Death Spiral (6 page)

Melinda dashes out of the room before I can finish my question.

Fat Guy doesn't move or acknowledge our presence. He just stares at the bloodshed on TV and takes a hit off his joint as if two strange teenagers getting shoved into his room is an everyday occurrence.

I have no idea what to do, so I go to the door and peak out to see a tall, stringy guy, wearing a black leather jacket, black jeans, and black sneakers. His back is to me, but from the way his hand is clamped around Melinda's wrist you don't need to be on the AP track to tell he didn't stop by for a cup of tea and some biscuits.

“What's happening out there?” Jesse whispers, squeezing up beside me.

Before I can answer, the guy glances in our direction. I'm not sure if he sees us, but my heart stops all the same. I grab Jesse to keep my legs from buckling.

I can't believe it. It can't be, but it is. I couldn't forget those heavy-lidded charcoal eyes, that long, narrow face and pointy chin, that stubby, wind-burned nose and small, twitchy mouth. It's that same guy who came to our apartment the day Mom died.

“You have a debt to pay,” I hear him tell Melinda.

My stomach curdles at the words. A hard chill runs down my spine. I close the door and spin around to face Fat Guy.

“Who's that with Melinda?” I blurt.

Fat Guy scratches the hairy strip of belly his shirt doesn't cover. “No clue. She calls him the Rat Catcher.”

“The Rat Catcher?” I say, not understanding and not sure I heard him right. “What does he want?”

Fat Guy snorts, turns away from the TV, and fixes me with his bloodshot eyes. “You want my advice?” He doesn't wait for my answer. “Mind your own business.”

I stand with my back against the door, unsure whether to go out and help or take Fat Guy's advice. I close my eyes, and when I do, the grotesque image of Melinda's face haunts me, death tearing at her flesh. Those words echo in my ears:
You have a debt to pay
. Melinda's face morphs into Mom's. The Rat Catcher's at our apartment now. It's Mom's wrist he's holding, and when he looks up and sees me peeking out from my bedroom, the glint in his eyes is enough to keep me cowering.

If Melinda's really in trouble, I have to do something, but when I open my eyes and crack open the door, they're gone.

I take a deep breath to clear my head, but there isn't enough oxygen in this smoke-filled pit to fill my lungs. I grab Jesse's arm and take off through the apartment. I fly down the stairs and break into a run the second my feet hit pavement. If it weren't for the fact I failed PE at my last school, okay got kicked out (you
cannot
play field hockey in combat boots, Ms. Flores!) and my cardiovascular deal is on par with about that of a sloth, I'd keep running. But my lungs are going apeshit on me, as in stop now or die—literally. I have no choice but to obey. I slump against a kiosk and double over.

“What's going on, Faith?” I hear Jesse say. I straighten up and catch his eye, then quickly look away.

“I don't know,” I say, stalling for time as I figure out what to tell him. Um, gee, sorry about what happened back there. Looks like there was some drug dealer or pest control guy having a seriously bad day in Melinda's place. I had a great time, though!
(Big smile!) Movie next week?

It doesn't matter what I say or don't say, and I know it. Why would Jesse stick around after what just happened? I brace myself for the I-like-you-but-hanging-out-is-just-not-a-good-idea excuse. Well, that's what I got for asking him to come with me.

“How about a coffee?” he says instead.

“Huh?”

“Coffee—you know, hot beverage? Originated in Ethiopia around the ninth century? Filled with caffeine? Gets you through first period? I could really use one. And from the look on your face, so could you.”

“Right…okay, good,” I stammer. “Coffee sounds good.”

On the other side of the street there's a place with metal bars across the window, a torn green awning, and a sign that says
Breakfast Served All Day
. Not exactly the cheeriest scene, but it'll do. We go inside where a girl with long, greasy hair stands behind a glass-fronted bakery case displaying food that looks to have expired sometime around the time of the dinosaurs.

While Jesse stops at the counter for coffee, I take a seat in the back corner by an ancient pinball machine and root around my pockets for a Tylenol, even though I know it's ridiculous to think a painkiller could kill the fear and anger in my heart. All I find is Mom's lighter, some lint, and an unwrapped piece of gum.

I stick the gum in my mouth, and when I close my eyes, the questions start to flow. Is the Rat Catcher Melinda's dealer? Was he Mom's dealer, too? Did she owe him money? Did he have something to do with her death? And why's he called the Rat Catcher?

I run my hands over the grime of the sticky table and open my eyes. Then there's the clinical trial. How does
that
fit in? What if Melinda was telling me the truth? What if she was right and it was the side effects from some drug that killed Mom? That would mean she didn't OD.

