Fading Away

By the time I signed my offer letter, shook the director’s hand, and walked out of the Boys and Girls Club into the afternoon sun, the Adderall had worn off and I felt a subtle nausea swim through my stomach. I needed a fix. I had become quite familiar with the feeling during my first month off painkillers. The sequence goes like this: the morning Adderall lasts until 4 PM and then comes the nausea and then I reach into my pocket for my cell phone and then I remember that I deleted the numbers of Kevin, Chris, and Amy (all my dealers) and then I remember that I have their numbers memorized and then I remember that I went to Verizon and blocked my phone from calling those numbers and then I remember that I can walk to the T station and ask an unsuspecting elderly man to borrow his phone to call for a ride and then I can call Kevin instead. 

Fuck it, I thought. I reached into my pocket for my pack of Camels and lit one. The smoke danced blue in the summer sun. I walked across the street to Starbucks, pulled open the glass door and ordered a large iced coffee with a turbo shot of espresso. That would hold me over. Percocet would be off my mind until dinner. I could drink a beer in my bedroom after Mom and Dad went to sleep, take an edible, watch an episode of The Sopranos on my laptop in bed and I would be out cold within the hour. Sobriety was a piece of cake. 

The blue-haired barista coughed into her shirt as she handed me what looked like a plastic bucket of iced coffee. I sipped the cold brew and the nausea wave retreated into the cruel sea from which it came. My head cleared. On my way out I noticed a few puffy clouds in the sky. 

“Cumulonimbus,” I said, gazing up. 

The rehab facility in Falmouth said that the opioids were deteriorating the learning center in my brain. 

“The cerebrum,” I reminded myself. 

I had taped a chart of all the different cloud types to the bathroom wall so that I could regain my learning centers while I pooped. So far, so good. I also kept a diagram of the human brain folded in my wallet. When I reached for cash, I remembered how important each wet, pink, squishy piece actually is. 

I heard my phone vibrate in my backpack and placed my coffee down on a mailbox. I unzipped my bag and dug past my notebooks and felt for the buzzing thing. It was Dad. 

“So?” he said. “Did you get the job?” 

“I got it,” I said. I stretched my arm and held the phone away from my face. 

“That’s so great!” I heard from three feet away. “Max! What are they paying you? Did they match your old salary?” 

I switched the phone to speaker. “70k. I’ll have to travel a lot for fundraising but I see that as a good thing.” 

I cautiously turned off speaker and brought the phone back to my face. I heard sobs. 

“Son, your mother and I—” 

“Dad, can we do this later? I’m meeting Larry for basketball.” 

“You two are talking again? Son that’s so—” 

“Dad, please. He’s my best friend.” 

“Okay, okay. We’ll celebrate when you get home. Burritos and root beers?” 

“Great,” I said. “One root beer on the rocks for me.” 

Silence on the other end. 

“Okay Dad, I’ll be home around seven.” 

He paused. 

“Son, don’t worry about your mother. I—” 

I thought about Mom’s facial expression the third time she drove me to rehab. Hands death-gripping the steering wheel at ten and two. Eyes locked on the road in a cold stare. Murmuring to herself while I smoked a cigarette in the backseat. 

“I know,” I said. “It’s just that first it was the car and then it was the window to the—“ 

“Water under the bridge, Maxy. Water under the bridge. What do you say you and your old man get tickets to the Sox this weekend? The Brewers are in town.” 

“Works for me, pops.” I heard a brief silence. I checked the screen to see if we were still connected. 

“I love you, son,” he said. 

“Love you too, pops.” 

I hung up and texted Larry. Beers after hoops tonight? 

Then I placed the phone in my backpack, grabbed my iced coffee off the hot metal mailbox and touched my finger to the wet ring. I ordered a Lyft and set the destination to Sullivan’s Playground in Brighton. I gulped. I had landed my first job in twelve months. I hadn’t taken a Percocet in thirty days. Now I just had to pay back the money I owed Larry. 

 *          *          *

I cranked the stiff window handle in the backseat of the Lyft driver’s Toyota Camry and probed bubblegum residue with my finger. 

“I thought the cutoff date for Lyft vehicles was 2005,” I said to the driver. He glanced in the rearview and said nothing. 

“I could be wrong,” I added. 

 I cranked the handle a full turn further until the child-proofing stopped the glass. The breeze blew against my face as the caffeine from my coffee settled in. I imagined my pink brain submerged in a giant Starbucks cup. 

