High Achiever Read online

  My phone buzzed on the table and as I went to reach for it, Eliot stopped me. “That better not be work trying to get you to come in. This is our only day off together. Plus, we are puppy shopping,” he said, giving me an annoyed face.

  “Stop. It’s not work, and even if it is, I’ll tell them I can’t. I’ve been wanting a dog forever—you think I’d leave to go get yelled at by customers?” I said, opening the text.

  From Monica.

  Hey girl, I know we haven’t talked since I left for maternity leave. But Jett told me you had gotten some green for him, and I was wondering if you could get me some blues. I need 50. I’ll give you $35 apiece. Let me know.

  * * *

  —

  “Babe…I gotta go,” I said, jumping up from the couch. Eliot’s face fell, and he looked both confused and frustrated. “I’m sorry, honey, it’s an emergency. One of the managers got sick and had to go home. They don’t have anyone else. I’ll be gone two hours tops, I promise, then we can go to the pet store. I’m so sorry,” I said, kissing his forehead and running into the bedroom before he could respond.

  I grabbed five baggies and shoved them into my bra while quickly throwing on my work clothes. I know it was wrong for me to lie to him. But honestly, I couldn’t pass up this offer. Blues go for twenty dollars apiece and this idiot was desperate enough to pay nearly double. If I had any chance of paying Mitch back the money, I had to go, and I had to go now.

  Thirty minutes later I was in her driveway. I remembered where it was from the night I dropped her off after blackmailing her into giving me five of her pills. I didn’t even feel bad about it; she was poisoning the twins in her belly and didn’t give a shit. She knew she was wrong, and that was probably why she had no problem reaching out to me for these.

  The front door swung open and I saw Monica smiling and holding one of her babies. I couldn’t believe how thin she’d gotten. Clearly she hadn’t cut back on the drugs.

  “Hey, Monica,” I said as I approached. “Who’s this little guy?”

  “This is Liam, his sister is sleeping so…shhh.” She tiptoed into the house and I followed closely behind. If I’m being honest, I was almost certain that Child Protective Services would have taken her babies away the minute she popped them out, considering that she had five hundred pills on her at any given time. Liam looked…surprisingly healthy for a baby born addicted to drugs.

  “Where’s your grandma?” I asked, looking around as she shut the door behind me.

  “My grandma? What are you talking about?” she asked, looking puzzled.

  “Yeah, your grandma, Grams or whatever. The lady who was gonna beat me up. That night I dropped you off here you said she wasn’t going to be happy with me.”

  She started rocking Liam suddenly and shushing him, which was weird because he wasn’t even crying. “He’s getting fussy, I’m gonna go lay him down,” she said, turning and heading down the hallway. Maybe she had super mom powers and could tell when her baby was about to get fussy, because he looked fine to me. Weird.

  Once she was out of sight, I began surveying the living room. There were dirty diapers and cigarette butts littering the floor, and I suddenly felt so sad for these babies. Not only was their mother an addict, but they had to live in this filth—

  “Hey, bitch.” A man’s voice interrupted my thought process and I spun on my heels to face him.

  Monica was nowhere in sight, and neither were the babies. It was a large African American man, maybe six foot three, wearing a wifebeater and jeans.

  “Oh. Hello,” I said, confused as to who the hell he was and why he was calling me a bitch. He stepped closer, and that was when I noticed the gun tucked into his waistband.

  “Sit down,” he ordered, pointing to the couch.

  Not wanting to argue with an armed man, I reluctantly headed to the couch and sat down slowly. I glanced around nervously for Monica, thinking this was some sort of a mistake, but she was nowhere to be found.

  “So, you the trick that stole from me? Huh?” he said menacingly, stepping closer. Trick, doesn’t that mean prostitute? What the hell…

  “Wait, what? Okay, clearly this is some sort of a mistake. I don’t even know you. And I’m certainly not a prostitute.” I was relieved once I realized he had the wrong person. “Where’s Monica?” I asked, glancing past him.

  “Don’t worry about Monica, bitch. She ain’t your friend.”

  He slid one of the kitchen chairs across the room and slammed it down in front of me. He plopped down into it, releasing his gun from his waistband and setting it flat on his lap. My heart was pounding out of my chest and I was struggling to breathe. I was pretty sure I was about to die.

  “Listen…sir. I feel like there is a misunderstanding. Monica called and asked me to bring her some—”

  “Shut the fuck up. This is how it’s gonna go down. You came here with fifty pills, right? Guess what? They’re mine now. Hand ’em over,” he said, leaning forward and sticking his hand out. I suddenly realized what was going on. I was getting robbed.

  I wanted to speak, but something inside me told me it would only make it worse.

  “Hand them the fuck over. NOW!” he screamed. It looked like his eyes were about to pop out of his head; he looked scary as shit. I jumped in response to his yell and began fumbling around in my bra for the bags of pills. Pablo Escobar would have shot this guy by now….I handed over the bags and he snatched them from my hand.

  “See, you thought you were all big and bad because you were the manager of a fucking restaurant? You thought that gave you power? You don’t know the first thing about fucking power. What the hell is wrong with you, stealing from a damn pregnant woman.”

