Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) (8 page)

“
I can’t tell you why I dropped. I’d love
to tell you why, but I can’t. Mamah loves me. She took care of me.
So, it’s not a question I can answer. I also can’t tell you why I
got Savva into it. Although I can guess why she herself accepted.
That one’s easy. Or is it?” He sits next to me. “I mean, we assume,
don’t we? We
assume
it’s the
broken family. But is it really?

“
So, we were one big happy tripping family.
E became A and
then
speed—meth. I drew the line at C. I mean, I did it a few times, but
it grabbed me—
hard
.
Understand? It made my skin crawl when I didn’t get it. So I forced
myself to stop when it was still early.

“
Savva?” I look
back at her building. “She never did stop
it.

“
By this time, Mamah had already left back
for Poland. Money was tight, and you know A is cheap as sin, so it
didn’t cost nuthin to keep the trips going. Weed also costs jack,
so—right here on this rooftop—we smoked it up a storm. Sometimes on
that one.” I point to her building. “She’d score me some E every
now and then. She had a day-job as a PA in the city, so she made
her cut of money. I was trying to make it as a DJ. It’s always been
my dream, and I couldn’t imagine getting stuck in a
day-job.

“
Tolek
—the dude who came over to
Slambam
on Wednesday?” Deck nods. “Well, he and I dated
awhile. And, well, he gave me a lot of E. I never thought twice
about it. I just figured guys buy girls things. And, in our world,
well, we don’t go to restaurants, we drop, right?”

“
Yeah.” He looks into the distance, over
the sprawling city, as if I’ve spoken the truth of life
itself.

“So I never thought anything about it.

“Xavier, her brother, he was dealing already
by this time. Got himself a piece. So, Savva wanted to do H. Long
story short, he gave it to her. I mean, you’ve heard of
Krokodil?”

He shakes his head.

“
Well, it’s this crazy drug they make in
Russia that looks like H and has similar effects to H, but will
actually
eat
you inside out
after
taking it! Anyway, Xavier justifies that it was better that she got
her shit from a thoroughbred dealer—which he is—”

“
Yeah, Randy mentioned it at
House Market
that Xavier’s the bees knees of
dealers. Only the good shit.”

“
Right, well, he got the H for her. She was
hooked instantly. I mean
instantly
. A year later, she killed herself. Speedball concoction.
It wasn’t a mistake. I mean, she actually knowingly took her own
life. She left a note and all, saying sorry.”

Finally the tears prick my eyes, but they
don’t feel out of control. They feel like the natural progression
of the body after talking about something like this. Savva’s face,
in my mind, is distant. And she
is
smiling.

But, this time, I think she’s smiling because
I told someone. Someone I think she would like.

Declan puts an
arm around my shoulder, and what he says only
makes me love him more. Because, again, he doesn’t sympathize or
treat me like a baby or any of that shit. He just states the
truth:

“Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

And that just makes me laugh. A
lot.

He tells me about his pops, how they got
into a physical argument just before Deck left home. The reason for
it being that Raymond Cox had been screwing Catalina—his eventual
murderess—the very night Declan’s mother was dying in the hospital.
He tells me how Trev happened to come by just in time, and if he
hadn’t, Deck would’ve maybe not stopped hitting his dad.

Catalina pulled out her famed Beretta that
night, had it aimed at Declan’s head. “But she wasn’t so far gone
yet in those days
, I
believe. Pops stopped her. Told her she was fucking crazy for
pulling a gun out on his son, and she actually listened to him back
them. Almost four years ago. On Thursday, he said the same shit
and, well, it didn’t work this time.” He stops talking for a
second. He looks away, and I see the back of his hand go to his
eyes. Then he shrugs. “Ain’t nuthin we can do about that shit,
Blaze. It happened. We just gotta move on.”

“You know, you’re the first person who never
tried to make me feel better about it all. I mean, who never told
me not to blame myself or tell me to forget it or not to cry about
it or whatever.”

“
What’s the point? It happened. It’s sad.
Fucking sad. But we move on. We wake up. The sun shines, or it
doesn’t, but we
do
move on. If
you wanna regret it, go ahead. If you wanna cry about it, do it. If
you wanna blame yourself, blame yourself if you feel it’s right. I
don’t think there’s any point in analyzing our reactions to just
absolute
fuck-ups
like a
friend’s suicide or a father’s death or, even harder for me, a
mother’s death. Now
that
was hard.
Pops? It’s sad. It’s tragic. But mom...” He lifts his sweater
sleeve and looks at the
Priscilla
tat on his arm, points at it. “
That
one stung. And? What should I do about it?
Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I think about her. Blaze, I won’t lie
to you, sometimes I even cry about her. It was horrible the way she
died. Pops was quick and sudden. Mom, well, she suffered; it ate
her away; and it makes me sad. And I let myself be sad. I welcome
it. Because if I wasn’t despondent about it, then I wouldn’t be
human. I guess that’s the point. We’re human. So, you gave your
friend drugs. And, well,
she
took them. So what? Who’s fault is it? Yours? Hers? The
dealer’s?

“
It ain’t nobody’s ‘fault,’ Blaze. It’s
just...
life
. And what
you wanna do? Go around establishing who’s to blame for a tragic
and horrible event? You’re gonna die one day. I’m gonna die one
day. We got a limited number of days on this earth. And what’s the
point in spending them figuring out if you’re to blame or someone
else is to blame or, my favorite, if some ethereal
god
is to blame. So, you made
mistakes. She made mistakes. A great tragedy was suffered.
Nothing’s gonna change that. And whatever you feel about it ain’t
gonna bring her back. So, go ahead and blame yourself, or not.
Point is, just go ahead and experience the
human
emotions associated with that event. Because
that’s what they are: Human emotions. There ain’t no explaining
them. Personally, I think that’s what makes us better than the
apes. That we can
feel
. So you
wanna say I should stop feeling sad for my mother’s
death?

