CHAPTER EIGHT

Seventeen Years Ago

Patient Number 0022

Jett reached into his pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes, attempting to tap one into his hand before realizing the pack was empty. “Mother fuck .”

Some dude had dropped the almost-full pack last night coming out of a bar, and Jett had been just a few steps behind him. He’d scooped it up, and the guy had been none the wiser.

A lucky son of a bitch. That was him.

Something rose in his chest that might have been laughter, except that most times, he had a hard time telling a laugh from a scream. He swallowed whatever it was down, not trusting his body to know the difference.

He’d seen an old homeless woman shrieking with laughter at a bus stop a few months before. People around her had looked terrified, giving her a wide berth as they walked by on the sidewalk. After a few minutes, her laughter had morphed into sobs and then wails, even though a smile still stretched across her cracked lips. Jett had watched her, feeling nothing except a vague understanding.

Eventually the woman had fallen asleep—or into a drug-induced stupor—and slunk to the ground in a heap. Jett had searched her pockets and come away with three crumpled dollars and some change. It wasn’t enough to buy any dope, so he’d taken it to the McDonald’s up the block. All the money would buy him was a hash brown that he wolfed down in two bites before opening the paper pack and licking the grease off the inside.

But now he had fifty bucks in his pocket from sitting on a velvet sofa and answering questions about his shitty life.

Physical or sexual?

Jett tripped on the curb, almost falling but catching himself. Something hot and acidic shot through his limbs, making them feel both energized and singed. He shuddered and stuck both hands in his pockets and then removed them almost as quickly. Maybe he’d call that interviewer dude and tell him he’d changed his mind. He didn’t want that interview aired. But in any case, he’d answered the guy’s questions and gotten paid for it. He needed some smack, and he had the money to buy it. A few droplets of relief cooled the inner burn. He could practically taste the illegal mix of chemicals that he’d snort or shoot the minute he had them in hand.

“Hey, Jett.”

He turned to see a prostitute named Dawn, wearing a silver sequined dress that barely covered her crotch, wobbling toward him on her ridiculously high heels. “Wanna party?”

“No.” He had no interest in what Dawn was offering, and he didn’t have time for her bullshit either. He’d smoked with her a couple of times, and she’d gone on and on about how she got left some money from a relative and then had it stolen from her. She never stopped talking about that. She was like a broken record that just kept replaying the same fucked-up song over and over. It was boring as shit and gave him a headache.

What he wanted to tell her was that it didn’t matter that someone had stolen her money. If that someone hadn’t, she would have lost it anyway. People like them didn’t know how to keep good things. That money never had a chance in hell of saving her or changing her life or whatever she imagined it might have done. People like them squandered anything of value. Knowing didn’t help him change it, and he couldn’t have even expressed those thoughts in words. But he knew it was true. He fucking did. And yet he still wanted. Still craved. And maybe if he’d have ever had anything of value and lost it, he’d be talking about it constantly too.

Jett picked up his speed, easily ditching Dawn, and turned the corner, onto the street where he knew he could score. A car backfired, and Jett startled, blood pressure spiking as he almost tripped again. A little boy in a faded red T-shirt appeared from behind a dumpster at the entrance to an alley. Jett sucked in a breath and jerked to a stop. Oh no. Oh no. The kid’s eyes were glued to him, expression somber, as he walked toward the street where cars were whizzing by. Their eyes held, and Jett stood frozen, his muscles seized up. No! “No,” Jett whispered, but he wasn’t sure if he’d said the word or not. No, no, no! His nerves vibrated and then burst into flames. He yelped, and a woman walking by him on the street jumped aside and then hurried on.

The boy was almost at the curb, about to step into moving traffic. No, please. Jett flung himself forward and ran into the street, arms outstretched as a car swerved, brakes screeching, as Jett barely avoided being hit.

The world grew unbearably bright so that Jett could hardly see. His nerves flamed, scorching the underside of his skin, and he raised his arm to shield his eyes.

The little boy was walking toward him, too, and even from the distance and through the overwhelming brightness, Jett could see the tear rolling down his cheek and the purple marks around his neck.

A car came barreling forward, and Jett screamed as it hit the little boy, rolling him under its wheel and flipping the kid upside down like a rag doll. He landed on the street. Jett’s scream continued as he went down next to the kid, attempting to pick him up as more brakes screeched and two cars collided next to him in a cacophony of intense impact and scraping metal.

“What the hell? What are you doing? Holy shit!” A man’s voice. “Are you fucking crazy?”

Jett trembled so violently his teeth chattered, clutching the little boy’s body. But then there was a hand on his arm, pulling him up. He reeled and stumbled, trying desperately to get his bearings as he held on to the boy. “The boy, the boy,” he repeated, his voice a dusty whisper.

“What boy? There’s no boy, you goddamned nut.”

Jett gasped, squeezing tighter, realizing he was hugging only air. His arms dropped, an avalanche of ice joining the raging fire inside and yet somehow not extinguishing it. He froze and he burned. He was a frigid inferno. He needed rescuing, but there was no one to rescue him from himself. The world dimmed, sound rushing into the void around him.

“Call the police,” someone said. “He’s high. He’s on something.”

Jett gasped, stumbling back, looking around. So many eyes. There was no boy. He’d made him up, just like the doctor told him. But he wasn’t on something. That was the problem. Take your meds, take your meds, take your meds. Or the voices come back. The boy comes back.

But it was Sunday, so the free clinic was closed anyway. And even if it wasn’t, he didn’t want medication that made his face, hands, and feet jerk and move constantly, so that he felt like jumping off a bridge to make it stop. At least the dope he acquired on the street made him drift away. It stopped his pain, didn’t make it worse.

But he’d go to the clinic when the smack was gone. He would. He would. Because despite the side effects of the medication, he didn’t want to see the boy. It bent his brain. It hurt so fucking bad.

The people were all staring at him. He took another step back. He wouldn’t let them put him in jail. He knew what happened there, and he’d die before he’d be locked up. At least on the street he could curl up and hide. He could sleep behind the rusted, junked car next to the abandoned strip mall, or under the ivy growing along the chain-link fence near the old motel used mostly by prostitutes and their tricks. The one where he sometimes heard screams from the girls that no one answered, including him.

“Get your fucking hands off of me,” he growled to the man whose hand gripped his upper arm. Whatever was in his voice made the man step back. Behind him, another man was helping a woman out of her car. She looked dazed as she scooted past her deflating airbag.

Jett glanced back once to ensure the little boy wasn’t actually there, lying in a puddle of blood on the street as people stepped over him. But the asphalt was clear except for some broken pieces of headlight, not a drop of blood in sight.

Help, he heard, the voice young and weak. He shook his head, moving it rapidly from side to side, searching. There was no boy, but yet he’d heard him. He was somewhere. Somewhere.

He’s inside your head, Jett. You have to take your medicine. You have to remember.

Dawn was standing on the sidewalk, swaying slightly in her spiked heels, her thumb in her mouth.

A siren grew louder in the distance, and the sound propelled Jett forward, out of the street and back onto the curb.

“Hey, you can’t just leave,” the man who’d held his arm said. “You caused this. This is your fault. Get back here!”

But Jett didn’t listen. Jett ran, clutching the cash in his pocket, the money that would buy him at least a few minutes of peace.