After five minutes of slow-crawling traffic, I squinted at the peeling sticker on the dented bumper of a Jeep Cherokee. The closer you get, the slower I drive. Exit 18 off the Pike was a nightmare. I realized I had enough time to smoke, so I reached into my pocket for my Camels. 

“No smoking in the car,” said the driver with a quick glance in his rearview. 

“Do you want one?” I asked. The driver glared at me in the reflection and nodded. I lit a cigarette, took a drag and held it out for the driver. I lit another. Two long pulls slowed my breath and I felt the nicotine lighten the load of my mind. I pictured my wet brain in the backseat next to me—toweling off from the coffee and lighting up a fresh smoke. 

 *          *          *

In the sixth grade, Larry came to my house every day after school until his dad came home from the construction site. That spring we discovered the nuanced beauty of whiffle-ball. The shrubs behind my deck became first base. An old tree-stump toward center field became second. A strategically placed Frisbee became third and my dad’s warped Adirondack chair that he made in high school woodshop became home plate. A crooked lamppost and a Japanese maple were our foul poles and we dubbed our lopsided, unevenly landscaped field “Little Fenway.” 

Larry was a lefty, so naturally the co-created field worked in his favor. A giant overhanging oak rejected any right-handed power shot above the height of its lowest branch. I could smash a ball into the towering tree and was rewarded with a second strike on my batting count. 

“Rules are rules,” Larry would say. 

By the seventh grade, Larry boasted hairy legs and the deep voice of a boy blessed with early puberty, and too many arguments negating the lefty privilege resulted in a full nelson. 

The only place Larry couldn’t dominate was the basketball court. After every game of whiffle, we walked across the driveway to reach the front of the house, where Larry mounted his BMX and pedaled home. Every time we crossed the driveway, a spontaneous game of basketball ensued. I owned Larry on the court. I knew how to shift his weight to the left with a jab-step and then drive right—sealing him inside my shoulder for a perfect finger roll off the glass. And when he feared my drive to the hoop and gave me space, I had the finesse to drain a jumper in his eye. Larry’s brute strength didn’t matter on the court. My hands were quicker than his and I’d knock the ball loose before he could put it to pavement for a dribble. He could jump higher than I could but I knew how to lift him off the ground with a pump fake. And on his descent I would raise up and stroke a three. Larry humbled himself to me with an easygoing smile that was rare and beautiful. 

“You have me in hoops. I’ll give you that,” he would say. “You have a knack for the game.” 

 *          *          *

I lit another smoke and the driver held out his hand for his cut without taking his eyes off the road. I imagined how Larry would react knowing that I had landed a nine-to-five—knowing that I beat my sweet-tooth Percocet habit. I’d pay him what I owed him for the laptop and for rent. That was a different me. He’d pat me on the shoulder and tell me that he never doubted me—that warriors never quit. 

“Buddy, you leaving or what?” the driver said. We were across the street from the park, and the towering hoops arched over the whizzing traffic. 

I flicked my butt onto the sidewalk and watched the gold ember dance across the pavement and vanish into a bush. I rolled up the window, met a jam halfway, grabbed my backpack and exited the car. The driver held out his hand and I gave him two more cigarettes. I saw the lonely three remaining in my pack and asked for one back. Then I began my strut to the court. Two kids—eleven or twelve years old—hoisted airballs on the far-side hoop. Robins hopped around the field nearby pecking the ground for worms. The front hoop was free. I placed my backpack next to the pole to claim the court and waited for Larry. 

I reached in my pack for a cigarette but as I flicked my lighter a cool breeze blew and extinguished the flame. I flicked furiously but the wind persisted. I turned my back to the breeze and hunched over—swearing under my breath. 

“Probably for the best.” I heard a deep voice behind me. 

I turned around and saw Larry. He looked taller than I remembered. He fastened his silver road bike to a chain-link fence. I held the unlit cigarette in my mouth as I pulled my waistband over my flabby stomach. His white Under Armour T-shirt and blue Nike shorts looked new and he wore the latest Kyrie Irving sneaker. His arms were tan and his legs were thick and athletic. 

“You look like shit,” I said. 

He smiled and produced a red, white, and blue basketball from his backpack and heaved it into my chest. He eyed my unlit cigarette. 

“You still smoke those things?” 

I sneered and returned the cigarette—slightly soggy from saliva—back into my crumpled pack. 

“New job?” Larry asked as he knocked the ball out of my hands and dashed toward the hoop. 

“Killed the competition,” I said. 