I stare out the window into the last light of day, thinking about the word
truth
. Is there even such a thing? Mom was always about to get off drugs and get better. That was
her
truth. In the end it was all a lie. Even if it was true that she'd gotten off drugs, she didn't get better. She died.

I'm lost in these thoughts when Jesse comes back with the coffees. I ignore the mug he sets in front of me. “What if Melinda's being straight and my mother was in some clinical trial? Why didn't she tell me? Why keep that a secret?”

The question is rhetorical, but Jesse answers. “Maybe she didn't want to get your hopes up, you know, in case it didn't work.”

“Yeah, like maybe she'd die,” I say. “Anyway, it's bullshit. It has to be. Melinda owed the Rat Catcher money. That's why she looked so scared when he showed up. He's probably her dealer. That's the debt he was talking about—drug money.”

Jesse doesn't say anything. He dumps three containers of cream into his mug, takes a sip, then dumps in another container along with about ten packets of sugar and sips again. Once his coffee expectations are satisfied, he picks up the flier I set on the table and reads it over. Then he reads it again. I'm wondering if he intends to memorize the thing and am about to snatch it out of his hands when he says, “Melinda doesn't seem capable of making this up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This,” he says, waving the flier in my face.

“So?”

“So, I'm just saying, she did have this flier for the clinical trial. It has to be legit.”

I roll my eyes. “She could've found it in the trash.”

Jesse shrugs and sips his coffee. “She seemed pretty scared, though. Totally messed up, but scared. It seems possible she's telling the truth.”

I lean forward, knocking over the sugar with my elbow. “So you think my mother was being used as a lab animal in some clinical trial that she never told me about?” My voice is loud, too loud, but I can't help it.

The girl behind the counter throws me a dirty look, like I might be some kind of teenage psychopath sporting a gun under my jacket.

“You're getting too emotional,” Jesse says.

“Too emotional?” I burst, and then lower my voice, forcing myself to keep control. “It's my mother we're talking about. Not some lab animal.”

“Yeah, well I'm just trying to help.”

“Yeah, well I'm not a charity case.”

“Yeah, well I'm not your punching bag.”

I'm about to start another “Yeah, well…” but I look down at my hands folded in my lap and feel lame for my outburst. I want to say I'm sorry, but I don't have much practice in the field of apologizing. Mom and I solved most problems by pretending they didn't exist. In fact, she was an addict and her whole
life
was a problem. That meant our entire relationship was one big avoidance.

“Okay, fine. You're right. It could be true,” I concede after several minutes pass, hoping this counts as an apology.

I pick up my coffee mug, but put it back down without drinking. I stare at the kid with the big eighties hair and duck tail who's passionately working the pinball machine. I watch the flashing lights, listen to the ping as the ball drops into the gutter. My thoughts bounce back to that last day. I try again to understand what happened.

Mom's in the kitchen attempting to scrape together something to eat. Dylan's “Tangled Up In Blue” crackles on the radio. I'm in my room, digging around the dirty laundry pile for a pair of jeans.

“Did you finish the peanut butter?” Mom shouts to me from the kitchen. “I'm trying to make PB and J, Faith! If you finish something, you gotta tell me.”

I'm about to shout back and tell her there hasn't been any peanut butter for three days, that I threw out rest of the Wonder Bread, which looked like a science experiment, when there's a knock on the apartment door.

I hear Mom's footsteps as she stomps across the kitchen, then the squeak of door hinges. I'm still in my underwear, so I stay in my room, but when I hear a man's voice, I peek out.

“Come on,” he says. “You're coming with me.”

Mom's shoulders are hunched. Her head is down. At ninety pounds, she looks like a kid getting scolded by a teacher.

“I don't want to go,” she tells him.

“You have a debt to pay,” he says in a voice that leaves no room for argument.

“One minute…I…need my purse.”

She's stalling, but why? Does she think she can get away from him? That she can call for help?

“Faith,” she whispers as she passes my room. “I'm…”

But that's all she gets to say. He yanks her to the door, and then they're gone.

Was she trying to tell me something? Where did the Rat Catcher take her? What debt did she have to pay? I never got to ask. That night she was dead on the bathroom floor.

The front door opens with a loud clang. The Arctic blast slaps the memory-induced haze right out of me. I shift my gaze from the pinball player and look at the flier again: Twenty-third and Jefferson.
I might not know who the Rat Catcher is or what debt she owed him, but there's one way to find out if Melinda was telling the truth about my mother.

“I'm going to the clinic,” I tell Jesse.

Jesse looks at me with a blank expression.

