Read Online Nothing Real Volume 1 by Claire Needell - Free Book Online Page A

the back. I’d nod like Jay and I were tight, and like we ever talked about anything deeper than whether my guy, Sam Weissman, sold better weed than Sam Smythe, Jay’s delinquent,porn-obsessed neighbor—that was it, Purple Cush versus Green Crack. That was basically our bond. Plus Jay would take shots at my head all Saturday afternoon in the goal cage my dad bought me over the summer.
    Dad thought I’d love to practice with him on those long August evenings before double sessions started up. I made it a point to be out of the house by the time he finished dinner, even if that meant riding my bike over to May’s, even if her mom was home. Even if we just watched TV and ate the organic chocolate-chip cookies her mom bought, which tasted weird and whole-wheaty when you mixed them with milk. At May’s it was like there was no time of day, maybe because she didn’t live with her dad, and there was no one coming home all jazzed up from the day of being the most important fucking tax attorney in New York City, in the world.
    I didn’t tell Jay about my new best friend. I didn’t tell him how when I got almost done with my little nonrefillable bottle of Percs, I started looking on the internet for a way to get a prescription, or a way to get something like them. It wasn’t hard and they were a shit ton better than Sam’s weed, in my book.
    Percs aren’t an in-your-head buzz like weed. Percs are all over you. On Percs, life is a slow dance and the sex is hotter than it even should be. Of course, May wanted in.
    The internet is made for shit like buying Percs. There are about a hundred websites where you fill out your name and some bogus doctorinfo, and then a little credit info. I’ve got one of those prepaid credit cards from Dad, so online shopping is not a problem. Mom didn’t ask a thing about the little brown package when it arrived, because I’m always ordering vitamins and protein bars from Bodybuilders.com. She figured it was more of the same.
    Parents are easy to bullshit, since they want the same thing you do. They want to believe in magic. That things can be made right by shutting the front door and saying, Hi, Mom, I’m home. By setting the table with the good napkins, and saying sure when someone suggests you clear your plate. He does what I ask him, they think. He’s a good kid. They want that whole happy-family thing that smells like bubble bath and baby powder.
    At first I was afraid there’d be something wrong with the almighty Perc buzz, that the pills would be fakes or something. But they were the real deal all right. May made one of her trademark humming sounds after downing her first one. I should have known the game would be up fast that night when May lay in the crook of my arm and told me she loved me. That should have meant something, but I just laughed. Because yeah, I loved her too, but I also loved the roses on her tacky bedspread, and the way her tan-and-brown sneakers had holes in the toes. I loved the way the sun came in her windows through the sheer blinds, and I loved doing nothing but lying there high as shit, and loving nothing so much as I loved Percocet.
    Dr. Mick told me at intake that mine was the fastest crash and burnhe’d seen in his nineteen years of working with fuckups. His saying that almost made me doubt myself, doubt I was legit, that I needed to be here at all. Because that’s how I think. Am I even the right kind of fucked up?
    There was an incredible arc to the whole thing, a kind of structure, looking back. It began with me and Jay a few weeks after my heroic game, and the beginning of me being the Perc king, a version of myself so mellow I stopped being afraid of Dad. A version of me that cared so little, May’s silence stopped feeling like peace and started feeling like emptiness.
    I had been taking two, three, four Percocet a night. That was my main thing, stoning out on it up in my room at night