“Do you get a wage or do the non-profits still pay in food stamps?” Larry elevated for a layup, kissed the ball off the glass and slapped the backboard as the ball swished through the soft mesh. 

“Salary, bitch,” I said. Larry won at everything—from the latest shoes to his hook-up résumé to his marketing job with Google. 

“Oh. Salary?” he asked. His voice had a sarcastic tone that I couldn’t place. He dribbled circles around me as I stood near the three-point line. I gave him a light shove. He dribbled away from me, stopped at the free-throw line, elevated for a jump shot, stroked a swish and dangled his hand in the air. “So that means I’ll be seeing the three months of rent you owe me plus the money for the laptop you stole and sold for drugs?” 

I shuffled my feet and reached for my pack and remembered the wind. My breath quickened. I couldn’t recall the last three days at our two-bedroom apartment in the North End—only waking up crying in the stiff cot at a detox center in the Cape. 

I gulped and avoided Larry’s eyes. Then he turned away and shot a three-pointer that clanked off the rim. 

“I didn’t steal your laptop,” I said. “I borrowed it for job applications and left it on the table at Starbucks. I went to buy a coffee, and when I came back, it was gone.” I paused between each segment of the story for emphasis. 

“So it’s a coincidence that the day my laptop disappeared I found you unconscious on the living room couch next to a bag of pills?” 

My hands in my pockets were damp with sweat and I balled them into fists. 

“Do you know how hard I’ve worked to get sober?” I lowered my yell to a hushed whisper. “Do you know how humiliating it is to have my dad drive me to NA meetings three times a week like he’s driving a fucking kid to Little League?” 

“Remind me what sobriety is, exactly? I’m pretty sure you invited me out for a beer tonight.” 

I stared vacantly across the court and watched the smaller kid hoist an airball that missed the rim by five feet. His larger friend laughed in his face. 

“I’m clean,” I said. Larry gave my fat physique a once-over. 

“Great. Then let’s play.” 

 *          *          *

I took the ball at the top of the key. 

“Check ball,” I said and passed it to Larry who handed it right back. 

Larry crouched in a defensive position and swarmed his body around me. I turned my back to protect the ball and felt his hot breath on my neck. He wanted to destroy me. The sun shone behind a harmless cloud and I pivoted off my right foot, bounced the ball between his gaping legs, maneuvered around him and caught up to it for an easy layup. I laughed, then coughed twice. 

“Cocky bastard,” I said. “One–nothing.” 

The next possession, Larry gave me two feet of space. I looked down at his tree-trunk legs and noticed a slight quiver around his ankles. He sat back on his heels, daring me to shoot. I raised up and stroked a jump shot—flicking my wrist as the ball glided off my fingers and swished through the hoop. I left my hand hanging in the air. Larry avoided my eyes with a furtive glance and fumbled the ball when I passed it to him to check. 

“Three–nothing,” I said. The two kids from the far hoop sat on the long grass next to our court and dug into a box of Cheez-Its, their eyes fixed on us. 

“You sure you want to play to seven?” I asked. 

Larry shoved the ball back into my chest and I immediately drove to my right—sealing him off with my shoulder like I did back in our driveway battles. He caught up to me after I rushed to the hoop but I kept him behind me and finessed a finger roll off the glass. I coughed hard this time and hawked up a piece of phlegm. 

“Gross!” the larger kid yelled. 

I coughed again into my fist. My lungs burned. I watched the clouds pass over the sun and it looked as if the blue sky were racing and the sun and the clouds were still. My knees ached under the weight of my body. 

“Four–nothing,” I said. I hunched over the ball at the top of the key and wheezed. I held up my hand—asking for time—but Larry struck like a cobra and pulled the ball from my grip and raced to the hoop. He laid it off the backboard for an easy bucket. 

The next two possessions, Larry dribbled from baseline to baseline trying to gas me out. I stayed in front of him at first but my knees stiffened with fatigue until I hunched over. He beat me to the hoop for two easy layups. 

“Four–three,” he said. 

By this point my hands stayed fixed on my knees and I stood at the free-throw line—begging him to shoot. 

“Why’s the fat man so tired?” the smaller boy asked his friend. I hiked my shorts over my wet, itchy, chafing stomach. I looked at Larry’s long veiny arms and his thick legs and for the first time I saw how I looked to the boys—chubby, pale and ending every play with a coughing fit. Maybe they wondered how Larry and I even knew each other. 

Larry raised up for a three and banked it off the backboard and through the hoop. I laughed and coughed and hawked up more phlegm. 