“The clinic,” I repeat, pointing at the flier. “I'll go Monday. Whoever's in charge should be able to tell me if my mother was in the clinical trial. And if she was, maybe they can tell me if the symptoms were side effects from the drug. At least then I'll know if Melinda was telling the truth, and maybe I'll find out what happened to my mom.”

***

When I get home an hour and a half later, Aunt T and Sam are hanging out on the couch watching some show about mummies on the History Channel. Aunt T pats the couch and moves over, making room for me. I know how much she wants me to stay and tell her about my day, how much she wants to include me in things and make my life normal. But how can my life be normal? My mom was possibly used as a guinea pig in a clinical trial she never told me about. I just saw her strung-out former junkie friend who got led away by a possible drug dealer who might've once been Mom's dealer. How can I tell Aunt T what I think might've happened in the past when more than anything she wants me to let go and move forward? I smile and thank her for the offer, but tell her I'm tired and withdraw to my room.

Once in my room I pick up my iPod. I jam the earbuds into my ears and crank up the sound of waterfalls and singing birds, hoping the peaceful sounds of nature will still the restless demons pacing inside me.

The singing birds remind me of the white bird. I flop on my bed and stare at the ceiling.

Maybe that bird was Mom's guardian angel. Maybe it did watch over her and then carry her away to the stars, to the heavens, to someplace she believed existed. Mom always taught me there are some things you know, like the laws of nature; for other things, like souls and heaven, you have to have faith. Maybe she gave me my name as a reminder of this, so that whatever happened, my faith would carry me through.

But what kind of faith am I supposed to have? If an albino bird was Mom's guardian angel, then she never had a shot at survival. Albinos stand out in the wild. Forget being cared for and watched over. Her guardian angel would be attacked by predators and ripped to pieces.

Seven

I spend most of Sunday in my room, listening to music and obsessing about all that happened at Melinda's. First thing Monday morning, after a night of tossing and turning, I call the methadone clinic to see if I can get an appointment with whoever's in charge of the clinical trial. I figure it'll be days before someone can see me, that is
if
someone will see me. What if they won't talk to a minor? What if I need some kind of parental consent?

I'm working out a plan, which basically comes down to begging, when a woman answers the phone. I tell her that I'd like to make an appointment to discuss the clinical trial and wait for her to a) laugh, b) hang up, or c) ask to talk to my mother.

“Dr. Wydner's in charge of that,” she says instead. “Hold please.” She pushes whatever button turns on the really bad music, and after a round of put-you-to-sleep piano, she's back. “He can see you at one today.”

“He can? Today? One o'clock?” I don't even both considering the consequences of missing school or the logistics of getting downtown. “I'll be there,” I say and hang up.

***

A few hours later, I'm crossing the school parking lot, ditching the rest of my classes so I can catch a train and make my appointment when I hear someone calling my name. I turn and there's Anj bounding toward me. In her pink fluffy sweater and matching pink hat, she looks like she's been wrapped in cotton candy.

“What're you doing? It's freezing out here. Don't you have class?” she asks when she reaches my side.

“Skipping. What about you?”

“PE, but that's not a class. I told Mr. G it was that time of the month and I had cramps and he excused me. Works every time.” Anj smiles. It's the smile more than anything that lets her pull this kind of crap. Big, bright, radiant, and oh so earnest. “So what's your plan?”

“I'm going to the city,” I say, tapping my foot. I have an eleven o'clock train, and I'm late as it is. Laz cornered me after third period and wanted to know when I was planning on handing in my Hemingway term paper, due sometime last week. I promised I'd get it to him tomorrow and took off before he could protest.

“The city?” Anj bubbles. “Sounds fun. There's something I have to tell you. Mind if I tag along?”

“Well, actually—”

“Great, because Mondays are a total drag. I have three electives in a row. Spanish, German,
and
French.”

I lean against the hood of a red car with a license plate that says GRLTOY and stare at Anj. “Since when are you taking German?”

Her cheeks turn the same color as her sweater, and she looks at me with a sheepish grin. “I started two weeks ago. What can I say? Romance languages look good on applications.”

“But German isn't a romance language,” I say as a boy driving a truck with purple racing stripes peels out of the parking lot. “And anyway, who takes three languages? That's crazy. You're going to get your
bonjour
mixed up with your
buenas dias
and your
buenas dias
mixed up with your
guten tag
. I can just hear it,
Guten jour
…or is it
buenas tag
?” I say, laughing at my joke.

Anj brushes a curl off her face and works me with the angelic smile. “Yeah, well, I'll worry about that if I ever actually speak any of the languages for real. So where are we going?”

“We're not—”

“Never mind.” She grabs my hand. “You'll tell me later. Come on, let's go. I'll drive.”

