I heard it before I saw any of it.
Mom's voice first, coming from the kitchen, the low careful version she used when she was holding herself together on purpose. Then Rue's going up fast. Then Gia getting dragged into it somewhere in the middle. I stayed at my desk for a minute. I was in the middle of something. I told myself to let it play out.
It didn't play out. It got louder.
I got up.
* * *
They were in the kitchen. Mom had her hands flat on the counter. Rue was moving. Gia was standing to the side looking like she was trying to figure out how she'd ended up in the middle of something she didn't start.
Leslie: I want you to know that I'm not angry with you.
Rue: Angry?
Leslie: I love you. But I know you're doing drugs again.
Rue turned on Gia before Mom finished the sentence.
Rue: Did Gia say something? Really? You're gonna rat me out to Mom over smoking a little bit of weed? Is that what we're doing now?
Gia: What are you talking about? I didn't rat you out.
Rue: I knew I never should've trusted you.
Gia: I didn't say anything!
Rue: Then what is she talking about?
Mom tried to cut back in.
Leslie: Wait — were you doing drugs with Gia?
Rue: No!
Gia: I — Rue, I didn't say anything!
Leslie: Gia, you knew she was doing drugs?
Gia: It's not like that.
Rue threw up her hands.
Rue: Okay. If you want to consider smoking some weed for my panic attacks doing drugs, then yeah. Sure. I was doing drugs. Give me a break.
Leslie: I'm not talking about weed, Rue. I'm talking about pills. Opiates.
Rue yawned. Actually yawned.
Rue: I'm not doing opiates, Mom.
Mom told Gia to go to her room. Gia started to protest. Mom said please, just go. Gia looked at me on her way out and I had nothing to give her.
Rue: If you want to drug test me, let's do it. Come on. Let's go.
Leslie: I don't need to. Jules told me everything.
The room changed. Rue went still for one second and then started moving fast, looking for the suitcase, pulling things, asking where Mom put it. Mom followed her saying it was going to be okay, saying they could go to the hospital, saying they'd done the withdrawal before.
Rue said she wasn't going to any hospital. Said if Mom called anyone there was going to be a problem. She grabbed for the phone. Mom held on to it.
It went back and forth like that for a while — Rue getting louder and Mom trying to stay steady and neither of them reaching the other.
Then Rue said something about Dad. About him being dead. About what that kept people from saying out loud about Mom.
I walked out the front door.
* * *
Jules was on the couch. Some guy next to her I didn't recognize. He had that look — the kind of person you clock in one second and move on from. They both looked up when I came through.
I didn't say anything. I went outside and sat on the front step.
Fuck Rue.
I sat with that. Let it be what it was without cleaning it up.
It's like a revolving door. No matter how hard someone tries to push you out, you run back in. I get it. I understand the door. I know what it feels like to need something that's also the thing trying to kill you. But at some point you have to call it what it is — she chooses it. Over and over she chooses it. And maybe that's okay. Maybe that's her right. But I couldn't hold that thought and also be functional. If I stayed distracted too long Rue might die. I couldn't work like that. I couldn't make music like that. I couldn't do anything like that.
So I put it down. Filed it somewhere that wasn't the front of my brain and went back inside.
* * *
The next morning Mom and Gia were going to try to get Rue into rehab without telling her where they were going until they were already there.
I said it was a bad idea. I'm just a stupid rapper so what do I know.
They went anyway.
About thirty minutes later I got a call. Rue ran.
I didn't say anything when Mom told me. I just set the phone down and went to the garage. I got under the Tahoe and worked until I couldn't keep my eyes open. I didn't think about it. That was the whole point. The garage was the one place where the only thing that existed was the problem directly in front of me and whether or not I could fix it.
I fell asleep on the garage floor at some point. Woke up cold and stiff and went inside.
* * *
She was back the next day.
She looked like shit. Not the regular kind. The kind where something has been taken from a person in a way that doesn't come back fast. She moved through the house slow and didn't talk much and nobody pushed her.
That evening Ali came over. Mom had called him. I'd heard of him from Rue before but never met him. He was older, quiet in a specific way — not withdrawn, just not performing anything. He came in and sat down and started talking to people like he had all the time in the world and none of it was wasted.
We cooked dinner. It was the most normal the house had felt in days.
At some point he talked to Gia in a way I hadn't been able to. He told her it was okay to be angry. That she didn't have to hold it or manage it or pretend it wasn't there. Gia didn't say much back but her eyes went wet and she nodded and I could see something in her relax that had been tight for a while.
Then he looked at me.
Ali: Are you angry?
I thought about it honestly.
"Angry — I can't be angry. I do drugs too. I don't get to sit here and be like that. But I'm disappointed. It feels like no matter what I do, even the wrong stuff, my brain goes — well, it can't be as bad as Rue. And I'm never proven wrong. And I hate that it works like that."
He nodded. Didn't offer anything to fix it. Just took it in.
We ate. The conversation eventually turned to odds, to what was realistic, to what came next.
Gia said, "Five percent."
Everyone looked at her.
"That's the statistic. Long-term recovery for heroin addiction. Five percent make it."
"Where's the hope in that," I said.
Nobody answered.
Then they looked at me and asked if I thought Rue would get clean.
I looked at her across the table. She wasn't looking at anyone. Just sitting there, somewhere else behind the eyes.
"Yeah," I said. "But she has to decide to."
She didn't look up.
She heard me though.