Star Witness

9

JESSE

Fernando is kicking my ass at soccer, and the other Bloom-Escamillas are no help.

Tomás is sitting safely in the shade on the porch, blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He is rooting only for Meta Knight, who's bounding around with no clear objective, wanting to be a part of the excitement. He and his moms worked out an agreement because of how much he misses being outside. Part of the reason I suck so horribly at soccer is because he distracts me, the way he'll close his eyes and lift his head and hold so still into the sun. It's making me rethink the whole act of being outside.

Lucia is too busy with her herb garden to be rooting for anyone, Mia is inside studying, and Josie just wants to see blood. So, I repeat: no help.

"19 to 6," Fernando says, carrying the ball back to the center of the backyard, eager to humiliate me all over again. Meta Knight darts in, bites his ankle, then goes sprinting around the side of the house.

"Rat," he says.

"Die!" Tomás yells from the porch. "Jesse, defend her honor."

I drop to the ground. "I can't even defend my own."

"All or nothing?" Fernando says, face appearing against the sky above me. I've never seen anything as blue as the Phoenix sky.

"All or bite me," I say, kicking at him.

"Do it!" Josie calls. "But make it a fistfight."

"No," Tom says, pulling on her shirt. "Swordfight, swordfight."

"Swordfight!"

"Are you making fun of us?" Fernando asks suspiciously.

"I think we are," Tomás says, tilting his head and pretending to ponder.

"No, we are," Josie assures.

I stand and approach, taking refuge in the shade. March in Arizona is June in Illinois. "I need water. And my dignity back."

"Get me a Sprite?" Tom asks, giving me a puppy stare as if I could ever say no to those eyes anyway.

"And the insulin," Josie says.

"Christ, can you say errand boy?" Lucia teases. "Not even a please."

So of course Tomás and Josie start clobbering me with jokingly grandiose requests, getting carried away in one another the way they do.

I go inside, get water and Sprite, then head into Tom's bedroom to get his insulin. It's kept in a small black zip-up case--with a Pokémon keychain--and it takes a moment, but I spot it on the messy bedside table. As I'm dredging it up from books and wrappers and catheter things and random earrings, I accidentally knock over a few pill bottles.

Nothing spills, so no big deal. I pick them up, setting one, two back on the nightstand.

And then I look down at the third. And now the name on this pill bottle is staring me directly in the face. Roxicodone.

Shit.

The worst part is that I barely even think about it. There's no moment of hesitation, no angel on my shoulder. I just open the bottle and dump some pills into my hand. Three. Then four. Almost five, but I only take four, and I let myself feel good about it. I slip them into my hoodie pocket and set the bottle where I found it.

I rejoin them in the backyard. No one suspects anything, obviously, and the shame grabs at my arms and throat, leaving bruises. But bruises are only bruises. Blood vessels. That's all.