Free The Story of Junk by Linda Yablonsky

disagreement we’ve had.
    Over the summer, our routine falls into a certain rhythm. We hear it from boom boxes at every step. “Everything’s rap now,” Kit says one afternoon. We’re sitting in bed eating ice cream. “My band better write one or we’ll never get a record contract.”
    I pull out a notebook and hand her a pen. “They’re simple rhymes,” I say. “We can write one.”
    â€œI’m no writer.”
    â€œI’ll start,” I say, and it comes: I don’t want to stand in line, I don’t need to waste my time. Six flights up and no way down, so many creeps for just one town .
    â€œYour turn,” I say, and Kit writes:
    I watch TV from nine to noon, waiting for miracles that don’t exist. Up so high, lay down in bed. One day I’m gonna wake up dead .
    â€œThat’s awful,” I say.
    Kit likes it.
    Back out we go to hunt for the dope du jour, the bigger bags, the better high. The dealers keep moving, like so many country doctors crisscrossing the fields to treat their neighbors. The police bust them out of business all the time, and then they turn up a day or so later in a new location, often in close proximity to the last, sometimes in the same place. One day we get over to a spot on Rivington in time to see a police bulldozer ram the front door of the building. Next day, business is brisk as before—there’s even a hot-dog stand parked in front. We keep walking.
    We walk past broken stoops, sealed doorways, and gaunt savages, looking to buy works—syringes. “Blue tips,” we call them, like the matches from Ohio. Works, kits, points, rigs, gimmicks, spikes—they’re a long way from the eyedroppers junkies used in the 1950s. Those were bebop; this is no jive, just more disposable. Except everyone uses them again and again, till they’re too dull to pop the skin.
    Kit shows me how to sharpen our points on the side of a matchbox. We rinse them out with bleach. You can never be too careful. A man with one arm has sealed works for sale in the parking lot of an abandoned gas station on Avenue B, but he’s only there at night. Days, we stop into a bodega on Forsythe, where they sell cheap, under-the-counter wine to Bowery bums and clean blue-tips to dopers like us. Here, they cost only a dollar apiece. At most other spots, they’re two.
    We carry our money rolled up in our sleeves, pockets empty, walk close together at a steady pace, and watch all the faces that pass. I learn to differentiate the junkies from the users. Here’s the difference: users travel in packs; junkies are always alone.
    Big Guy calls. He’s back, and what’s-her-name—Spider’s—source has gone dry. Are we going out to cop today, and can I get a couple of bags for him? He’ll buy one for me, he’ll be glad to.
    Sure, I say. We’ll be out there. A couple of other friends want something too, so yeah, I’ll go. No problem.
    â€œI don’t know how y’all get away with it,” he says. “Goin’ over there. Just the idea gives me the shakes.”
    â€œI don’t know,” I say. “I guess someone out there likes me.”
    â€œIt must be true,” he says, and I agree. It must be.
    The real truth is, I no longer stand out among the living ghosts in the streets. I like the look; it makes me interesting. I’m not the same person I was, and that’s the way I want it. Some days, though, it’s too much work—days we feel sick, days it rains, days when our money is low. Those are days to drink methadone.
    Methadone is legal, but only to those in a state-run program. It’s supposed to help you kick, but your body doesn’t know that. Kicking methadone is harder than heroin. There’s only one difference between the two drugs: methadone you can’t shoot up. If you do, they say, the sediment will clog your veins and kill you. If it