When I walked into Mr. Clark’s room after lunch he wasn’t in there. The folder from class was sitting on his desk open to Luke’s story. The one he had decided not to read. I looked around; to make sure he wasn’t in the room. He wasn’t. My heart was pounding; I had been doing a lot of deceiving lately. Did I want to try my hand in sneaking around too? Fuck it.
I picked it up.
For as long as I’ve been alive my sister has been an addict. When I was little she was addicted to attention. She was the middle child so she was always screaming for it. With my big brother being the model son and I being the baby she had to basically beg to be noticed. When she started to develop she found a way to quench her attention addiction through another one. She got more than her needed dose of addiction through boys and sex. I can’t remember her having one solid boyfriend. It was always a different boy always a different partner.
She wasn’t being very safe though. She got pregnant at 16, she stopped having sex but her attention addiction was still around. She got more than enough of it with her pregnancy. Everyone fused over her. She basked in it. Although she loved being pregnant she didn’t love the idea of being a mom. She gave the child up for adoption and once the attention stopped she had to find something else to fill her time. She found herself with boys again, except these boys were different. These boys were older, dangerous, and…addicts too. Except these boys weren’t addicted to attention or sex, not they were addicted to other things and it didn’t take long for my sister to fall in with them.
Eventually the boys went away but they left their mark on her in the form of heroine and alcohol. My sister fell hard. It got to the point where I didn’t even recognize my sister anymore. With my brother gone she was all I had left. It was painful watching her destroy herself like that. Have you ever seen an addict at their worst? It’s a horrible thing.
I’m not very religious but I found myself wondering there was a higher power that could maybe help my sister through this. Help her beat this, so I used to pray to him. Whoever he was…and he didn’t really help. She only got worse and worse and then there was the day she OD’d. Thankfully mom came home early and found her there on the floor vomiting and ceasing up.
I had to do something. Rehab cost money, and that was money we didn’t have. Plus my mother was determined to get me into collage. I was good at things too. I was good at basketball. So I worked harder at it. I thought that maybe if I got a scholarship for it we could use the money we weren’t using for my sister’s treatment. Use it to save her life. I got my scholarship but then there was the problem of actually getting my sister to go. She refused, she insisted that she was fine, she was okay.
She was anything but.
She was skinny, she was pale, she was sick.
So I stopped playing basketball despite my offers to go pro. I needed to make money to help my sister. I thought that maybe if I used the money I made to help her through. I was tired of her overdosing. I hated seeing her like this. I would make money and only give her want she needed but not too much. I would make her reliant on me, and then I would cut her off and send her to rehab. That was what I needed to do, but I just needed a way to make the money.
My friend gave me an idea, introduced me to an opportunity. It was dangerous but I was willing to do anything to save my sister. I would fight. No not box like Mohammad Ali, or Rocky balboa, I would fight. I would street fight for money. The dirty kind, the dangerous kind, the kind that got people killed and arrested. I would risk my life and my health on a daily basis to save my sister’s.
I would’ve done anything to save my sister.
“Did you like it?” I jumped at the sound of Lyle’s voice. He was watching me from the door way.
“Why didn’t you read us this one? I would’ve done my assignment on this one if you had read it.” He shrugged and moved towards his desk.
“I just didn’t want to.” He mumbled; I knew there was more to it than that. I looked down at the story and it dawned on me.
“This one is about you…isn’t it?”
“Riley drop it okay.” I froze at the husky and angry under tone in his voice.
“What did you mean by what you said last night? About the lines?”
“This.” He glared at me, my heart dropped. “I mean this,” he growled snatching the paper out of my hand. “You don’t need to know everything about me and I don’t need to know everything about you. I’m your teacher Riley.” The lump in my throat grew three times and the tears started to sting behind my eyes. My phone vibrated and I pulled it out quickly to distract myself from this moment. I didn’t want to cry but I could feel it coming. If there was one thing I could count on Eli for, it was good timing. He had texted me to tell me that he was right outside, he came to pick me up from school.
“I got to go.” I thought I could hide the fact that I was about to cry but my voice betrayed me. His head popped up and looked at me with such sadness and regret. It was hard to predict what Lyle was going to do next. First he was yelling at me and next he was saying sorry. I couldn’t take him jerking me around anymore.
“Riley-” I rushed for the door but he jumped up to stop me. He got to the door before and blocked my only way to escape. “I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“Just get out of my way,”
“Where are you going? You’re here for two more periods.”
“My brother is waiting for me in the parking lot.” He cringed at the mention of Eli.
“Look I’ve been having a shitty day and I kind of took it out on you, I didn’t mean any of that.” I glared at him.
“I’m tired of you always taking your frustration out on me!”
“I know I’m sorry.” He frowned. He reached up and rubbed my tear away from my cheek. I jerked away from him.
“You’re my teacher remember.” I glared, he cringed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. When I said we needed to redraw some lines I just meant that maybe I shouldn’t be coming over to your house and stuff like that.” He looked down at his feet sheepishly.
“Whatever.” I grumbled trying to push past him.
“No, look let me make it up to you. Come over to my house after work today and let me teach you how to bake brownies. No fighting, no screaming, and no drama I promise.” He looked at me with such a pleading face I couldn’t look at him and say no. I huffed.
“Fine, I get off at 6.” He smiled and moved away from the door.
“See you then.”
The whole time at work butterflies played around in my stomach as I thought about my second chance with Lyle. I couldn’t focus; I was all over the place. I really couldn’t do anything right or get anything done and it got to the point to where Mr. Carmichael told me to go home and get my shit together. I was okay with that. I walked down to Mr. Clark’s house with a stupid ass grin on my face. I couldn’t help it, I was so excited. In fact I was so excited I didn’t pay much mind or attention to the extra car parked on the side of his house or who it belonged to.
I walked up the back steps and walked through the back door without a care in the world. I froze when I saw it. My heart stopped and my body froze. I could feel the tears prickle at the back of my eyes. Lyle pulled his lips away from Carla’s and looked at me with shock and embarrassment coated in his eyes. I looked over at Carla to see her small smirk as she played with her fingers. Lyle stood up quickly, he was saying something to me but I couldn’t hear anything. The blood rushing in my ears was too loud.
“I have to go.” I mumbled and rushed out of that house and tried to get away from that place as fast as possible. I’m done.
I’m tired of his jerking me around, I’m done! I’m done! I’m fucking done!
When I got home my face was tear stained and pale. Eli took me into his arms and held me close. I was tired of this…of all of this. I’m done. Whenever anything went wrong I could count of Eli being there for me. My Eli.
“Runaway with me.” He whispered.
“Okay.”