I check my phone. Ten forty-five. Good chance I'll miss the train even if I leave right now. The next one's not until two. “Fine,” I tell her. “Let's go.”

We head to the back of the parking lot and load into Anj's car, this enormous twenty-year-old Chevy with like 200,000 miles. She calls the car Hazel in honor of her grandma who left it to her when she died. Anj starts the engine and Hazel makes every bad car noise imaginable, sputtering and spewing enough smoke and fumes to increase the planet's temperature a full degree. But the car starts and a few minutes later we're on the West Chester Pike heading into the city.

At some point I'll have to give Anj directions and tell her where we're going, but I have some time before we get to that part because it's at least a twenty-five-minute drive, and Anj immediately starts updating me on her relationship with Duncan.

“He's not the type I usually go for,” she reminds me. “It's the accent. I don't care what he's actually saying. I just like listening to him say it. What about you and Jesse?”

“What about us?”

Anj swerves into the next lane without looking and nearly causes a collision. “He's pretty cute in that grungy I-haven't-taken-a-shower-in-a-week kind of way,” she says, smiling an apology into the rearview mirror at the woman behind us who's wailing on her horn. “Do you have the hots for him? Are you guys hooking up?”

“Anj, give me a break. The kid's been here all of four days. I don't work that fast.”

I turn and look out the window, making it clear that the conversation about my love life, or lack thereof, is officially over.

Anj tries a few more questions, but when I refuse to say more, she drops the subject and starts telling me about the Happy Cow campaign, which I was right about and she is spearheading. She tells me all the campaign gossip, how they're trying to get the school cafeteria to go vegan, and how, of all things, the head of food services didn't even know what vegan meant! Then she starts telling me about something called mechanically separated chicken and pink slime, which makes my stomach turn. With hardly a pause for air, she changes the subject—classes, boys, teachers—whatever pops into her brain.

Twenty minutes later, the old-money, Main Line estates have been replaced by boxy rows of storage units, fields of crisscrossing train tracks, and abandoned warehouses—an urban, industrial gloom untouched by the historical tourist-Mecca of Franklin Square and Independence Hall.

Anj breaks from her monologue to offer a suggestion for our outing. “How about Society Hill? There's this awesome new vintage boutique Tara told me about.”

How can I tell Anj we're not going shopping for retro outfits and having our nails done? We're going to a methadone clinic to talk to someone about my mother. Anj has a dad who works at a marketing firm, a mom who sells real estate, and a little sister who plays on a basketball team. Anj lives in the same house she was born in. Once a year she goes on Club Med vacations with her family to places like Jamaica or Costa Rica. How could I expect her to understand?

“Turn left on Chestnut,” I say instead. “And head to Twenty-third.”

The bronze spire of William Penn gazes down at us from his heavenly position on top of City Hall as Anj drives past the treelined streets of Center City. “I totally suck at parallel parking,” she moans when we reach Twenty-third and the only empty spots are in line with other cars against the curb. After a long and fruitless mission of searching for an easier solution, she gives in to the inevitable, bumping both the car in front of us and the one behind before finally managing to maneuver Hazel into a spot.

“Where to?” she asks, cheerfully cutting the engine.

I look at my hands knotted in my lap. The moment of truth is upon us and I search for a lie. “You can just drop me off and I'll meet you in a few hours,” I say, unable to come up with a fib and instead going for vague.

Anj rolls her eyes toward the roof of the car. “You dragged me out here so I could hang out by myself?”

“I didn't drag you,” I remind her. “You wanted to come.”

Anj ignores this detail and pierces me with a stare. I swear the CIA could use her for counterinsurgency intelligence operations. She could get a terrorist to rat out his own mother with a single look.

“Okay, fine,” I say, buckling to her silent method of interrogation before she pulls out the water board. “I'm going to a methadone clinic, but you don't have to come. You can go shopping or whatever and pick me up later, or I can take the train back.”

Even as I say this, I realize how much I want Anj to come. Not so I can get all sentimental and teary eyed about my mother, but because Anj drags me out of the nightmares that play in my head when I'm alone and keeps me in the world of the living.

“A methadone clinic?” she asks without taking her eyes from my face. “What are you going there for?”

“Some unfinished business about my mom,” I respond, offering just the right amount of information to keep the chemistry of our friendship in balance. Too many details and the relationship erupts in flame, not enough, it fizzles and dies.

For a minute I think Anj is going to break the formula and unbalance the equation with a question. Instead she switches her well-glossed lips to the side and reaches into her purse. “Okay,” she says, handing me a brush. “But you have to comb your hair. You look terrible.”

