Free Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers Page A

best-looking woman in the whole world. Her real name was Alicia, but all the guys started calling her Silly because that’s the way she made you feel when she came around and you didn’t know where to put your eyes. Alicia andLauryn were probably the smartest students in the school, too. Silly was thinking about being either a historian or a dancer, and Lauryn wanted to be a lawyer. They were both serious about their lives.
    â€œSo what you want to do?” I asked.
    â€œYou were going to cop, so let’s go do it,” Lauryn said.
    We had some more back-and-forth, and at first I figured she thought I’d be too shamed to use in front of her. Then she was insisting and my head was tilting to maybe she wanted to party.
    The brownstone man was on 105th and Park. He ran a little bodega on the corner and sold stuff from Mexico right over the counter. I knew the cops had to be on to him, but he was always open for business. Lauryn waited outside for me while I went in, bought two hits and a bag of chips, and came out.
    We didn’t talk on the train uptown on the way to her house.
    Lauryn’s parents were separated. Her mother had a good gig and did all the right things. Shewent with Lauryn to museums and plays and saw to it that Lauryn always had some cash and dressed good. Lauryn was a day and a half past fine and knew how to present herself.
    The apartment was clean and everything was in its place. It wasn’t like my pad, with a sink full of dirty dishes and little armies of empty plastic medicine bottles all over the place.
    â€œSo you tense, go on and get untense,” Lauryn said.
    â€œSo what you saying?” I asked.
    â€œWhat am I saying?” Lauryn put her palms up. “I’m not saying anything. I’m just sitting here at my kitchen table waiting for you to get yourself untense. You’re the one that’s running the show.”
    â€œHey, Lauryn, let me get to the bottom line,” I said.
    â€œYou going to snort the line or shoot it up?”
    That shut me up, and I didn’t know what to say to her. I just sat there for a long time with my head down. Then I was hearing her on the screen and at the same time I wasn’t hearing her, because I wastrying to shut it out. I asked Kelly to shut the television off.
    â€œYou dope up in front of her?” Kelly asked.
    I nodded. “Just turn it off.”
    â€œWhy, don’t you think it’s time to see what you been doing?” Kelly asked. “How you going to put some reason to it if you keep running away from the set?”
    â€œI wasn’t running away from nothing. Sometimes it was like the heroin calling to me. When I didn’t have nothing, I could think about giving it up, about turning away and doing something else. Sometimes, when I really wanted to party and didn’t have the money, I’d go play some ball or just watch television and the feeling would go away. But when I had money, or when I had already scored a hit, I got nervous. I didn’t have to have the dope, but when I had it, I had to use it. You know what I mean?”
    â€œNo,” Kelly said. “Let me watch the screen.”
    Lauryn’s mom kept aluminum foil in a cupboard, and I saw myself getting it. I folded it upinto a little upside-down tent and put the hit in the middle of it. I didn’t look at Lauryn as I heated it up over the front burner on the stove and watched it melt. I watched myself changing hands as the foil got hot, then watched the hit steam up.
    I didn’t dig the smell as I breathed it in deep, and my throat was feeling bad in a heartbeat.
    I was saying something to Lauryn, but she didn’t answer. Sitting with Kelly, I didn’t remember what I had said.
    I told myself I was going to be cool as the dragon found a comfortable place in my body. I could feel it shifting and moving and finding places that needed chilling out. I put the foil down in a cigarette tray when it was