I want to cry again and I don’t even know why. I want to tell my mother to take me home. I want, again, to tell her about my father, but I won’t even tell myself about my father. I think about this often, about whether the past is real if we don’t bring it into the present. Tree falling in the forest and all that.

I’m okay, I say.

I don’t know if I am the tree or the no one who doesn’t hear it.

My mother searches my eyes. Runs her tongue over her teeth.

See me, I think. Just this once, see me, Mommy.

My mother opens her mouth like she’s going to say something, closes it again. Finally she speaks. Your skin looks so good, my mother says, and there is sadness on her face, I can see it. But I just feel so much relief.

Mario was supposed to get a Lortab script but the doctor wasn’t in and the other doctor was too busy. I should have jacked a script pad, he says. Bro, my boy at the clinic fucking sells them. He’s in such a bad mood. Calm down baby, I say. I offer him some of my coke, but he’s like nah, I’m already too on edge. You know what, he says, let’s see what all the hillbilly hype is about. He’s been avoiding the Oxy because (1) it’s stronger and more pure, and he isn’t trying to get super-hooked or anything, and (2) that’s where the money is and everyone knows that once you dip in your own supply, you’re screwing up. It’s cheaper here in Florida, but Mario’s been talking to his friend and they are planning the drive up to Virginia, see if they can set up something steady.

Fuck it, he says. It’s one time.

I give him my fifty-dollar tip. It’s like I paid for it, I say.

We hold each other that night and I want to simultaneously die, laugh.

The fan whirs above us and I watch a mosquito perched on the edge of a blade. How can it stay so still when everything is spinning? I wonder, but I wake up with bites all over my body.