Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) (3 page)

“
Let’s just say you might as well have
been. OK? I did it...
once
...when I
was really high. And, well, I knew what I was doing. But, whatever,
drugs, you know. I didn’t feel shit for it. It was more the
sensation of the high. Not the sex itself.”

He stops wiping his hair, throws the towel
on the ground.
Presses
me to him. “It might as well have been my first time as well. It
was far from it. But it might as well have been, OK? I’ve never had
‘emotional’ sex. And I may as well have never had it. Because
getting your cock pulled by someone’s junk is so far from what you
and I...
shared
...yesterday, that it was indeed a first for
me.”

“
Th—thank you.”

He wipes the shaved side of my head with
the towel, then the long side. “Never change your hair, Blaze. I
love the bad-girl look, even though I know you’re far from
that.”

Something flutters in my chest. I fall
into his arms and let him hold me. “You know me more than any boy
has ever known me. And I trust you. Completely. Just FYI.”
So don’t break my
heart. Please don’t.

At the kitchen counter: “You working
today?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. No point in letting this
bullshit stop my life. Besides, I think it’ll be good to keep busy.
It was”—he looks up at me, eyes quivering—“gruesome, Blaze.
Gruesome. I think that’s the worst part. Damn. He basically dove to
save Trevor’s life. If it hadn’t been pops, it woulda been Trev
and... Fuck. I can’t imagine it. If Trev had been in the way of
that bullet. God. I wouldn’t be here, Blaze. I’ll be straight with
you. I woulda... I don’t know. That woulda killed me. Losing my
best friend would have killed me.”

I look down at my coffee mug.
Twirl it. And a set of images I
work hard every day to bury, hits me.
Hard...

Back in the day...

Mr. Bernstein found her. “She’s dead,
Blaze.”

“No! NO! NO! Stop holding me back. NO.” The
crying and screaming began at the same time.

He held me back. And I hit him. I hit the
plumpy man, because he wouldn’t let me through. “Blaze, no,
don’t—”

“
Savva, baby, baby, wake up, Savva! Get out
of my way you freaking asshole! Let me go.”

“
Blaze, there’s nothing you can do,
sweetie! She’s dead—”

“STOP SAYING THAT! STOP SAYING IT!”

And then they covered her, the medics,
white blanket, in her apartment. “No, check again. NO! YOU FUCKING
ASSHOLES! DON’T COVER HER UP! SHE’S ALIVE!”

Despite her blueness, and her
lifeless eyes, I told them
this.

I hit him
—I pummeled my fists into Mr. Bernstein’s chest,
kicked his shins. A cop came by, held my arms. “No,” said Mr.
Bernstein. “No, let her go.”

The cop looked at him strangely. “Sir,
please—”

“No! Leave her. I will take care of her.”

Then I stopped hitting him. I just stood
there, feeling like a speck of dust on a spinning LP.

Savannah’s body was carted
out
—a white cloud
floating in mid-air. I think that’s when it hit me. I mean,
really
hit me. That she was gone.
Because I wailed—the keening howl sounding all the way down the
stairs—and I dropped to my knees. No energy.

The rest is flashes of memory. I think my
mind shut down.

An arm—two arms—under my armpits. My legs
somehow getting up. A cigarette butt—half-smoked—in Savva’s corner,
the butt a dark yellow.

The
flash of a camera. Voices.
“Looks like a clear suicide,
sir.
”

Outside, a white van with
Brooklyn
Paper
written on
it.

“
I’ll take care of you,
Blaze.”
I was vaguely
aware of that being Mr. Bernstein’s voice.
“I’ll take care of you. It’s OK.
She’s in a better place now. I’ll take care of you.”

People on the streets, mumbling,
whispering.

And looking at me.

Pointing.

Taking photos.

The next day, I woke up to a chasm in my
heart.

