Chapter 1: Crash

I sit on the curb of the bus stop, my feet are scorching on the hot cement. My flip flops and suit case sit next to me. The cars whiz past me; the drivers all have somewhere to go to or someone to go to. What about me, where will I go? Who will I go to? I'm not close to any extended family, and the friends I made in school all distanced themselves as far away from me as possible after I dropped out a year ago. 

Fishing around in my pockets, I find my cell phone. I go to the emergency contacts list. Ryder, my dealer, is number one on the list in case of emergency cravings and severe munchies. I tap call and bring the phone up to my ear. After a couple of rings he picks up. 

"Who's this?" He sounds nasally and stoned. God, I hope he's not on one of his hallucination trips. 

"Tyler. Ry I got kicked out. Can I crash at your place?" He takes a long time to answer, in the background I can hear the Beatles, Hey Jude playing. 

"Yeah, okay." I thank him and hang up quickly. The battery's dying, and my charger's at home. I look down the street and see the bus coming. I stuff my phone back into my pocket and put my  flip flops back on. I get up and grab my suitcase. 

-@-

After a long ride, changing buses twice, and being harassed by some old bum, I'm finally at Ryder's house. It looks worse than the last time I'd been here. The yellow paint is chipping off of the old wood. The grass reaches my waist, and used needles, empty liquor bottles, half crushed beer cans, and balled up brown paper bags litter the ground. The old chain link fence is rusting and falling apart. The front door is wide open. 

In the air I can smell a sickening mixture of piss and vomit. I tighten the grip on the handle of my suitcase and walk up the front porch. Cautiously I step into the house making sure I don't step in anything. I slam the door behind me and lock it. I drop my suitcase by the door. 

"Ryder where are you?"

"In my room," he says followed by a long fit of coughing. He'd better not have anything contagious. I walk to the back of the house towards his room. In the hallway I see a trail of piss that went all the way to the bathroom. Gross. 

I walk into his room and find him sprawled out on his waterbed.To me Ryder looks like a your stereotypical hippy and 60s stoner. He's at least twenty years old, so about two years older than me. He has long stringy elbow length blond hair , his eyes are always glazed over, big black gauges in his ears, super tall and boney. 

He nods at me in acknowledgement, before turning over on his side in fetal position. He looks awful, but at least he's wearing harem pants this time; I've walked in on him too many times while he was naked. 

"You look messed up! Dude, how long have you been like this?" By the imprints in the bed it looks like he'd been laying there for a long time.

"Five days," he moans. My eyes widen. 

"Have you eaten anything in five days?" 

"Nope," he responds. Five days straight without eating? I run my fingers through my mop of ,dyed, electric blue hair. I turn on my heels and head towards the kitchen to get him something to eat. Nobody should go that long without eating. 

I grab a handful of Fruit-Roll-Ups, Poptarts, and a bottle of Gatorade from the cabinets. I stalk back to his room, and dump the food onto him. He glances up at me. 

"What are you-"

"Just shut up and eat," I demand. I plop down face first onto the corner of his bed. It bounces underneath me. I hear the sounds of crinkling wrappers and loud obnoxious chewing. Good. 

-@-

It's late. Ryder's asleep in his room. I ended up mopping up the pee in the hallway, the smell was too much for me to ignore any longer. Now I'm in his living room lying on the couch. I watch Scream on the big flat screen TV, one of his clients gave him a couple years back. 

On the table next to the couch there's a needle. I don't know what's in it. I smoke and snort, I've never shot anything up. I pick it up carefully. Memories of going to the doctor and getting a needle rammed into me, resurface. It hurt like hell back then, it still hurt like hell now. 

I set the needle back on the table. Ryder and a couple of his friends shot stuff up, I'd seen them do it at parties Ryder'd drag me to . I asked him once when first started using drugs, two years ago, what it felt like. He said it was like a regular shot, just a little pinch, but you get used to it. I don't think I could ever shoot anything up. I'd never get used to it.

Author's Note

Is it rushed? Yeah, possibly, I just wanted to update....