04-Mar-2003
Title: Street Of Dreams 13/?? Author: Lasha Lee Email: anakerie@cinci.rr.com Disclaimer: The OC's are mine, no one else is. Pairings: Various Warnings: Angst
Do you know what Kick is?
Kick is a tiny, cheap solution to everything bad and horrible and wrong with your life. A pill is maybe five bucks, or less if you know who to ask. Kick takes your pain and wraps it in a pillowcase and stuffs it in the closet so you don't have to think about it any more.
It hit the streets when I was 13. Two years and counting after the whole Chester thing. Two years of waking up in the middle of the night scared to death that I was going to open my eyes and see him standing there, fat and hairy and powerful, offering me things I wanted too badly back then to resist. I thought it would be so simple; that I only had to give him my body, but Chester took part of my soul as well. My dignity, my self-respect. It was like he'd done a spinal tap and drained out any shred of good I might possibly have inside of me. All of this coated by the shame of knowing that everything he'd done to me, I'd allowed. I let him.
So when I discovered Kick, it was a dream come true. It doesn't cripple you like a lot of stuff would. You can still go to school or work and function, and no one can tell by looking at you that you're high. Or numb, I guess is a better word for it. Removed.
I'd pop one before school, after school, before they drove me to my shrink-of-the-month. We all did it, the people I knew at school. Heck, I ever knew some teachers who were dealing, although I never scored from them myself. I was terrified of getting caught, of what my uncle would think. Afraid that my aunt would put her foot down hard one final time, and I'd never be allowed to see him again.
Even though Kick was cheap, for a kid that age the price adds up pretty quickly. At minimum it was costing me 15 bucks a day, sometimes more. It didn't take long to blow what the birthday money my uncle had slipped me, and my allowance was tiny just for this very reason. They were afraid I'd start spending it all on drugs. Please insert your laugh here.
That was about the time I started really stealing. I'd done some petty stuff before that, but it was just for fun. Those months, the Kick months, from the October I turned 13 until after New Years, I stole to support my habit. When the stores started to get suspicious, I started lifting stuff from around the house and hawking it. In a house as big as ours was, you can make off with quite a lot before anyone realizes it's missing, and I was lucky; no one ever noticed.
So flash forward a few months. It's mid-January, and I'm a hard-core addict, and my folks don't have a clue. I managed to sell a vase I found in the cellar for a few hundred bucks, so I've got enough cash to keep me in Kick for a while. I'm still getting straight A's in school, and they could drop a dinosaur on my head without me caring. I haven't let myself feel anything for ages.
Well, the cops have been trying to kick Kick this entire time, and one day they get lucky. They bust a group of teenagers, and find a ton of the stuff, and haul them all off to juvie. No, sorry, I wasn't one of the kids they nabbed.
But Meg, 17 at the time, was.
Now, unlike me, Meg and Amy led very clean, appropriate lives. Never a bit of trouble with either one of them. The fact was, the night she was arrested was the first time Meg had ever tried Kick. Go figure. I guess the devil really does take care of his own.
Well, the mess it caused was glorious. Meg got her very own place in the Hall of Shame, not just at home but at school as well because she made a deal with the police to cough up the names of people she knew were using the drug and supplying it. She became a pariah.
I think the hardest thing for her to face, though, was the thing that had made me so careful, her father's disappointment in her. He took it personally, that somehow he'd failed to be there for Meg so on such a severe level that she'd turned to drugs for comfort. I'd never seen him take anything so hard in my life, and for the first time since I'd started using Kick I felt something so strong the drug wasn't able to numb it away. I felt guilt.
I threw away my pills, almost a hundred dollars worth, flushed it all away, and I swore that I'd never touch the stuff again. And somehow, despite my age, despite the fact that I was going at this without any help, I did it. I still got drunk from time to time, but I'd managed to kick the Kick.
But tonight, with my feuding sisters and stepmother finally asleep in one guest room and my mother and Gerry asleep in the other one, and Shan asleep in our giant bed, Kick wanted me back.
I left the house without waking anyone up, and I knew exactly where to go, who to see. And before I knew it, there I was standing outside of a run-down bar with a tiny container of little white oblivion in my hand. A bottle of promises to make it all go away; the image seared into my brain of how my father looked in that hospital bed, the contempt on my sister's face as she told me that I'd never really be part of the Peacecraft family no matter what I called myself. I'd tried so hard to be good. So freaking hard. I'd swam against the current for so long that my arms were aching and I was tired. I just wanted to give in, let it carry me away. It was like the night I'd learned who I really was all over again, the night I'd laid in the forest and wanted to die. I didn't want to die right now; I just wanted living to hurt a lot less. The Kick could do that. I stared at the bottle, jiggled the pills a little. Shan would be angry, but I'd make him understand. I'd told long ago about my battle with the drug; he was the only person in the world I'd ever told, and he had never made it any secret that he thought I'd been an idiot for doing it in the first place. But he loved me; surely he wouldn't want me to suffer if I didn't have to. I shook out a single pill into my mouth, but I couldn't make myself swallow. I spat it out on the ground in disgust, and truly gave up. I reached into my pocket.
"I'm sorry to call you so late." I tried to sound normal but I couldn't stop from shaking on the mobile phone. "I don't even know why I'm calling you but... I need help. Can I come over there?"
A few minutes later I sat at a kitchen table, my head in my hands, listening to the sound of the garbage disposal as it tasted Kick for the first time.
"Is that all of it?"
"Yeah, that's all. I swear."
"Did you take any?"
"No, I told you I didn't!"
"Here, drink this. It's just tea, but it will help calm you down. You asked me to help you; I have to make sure you're leveling with me before I can."