And the wailing began again, plus the
shivering. When I started for the door, to go check if she was
maybe still alive—to check if it wasn’t all just a big damned
mistake!—Mr. Bernstein—who’d slept on my beanbag, tie ruffled up
and yarmulke at an odd angle—was quickly in my way. He shook his
head gravely. “She’s gone, Blaze.”

“
No,” I whispered. And already I could feel
the tears on my cheeks. “No, Mr. Bernstein. No.”

“
Yes.” He nodded slowly, closed his eyes.
“Yes. She’s gone, Blaze. She committed suicide yesterday. Overdose.
She’s gone. There ain’t nothin’ you or I can do about it, honey.
But you’re alive, OK?
You’re
alive. You get that?”

And then I cried again, on his chest.

He made me coffee
—standing where I am now. And I sat where Deck is
sitting now. When Mr. Bernstein gave me the coffee, I sat there
staring at it for a half hour. When it got cold, he poured it out;
poured me another one.

I think somewhere along the line there were
groceries. A sandwich. And then, four days later, a constant
emptiness that’s never left me. But at least Mr. Bernstein could go
home, no longer afraid I’d jump out the window.

Or spike myself up like Savva did.

I almost did. But, again,
Mr. Bernstein saved me—whether
he knows it or not...

Two weeks later, Patryk
Warta—Patryk the Painter, Savva’s
boyfriend since she was sixteen—left for Poland. “Is too rough for
me here, Błażej. I cannot—I cannot—” And he broke down in
tears.

I didn’t.

I was empty of them by that
time.

Without her by my side, life became an
endless void of desert plains, spreading out into the vast
distance, in between buildings, in between flowers and life,
spraying it everywhere with tinges of blackness and
death.

Without her, life became nothing more than
something to get through—a prison sentence bound for an inevitable
end. A song with no bassline.

Until Declan...

Back in the present...

“You survive it. The death of a best friend.
You survive it.”

“
I don’t know if I would. If
Trev—”

Almost angry, almost as if convincing
myself: “You would! You do! Trust—trust me.” I can’t look him in
the eyes. I know he sees straight through me. I stare at my feet;
feel the heat of the coffee mug in my hand.

I look at Savva’s apartment.

She’s dead, Blaze. And you’re alive.

“
Is that where she lived?” Deck asks,
following my eyes. “Your friend who ODed.”

I nod. My eyes will soon be out for the
count. I fight it, but the rush fights back. My glands tighten.
Quickly after, there’s a prickle in my eyes. I hold the mug harder,
firmer. I see the coffee shake in it. If I could, I’d ask him to
veer off the subject. I’d tell him that it’s not because I
don’t
want
to talk
about it, but because I can’t.

“She must’ve been a good friend.”

All I can do is nod. I grit my teeth, but
my jaw wins the shaking battle. I put the coffee down, press my
thumb and index into my eyes.

Declan doesn’t stand, doesn’t hold me. And
I appreciate it, because that wouldn’t make me feel better. It
would just make me feel weaker. And I’m not weak about this. I’ve
survived it, and I’ll continue to survive it. So long as I don’t
keep getting reminded of it.

After a few minutes, feeling more
composed, I say, “In a way, we have her to thank for
our...
relationship
.”

“How so?”

“
Well, the reason I first kissed you
was...
Well, you know
when you first saw my sleeve?” I gesture to my tats. “And you saw
the rose up here and then, well, you looked down at the skull and
the flames and the wolf and you said something like: ‘That musta
been a heavy time in your life,’ or something.”

“Yeah.”

“
Well.” I point to Savva’s apartment. “I
got them shortly after that. Anyway, when you said that, I was
tired and it hit me like a train. And we’d just met and...I
confess...I kinda liked you already because, well, I just did.
Anyway, you said that, and it struck something. And I’d been on my
feet all night, and I was about to break down crying and that
would’ve been weird, especially seeing as I actually wanted to get
your number and everything. So I kissed you.”

