Have amazing amounts of time to post my blog tonight. I've really got to get going. I'm really tired after nearly an all night escapade in the tent. Which was not all that comfortable.
So here's the next chapter. I'm not too keen on how everything is handled in the ending. So I've made some notes on what I think I might do when it comes to the editing.
Moving on, I hope you enjoy.
Chapter 24
“Oh, shit.” I said looking up to see Maggie standing by my door, her jaw completely slack. How could I not have heard her? At least she hadn’t commented on my swearing yet. She had in the past.
“Danny…when?...how?...please tell me…”
“I don’t know what to say.” She seemed a little shocked; I wasn’t sure how to handle it. It didn’t help that I could still feel the high running through my veins.
“What are you smoking Danny?”
“I don’t think you want to hear it.” I answered her honestly, I wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what I was smoking because it would destroy her already fragile image of her son.
“Is it pot?”
I didn’t answer her.
“We found a stash of pot, well, Inspector Malcolm found a stack of pot in your trousers when you were caught. We’ve known since he told us. I didn’t think you were still smoking it.”
“Old habits die hard?” It came out as more of a question than a statement. I honestly didn’t know that they knew that I’d been smoking pot with John. So, was there really an image to tarnish? Did she know why I was home yet?
“Mr Erickson called me, and told me that you’d been sent home for the afternoon. Why is that?”
So, she hadn’t been told why I was home. Damn, bastard, Erickson, I should have guessed he’d leave me to rot like this.
“I beat a kid up.” I said, after a breath. “Pretty badly.”
“How badly?”
“He was rushed to hospital in an ambulance.”
“Oh, Danny,” she moaned, “Why did you do something like that?”
“He was talking shit about Hayley and Jesse.”
“But you don’t even remember them? Why would you go to suck lengths to fight for them?” I’m guessing she was responding like this because she didn’t understand what she was seeing. It didn’t help that I was still smoking the pot, did it?
“The fact that I don’t remember them doesn’t count for anything.” I said loudly, “Their still my friends. I look at their pictures and pray to God that I remembered them. God, you don’t know how much I’d love to remember them. To be able to feel them, other than through a photograph. To laugh at the memories we had. Do you know how much it kills me every morning to wake up and not be able to remember what they smelt like? Where they are? That whilst I’m sleeping in a comfy, warm bed, their probably being tortured half to death? You have no idea how it feels!”
“Danny, you need to get help for this.”
“What I need is to find Hayley and Jesse, and I’ll be damned if someone from school thinks that they can talk shit about them.” The argument was really dampening my high. I hated talking about this stuff to people. I don’t even talk like this to Mrs Connors. I just couldn’t stop myself. I was angry at myself for losing it like that with Simon, and I was on a high. It wasn’t a very good combination for me.
“Danny.” She was upset with me. I knew it.
“Maggie, please, you just need to understand. I want them back. I’ll do anything to get them back.”
“And so that includes smoking yourself silly? How do you expect to find them if your stoned?”
“It calms me down. I only smoke the stuff if I’m really nervous or panicky. This is a fine example of what I’m like when trying to deal with both.” And there is where the sarcasm, or something similar, comes into it.
“Danny, you really, really, need help with this. Don’t you say anything to Mrs Connors? She told me that you were getting better.”
“I don’t trust her.”
“And what about Simon? His parents are obviously going to say something about this to the police. It’ll be all over your trial. You can’t help your friends from a youth detention centre.”
“I know. I wasn’t thinking.”
“What would they say if they saw you now, eh? What would they think of you?”
“Please, don’t use that on me. It’ll be the second time today someone’s said that to me, and the first person didn’t exactly end up fit and healthy.”
It’s moments like this where I wonder where my life has gotten too. I have nothing at the moment. I’m clinging by a fragile hope that my friends are still okay. I’m clinging to the hope that I’ll get my memories back.
I need to find my friends as soon as possible. There are no what’s, but’s, if’s about this one. It needs to be done.
Then Maggie said something. Something I just wish I’d never heard.
“Oh, Danny, why won’t you come back to me?”
She was crying. I knew she’d been thinking it. I’d hoped that what I was thinking was all in my head and that she was getting used to me.
Obviously I’d been wrong.
I don’t know how much I’d smoked. I definitely went through one stash that I’d been hiding and some new stuff that the Porter had said was awesome. I don’t really remember what he said it was, something with ‘meth’ in the name; I’d picked that up the other night.
It was now dark outside. The sun had set; I knew Jamie and Jim were home, I’d heard the door opening and closing and them being told not to go to my room. I didn’t listen after that, I was sure she probably told them about my escapades in school.
They didn’t bother me either. They did as were told.
Maggie’s words had hurt me in a bigger way than I’d thought.
She’d left not long after what she’d said. She hadn’t even apologised. She just turned and walked out of the room. Nothing had been said.
I definitely didn’t say anything to her, but the silence was deadlier than a knife piercing slowly through your heart and then being twisted around.
It was painful emotionally.
Something wasn’t right. A sudden pain broke out through my stomach, around the kidney area. I groaned in pain, grabbing my stomach and squeezing in hopes of stopping the pain.
Nothing worked. I fell to the floor from the windowsill where I was sitting. I’m sure I must have made a loud bang. I couldn’t call out to anyone.
I curled into a ball, but the pain wouldn’t go away. I growled at the back of my throat.
Please, just someone, anyone, just get rid of the pain. God, it hurts. It hurts.
Jamie, Jim and Maggie had been sitting in the kitchen, watching television. They were eating remains of the food from the night before, but no one was really paying attention to the television, or the food in front of them.
All thoughts were about Danny.
None knew what to do with him.
Mom said that he was upstairs getting ‘high’ and didn’t want to be bothered, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that. Something she doesn’t want to admit. She said he’d gotten into a bad fight at school. I don’t know what to do. I can’t sneak up there. Mom would know for sure. Jamie thought passively as the images flickered before her eyes on the screen. And even if he is upstairs getting high, why is Mom just letting him do that? She’d never just let him get drugged up there; she’d worry too much about him.
BANG! They all heard from upstairs.
Danny! All of the Smith family thought at once, quickly rushing upstairs to where Danny’s room was.
They found him curled into a ball, his breathing heavy, and in obvious amounts of pain.
“Danny? Danny? What’s wrong?” Maggie shouted.
He did not answer; he just lay there, clutching his stomach.
“Mom, what’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know sweetie.” She replied. “Jim, call an ambulance.”
“Mom, what do you think it is?” Jamie asked, but then she realised the two empty sleek black packets on the floor next to him. They weren’t small in size, but not large either. She understood what was wrong with her younger brother. “Idiot.” she whispered. How could he be so stupid? Can’t he think at all? Jamie thought angrily.
Jim ran through the doors. “They’re on their way.” He said breathlessly.
“How long?”
“Five minutes. I told them he was clutching onto his stomach, wasn’t responding to calls, and there are two suspicious packets on the floor by his side.” He replied. “We don’t need them to know we just let him get like this.”
Suddenly there was a banging on the door and Jim rushed back downstairs.
A pair of paramedics was rushed on up the stairs by Jim, barely having any time to recover before being thrown into the room where Danny curled up in agony.
“What seems to be wrong with him?” One of the paramedics asked.
“We’re not sure. He won’t say anything to us. There are two packets of stuff over there. We’re not sure what it is. Both of them are empty now.”
“Right.”
The paramedics did their checks of Danny. Doing everything they could for him then and there.
“This is serious. He needs to get to the hospital as soon as possible. This is a pretty bad overdose. It could be fatal.”
Night!
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