"I tried to take one, but I couldn't do it." I admitted. "I couldn't make it go down."
His hand was warm on my shoulder. "You've used this stuff before, haven't you?"
"Long time ago. I stopped though. I've never used it on Dera if that's what you mean. Just tonight, I wanted it so bad... " I broke down, and he rubbed my back. "I'm going to go call Shan, okay?"
"No. I don't want him to see me like this!"
"You need to see him though." My father-in-law was reaching for the phone. "You need to see what you'll be throwing away if you start using that garbage again."
A few minutes later, despite my feeble protests, my mate was in the kitchen with his father and I, looking sleepy and confused and worried to death and I knew that Wufei had done the right thing in calling him. Without a word he wrapped his arms around me and let me sob. He was still wearing his blue satiny pajamas and my tears made wet spots on the front of his shirt.
"Why didn't you tell me how bad it was getting?" He sounded hurt. "Huh? Why didn't you do this before going out after a hit?"
"Because I have to be strong for my father." I said through clenched teeth. "I have to. I thought I could handle it by myself."
"You can't do this alone." Wufei was blunt. "Otherwise we'll be burying two Peacecrafts."
"Baba!" Shan was horrified, but I stopped him. "It's okay. That's why I called him instead of Heero and Duo. He doesn't sugarcoat what I need to hear."
"I guess I do." He muttered.
"Yeah, you do." I managed to smile. "Everyone's walking on eggshells around me, trying to be really nice and supportive. Don't they realize that that's never worked with me? I need someone to get nasty with me."
"Fine." He smacked me lightly. "If you even think about buying that Kick stuff ever again I'll chain you to the wall."
"Well, that's not quite the nasty I had in mind, but I'm game. I'm going to try, Shan. I really am. I just feel like a rubber band that's been pulled too tight."
"I'm going to ask that Lucrezia and the girls stay here for the sake of peace. Something tells me that having all of you in the same house is just a recipe for trouble, and you don't need the extra stress." Wufei frowned. "I suppose the pacifist blood must skip a generation?"
"Something like that." I agreed, feeling a lot better than I had an hour ago. "But they're my family. I can't you to do that."
"Your stepmother is a very old friend of mine. Are you telling me that I don't have your permission to ask my friend to stay in my home?"
"Fine, take them. But I assume no liability for anything they break."
Shan had his glasses off, chewing on the handle, which meant he was deep in thought about something. "You know, it's been a really long time since they've seen you." He said at last. "As strange as it sounds, maybe they've forgotten what you were like before you left Earth. So they can't appreciate how much you've changed now."
I chewed on that. "Think it's the hair?"
He kissed me, running his hands through it, until his father coughed loudly. "I think that might have something to do with it." Shan winked. "Maybe what they need is a reminder."
"Exactly what are you suggesting?"
"Lucrezia and Meg came here expecting to find the old Gage. Maybe you need to give them that, just a little, so that they can see for themselves you're not like that any more."
"Dearest one, let me get this straight. I'm to convince them I'm no longer a menace to all creatures great and small by acting like I am?"
"Exactly. Just for a little while."
Wufei was looking a little ill as I considered it, and I snickered. "Don't worry. I'm not going to blow up the town. I don't think they need something on such a grand scale. But something... ."
We were interrupted then by Shan's mother, who wanted to know why she hadn't been invited to the pajama party. I'd like to mention that I dearly love that woman. Not only is she responsible for creating the man I love (although to be fair I think Justice Skunk did have some part in that), but she led almost as much of a misspent youth as I did. She's terrific.
So instead of popping Kick, I ended up in the Chang kitchen in the middle of the night eating Deran bacon and toast instead, listening to Shan's parents bicker back and forth cheerfully about everything. The tea and hot food made me sleepy, and before I knew it Shan was nudging me awake and leading me toward the transporter. I won't lie; I still wanted the Kick and if it was just about me I would have. But it would hurt Shan in the process.
No rush was worth that.
Two days had passed since Kato's mother had talked of packing up her son and leaving the Sanc kingdom, and Kato still hadn't quite forgiven her for it. He didn't say anything to Starboy or Sungirl at first, but he was no longer as secure as he had been. Before the other day, he'd never even thought about leaving here, living somewhere else. But now that she'd brought it up, now that he realized it was possible, he couldn't stop worrying about it, and he clung to his foster siblings tightly.
Sungirl had gotten over her cold, and the rain had stopped, and the smaller children were playing close to the house. Kato was teasing Sungirl, making his toy robot step on her dolls, faking little screams of terror, which made Sungirl giggle.
Then from over the hill came Starboy running as fast as he could, his hair loose and flying behind him, looking more like the Prince of Elves than the Prince of Sanc.
"Come on!" he panted when he reached them. "There're frogs in the creek! Come on, come help me catch them!"
They weren't to leave the area near the house without Kato's mother, at least not the younger kids. Starboy wasn't allowed to go near the creek on his own either, if one wanted to be technical about it, and Kato had promised his mother that he'd stay right here.
But his mother had stepped inside for a minute, and Kato realized he was still angry at her. Angry enough that he liked the thought of disobeying, and curious enough about the frogs to do it.
Starboy ran ahead, urging them to hurry, and Sungirl ran ahead of Kato when he tripped, calling him a slowpoke.
At the creek, they stared in amazement at the mass frog invasion, reaching into the creek to try and catch them, splashing each other in the shallow water. Kato had wanted to wade in but Starboy wouldn't let him, and finally, each carrying a frog, they headed back toward the palace.
End Part 13
(:./lasha/street13)
