Free Ghosts of Bergen County by Dana Cann Page A

I won’t be home as early as I thought. It’s a little before six now. I hope you’re well. Bye.”
    â€œNice shading.” Jen had changed out of the ripped pants into a pair of black jeans. “‘Things have come up.’ Who could argue with that?”
    â€œI’m not here to be judged by you.”
    â€œWho’s judging? I’m genuinely impressed. Just don’t think you’re getting any action from me. We’re hanging out.”
    He was grateful for the clarification. Hanging out was fine. Hanging out was better. He took a swig of his beer.
    Jen sat on the couch. She set one of the clear Baggies on the glass coffee table.
    â€œWhat’s up with the black cat?” he asked.
    â€œThe power of branding.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.” He examined the image—a collection of black shapes, which, collectively, formed a cat, curled and ready to pounce. “How long have you been doing this?”
    â€œSix years.” She tapped the contents of the Baggie onto the coffee table and began cutting it into lines. “Off and on,” she added. “And I know what you’re thinking: that I’m an addict. I guess I am. That I’m a junkie. If this is junk, I guess that’s true, too.” She retrieved a section of straw from the breast pocket of her shirt. “I can get off this stuff. I’ve done it before. When the time’s right, I’ll do it again.”
    â€œOkay,” Ferko said.
    â€œOkay, it’s not nothing,” she said. “It’s a pretty good something. But it’s not like air or water or food.”
    â€œI get it.”
    â€œIf I pass out, call 911.”
    â€œYou’re serious?”
    â€œI’d do it for you.” She snorted a line. Then another. She leaned back on the couch. Her face got sad for a moment, but only a moment. Then it flushed pink. He watched her for a full minute from where he was standing at the edge of the coffee table, between the couch and the futon. She didn’t move, but she hadn’t passed out either.
    â€œAnd?” he asked.
    â€œAnd?” she said. It was an invitation. She’d cut two lines, he understood, for him.
    â€œI’m only having one.”
    He sat next to her. He took the straw, and before he could change his mind, he leaned his face to the glass and started on the line nearest him. He snorted an inch of it, paused, switched nostrils, and snorted the rest.
    The warmth came first to the space behind his eyes, then to the bridge of his nose. It was warm and cool at once, an amazing numbness that spread down his spine and out through the muscles of his chest and shoulders and down his arms. It spread through his heart and stomach and intestines, and all those vital organs he once could name but had since forgotten. They didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Only the blood that brought the warmth and cool into his hips and buttocks, into his testicles and penis and down his legs, through his knees and ankles to the soles of his feet. It was bliss. He sat there for a long time soaking it in. And it refused to stop, refused to get old, to get weak. His lungs filled with oxygen, and the blood grabbed the oxygen and coursed with the beating of his heart, wave after wave, beat after beat. He kept feeling good, again and again.
    â€œYou should see yourself,” he heard her say.
    â€œI can’t get up.”
    â€œThe first time’s the best. I envy you. I wish I could go back, make it my first time every time. It will never get better than it is for you right now.”
    He accepted this. He couldn’t imagine how it could get better. He couldn’t imagine how anything better would feel. He wondered what might happen next, but it didn’t really matter. He tried to close his eyes but he couldn’t. The sun, low in the sky, shone through the windows, while his blood, so much of it, so much more of it than he’d ever