I do my hair as directed, and Anj announces that before she can go anywhere, she needs something to eat. We find a deli on Twenty-second where she apologizes before ordering a cheese steak sandwich and makes me swear I won't tell Tara.

“Okey dokey,” she says when she's devoured the last bite. “Let's go meet some heroin addicts.”

***

The first thing I notice when we walk into the clinic is the nasal assault of chemical disinfectant, B.O., and cigarettes. The second thing I notice is the uniformed security guard. His presence is ominous and I guess that's the point, to make sure no badly behaved junkies lose their cool and start wielding a knife at anyone.

Anj takes a seat on a folding metal chair, plucks a magazine from the floor, and starts to read, as if sitting in the lobby of a methadone clinic is the most natural thing in the world. I, on the other hand, can't relax. It's been years since I went to a place like this with Mom. The memories are there though, burned into my mind, tattooed into my flesh. Every cell of my body holds a piece of her story. Some things you can't forget.

I drop into the chair next to Anj and watch a scrawny guy with a greasy ponytail and leather vest pace the floor. This is where I come from, I think, noticing his skinny, track-marked arms.

I stare at the wall, seeing nothing, and remember.

I'm ten years old, just home from school, the thrift-store Cinderella backpack I scribbled all over with black sharpie slung over my right shoulder. Mom's in a tank top and shorts, standing at the sink, washing dishes. I notice the row of red bruises following the blue veins on her arms.

“What are those marks on your arm, Ma?” I ask, rolling up my sleeves to inspect my own arms. “Will I get them, too when I'm older?”

Mom whirls around from the sink and grabs my shoulders. “No! You'll never have them. Okay, Faith? Promise. You'll never be like me.”

“Do you have a light?” I hear someone say.

I blink and look up to see a hollow-eyed girl with a gaunt, angular face standing at my side. I realize she's talking to me.

“No,” I murmur, fingering the empty Zippo in my pocket.

She turns and goes to a corner. I watch the dead look in her eyes as she sits on the floor, muttering to herself, and I think maybe the real issue isn't where I come from, but where I'm going. Is it enough to try really hard to be different, to try and do better, or in the end is it just a story of genes, and no matter how hard I try, I was screwed before I was even born?

I tear my mind from these thoughts and glance at Anj, the little piece of normal holding me up like a life raft. I didn't come here to wallow in self-pity. I have a purpose. I get up, cross the peeling linoleum floor, and go to the back of the room where a small corner is sectioned off with glass blocks. I assume this glass cubicle is the check-in.
Hello and welcome! Come lead a happy heroin-free life!

I stand next to a poster of a sunset dangling from a single tack and tap on the window. A young black woman with her hair in cornrows and a name tag that says Veronica pinned to her blue smock raises her eyes from her computer without lifting her head and slides open the window.

I tell Veronica my name and appointment time. Her long, pink fingernails click the keyboard as she types my information.

“Doctor Wydner'll be with you soon,” she says in an accent that makes me think of white sand beaches and clear blue ocean water. “Have a seat.”

I slump into a chair next to Anj and burrow into my hoodie. The guy with the leather vest sidles toward me, aiming to strike up a conversation. I pick up an informational pamphlet from a dusty table and busy myself reading. I'm in no mood for chitchat.

“The Twenty-third Street Methadone Clinic is a public health clinic offering low cost treatment choices to help stop substance abuse. We offer both counseling services and detox programs. We have two medical treatment options: Methadone and RNA 120.”

I skip the part about methadone and read on to RNA 120.

“For patients interested in a new, experimental approach to substance abuse, the Twenty-third Street Methadone Clinic is working with researchers at PluraGen, a leading biopharmaceutical company, to offer a clinical trial to those who meet our eligibility requirements.”

I've just finished reading when Veronica calls my name. She leads me out of the waiting area and down a long, mildew-stained corridor, past a cluttered desk guarded by two tall filing cabinets. A stocky, unsmiling nurse waits by the copying machine. A few others flock around the coffee maker. I trail after Veronica to the far end of the hall where she stops and knocks on a door beside a plaque that says:
Dr. Joseph Wydner, MD, RNA 120 Clinical Trial Administrator.

The first thing I notice about the guy who opens the door is his hair, a do that reminds me of a big fuss in the news a few years back about a political candidate who spent like five hundred dollars on a haircut. This guy's hair is styled and combed meticulously into place and then gelled so carefully that even if a windstorm tore apart the city, I doubt a single one of his hairs would move. Maybe the hair is an attempt to draw attention away from the rest of his face, which is tired and weathered, skin sagging around his cheeks and neck as if he's about to molt.