“
Fuck that
! That’s the day I’ll consider myself deader than
dead, and dumber than an animal. Because if I don’t feel the
melancholy of her passing, I think I will have lost the last
vestige of what it is that makes me human. And I know I’m also a
hypocrite for saying this shit. Because I
know
why I drop. Or, should I say,
dropped
. Past tense. I mean, I’m not like you, Blaze. I
dropped because it made me forget. Plain and simple. And I know I’m
being hypocritical. It doesn’t change the facts. It’s not right
that I dropped to chill out. Would I have dropped after pops was
killed if I hadn’t known you? That’s one of those imponderables,
because I
do
know you. So
I can never answer that for real. I’ll never know. And I’m just
glad I found you.

“
I guess the point is: You gotta be tough
to survive. You gotta be made of
steel
to know it’s OK to feel sadness, and then go ahead and feel
that sadness for as long as it takes. I wasn’t that strong when my
mom died. Maybe now, mourning my pops’s death, maybe I’ll be
subconsciously mourning my mom’s death as well. Because I never did
that. I was too high as a motherfucker to really feel her passing.
But now, I mean, with you being there, I actually
felt...
OK
...about her
going. It’s almost like the drugs were putting up a wall preventing
me from just going
through
those
natural emotions that people are meant to go through. Know what I
mean? I’m sorry. I’m talking my ass off here.”

My mouth is agape with wonderment.

“Blaze?”

I close my mouth. “You’ve just answered
every question I’ve ever had about...damn...
everything
!” I hear screeching tires.

“
I did? I was just thinking out loud.” A
door slams.

I love you, Declan Cox.
I grab his hand and squeeze it;
rest my head on his shoulder. We sit like that for what feels like
forever.

Only it isn’t forever. Because everything
that starts, must end.
..

And the end of this moment starts
with the sound of a smashing
window.

And ends with the
unmistakable
whoomf
of an incipient fire.

Declan Cox

Each sound in itself was not
that threatening. But, put
together, they filled me with a sinking coolness that made me grip
Blaze’s waist like she was about to fall off the rooftop’s low
wall.

And then we ran.

The sounds were these:

One. Screeching tires. Two. A door slam.

Three. A smashed window. Four. “DECLAN,
I’M GONNA GET YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”

I know that voice.
And that Brooklyn
Italian accent...

F
ive: Screeching tires again, followed by rapidly
disappearing laughter and catcalls—like old-time cowboys and
Indians firing guns ahead of a backdrop of cacti and a setting
sun.

And, finally, six: The sound that brought
about the most bone-crunching dread of all: That
whoosh
and
KABOOM
of a hungry fire.

Below us
.

I didn’t think. I grabbed Blaze, opened
the roof door, and pushed her in. She protested, a little, but my
hands were too strong. I was working on impulse. Instinct.
Save her no matter
what, Deck. Because Dino Moretti came for
you
, son. And if she dies because of you, then you’re one sick
motherfucker
.

I was amazed at the lack of flames in the
building. At this stage, the worst was rushing through my
mind:
An
entire building on fire. The Bronx in the nineties. The Latin Kings
Gang
. Everything. But
the environment didn’t match my black thoughts.

Nonetheless, we still ran.

Until Blaze stopped. “My gear. I need my
gear!”

Her hand’s in mine. I’m three steps down
from her. She’s tugging away, trying to go to her door. “Blaze.
No!”

“
Deck, I must! Without it... It’s all I
have!” Her eyes tear up. And she says something that breaks my
heart: Her head sinks to her palms, and she mumbles, “My books. All
my books.”

I stride up two steps, grab her shoulders:
“Blaze,
please
,
baby.
Please
. I have
some money. I can replace all that shit for you. Your gear, at
least. But...
please
...baby.
We need to get out of here.”

That’s when I feel the heat
rising.

Shouts fill the stairwell. A male voice:
“LET’S GO, LET’S GO!!! GET THE FUCK OUT—”
Thump thump karash!
“OW! FUCK!” He must’ve
fallen...

Sirens in the distance.
Oh, thank
god.

Blaze: “OK, let’s go. Forget the
gear.”

We
take the stairs two and three at a time, Blaze’s sweating
hand constantly in mine.
I’m never letting you go. Ever.

On the third floor, seven floors below
Blaze’s loft, we finally see the flames, licking the walls. And we
feel them.

It’s not as bad as I thought. One
apartment, it seems. Red tongues slide from underneath the door.
Yellow-dressed firefighters are here already. “Sir, ma’am—this
way!”

Blaze takes the firefighter’s hand, and
lets go of mine. But it’s OK, because she’s leaving mine for
someone safer. Even in
this moment of awe—staring at a firefighter with an axe by
the door—I ponder this philosophical conundrum.

DECLAN, I’M GONNA GET YOU, YOU
MOTHERFUCKER!

Someone safer...

Somehow, I always knew that Dino Moretti
would come after me again one day.
Especially after Clarissa’s lecture to me
at
Tom’s
restaurant
about how Gina was “getting worse.” I never knew what my reaction
would be when he did. Now I know:
Do what you will to me. But lay one hand
on Blaze, and I’ll feed your own nuts to you while you’re still
alive.