“Doesn’t count. You have to call a bank shot. Driveway rules.” 

Larry threw the ball at my feet and it bounced back to him. 

“Five–four.” 

I felt a rage in my chest and I swarmed him—knees bent and arms stretched wide—swiping up at the ball. He pivoted to his right, swung the ball behind him and lowered his shoulder. All I felt was his heavy weight against my chest and then the raw feeling of my back scraping the concrete. The clouds had vanished and the sun looked lonely in the hot blue sky. I looked up and watched Larry miss a layup. He calmly grabbed the rebound, dribbled down the baseline, stepped behind the three-point line and swished a three. 

I jumped to my feet. 

“You finally got me,” I said. “You’ve improved. I’m not mad. Say it. You beat me in hoops. Rub it in. Go ahead.” My words sounded frantic. 

I expected Larry’s shit-eating grin but instead I noticed pools of tears in his hazel eyes. He shook his head and blinked them away. He looked at me but his eyes were sad—like he didn’t recognize what he saw. The two kids ran off with shrieks and I heard their ball bouncing on the far side of the court—echoing alongside the chirping birds and whirring cars. Larry took a step toward me. 

“Get yourself clean,” he said. “For you.” He dropped his head and walked to the chain-link fence and began the combination lock. 

“If this is about the laptop, my first paycheck is yours. I’m living at home, so I don’t need the money. My first paycheck and two months’ rent,” I said as Larry mounted his bike. 

“Keep it,” he said. “Just don’t be the guy that I get a call about at two in the morning.” 

He opened his mouth to say more but instead strapped on his helmet and gently rolled the ball to me. Then he rode off down the asphalt path. I watched him pedal until he joined the flow of traffic and disappeared behind a passing truck. I was left with the chirping birds and the blaring horns. 

With a surge of anger, I picked up the ball and punted it as far as I could. I watched it bounce over a chain-link fence and disappear into the woods. The two kids stood at the opposite end of the court, mouths ajar. 

“Six One Seven Five Six Two Eight Four Three Nine,” I yelled. “Why can’t I forget that fucking number?” 

 *          *          *

It’s strange watching your body do something from memory while your mind floats at a distance and begs you to stop. That’s how I felt when I approached the old man with the walker at the T station and asked to use his cell phone to call for a ride. That’s how I felt when I called Kevin and asked to meet at our usual spot—the Finagle a Bagel in the financial district next to the Hookah Lounge. That’s how I felt when the billboard for Sun Life Insurance at the Back Bay station looked all too familiar and the inertia of the stopped train propelled me out the door toward my dealer, whom I’d managed to avoid for thirty days. It was muscle memory and my body glided through the motions with ease. 

Kevin was the same fat piece of shit he was one month ago—black flat-brimmed hat with Ray-Ban sunglasses and camouflage cargo shorts hanging around his fat ankles. I slapped his hand and watched my fingers slide off his and transform into a fist bump in slow motion while I hovered above my body and begged it to stop. 

“Thought you lost my number or something,” Kevin said. He grinned and the black reflection of his shades showed a sweaty, fat, tired man who was sick of it all. 

“I was taking a break,” I said. My eyes darted and danced over cracks on the sidewalk where tiny weeds poked through. My hand shook as I reached into my pocket for my wallet and then I was above myself, begging the shaking to stop. I thumbed past my dog-eared diagram of the brain toward my fresh twenties. A bead of sweat dripped down my forehead and caught the corner of my eye with a salty sting. 

“Breaks are good. Breaks are good,” Kevin said. “You know I got you. Weed, pills, whatever. If you need it, I got it. And if I don’t got it, I’ll get it. Just call Kevin.” 

He was always calling himself Kevin. Kevin. Fucking Kevin. He lifted his black hood over his hat and I waited for him to pull out his fucking scythe and slash me in the back once and for all. 

I slipped the twenties into a folded piece of newspaper and handed them to Kevin and he gave me the pills in an empty pack of Marlboro Lights. Fat people always smoke Marlboro Lights—like they come in a package deal with Diet Coke or something. 

I watched again how easily my fingers slid off his when we slapped hands and his knuckles banged into mine with a final fist-bump. I reached into my pocket and opened my pack and my last four cigarettes were all smushed and split above the filter—loose tobacco spilling everywhere. 

“Hey man, think I can bum a smoke?” I asked. 

“Fresh out, bro,” said Kevin. He took a spastic sip from his Monster Energy drink. 

