Placebo Junkies (13 page)

Step One

You will start by selling plasma. Everyone does. It's easy money and the standards are low.

Step Two

Because that was easy, you will rationalize the giving away of small samples of potential yous. If you are male, this means sperm. (Why not get paid for what you're already tossing off, er, away?) If you're young and female, this means egg donation, but only if you can get through the screening process. (Are you pretty-pretty-pretty enough? Perhaps a gymnast or a cellist? And, by the way, what are your SAT scores?)

Step Three

Because the slope is slippery and the pay is good, you will next allow something other than your skin to be pierced and probed. It will feel uncomfortable and you will not like it.

Step Four

Because you did not like it, you will decide to take pills for profit instead. Especially when the odds are good that you'll be given a harmless placebo anyway.

Step Five

You will get a sugar pill and therefore feel nothing at all except a distinct sense of superiority over the poor working stiff you used to be before you discovered the world of drug trials.

Step Six

You will take more pills. Some of them will work as expected. Some of them will not. Some will do nothing at all. Some will do far too much.

Step Seven

Because some of the pills work as expected, and also because some work as not expected, you will no longer be so uncomfortable when strangers in lab coats stick things down your throat or up your ass. The money is good, and you feel good. Most of the time, anyway.

Step Eight

Because you are now letting strangers stick things down your throat and up your ass on a routine basis, you take more pills, and then more, and then more. You begin to hope that you do not get a placebo, because those do fuck-all, and that is now a problem.

Step Nine

Because you are taking many, many pills, most of which do
something,
holding down a regular job has become impossible. This does not bother you, as even the idea of a regular job has now become intolerable. Side effects from pills are usually temporary. Side effects from real life are usually not. Also, you like to be in control. You're your own boss now, you tell yourself.

Step Ten

Because you make a full-time living from the steady sublet of your veins/skin/bones/bowels, things that once seemed unbearable are now routine. You hardly even notice the pain anymore, and you've begun to feel pleasantly indestructible. You are definitely in control.

Step Eleven

Because you are indestructible and in control, and also because the money is very good, you will start to see every day as another chance to play chicken with the universe. It's a powerful feeling, and you will usually win.

Step Twelve

Until you do not.

Rest In Pieces, Charlotte.

It's a sign of just how broken up we are about Charlotte that Jameson and I wait another full day before we go through her stuff.

Jameson brought her ratty purse home from the hospital, so he gets first dibs on the wallet. He cradles it in his hands for a minute, then unsnaps it and opens it slowly, all reverent like it's a ceremony.

We are solemn and respectful thieves.

He extracts a thick stack of money, and I let out a low whistle. “That's a lot of cash.”

Jameson reaches into the purse and pulls out an envelope filled with even more; I see fifties and hundreds as he fans through the bills. This isn't quick-trip-to-the-ATM kind of cash. This isn't a handful of crumpled ones and fives. This is serious money—one hell of a payday or ten. I can't believe Charlotte would even think about loaning any of it to Scratch, but neither can I think of any other reason she'd be walking around with so much cash. It'd be just one more in a string of poor choices; she'd be the first to tell you she had a long history of bad judgment when it came to guys.

Jameson turns pink and shifts around, looking a lot less reverent than he did a minute ago. He splits off a stack of bills—a very small stack—and hands it to me. He tries to stuff the rest into his own pockets, but there's too much. He finally gives up, his face dark red by now, and puts the money back into the envelope, which he slips into his jacket.

I count what he gave me. Two hundred bucks. I'm guessing he kept at least ten times that for himself. I start to object, but he cuts me off. “We were working on something together. She owed me this much and more.”

Well, isn't that interesting.
Now that Charlotte's not around to set the record straight, she suddenly seems to have owed money to all sorts of people.

Jameson's almost certainly lying, but what can I do about it? This is technically his apartment, after all, and I haven't paid him my portion of this month's rent. He hasn't said anything about it yet, but we both know a conversation is overdue.

Now that I think about it, I don't remember paying him the rent last month, either. That doesn't necessarily mean I
didn't
pay him. I forget a lot of things. Still, it's my turn to flush red, heat creeping up my cheeks as it occurs to me that Jameson may be lying about Charlotte owing him money only because he's too nice to point out that
I'm
actually the one who owes him a shitload of cash.

