Fadeaway by E. Vickers (ebook smartphone TXT) 📗

My finger hovers over the phone. All it will take is one small stroke to do what’s right. I’ve known it in my head all along, but it took my heart a while to catch up. Now that it’s up to my hands, somehow I can’t finish the job.

I grew up on the basketball court in the shadow of so many heroes, but none of them turned out to be who I needed them to be. And sure, we won the championship, but at what cost?

True integrity takes tremendous courage. Isn’t that what Coach B says? And in the end, isn’t Coach B the only person who has never let me down?

I don’t realize I’ve completed the call until I hear the soft ring in my palm. I put the phone to my ear before my fingers have a chance to hang up.

“Ashland Police Department. How may I direct your call?”

I take a breath. Close my eyes.

“I know who robbed the pharmacy. I know exactly where he is and exactly where you can find the pills.” I stop. Swallow. “I’m sorry. I should have called a long time ago. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Let’s go,” Phoenix calls down the dark stairwell.

“I’m still packing” comes the reply.

“Packing what? All you brought was a backpack.”

He can hear the hesitation in Jake’s silence. Jake isn’t ready to leave, too afraid of what’s next.

Finally a reply. “I should probably shower. If we’re going to be in the truck for a while, you definitely want me to shower.”

“Fifteen minutes. This truck is leaving in fifteen minutes, and you’re going to be in it. Don’t make me bust out the handcuffs again.”

He wonders if it’s too soon to joke about it, but then he hears Jake’s laugh. “I’ll be there as soon as possible. Thirteen minutes, max.”

Phoenix hopes it’s soon enough. He’s seen the headlines. He knows the cops are narrowing down suspects in the burglary, knows there are too many trails that lead to him, whether he’s guilty or not.

It’s time to leave town anyway, and no better time to go than when they’re well supplied. The roll of cash in his pocket might be enough to make a fresh start, even farther from Ashland.

He takes one last look down the stairs, then walks through the small main floor: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. More space than one person should need, but it still felt like a prison so much of the time.

But no. He stops himself. It wasn’t prison; he shouldn’t compare the two. He actually hates it when people do that, because a small house where you can come and go and eat what you want and close the door to take a crap is nothing, nothing like prison. The furniture is full of holes and smells, but it’s been his these last few months, here in the only furnished place he could afford.

Phoenix leaves a prayer behind for the next person who will call this place home, because anyone who would live here is already someplace dark and may be on their way down from there.

He’s wondered a hundred times whether this was all a mistake, but seeing Jake tonight—so hopeful, so clean—helps ease the guilt and doubt a little. When he steps onto the front porch and shuts the door behind him, he is determined not to look back, literally or otherwise.

But a car turns down the rutted drive, and as the front passenger comes into view, his past rushes toward him in a way he is not prepared for.

“Kolt.” The name falls from him, heavy but soft, like the breath has been knocked out of him.

In an instant, he is Kmart again. In an instant, he sees his little brother in all stages of his life: the baby who hid carrots in his diaper; the preschooler who tried to scam the tooth fairy by putting white pebbles under his pillow; the teenager who stood before him the day he returned from prison and shoved him, hands on chest, saying the same words with every push: I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. And his only response: I hate me too.

Kmart left town that very same day, and they haven’t stood face to face since. Of course, he has seen Kolt: as a red dot against the field when he watched football games from the hillside, and from the stands at the championship game, when he was feeling particularly reckless. He’d wanted to come closer so many times, to try to make things right in the place it had all gone wrong.

But if he came back, so would all the questions and stares and whispers. No denying the burden it would be on his family, and he has already been burden enough.

He knows too that he could never stay clean in that town. Environmental cues are one of the most common triggers for relapse. He’s recited it to himself—and now to Jake—so many times it feels like a mantra. Any place or person or smell or feeling that reminds you of when you were using can send you straight back, and that makes Ashland a minefield for them both.

Even now the sight of his brother so close reminds Kmart of where it all started: sneaking a Norco at the lake one day when Kolt was too little to notice, the sun warm on their skin and summer stretched out before them. That happy, floating feeling, even though they weren’t on the water yet. The drugs are tricky that way, calling up the one good memory in an ocean of bad.

Kolt jumps out as the car rolls to a stop, and he’s more than twice the size of the boy at the lake. Kmart is so stunned by it all—his brother, here, tonight—that he doesn’t have time to react or even brace himself as Kolt winds up and punches him in the face.

Kmart staggers back, cheek throbbing, nose bleeding. He deserves whatever Kolt throws