“All the same,” I said. I thought of the final possession against Larry—how lonely the sun looked in the sky as I lay on my back at the foul line. “I should probably quit, anyway.” 

I made it twenty steps before I looked over my shoulder at Kevin. His back was facing me as he leaned against a mailbox. He held his cell phone against his ear with his shoulder and a cloud of smoke gathered and dispersed above his hooded head as he puffed a fresh cigarette. 

 *          *          *

By the time I sat down with Mom and Dad for dinner I had snorted two key bumps in the backseat of the Lyft and didn’t have the stomach for a burrito. 

“This can’t be my son,” Dad said from across the table, picking two kernels of corn off an otherwise clean plate. “The Max I know could eat a Super Burrito, a small quesadilla, chips and guac, and still have room for dessert.” 

Mom went to the fridge for another glass of wine. 

“How was hoops with Larry?” he asked. 

“Still undefeated.” I forced a smile. My breath was slow and my body felt like a rhythmic balloon and I could taste the bitter Percocet in the back of my sinuses. I sniffed it down into my throat and took a sip of water. 

Dad eyed my untouched meal. He managed a weak smile, cleared my plate and put my foiled burrito in the fridge. 

 “Fuel for your first big day,” he said. 

Mom retreated to the couch with her wine and hugged her knees into her chest as she watched the evening news. 

After dinner I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling fan. If I focused just right, the blur turned into individual blades—moving at warp speed—and then back to a blur and then blades again. I chewed four perk thirties which make for one hundred and twenty milligrams of Percocet. They tasted bitter and I didn’t bother with water. I let the bitterness sit on my tongue and then I swished it to one cheek and then the other—collecting spit and dissolving it into a wet phlegmy mess. Then I swallowed it down. 

I texted Dad, who was nested in his red recliner watching the Sox pound the Orioles for the third straight night. 

Can you wake me up tomorrow in case I sleep through my alarm? I want to be fresh for my first day. 

You got it, slugger. 

I picked up Dad’s old laptop and felt the heat through my thin sheets. My ankles throbbed from the game. I opened Netflix and resumed my latest episode of The Sopranos. 

Tony—the sociopathic mob boss I can’t help but love—dives into a swimming pool to save AJ, his depressed teenage son. AJ tied two cinder blocks to his legs and jumped in the pool. Only the rope is too long and he finds himself able to struggle at the surface—head barely above water—gasping for air. The cinder blocks keep him from reaching the edge of the pool and the long rope prevents him from drowning completely. He flails in the space between—too weak to save himself and too dumb to die. 

I feel the weight of the air in my lungs as the second wave of sedation washes over me. The screen turns blurry. A panic gathers in my chest like a fury of clouds. “Cumulonimbus,” I say, and try to laugh, but the fear compresses like a ferocious storm. 

I pick up my phone to text Dad but I feel it slip between my fingers and hear the thud on the carpet. 

“Dad,” I call. 

But my throat is dry as I croak and I feel a sharp jab in my chest and then a cough that won’t let out and then another jab. I sit upright, gasping for air. The computer slides off my lap and falls onto the rug. 

“Dad,” I croak. Just the sound of the fan. I croak again: “Larry.” 

I lie down and close my eyes as the third wave arrives. I feel calm and my ankles don’t hurt and I float inches above my body with no burden of physical suffering—with no burden of anything at all. I feel the floor for my phone and call Larry. 

It feels like minutes between each ring until it breaks to an automated voicemail and then to a beep. I listen to the static and think of one particular pitch in Little Fenway. Larry hung a curve ball that never broke and I hit the ball so clean that I couldn’t even feel it off my bat. The loud crack chased the soaring ball through the green leaves. Normally the branches knocked down any left-field shot and the ball would reemerge from the oak thicket and drop to the ground by the pitcher’s feet. But this ball found gap after gap until it disappeared and it never fell and we stared up at the tree in awe. Larry looked back at me and then up again and gasped. 

I hear the rustling leaves through the phone’s static and I see Larry’s twelve-year-old face. Wide smile. Eyes aglow, as I drop the bat and round the bases. Then I think of the wet hazel eyes that can’t bear what they see. I press the phone to my face and ask Larry if he still thinks I’m beautiful. 

PETE PROKESCH

Pete Prokesch (he/him) is a writer and lives in Watertown, Massachusetts. His fiction can be found in Four Way Review, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, and BlazeVOX Journal, and he is a reader for Epiphany. He also works in construction and writes green building curricula for carpenters.