Either way, it stings a little that he's lying to me. That he can't just come right out and say what's on his mind, especially on a day like this. That we can't just put it all out there and acknowledge that one of us is screwing over the other. I shouldn't be surprised, though. Guinea pigs aren't exactly play-by-the-rules sorts of people.

We do whatever it takes to survive, up to—and including—stealing from our friends.

The thought comes full circle, then slams into me like a fist. A large sum of cash disappears from my backpack one week. A large sum of cash appears in Charlotte's purse the next. Coincidence?

I think back to the way she begged me to take her place in the study that day.
Please, Audie? My head is seriously killing me….She knew my schedule, knew exactly where I'd be. She could have been watching me, waiting for her chance to pounce, to steal the money I'd been working so hard to save….

No. It's a stupid idea. I mean, we freaking lived together. She could've just taken the money while I slept, or while I was in the shower. There'd be no reason to stalk me around the lab on the off chance that I might pass out in the alley.

It was a ridiculous thought, and I feel like an asshole for even considering the possibility that Charlotte would rob me. Charlotte was my friend. She'd never do that to me.

I wouldn't put it past Jameson, on the other hand. Between his little pharmaceutical resale business and the way he just pocketed most of Charlotte's cash, he doesn't even try to disguise his…entrepreneurial interests. I know for a fact that just last week he resold a bottle of my leftover pills to some poor bastard for eighty bucks. He paid me five.

Did I pay him rent? I must have….

Jameson pokes around the remaining contents of the purse briefly, then pushes it over to me without taking anything else. He looks away while I pick through the tampons and ChapStick and crumpled fast-food receipts. The only thing even remotely worth keeping is a leather appointment book. It's nice. Refillable. It's something for a person with a real life, someone with things worth keeping organized. I keep the book and the wallet, and shove the purse away. I'm not a purse-carrying kind of girl, and besides, it would make me too goddamn sad to look at it and think of Charlotte every day.

He must realize that he's being a greedy shit, because Jameson tells me to go ahead and keep whatever I want from her room. “I'll go in there and clean out whatever you don't want some other time,” he says. “I can't deal with it right now.”

And then that's it. It's done.

This is how it works for people like us. No reading of the will. No last testament, except what you have crumpled in your pockets. Leave enough behind and you can at least rest in peace knowing the scavengers are singing your praises.
Peace be with you and your up-for-grabs stash.
Otherwise, it's like you never even existed.

Jameson's skewed division aside, there's no shame in taking what we need from Charlotte. It's the universal code of the slightly less unlucky, like a Civil War soldier taking the boots off a gutshot comrade. An unbegrudged matter of practicality. I fully expect the vultures to descend when I die. Let 'em pick my bones clean—less of me to rot in the ground.

Jameson stands up and wipes his hands on his pants, like the whole process has made him feel dirty. He's avoiding eye contact. “I'm gonna go get some beer and pizza. Dinner's on me tonight.”

I nod, still not sure whether I have a right to be pissed or whether I should feel grateful, and he takes off fast, his pockets heavy with thousands of dollars of our dead friend's money.

Once he's gone, I go into Charlotte's room, glad for the chance to be alone there. It's a lot like mine, meaning there's nothing in there but dirty clothes, more tampons, and a wheezing hair dryer that probably won't survive the month. A handful of change. A lighter and a cheap alarm clock, mismatched earrings all missing the backings. A crusty tube of mascara and four black eyeliner pencils. This is all that's left of her. A bunch of useless crap that could belong to anybody. It's depressing as hell, really.

But even with so small a presence in the room, this is still all I have left of Charlotte, so I take my time. I touch all the surfaces. I breathe in the air. This was my friend. This is my goodbye.

There are no pictures on the walls. No mementos. There's fuck-all for tchotchkes or knickknacks. Something about the guinea pig life, all that gambling with your mortality, makes a person unsentimental, I think. Like it's hard to appreciate the value of any object, any
thing,
if you've already started selling off your own flesh to the highest bidder. Because what's more valuable than that?

We are not yearbook people. We have no trophies or stuffed animals held on to from childhood. We don't display our pasts in frames.