  His voice was so deep and so loud it vibrated my chest as he spoke.

  “Yeah. I know all about what happened between you and her,” he said, leaning forward in the chair and lowering his voice. “See, Monica was married to my brother and he up and left her, pregnant and alone. I felt bad and told her she could live with me—on one condition. She helps me out. Monica doesn’t even do pills, you stupid cunt. You think she would risk her babies’ lives? My niece and nephew? She loves them more than anything.”

  I sank into the couch as the realization of what was happening set in. I felt like I was going to pass out.

  “Those pills weren’t hers,” he continued. “She was just the messenger. She gets the pills from her dad and brings them to me. The pills you forced her to give you? They were mine.”

  I opened my mouth to speak and he held his hand up to stop me.

  “You lucky I don’t kill you where you sit, girl. If it wasn’t for Monica telling me to take it easy on you, you’d be dead and buried in the backyard. I don’t fuck around ’bout mine. Get yo’ ass up and get the hell out of my damn house. Now.”

  I jumped up from the couch and ran toward the door. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Monica emerge from one of the bedrooms and into the hallway, rocking her baby. I couldn’t help but feel foolish. I had chastised her for being a terrible mother and the pills weren’t even hers.

  When I pulled the front door open, my eyes were locked on my car. I was prepared to run full speed the second I stepped outside. Before I left, I heard the man’s cellphone ring and when he answered, everything suddenly made sense.

  “Yo, this is Grams…what’s up.”

  My adrenaline was exploding like fireworks inside my body, and I needed to get high to calm the hell down. I had been set up, and I almost died.

  I pulled into a McDonald’s and parked under a tree. My windows were tinted enough that I could do a shot right here and no one would ever know. My hands trembled as I pulled the syringe and spoon from my purse. I smashed a pill into powder on one of my CD cases and dropped the powder into the spoon. Before I could mix it up, my phone rang.

  Shit, it was Eliot.
>
  “Hey, babe,” I said, trying my best not to sound like I’d just escaped certain death.

  “Hey,” he said abruptly.

  “What’s up?”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Hello?” I said, mixing up the solution and uncapping the syringe.

  “Where you at?” he asked.

  “I’m still at work, I should be done soon. What’s up?” I tied the belt around my arm and began growing impatient. He needed to hurry up and spit it out, so I could do this before I lost my damn mind.

  “Just wondering. It’s weird, though, cuz…I came here to get something to eat and figured we could just leave for the pet store straight from here. But guess what?”

  Chills suddenly crept up my spine. I dropped the syringe into the passenger seat and covered my mouth with my hand.

  “Your manager said you’re not here; he actually said they never texted you to come in. So…I’ll ask you again. Where are you?”

  38

  I was so grateful that Eliot was confronting me over the phone, because my face immediately flushed with embarrassment. He had caught me red-handed, smack-dab in the middle of a big fat lie. Part of me wanted to hang up immediately and pretend I’d lost service, but I knew that would be too obvious.

  The thing about my addiction is, it has enabled me to be the record holder for “most believable lies ever told” as well as “quickest thinker during times of distress.” It was as if there were no limits to my lies, because my moral compass had broken a long time ago. Therefore, I was able to say the wildest shit without feeling bad about it. I had to do whatever was necessary to keep this dark side of me hidden—and this time was no different.

  “I lied, I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Yeah, no shit,” he said. “So, what the hell are you doing then?”

  Here we go.

  “Babe, it’s bad. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d be upset,” I said.

  I still had no clue where I was going with this story just yet, but I decided to just wing it.

  “What’s bad? Where are you? Can you just tell me?” he said, sounding distraught.

  My heart was pounding, and I blurted the first thing that came to mind.

  “It’s Kayla.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I know. See, I knew you’d be upset, this is why I didn’t want to tell you. Kayla texted to tell me goodbye. She said she had a gun to her head and had enough. She didn’t want to live anymore. I told her to give me five minutes, that I wanted to hug her goodbye before she left. Babe, I knew if I told you, you would have called the police or something and she would have been dead before they arrived. I’m so sorry for lying, I didn’t have a choice. I knew that I would be the only one able to stop her.”

  He was silent for a moment on the other end of the phone. I was feeling pretty damn proud of myself. This was one of those lies that he couldn’t refute, because there was no way for him to prove whether it happened. All I had to do was text Kayla the minute I got off the phone with him and she would go along with it in a heartbeat.

  “I wouldn’t have called the police, Tiff. Although she probably needs to be Baker Acted, but I would have respected your wishes to let you handle it. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk to me about things. We are working on building trust, remember?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. He’d bought it. I should have felt bad in that moment. I’d left my faithful boyfriend on date night to do a drug deal that went horribly wrong—and then used the invented potential death of a friend to get myself out of a lie. What kind of person does that?

  An addict, that’s who.

  * * *

  —

  “Tiffany, I hate to stop you there, but we have to wrap this up,” Dr. Peters said, closing her folder and sliding it into her briefcase. She stood up and silently began gathering her belongings, careful to avoid eye contact.