“
That’s
why you kissed me?”

I laugh. “Sure.” He waits. “Well,
mostly.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “And?”

“And? That’s it.”

“
It wasn’t my ink, my eyes, my blonde hair?
My muscles, damn it!”

I can’t stop chuckling. “You’re
disappointed?”

He slouches back. “Nah. I don’t care how it
happened. Just that it did.”

Warmness fills my chest. “Me too. Me
too.”

“
What actually happened, Deck? I mean, Trev
said she was high or something—your dad’s...
girlfriend
?”

He tells me. Everything. The woman his
father had been sleeping with—and
slept
with on the very night Declan’s mother was sucking in her
last breaths at the hospital! He tells me about the mistress’s
proclivity for both White Powder and firearms without a permit.
“Before he died, he told me that her habit was ‘nuthin serious.’
Those were his precise words. ‘It ain’t nuthin
serious.’”

I think of Xavier yesterday at the
Swallow
Café
, “powdering his
nose” in the bathroom. Jekyll before he left me, violent Mr. Hyde
on his return. One second wanting to “be” with me, the other,
having my wrist locked in his grip while he dragged me off the
bench and onto the ground.

I don’t tell Deck about this. Now is not
the time. If ever. Xavier is still Savannah’s brother. He always
will be. And he’ll always be the boy who spat in Damian Keegan’s
eye after Damian threw mud on my dress when we were
tweens.

Or the dude who pulled a gat on someone
rougher for me. And basically saved my ass.

My how things change.

Deck’s final statement to me is about his
father’s comments about Karma just before he died
. “You believe in that shit?” he
asks.

A quick uncertainty grabs at me, the fear
of it. The sheer possibility of being punished, in this life, for
things done to others. For mistakes committed when you were simply
too young to know any better. Or is that statement a white lie in
itself? Created by those who once threw mud on girls’ dresses and
then grew up to justify it by saying they were “too young to know
any better.”

“
K
—Karma?” I scratch my forehead. “I don’t know. I mean, I
guess I always think things might come bite me back in the ass.
That’s why I tend to maybe think twice before I do stupid shit to
other people. But who’s to say if the universe isn’t built that
way? I guess I’m more
afraid
of it existing, than actually
believing
in it.”

“Because you’ve done your fair amount of shit
that Karma would have a field day with, right?”

“
I guess. I mean, if it
did
exist, then we’d all be fucked, isn’t it?” I pull
up a stool and sit across from him. “I guess I just don’t think
about it. And when I do, I really hope it
doesn’t
exist.”

I tell him how I was the one who started
Savva on drugs. Es and weed. Then how she moved onto the heavier
stuff herself. “When she moved onto H, her brother sold it to
her.”

“
Damn! I’d hate to be on the receiving end
of
his
Karma.”

I think of Xavier being on the receiving
end of my shattering ceramic mug. “But that’s the thing, isn’t it?
I mean, how far back do you go with it? Was it him? Me? Was it
Savva herself? Was it her parents? If it really is Karma, who cops
it ultimately?”

He shrugs. “Personally, I’m not into that
esoteric shit. But I do think that things end up biting you in the
ass if you give them the opportunity to. It’s not that they
will
, but if you
open the door to them, then they will. Pops opened the door up to
that crazy bitch. I opened the door up to— Well, some things. Since
I met you I been tryin’ to close those doors.
Because...”

I sip my coffee. Wait. “Uh-huh?”

“
Because, Blaze, by whatever grace of god
or twist of fate you landed in my lap, I sure as fuck ain’t gonna
let anything take that away from me. And I just keep hoping it
isn’t the universe playing a sick joke on me, you know. Sort of
like:
Oh, you
thought you could have her? Ha ha ha. Just kidding! You shoulda
thoughta that before you
— Something like that?”

“Before you what, Deck?”

“
Before I...did some of the
stupid-ass
shit I did when I was
younger.”