Shine - Lauren Myracle [50]
I saw her for just a moment, the real her, just as she’d seen through to the real me. I saw her weariness, which she tried to hide with sparkly eye shadow and berry-colored lip gloss. I also saw that she’d been pulling out her eyelashes again. Back when we hung out, she pulled out her eyelashes when she was nervous.
What was she nervous about now? And I wasn’t going to ask again, but what sort of bad things was she no longer going to do?
“There’s no reason you couldn’t marry a doctor,” I told her. “You could be a doctor, even. Or a nurse.”
She smiled. Not bitterly, because Bailee-Ann didn’t do bitter. It was more just a hat-knitting smile that said I didn’t need to lie.
“But, Bailee-Ann, why would you want your doctor husband to give you drugs?”
“Um, because they’re fun?” She looked up from her work. “Not street drugs. God, I would never. But Beef knows this guy, and sometimes he gets Vicodin from him. Beef had his own prescription once, from when he blew out his knee, but it ran out.”
“Oh.”
“And actually, I’m trying to quit. That’s one of the ways I want to make amends. But have you ever tried it?”
“Vicodin? No, I don’t do that stuff.”
“Riiight,” she said. “You’re better than that. I forgot.”
Something shifted. It happened as quick as the click of her needles, and it made my skin tingle.
“No, I just don’t like feeling out of control,” I said.
“Oh. O-kay.” She hooked another loop of yarn. “So that’s why you dropped all of your friends, including Patrick. Including me. It wasn’t because you’re so much better than us. It was because you felt out of control, like maybe you’d accidentally catch a case of the stupids from us. Thanks for explaining. Now I totally understand.”
Whoa. Apparently Bailee-Ann was capable of doing bitter.
“Bailee-Ann . . .” I said.
She glanced at me. Her eyes held pain, but also a sliver of hope.
“I . . . I never . . .” I never thought you were stupid, I wanted to say. I never stopped liking you.
“Son of a goddang,” she cussed, looking back at the little hat. “Missed a stitch. Gonna have to do the whole row over.”
I felt awful. She’d let herself wish, and I failed her, and so, all right. Back to normal Bailee-Ann, who would take her disappointment and pretend it had to do with the dropped stitch instead of the dropped friendship.
My heart felt like lead, but what was done was done. I needed to regroup.
“Did Dupree give you Vicodin last Saturday?” I asked. “When y’all were at Suicide Rock?”
“I wish,” she said. Then she closed her eyes and gave herself a moment. She opened them, saying, “No, I don’t, because I’m quitting. I truly am. But anyway, all Dupree had was some herbal something-or-other. We put it under our tongues.”
There were old-timers all over the mountain earning a meager existence by selling herbal “remedies.” Aunt Tildy warned me and Christian to stay away. “If you can’t buy it at the store, don’t buy it at all,” she said. “Who knows what goes into their tinctures and potions?”
“You should be careful about that stuff,” I said.
“I know, I know. It didn’t do nothing but make us loopy, anyway.” She put down the little hat, balancing the needles on top of it. It was so small. I was that small once, and the thought blew my mind. I was that small, and so was Bailee-Ann, and so was Patrick. So was Patrick’s attacker.
“You wanna watch TV?” Bailee-Ann said. “Never mind. Set’s broke. Duh.”
I bit my lower lip. “Bailee-Ann, don’t take this the wrong way . . . but you don’t do meth, do you?”
She cut her eyes at me. “No, Cat, I don’t do meth,” she said, enunciating her words as if addressing someone very stupid who was also hard of hearing. “Meth eats your brain. Haven’t you seen those commercials?”
“Well . . . good. But some kids are using it. Here in our own town.”
“Kids are doing meth in every town in the country, Cat. Dang. Get your head out of your butt.”
“Do you know when it started? Um, people in Black Creek doing meth?” Beef