H: Chapter Twenty-Five

The drive up to Maine was quiet. We weren’t arguing, jamming needles in our veins, or any of that shit. But there was just something missing. Everything we had, our friendships, our dynamics, had all fallen apart. We had beat our demons, we had healed, but there was something broken, and that something could never be fixed.

Being addicted to drugs is like taking your life and smashing it into a million little pieces. You take all your relationships and cut them away, just so you can get your fix. It starts with calling into work because you just stayed up for forty-eight hours on a meth and coke binge. Then it ends with you ending up alone and knowing that, if you don’t stop, you will end up dying.

Then getting sober is taking the life that you smashed and slowly, yet methodically, picking the pieces back up and gluing them together, one by one. Your relationships are still destroyed. You don’t have a job. Your family still talks behind your back and demeans you. But hey, at least you won’t fucking die. Though maybe that’s the preferred option.

Drug addicts aren’t stupid, or at least, not as stupid as you think. If it didn’t feel good then we wouldn’t be doing heroin. We wouldn’t be doing lines of coke every thirty minutes. We wouldn’t be stealing and fucking for only a gram of our love.

We got to Maine in record speed, only two hours. We had decided that we would bury Jack at Eagle Lake, a little town close to the Canadian border. So we pulled up to the side of the lake and hiked through the woods for a couple miles, in silence of course.

When we found a nice spot, right next to the water, we started digging. Even with the three of us, it took a while. But eventually the hole was eight feet deep. We grabbed Jack, who was wrapped in a blanket, and dumped him into the hole. Then we buried him for good.

Once everything was finished, we started the funeral. I cleared my throat, and started speaking. “Jack was a great friend, athlete, and driver. We have had our times together, and it’s time to lay him to rest. You’ll always be in our hearts.”

I wiped the snot and tears off my face as I stared away from the guys. There Jack was, buried in the ground. He would never get to see a pair of tits or get yelled at by his manager. His condom would never break and then force him to raise a kid. He would never grow old with his wife by his side. He’d never experience all the shit life had in store for him.

I sniffled and said, “So… you guys wanna grab some food or something?”

“Like a wake?” Travis asked.

“Yeah… like a wake.”

Thomas and Travis looked at each other with discomfort in their eyes. Even though I wasn’t looking at them, I could feel their shaky anxiety. “Well…” Thomas said. “I think I’m gonna go. Maybe head to Montana or something.”

Travis nodded, “Yeah, I think I might head back to California.”

“Is it nice there?” Asked Thomas.

Travis shrugged.

* * *

With all of this said, it’s been ten years since my little road trip. After we buried Jack, I bummed around Canada and the U.S for a couple more years. I never got back into drugs, even though I was offered it many times. The price of it was too much.

When I had run out of money I decided to call up my mom and ask if I could stay. I knew that it would be hell living in that trailer park again, but what other choice was there? I got my old job back at the gas station, which was… surprising. Then I got a job working at a soda-can factory. And then… and then… yadda yadda ya.

Eventually I got tired of the modern life and decided to become a writer. And this was the book I decided to write. It was hard being honest with myself and all the mistakes I made. Many nights were spent crying and hating myself for the damage I did. Some days I still wonder if I’m still the old me, just wearing a mask and going about life.

Eventually, the second draft was done, and I had heard about Thomas being a big-shot editor. I did a couple more edits and then I called him up.

The phone ringed for a little bit, and then he picked up. At first, I was kind of shocked at how different he sounded. I wondered if I had ended up calling the wrong Thomas Malik.

“Hey, who’s this?” A gruff voice sounded over the microphone.

“It’s Payte. Is this… Thomas Malik?” There was nothing but static on the other end. “Hello? You there?”

I heard a heavy sigh, and then Thomas said, “What do you want Payte?”

I scratched the back of my head and stuttered out a couple words. “I’m writing a book about… about the road trip. You know?”

“The road trip?”

“Yeah… that road trip.”

“And your calling me about this because…?”
“Well, I need someone to edit, and you, since you’re a-an editor, I figured you might want too. There’s some scenes, well, that are kind of… out of the blue. You know?”

“No, I don’t know, Payte. I don’t.”

“Well could you—“

“No, I’m not going to edit it. Don’t call this number again, alright?”

“Okay…”

Thomas hung up and I fell onto my bed. I stared at the ceiling for a while, just thinking. Then I got an idea: I would contact Travis. I imagined that he was out there somewhere. Maybe he was a rich aristocrat chilling in Paris with a supermodel wife. At least, that’s what I hoped.

I scoured every social media website, looking for the name Travis Whittaker, and nothing popped up. I turned over every phone book I could find, and there was still no sign of him. That was until one night, I was scrolling on my phone and I got a notification for message. And you know who it was? Good ol’ Travis Whittaker.

So I got to Travis’s state and we met up at midnight at a dock, over-looking a reservoir.

“So, here he is, the grand Payte Harring.” Travis said. He looked like shit. His bones were all thin and his hair was patchy. His eyes were sunken in like a fuckin’ ghoul. I didn’t say those things though, I just kept them inside me.

“What the hell happened to you?” I asked. I cringed after those words left my mouth. I shouldn’t have been so blunt.

Travis shrugged, “I just got out of rehab. I used to look a lot worse you know.”

“Yeah, me too.” I cringed again.

Travis nodded, and we fell into silence. I looked out over the water and saw that the stars were out. They looked like little patches on a H blanket. The water was still, and there was a little canoe just abandoned out there.

I turned to Travis, and said, “You wanna know something?”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“I’m writing a book.”

“Oh yeah? What’s it about?”

I scratched the back of my head, trying to formulate words together. “It’s about two sorcerers fighting dragons and, well, I-I’m just bullshitting you. It’s about the road trip.”
Travis bit his lip. “The road trip?”

“Yeah. That roadtrip.”

Travis nodded. “Is it realistic?”

I shrugged. “Eh, I took some ‘creative liberty’ at some points.”

I sighed and crossed my legs over one another. “You know, on the driver here, I remembered some things…”

“Oh?”

I shook my head and exhaled through clenched teeth. “I… I can’t really believe some of the things I did. I guess I’m not that big of a monster, because I feel remorse. But… that doesn’t make what I did right. I thought I had changed, but I guess not. I still have a lot of work to do.”

Travis nodded again and turned to me. “You wanna know something that I heard in rehab, Payte?”

“What is it?” I said.

“One day, ten-or-twenty years from now, you’ll look back on this moment, and you’ll be filled with a kind of beauty for the natural order of things.”
“Damn, I didn’t know you were so smart.”

“Let me finish.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“One day, you’ll look back on this, this little blip in time, and realize just how much shit you took for granted. But you’ll also realize something else. You’ll realize how much you’ve changed and how hopeless you felt back then. And that’s when you’ll understand that if you went through hell, and you’re still here, well, you can go through just about anything.”

I let out a stiff chuckle and turned to Travis. “Why’d you say that?”

Travis shrugged. “I don’t know. I just felt like saying it.”