Read Online Death Spiral by Janie Chodosh - Free Book Online

Melinda.
    She’s passed out on our bathroom floor. I stand at the door, paralyzed. Mom rushes out of the bathroom, back in again with a needle and syringe. She fills the syringe. Jabs. Again. Until Melinda sits up, looks at us, and comes back from the dead. Narcon, the junkie miracle drug, Mom explains later. Saves you from respiratory arrest. Mom shows me how to fill the syringe, how much to give. Just in case I need to bring her back from the dead too.
    A bus screeches through a pile of sooty slush, spraying my legs and sending a chill straight to my bones. I wrap my arms around my torso and step onto the milk crate. My heart’s beating wildly. What if Melinda isn’t here? What if the note’s a ploy and all she wants is money? What if I have the wrong address and piss someone off by ringing the bell? But there’s no bell, and if I don’t make a move I’m going to turn around and hail the first cab out of here. That is, if we can find a cab. So, I knock.
    No answer.
    â€œMaybe she’s out,” Jesse says.
    I knock again. Louder this time. I call her name. Still, no answer.
    Someone starts shouting at me to chill out. I look up and see a man hanging half his body out a second story window. The guy is fat and bald, and he’s wearing a wife-beater tank even though it’s winter. The shirt doesn’t cover his gut, so the view from below is like staring up at the underbelly of some bloated sea creature.
    â€œWhat the hell do you kids want?” he shouts down at us.
    I clear my throat and reach for the lighter. “My name’s Faith Flores. I’m looking for Melinda Rivera. She invited me. She was a friend of my mom’s.”
    The man grumbles and slams the window.
    I stand there for a second, unsure what to do, but there’s no way I’m leaving until I find out what Melinda has to say about my mom, so I try the door. The knob turns and the door creaks open.
    â€œCome on,” I say to Jesse. “Let’s go.”
    â€œUh. That dude didn’t exactly exude friendliness. Do you think it’s a good idea to just walk in?”
    â€œNo,” I say, and go inside.
    Jesse sighs, then follows.
    Our footsteps echo into the cold gray space as we climb a set of rickety steps to the second floor. We walk down a narrow hall lit by a single bulb dangling from an exposed wire until we reach apartment 2E. I glance at Jesse and knock.
    The fat guy from the window opens the door and stands in the entranceway, his pants struggling against his belly to stay up. He sticks his face up to mine. “You wanna see Melinda?”
    I nod, expecting him to tell me to get lost.
    â€œFollow me,” he slurs instead. The stink of his breath is enough to make me sick. “Your boyfriend coming too?”
    I’m about to tell him Jesse isn’t my boyfriend, but there are more important things to worry about, so I just nod and follow him into a dark, musty room.
    Melinda’s hovering at the edge of the room in baggy gray sweats and a faded Phillies t-shirt. I recognize her hair—black by birth, blond by the bottle. I recognize her emaciated frame and black eyeliner smudged around her haunted brown eyes. We stand there, neither of us moving. I can hardly breathe. Melinda’s skin is leathery and blistered, like someone who’s been in the sun too long. And what’s worse are the red dots like zits or chicken pox covering her face. But the marks aren’t zits. They aren’t chicken pocks. I know that. They’re scabs. Melinda has the same scabby, blistered skin my mom had before she died.
    Melinda nods at the fat guy, who disappears down the hall, then she takes a tentative step toward me. “Hi, Faith.”
    It seems like there should be a different word than “Hi.” You say “Hi” to your friends in the hall between classes, “Hi” to the postman or the salesclerk. Not “Hi” to the messed up heroin addict