Jessica Sorensen - Saving Quinton

“Yes, but you can do it by yourself, too,” she says, rounding the foot of the bed. “Like you did.”

I start to wrap the cord around my hand. “I didn’t do it by myself.”

She looks puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I had help,” I say, putting the balled-up cord in my laptop bag. “From Landon.”

She’s even more lost, so I decide to explain. “I watched his video, the one he made before he…before he killed himself, and he said some stuff that sort of woke me up and made me realize I didn’t want to do drugs anymore…made me see what my life had become.” I think Lea’s been trying to make me see what it’s become now, but I’m fighting to open my eyes and accept everything.

She pushes up the sleeves of her shirt. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that…that you watched his video?”

I shrug as I slide my laptop into the bag. “Because I wasn’t ready to talk about it back then.”

“But you are now?”

“I guess.” Honestly, I’m not really sure why I’m telling her unless it’s because I’m emotionally drained. “But you should probably know that I told Quinton first, which I think says a lot about how much I care for him,” I say, zipping up the bag. She opens her mouth to protest, but I cut her off, holding my hand up. “Look, I know you don’t get it and I don’t expect you to, but just trust me when I say that I care for him and I probably won’t ever completely stop caring about him…he’ll always be a part of me.”

“Nova, I understand that you care about him,” she explains, picking up my duffel bag from the floor. “I just don’t want you to be unable to move past this. I don’t want to see you pulled under like you were with Landon’s death, and Lea said things were getting really bad.”

“They were…are,” I admit as I slide the handle of the laptop bag over my shoulder. “But it’s going to be hard to get over this when I have no idea where he is and I was the only one looking out for him, so no one’s going to even try to find him anymore.”

She walks up to me and puts an arm around my shoulder. “Well, we can still keep working on his father. Maybe if we tell him what you told me happened…that he might be hurt and in trouble, he might want to help him a little more,” she says, heading toward the door and guiding me with her. “And maybe we can get Tristan’s parents involved, too.”

“I don’t think that’ll work,” I tell her as we go into the living room. “I think they blame Quinton for Ryder’s death.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure they care about their son,” she says. “And maybe if they go looking for him, they’ll find Quinton, too.”

“And what if they won’t? Or what if they do and they find Quinton and make things worse?” I’m wary of her optimism, partly because of what I said and partly because I’m worried there’s no Tristan and Quinton to find.

“I don’t think they will,” she assures me, giving my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “And it’s their son too that’s out there and as a mother, I know that despite any angry feelings I’d have, I’d want everyone to be safe.”

I start to cry because I have no hope at the moment and my mom hugs me while I cry, letting me feel the pain because she knows it’s better than keeping it trapped inside. Whether she realizes it or not, she helps. It’s so nice to have so many people in my life who do, and it hurts to think about Quinton who has no one, just wandering around waiting to die like he told me that night. I wish I could stay and search for him, but my mom loves me too much to let me stay and deep down I know that I’m not strong enough at the moment to take on such a huge task. I thought I was when I started this. Thought I could handle this. I’d been doing good, helping at the suicide hotline. But the problem is that I have huge, massive feelings for Quinton, ones that remind me of my feelings for Landon. They make this so much more personal and trigger too much instability inside me.

It’s one of the hardest things to do, getting into my car and driving away from that noisy city, knowing that he could be out there lost in a sea of people who barely acknowledge his existence, who don’t want to see the ugly, dark, messed-up part of life, so they pass by it without giving it a glance, like the lost part of the city Quinton showed me. Forgotten by the brighter side of town.

As my mom drives the Chevy Nova down the freeway, I watch the city behind us, turning on the song Quinton and I were listening to that night we danced in front of the car, the one good time when everything seemed like it was going to be okay—when I thought maybe, just maybe, I was helping him. I mutter the lyrics underneath my breath as the buildings and hazy sky slip farther and farther away until Vegas disappears completely and all that’s left to do is turn around in the seat and face the future.

June 30, day forty-six of summer break

Quinton

Time is becoming nonexistent. Even major events, like the apartment building burning down a couple of weeks ago. Such a big thing, but I barely remember stumbling out of the apartment in the middle of the night, while flames engulfed the building.

No one really knew what happened. Someone said they’d heard gunshots coming from where Dylan and Delilah were living. I’d seen them a couple of times since the whole thing with Trace. Dylan and I even got into a fight. But he was too high to really do anything and so was I.

I wondered if maybe one of them started the fire, but I didn’t stick around to find out—I couldn’t. The cops and fire trucks showed up and that was Nancy’s and my cue, along with everyone else’s who was doing illegal shit there, to bail out and take to the streets.

And that’s where I’ve been living ever since. Sleeping behind Dumpsters, in vacant buildings when we come across them. We sometimes crash at people’s places when we have the opportunity, but that’s rare.

All we really have left is the clothes on our backs and a limited amount of drugs that we buy after stealing stuff when we can, and sometimes Nancy prostitutes herself out, when we’re running really low.

I’d hate my life at the moment, if I could feel hate, but I can’t feel anything except the hungry monster living inside me. He’s taken over every part of me and almost killed off the old Quinton entirely.

“Don’t shoot up right here,” I warn as I pace the alley between a strip club and a pawnshop. There’s a stack of crates at the back, concealed by a Dumpster, and it’s where Nancy I spent last night after the cops showed up at the vacant warehouse we’d been staying at for the past week.

“Why the hell not?” Nancy asks, glancing up at me with starvation in her eyes as she searches her backpack, looking for the one thing that can feed her hunger. Just seeing the look on her face—seeing the need—makes me salivate.

“Because first off, the last thing you need to do is pass out in an alley,” I tell her. “Then I’ll have to stay awake and keep an eye on you.”

She laughs at me from the ground, this hysterical laugh that she gets when she’s super sleep-deprived. “Is someone a little greedy?” she asks. “Afraid you’re going to have to watch instead of taste?”

I stop pacing and glare at her. “Can we please just go somewhere more private?” I glance nervously down at the end of the alley, at people walking by. Always looking over my shoulder, worried someone might show up. I’m not even sure who I think will show up or maybe deep down it’s that I want someone to—a blue-green-eyed girl I still think about no matter how much numbness I put into my veins. I don’t even know if she’s in Vegas anymore or if she went home. And that’s how it should be. I should know nothing about Nova Reed. “Somewhere we can just lie down and enjoy getting high?”