Free Problems by Jade Sharma Page A

asked.
    â€œMaya’s cold, so we were thinking of telling your father to start the fire,” Sandy said.
    â€œOr we could put the heat on?” Grace replied.
    â€œNo, I’m . . . it’s okay, I don’t mind . . .” But Sandy was already walking away, calling, “Rick,” and then I heard my name. I should have just taken off my coat.
    â€œYeah, but the fire will take longer to warm the house, and we can’t have her sit there alone in front of the fire,” Grace said.
    Peter’s father came down. “What’s up?”
    â€œWe were talking about putting the heat on.”
    â€œThe heat?” He wiped his forehead.
    â€œMaya’s cold,” Jake said.
    â€œI can put the fire on . . .”
    I wanted to literally vanish into thin air.
    â€œWe haven’t met, I’m Peter,” Peter said to Sue.
    â€œHey, Jake’s told me so much about you.” Sue put on Sandy’s apron. It had cherries all over it. I walked past Peter to Jake’s old bedroom and shut the door. I imagined my entire bag filled with heroin. Then all of this would have been very easy. Why did I even try to be clean? All my effort should have gone toward staying high all the time , I thought. I could smile and talk and be charming when I was high. I wasn’t self-conscious and weird. If not for me, then for the world. I started sweating. What could I do now? Tell them not to put the heat on and go through that whole hundred-year-long conversation. Sue and her amazing pie and her skinny waist and her smile—I wondered what it was like to be inside her head. She probably had her own insecurities. I needed a cigarette. I checked the time: five o’clock. Two hours of awkward conversations, and then just stuff your face and sit around the dining table for a while, and thenoff to bed . They went to sleep early, ten-ish. Just five hours. I fished out my cigarettes and my cell phone from my canvas bag.
    I wanted a bag of dope so fucking bad. If I was sick, I could convince them to take me to the train, and then I’d go back home and get a bag. A rush of excitement filled me at the thought. It was okay, I would get high again. This was not for forever. This was like a job. A bad shift at a bad job.
    After being numb for so long on dope, when I was finally faced with reality, I couldn’t handle the emotions. Not just the bad ones. The in-between ones too, like envy that Peter got along with his family, gratitude that these people were being nice to me and were willing to love me just for being there, and nostalgia when they played that Dylan song Peter sang on our first date. They wanted to like me, and all it did was make me feel lonely and insecure. I wiped the tears away and told myself to get it together. I was a grown-up and needed to act like one.
    Back in the kitchen, Peter’s mother stood in front of a pot of some kind of meat, Sue and Peter chatted it up, and Rick held a plate of the cheeses Peter and I had bought yesterday at Whole Foods. That was the difference; Peter and I bought expensive cheese from Whole Foods while Sue baked a pie from scratch. That Sandy’s apron looked so cute on her was also troubling.
    No one noticed me open the window. I was sweating through my clothes. I smelled like something that had died in the trash. At least if it was cold, I wouldn’t smell as bad.
    â€œI should really go and call my mom,” I said to no one in particular, holding my phone as if they needed a visual aid. I turned and walked out, trying not to look at Peter’s face.
    â€œCan you just not smoke for two fucking days,” he had said when I asked if I had to keep up this charade that we didn’t smoke.
    I opened the door. Couldn’t stand right there, so I turned the corner and then realized there was a window, and they would see me from the dining room. I walked back toward Jake’s old room, fished out a cigarette, and then hit