a wrestler.”
“Okay, John Cena.” She waved her hands back and forth in front of her face. “Can you see me now?!”
“What’s your point?”
She grimaced at his lack of reaction, but continued, “I’m fine selling to you. I don’t know him. It’s bad enough that he's sitting in my grow room.”
“I vouched for Dalton and he’s done just about as good as me. Luke’s not going to rip you off.”
Hannah paused for a moment, silently acknowledging Ryan was right. But she wasn’t done. “You know, come to think of it, I’ve never sold you anything besides weed and shrooms.”
“And?”
“What do you know about ecstasy? You ever roll?” She knew he would be able to sell the ecstasy. That was without question. What she needed to know was, Would he be able to tell it’s cut?
“Do you want the money or not?”
Hannah sat down next to him. Ryan felt uncomfortable with how close she got.
“All you’ve done up to this point is just kiddie shit.” She lit up a cigarette, taking a big inhale before continuing. “I grow the weed, I grow the shrooms. You fuck up, that’s my loss. You fuck up this ‘E’ - “ She paused to take another drag, this one like it was taking away her anxiety. “The people in this game are a lot more… dangerous.”
Ryan could sense her unease, but he couldn’t understand why. “It’s just ecstasy.”
She grinned. “You act like you’re a man, but you’re still just a kid.”
“Aren’t you?”
At first, the comment felt initially insulting, but after giving it some pause to marinate, Hannah understood what he meant. To the rest of the world, they were kids; delinquents and possible fuck-ups, but still kids.
“You know,” she started, “I’ve never asked you why you do this.”
“Easy. The money.”
“Well obviously! But you could have a different job. Ya know? A regular job. Like most kids your age.”
Ryan understood her point, but it was a dumb question. “I’m eighteen, Hannah. Why would I do that? So I can make eight bucks an hour? No thanks.”
“Doesn’t your ass want to go to college though? Ya know? Get a career? You’re into sports and shit. Didn’t you want a scholarship?”
“Why do you care all of the sudden?”
Because you care about him, she thought. You know where this ecstasy comes from.
She took another drag from her cigarette. “You know how many wannabe kids try to sell for me and I tell them no? I don’t fuck around, Ryan. You’re the only kid your age I sell to. And you know why? Because you’re fucking good at it. I’ll admit it. But if I give you this ‘E’, I don’t give a fuck if you screw yourself over. It’s me I’m worried about.”
Liar, one voice in her head said. You care. You don’t want to see yourself or him get hurt.
“Okay.” Ryan said. “But If you’ve made more money on me than anyone else you sell to, why are you so concerned?”
“What do you have to prove?”
He thought of the classroom door. You know why.
Hannah took another drag from her cigarette. Ryan was tempted to steal the cigarette between her fingertips and finish it himself. But he took a deep breath and, “I was going to work a regular job at one point. At the mall. With my girlfriend. I was going to give up dealing, but the day of my interview…”
He thought of the argument between his mother and father. He remembered the sound of the shattering glass framed pictures his mother threw and her cries of betrayal and heartbreak. And his father’s voice…
“I’ve been a good father!”
And his mother’s, “You never read one of his fucking writings!”
Then his thoughts turned to the moments he held Cindy in the hospital and the first conversation they had there…
“I swear to god, if I get my hands on him, I’ll fucking kill -”
“No. Don’t go there. Just stay with me. Okay?”
Ryan wasn’t sure how long he paused to think. Like most times of reflection, the minutes could feel like hours and the hours could feel like minutes. Judging on the lack of Hannah speaking, he figured it must have not been that long.
“Something bad happened,” he continued. “And I just forgot… I think I forgot what it felt like to live like a normal person. And the more I thought about my life - nothing about it felt normal. Later, I - I got in a car accident…”
Just the mention of the wreck sent pain to his bad arm. For a moment, he wondered if he had broken it again, but something else took his attention.
“And I saw something…”
An image of the Monster flashed in his head; a visual so horrifying, Ryan imagined it’d never go away.
It won’t, said one voice. Shut up, said another.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I just didn’t see a point in doing anything else. I was - I’m already good at selling drugs. I don’t need a regular job. And who knows if I’d be good at one. Who knows if I’d be good at a normal life?”
Why am I telling her all this? He wondered. Ryan didn’t trust Hannah much, certainly not enough to divulge sensitive information like he was sharing. But here was, spilling the intimate details of the tragedies he endured. Not even Cindy knew most of these things. A part of speaking about the events felt cathartic, but another felt ill-advised.
Then he thought of the football field.
Don’t go there. Just don’t…
“I don’t recall a time when I was normal,” he continued explaining. “The only thing that changed was…”
Cindy.
He remembered giving her money during lunch. Despite her hesitancy to take it, being able to provide for her was one of the most satisfying feelings he received in recent memory.
“Dealing has given me the opportunity to give people, people I care about, something. It’s something I’m good at, something that does feel normal.” He looked Hannah in the eyes. “Why is that wrong?”
In some of Larry’s most unguarded moments, he had a sensitivity similar to the one Ryan was showing. In a way, Ryan reminded Hannah of him. Despite telling herself she hated Larry’s guts, the truth was nostalgia did bring comfort. It reminded her of a feeling she felt with Larry, one she never got from her family; a warming sense of euphoria that was different from any intensely pleasurable high she got from a drug. It started in her legs and worked its way up her body, making her weightless. Any baggage she felt from the neglect of her childhood or from assholes who left a bad impression rolled off her shoulders giving way to optimism and a strong sense of connection. Only Ryan and her new ecstasy dealer made her feel this way now.
If only it lasted longer… Hannah nodded her head and put the bag of ecstasy in Ryan’s hand. “Just don’t fuck up,” she said with a sincere, soft smile.