Tweaked by Katherine Holubitsky Page A

days later, Mom locked herself in the washroom where she wouldn’t have to hear Chase on the other side of the front door, his key useless, mumbling that he was hungry and had nowhere to go.
    But even when he was out of the house, Chase never left my parents’ minds. All their energy went into thinking about him, why he was the way he was, and how they could get him to change.
    I didn’t know how to deal with it anymore. I was angry at them for falling for all his lies. And yes, I was angry at them for ignoring me and anything I did, in favor of catering to the self-centered whims of a meth head. But it was watching the emotional roller coaster he had them on that was the worst. The possibility that he might stick it out after rehab—actually do something with his life—followed by the inevitable letdown the first time he showed up stoned. I didn’t know how many highs and lows they could take before they also dissolved.

SIX
    Harris is dead. I hear the news through Jack. Harris died of twenty-seven stab wounds to his legs and chest. When I hear the news, I immediately think he must have been murdered as punishment for not paying his drug debts. But that isn’t what happened. The wounds were self-inflicted. Harris was alone in a park after leaving some friends. They said he was tweaking, strung out so bad he was making no sense and hallucinating to the point that he was freaking them all out. He couldn’t get rid of the crank bugs crawling all over his skin. Sitting on the grass beneath a streetlamp, Harris attacked them with a penknife, over and over. He’d lost a lot of blood before he was found by a jogger early the next morning; he died before they got him to the hospital.
    Chase registers little surprise when I tell him. He may have already known, although I doubt it. He reacts to news of Harris’s death with the same generic look of distant comprehension that he reacts to any news these days.I could have told him the toilet was overflowing for all the emotion he shows. But then, I don’t think he truly understands much anymore, not fully. It seems to take him forever to process even the simplest conversation. I really don’t know how he can stand it—I’d be scared to death if my brain wasn’t working anymore.
    On the other hand, he probably didn’t have a real deep friendship with Harris. People who become friends because they are both into drugs can’t have a whole lot more in common. If they did, if they had real interests or hobbies, they wouldn’t be using. But what do I know? It just seems a pretty exclusive club for freaks.
    â€œThank god, you’re not into that stuff anymore,” Mom says, probably hoping it will help convince Chase that he isn’t.
    Dad is a little more forthright. “That could have been you, Chase.”
    â€œI don’t get how you could stab yourself even once,” Jack says on the way home from school. “I mean, intentionally. Okay, maybe once if you’re goofing around and it’s an accident. But twenty-seven times makes no sense.”
    Jack is understandably confused by the whole thing. I, on the other hand, am shocked but I do sort of comprehend. “Think of it as a meltdown. You fill your brain with a toxic mixture of chemicals and crap, and over time, everything starts to short-circuit.”
    â€œYeah, I guess. But twenty-seven times? He was truly fried.”
    Over the next few days, Chase becomes more and more restless. Whether this has anything to do with Harris’s death, I’m not certain. I do know it is long past Ratchet’s due date for repayment of his loan. I am leaving for work a few days later when he pulls me aside. “Gordie, can you lend me five hundred? Just five hundred.”
    Just five hundred. He says it like I can pull it out of my pocket. Like five hundred dollars is loose change. Still, I wonder why he doesn’t ask for what he owes. “Why