I frowned and turned it over in both hands. The glass was smooth, transparent, cylindrical, and quickly warmed to the touch. My pinky may have fit inside, were it not for the junk stuffed along its hollow middle… strands of copper and… hard, black ash? It was the same stuff that had sat in the sink at the rooster motel. It was drugs.
I dropped to the couch, gripped the pipe in one fist, chewed the nails of another, and struggled to think through the anger that flared so suddenly, so unexpectedly. It was like wading through a thick pond of molasses.
I stared at the tube, scrutinized the tube, blamed the gunk stuffed inside the goddamn tube, what was that stuff anyway? Where is Mom and what is she up to? Maybe it’s not even Mom’s. Could belong to Elliot after all. Yeah, probably was. It must be Elliot’s pot!
Yes, the conclusion was one I could live with, but I knew before the thought even formed that it was just another pretty lie, a red ribbon wrapped around some ugly truth. I stared across the room at my reflection. The girl in glass was frozen troubled. Her mother was off somewhere, lips undoubtedly pressed against a different kind of glass.
“Mom,” I sighed. An unwanted idea surfaced. I pushed it aside, turning over the tube. But no, the evidence was there. The copper was there. And pot… it just doesn’t leave hard black ash behind. Mom was on drugs all right. I bit my lip and stood as Beverly’s freckled face rose from its place in my memory. “It’s just weed, Samantha,” she had soothed. “Just weed.”
I held the pipe in one hand, drew back my arm.
This shit is not weed. This shit kills.
Mom, passed out on the bed. Mom, not waking up-
Her glass collided with that of my mirror image, and cracked.
“God, what am I going to do?” I shouted blindly at the walls, furiously pacing the room, and eventually plopping down beside the shattered fragments. Carefully I picked the crusty glass from the carpet, calming with almost unnerving rapidity. Really, it’s nothing to lose my cool about. Really, it might even belong to Elliot. Or if it is in fact my mother’s, I thought as I wrapped the pieces in tissue, I don’t know that it’s not just weed. And I dropped them, one by one, in the trash. In fact, I don’t care to know.
