Cracked Coffins #1 | SAMPLE |

Chapter Two - Sample

I gape at him. But knowing that he's not one to lie to me, I sigh and plunk down in my chair. Was I really that messed up? I suppose what Charlie is saying makes sense. If the house had been locked, the alarm would have been blaring if a stranger broke in to help me through an overdose and put me in bed. Who would do something like that anyway? Was I merely so paranoid about that black car that I was only half paying attention when I tried to open the door?

Rubbing my hands over my face and groaning, I say, "Sorry, Charlie. I didn't mean to wake you up." With the blood I saw in the toilet bowl, I must have been puking for quite a while.

He gives me a forgiving smile. "It's okay. Are you still sick?"

I almost tell him that I overdosed, but if I did, why do I feel okay? Surely I should have more than a pounding headache and a shaky stomach if I had. Besides, how would I have gotten myself inside? I'd be dead in the shed right now. Maybe I was so high—so close to overdosing and delirious—that I couldn't tell the difference between my dreams and reality. Or, could have there been something else in my heroin?

"I'm okay," I mumble, offering Charlie an apologetic look. The reality of my actions makes me stare at my lap. I should have known better than to let him see me high like that, especially knowing how he found his own parents overdosed when he was six. "I'm sorry I came inside like that."

"Hey," he says, making me lift my head. "Happy birthday."

Samantha grins from beside him. "Sí, happy birthday, Mari."

My smile quivers. "Thanks," I whisper.

* * *

Stepping off the bus at the North End Mall, I unwrap the plastic from the new pack of cigarettes Pam gave me for my birthday so I wouldn't steal hers. After discarding it in the bin beside the entrance, I wait for my best friends on a metal bench. Opening the fresh pack, I flip three of the cigarettes over and decide I'll celebrate today by smoking the other seventeen before midnight. Plucking out the first, I place it between my chapped lips and light it, the first inhale that hits my dry throat making my muscles relax.

The cigarettes are more fitting than the unoffered alternative. At least seventeen cigarettes do a better job at representing me and how I feel about today than seventeen candles stuck in bright icing would.

I rake my thin fingers through my hair, strands singeing on the end of my cigarette. Shoppers pass through the door with a low hum.

A chill rolls down my back, something changing in the air. I look around, trying to shake the feeling of being watched. When I don't see my friends and nobody else sticks out, I blame the paranoia on recent events.

Ember hitting the filter, I crush it against a childhood scar from my mother's cigarette before flicking the squashed butt into the bushes and lighting another.

I burn through two more cigarettes while I wait and am about to pull out my fifth cigarette when familiar voices yank me from my tobacco-induced fog.

"Marianna!" my friends squeal while hastening toward me.

My head hammers when I stand, and I almost lose my footing. I jam the cigarette pack into my pocket and brace myself as Daina throws her arms around me.

"Happy birthday!" Daina squeals, her hug more suffocating than the stench I've wrapped myself in.

Jenna and Camille meander up behind her with glimmering eyes and wide smiles. "Happy birthday, Marianna," they take turns saying before we slip inside the mall.

They seem more excited than I, their loud banter carrying above the hum of shoppers as we traverse the packed mall to the food court, but it doesn't quite reach my ears.