I crawl under the covers of her bed and then open up her wallet. No pictures there, either—not so much as a single credit, debit, or gift card.
Damn.
Just her driver's license and a punch card from the falafel place down the street. One more stamp and the next combo meal's free. A real golden fucking ticket.

“Thanks a lot,” I say out loud. But I have a smile on my face. The girl did love a good falafel. How's that for an epitaph?

It's when I crack open the appointment book that the cash starts to make more sense. I let out a whistle, and the sense of relief I feel takes me by surprise.

Charlotte didn't need to rob me. She was a busy, busy girl. A genuine test-tube entrepreneur. She'd been double-booked, triple-booked in studies every single day for months. How did I not know she was testing so much? And why did she wait so long to bring me in on her plan?

I'm going through the last week—the week before she died—line by line when I notice the extra appointments. In addition to the studies we did together, there are several entries I don't recognize. I assume they were follow-ups for long-term studies she started before we partnered up, but I can't be positive, because she tended to use a bizarre kind of shorthand, with scrawled words paired with doodles and codes, only some of which I can figure out. The only thing I can be sure of is that she was far busier than I realized.

Why so much? Testing like this is just asking to die. Anyone could see it, even someone like Charlotte, who was convinced she'd live forever.

“What were you doing, Charlotte?” I ask her room.

I understand need. I understand hunger. I totally get the desire to make enough money to go a little wild, and then enough on top of that to feel safe, and maybe even a little more on top of that just because. But the pace Charlotte had been keeping for what I now realize was
months
was completely insane. Dumping all those chemicals into your body takes a toll. And then there's the blood—so many vials drained from her in the name of somebody else's science.

Why would she let herself get sucked dry like this?

I shiver a little under her quilt. Chemicals in, blood out. Poison in, life force out. Day after day. Over and over. I feel like I'm looking at a scheduled suicide. Death by testing.

“Why?” I ask her room again, but I don't expect any answers. We're an unsentimental bunch, remember? When we pack up and leave a place, we're gone for good. What little she left behind won't tell any tales.

I know there's nothing worth keeping, but I crawl out of Charlotte's bed and poke through her dresser just to be sure. Sweaters and jeans in the bottom drawer. A few shirts in the middle. One top drawer full of socks and underwear, and the other full of drugs. It's a pill graveyard, filled to the brim with dozens and dozens of different medications—Jameson must not have known about them, or else he wouldn't have been so quick to leave me the contents of the room. Half the bottles are uncapped, and tablets and capsules rattle around loose as I yank hard, then harder, to get the stiff drawer to open further. I yank too hard and the entire drawer comes flying out in my hand, spilling pills all over the carpet.

Damn it.
I get down on my hands and knees to clean up the mess.

It's doing this, picking up what I spilled, that gives me the idea. Crouched down on the floor like that, my hands full of the half-empty bottles and random, mismatched pills, any one of which could have been the thing that killed her,
I feel like Charlotte is sending me a message. Giving me a gift.

I know I'm being morbid and ridiculous as hell, but it's just the way I feel. Charlotte was my friend, and this idea, this
plan,
is coming from her. It sounds like woo-woo, poltergeist-y bullshit, but I know what I know. This is Charlotte giving me rent. This is Charlotte giving me a chance at the castle at the end of the world. This is Charlotte finally approving of Dylan.

Jameson may have snagged Charlotte's cash, but I can earn that and a whole lot more if I'm smart about it. Smart enough not to die, I mean.

I walk over to her bed and pick up her driver's license. It worked once before, and it'll work again. I open the appointment book to today's date. It's too late now, but starting tomorrow I will be a very busy girl. A test-tube entrepreneur.

I'm doubling down on my doubling down. I'll go to my appointments
and hers
. Not for months and months, like Charlotte did, obviously. This is a short-term solution—I'll do it just until I have enough for Patagonia. All the income, none of the dying. And if they catch me and kick me out, so be it. This is my grand finale here, anyway. My exit plan. My golden parachute.

Charlotte was right about one thing—it's time to move on. She just took things too far. I'll do it the right way. Just far enough.

I feel good about this. Happy and hope-y. It'll be a cinch stepping into Charlotte's place. Tomorrow, after I'm done being me, I will be her.

Except, not dead.