Page 85 of The Last Special Thing

She couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to escape reality anymore. She wanted to be back to herself again.

So she remained as she was. Alone in a heartbreak she couldn’t accept.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Amelia and Art stayed up most of the night. As badly as she wanted to sleep off the experience and have a break from the horror of what she would do with the car, the last line of cocaine with Evan did her in. With the upper drug, she couldn’t sleep. It was too much. Truthfully, Amelia was not sure what an acceptable amount of cocaine was, but surely it was less than they had inhaled.

After his extra bump of cocaine, it became the Art show as they lay there.

“After I graduated, my mom wanted me to join the military, like Bryan. She said I couldn’t live there anymore. My sister, Aurora, would need the extra space for her baby. I can’t believe she’s going to be a mom. I really didn’t want to join the military. I wanted to play the drums. I found the band online, and I figured I could move out here. Sleep on the beach if I needed to. That’s when I got Max’s message. It was like divine intervention. I didn’t even tell my mom I was moving. I used the money from my grandma to rent a U-Haul to get the drums out here in the middle of the night. I knew she would be disappointed that I wasn’t in the military. But you can’t bring a drum set on deployment. I sort of thought I was a runaway until you told me at the lifeguard tower that you saw me as free.”

Another day, she would have lapped up every word, ingraining his history as if it were her own. She wasn’t even sure she was listening to most of what he said as her mind kept turning. He was a drug dealer. She crashed her car because of him. She did cocaine, which was the line she said she would never cross when she met him.

But she had never loved anyone this way. Reconciling all of it was becoming impossible, a dizzying carousel of thoughts. She longed for the simplicity of being tucked underneath her pink quilted bed as her parents' light flicked off.

She had had everything. Yet, as she turned on her side and the air mattress hissed underneath her weight, she had chosen Art, which also meant that she had chosen drugs. It was an adventure, but it was anxiety-ridden and body-destroying, and tonight? Tonight, it was too much.

She didn’t know when or how she had fallen asleep, but she was awakened to a pounding at the door. She wiped the trail of saliva from her chin, the only tell that she had slept at all.

“What?” Art moaned with agitation, an arm stretched over his face.

Max opened the door a crack and poked his head through. “We’re having an apartment meeting in ten minutes.”

“Yep.” Art said, eyes closed. Amelia wasn’t sure if he even heard Max.

Her head was fuzzy. She slumped off the bed and placed a hand against the wall to steady herself. One slow, weighted step at a time, she made her way to the boys’ shared bathroom. Her eyes averted her gaze from her reflection, where Mirror Amelia lived. She reached for the blue-grey hand towel that didn’t match the shower towels, and that probably hadn’t been washed in weeks.

Turning on the faucet, she washed away the remaining makeup from last night and dried her skin. She was exhausted. Physically and emotionally. Her mind was a xylophone; a mallet knocking into every fucking piece, around and around.

Back in Art’s room, he had fallen back to sleep. She dressed in a pair of jean shorts she had forgotten there over the summer and a band shirt featuring an angry deer.

Amelia shook him awake. “Please, can we get this over with?”

He squinted his eyes open. Her face must have communicated her disdain as he groaned again and rolled off the bed.

Five minutes later, they sat thigh to thigh on the couch, each chugging from a plastic water bottle.

“Guys. We have to work this out,” Max said from the center of the living room.

Madisson sat in the recliner chair, eyes narrowed. Art was leaning forward, elbows resting on his legs, head hanging low. Amelia was pouting, arms crossed, as she leaned against the couch. She wanted this to be over so she could go home, pop Tylenol, and indulge in a proper shower.

When nobody spoke, Max circled the living room.

“Here’s how I see it.” He turned to her. “Amelia, you need to apologize to Madisson for how you treated her. That was seriously uncool.” Then his eyes found Madisson, his voice softer. “Madisson - you have to let Art and Amelia work out their shit on their own. It has nothing to do with you.” He looked at Art and folded his arms, tapping against his bicep. “I, uh, want to apologize to you. I shouldn’t have missed your show, man.”

“Thank you,” Art said bitterly.

Max relaxed his arms and sighed. “Art, you gotta stop dealing. It’s getting too sketchy.”

Amelia uncrossed her arms, let out a breath, and shifted to Madisson. “I was completely in the wrong to speak to you the way I did. I didn’t know about Art.”

Amelia glanced at Art. “You’re going to be done with that, right?”

Art hesitated. “After I move what I have, I’ll be done,” he compromised.

Amelia gave a short nod, but she wasn’t sure she believed him.

Madisson rolled her eyes and muttered, “He’s not going to be done.”