It doesn’t take long for the Percocet to kick in. It’s much stronger than Vicodin, and I went straight to my old dose, even though I haven’t worked up to it. Rookie mistake, but I don’t regret it because halfway through math I’m in my happy place. But remodeled. Warmer and fuzzier. Drew looks over at me a few times, and I smile, actually smile at him. I have no idea what’s happening in class—there’s a lot of shit I don’t understand on the board. The teacher calls Drew Mr. Nolan, and I have fun making sounds in my head with his last name. Drew Nooooo—laaaaan. Nohhhhhh. Llllllllllannnnn. When the bell rings, I float out the door.

“You only took one, right?” Drew asks quietly as he comes up to me.

I nod. “I’m a lightweight. And you’re a very nosy drug dealer.”

“Good customer service, remember?”

He puts his hand on my elbow and guides me away from the pushing and shoving, from the hordes of people. A life raft in this wave.

“How good?”

He gives me a sideways glance. “What do you mean?”

“Like, good enough to ditch with me good?”

He hesitates for just a second. “Yeah, okay.”

And, just like that, I’m skipping out on the rest of the school day with Saint Francis’s resident drug dealer.

my father is a liar.

Wall

Boston Public Library

Boston

15

Hannah

Drew grabs my hand and leads me toward the closest exit. We’re in the neighborhood across the street from Saint Francis by the time the bell rings. I notice we’re still holding hands, but I don’t move away. It feels good to have some kind of contact. I am the girl that still laid her head in her mother’s lap when she was seventeen.

Also, his hand feels like warm sand—or maybe I’m just full of warm sand.

“My head feels like an hourglass,” I say. “Like…” I stop and I show him. The sand that’s falling, so slowly from the crown of my head, down, down. “You know?”

“I’m glad to see my product’s working so well.”

“Five stars.”

He nods toward a Ford Fusion that’s seen better days.

“This is precisely why I don’t park in the student lot,” he says.

“A good Knight of Wands move.”

He laughs. “Um, okay, whatever that means. I like the knight part.”

“Your cards. Tarot.”

“Ah. Cool. So, where to?”

“I don’t know. I usually go to the beach. But the beach here sucks. What do you recommend?”

“How about the Common?”

“All right.”

Boston’s most famous park. Right in the middle of the city, where we can hide in plain sight.

“Didn’t they kill people there?” I ask as he starts up the car.

“Yeah. Public hangings.”

“Fuck.”