  Usually when she decided it was time to end our session, she gave me some encouraging words or thought-provoking questions pertaining to what I’d just shared. This time, she didn’t even look at me.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked, wondering if perhaps she’d finally realized I was the biggest piece of shit on earth, unworthy of her time.

  She stopped what she was doing and peered at me for a moment before dropping her arms to her sides and letting out a sigh.

  “Tiffany, you trust me…don’t you?”

  “Of course I do, why?” My heart began pounding.

  “It’s just, when I first ask clients ‘What brought you to rehab?’ they usually give me a short explanation of their childhood experiences, then their drug use, followed by some sort of catastrophic event that led to them coming here.” My eyes followed her as she slowly paced back and forth as she spoke.

  “With you…it’s almost as if you began telling a story—a fantasy, if you will. I’ve been doing this a long time and I am familiar with avoidance habits. I get the impression that you are afraid of being transparent with me. So you created this incredible story to distract yourself from the reality of what happened.”

  It suddenly felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. Shock and anger began to overwhelm me. I was speechless. She must have noticed, because she began speaking once again, softer and more carefully this time.

  “I am not trying to upset you, okay? I just feel like it’s important that we start dealing with truth from this point on.”

  I stared at her—through her, unsure of how to respond. She thinks I’ve been making all of this up?

  I stood up and peered at her. “Are you kidding me? Over the past couple of days, I’ve spent hours with you—hours—and you are telling me that you let me continue talking, all the while you were convinced that everything I was saying was a lie?! Even if it was—which it’s friggin’ not—why the hell would you sit there nodding in agreement, instead of stopping me?” I was baffled and, honestly, incredibly offended. I too began pacing, because the fury raging inside me was too big to remain stationary. I didn’t even wait for her to answer my question.

  “I thought we were connecting, I was feeling better, I thought you fucking cared. I am so stupid. I should have known that you are just like everyone else. You don’t give a shit about me, I’m just another psychotic junkie living in an alternate reality.” I was beside myself. This felt so unfair.

  “Tiffany, please calm down. It’s okay to feel angry, but you must know it isn’t helping.”

  “What the hell do you know about helping? Huh? Do you know what you’ve done? You were the first person I’ve trusted in a long time and now—I feel like I’m a patient in a psych ward.”

  “Now, Tiffany, I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to. I have told you things I haven’t told anyone.” I shook my head furiously and balled my fist as the uncontrollable anger began taking over. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, but I knew that would further prove her point about me being a whackjob.

  “Stop. You have to understand where I’m coming from. Okay? I am sure that some of what you have shared with me is true; however, I also believe some if it has been exaggerated. I have had many patients experience a form of psychosis after trauma, causing them to manifest scenarios that never actually occurred.”

  “Oh my God.” I needed to leave. I needed to get out of this room, because I was seconds away from wrapping my hands around her throat and strangling her.

  “I’m done,” I said, marching toward the door.

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No. We cannot be done. I see that you are upset, and I don’t want you storming out of here filled with resentment toward me. It will upset the other girls.”

  “Upset the other…you have got to be fucking kidding me.” I laughed, swinging the door open
so hard that it banged into the metal table. “I resent you, Dr. Peters!” I screamed over my shoulder, storming out of the room.

  Fuck her, fuck this place—fuck being clean. I try to do the right thing once, tell the truth once, and I still get accused of being a liar. What’s the fucking point of trying?

  I wasn’t meant to live a normal life. I wasn’t a normal person. I was a psychotic junkie loser and that was all I would ever be.

  Most people are good at life; it’s effortless for them. They go grocery shopping, pay their bills, go for walks. Hell, some people even bird-watch. They literally sit around and watch birds with binoculars. I couldn’t even go ten minutes without jamming drugs into my veins and had no clue how to function without them.

  I wasn’t sure why the hell I was put on this earth, what my purpose was supposed to be, but I didn’t have the energy to figure it out. Living is too hard…dying would be so much easier.

  I knew that if I left this facility, I would be arrested and sent to prison for like forty years, but I didn’t give a damn. At least in prison people wouldn’t pretend to give a shit about me before stabbing me in the back. I stood at the front door for a moment, considering the consequences of what I was about to do. I took a deep breath…and walked out.

  I inhaled the night air deep into my lungs as the gravel crunched under my sneakers. I made it to the end of the driveway and paused, realizing I’d forgotten my cigarettes on the picnic table. I stood there for a moment debating whether to risk going back and someone stopping me. But I knew I couldn’t make a proper plan without calming my nerves. I turned around and before I could take a step, I bumped into someone. My heart dropped to my knees.

  It was Stephanie.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she asked calmly.

  “Don’t. Move, Stephanie, please. I’m leaving.”

  “Why?” she asked indifferently.

  “Because I don’t belong here. I don’t belong anywhere. Honestly, being alive hurts too much. I’m not good at life and I never asked for it. That’s the worst part. I never fucking asked for this. My mom chose to have me, and then she went and fucking died and left me here to fend for my fucking self. I can’t do it anymore. I give up.” The last sentence came out in sobs as I collapsed to my knees in the gravel driveway.