After my visit with Cricket, my sleep is full of fever-induced nightmares. Most of them involve me leaving the baby in the trash, walking away but then regretting it a day or so later and trying to go back and find him. A variety of scenarios plays out; not being able to get back into the bathroom, getting back in but finding the trashcan emptied, seeing someone else taking him right before I can get there, finding him and having to determine if he's somehow still alive. Each dream is full of sheer panic and desperation, and I wake up with my face all wet with tears.

Jesse thinks I'm crying because I'm sick with the flu. I let him. It's simple, and somehow comforting, when he tells me it'll be okay and he'll help me feel all better, when he moves my hair to the side and kisses the back of my neck. Like I have nothing to worry about except making him believe that.

The first thing I do when I wake up the next morning is take both of our temperatures. I'm 102. Jesse is 100. All I want in the world is to go back to sleep. My energy is sapped, and I can barely summon the strength it takes to get out of the sleeping bag and search for some NyQuil to knock myself out again.

"Why don't you want your baby no more?"

I jump and whirl around. The angry, accusing voice belongs to Gus, of all people, like me giving up on Cricket is a personal blow to him. He's standing in the kitchen doorway, shirtless, hugging his stuffed dog, still sick and shivering. His big brown eyes are blazing with either fever or anger, I can't tell.

"What's it to you?" I ask hoarsely.

I don't even know how he knows. He must have heard me talking to Hex about how my visit went yesterday. It's the last thing I need right now.

"I just wanna know why," Gus says.

"It's none of your business."

"There has to be a reason. Why don't you want him no more?"

"It's not that I don't want him, Mouse," I say, stifling a cough.

"So what is it?"

I sigh and throw up a hand. "He deserves better than me."

"That's a cop out."

"What do you know about it?"

"Nothin'. 'Cept that's a cop out, and you're a coward."

Gus rarely speaks to anyone like this. Maybe that's why it gets to me so much. When Jesse says cruel things to me, I barely feel it. When it comes from someone like Gus, well, it makes you take a good hard look at yourself.

I cough so hard I almost puke, and my body aches like one big bruise. I swallow the NyQuil I came in here to find and push past Gus.

"You can call me whatever you want when you know what this is like," I say.

Back at our sleeping bag, Jesse is being all sweet to me and looking helpless. My heart softens towards him once again. He makes me melt like candle wax.

"Ember..." he whispers weakly.

"It's okay, baby," I say, smoothing his sweaty hair back. "Don't talk."

"You're the best girlfriend. I really love you."

I coax him into taking a sip of medicine.

"Shh... Jesse. Don't talk anymore."

"If I die before you..."

"Stop."

"Don't leave me there," he says fearfully. "Don't leave me in the dark."

I can't promise him anything, so I just kiss his forehead.

"Fix me a hit?" he asks.

The life of a junkie. I sigh and start preparing the syringe. Adam, too, is still hitting that meth pipe despite burning up with fever. The meth makes it much worse, sends his body temperature skyrocketing.

"Hex, he isn't even slowing down. What are you gonna do?" I asked her last night.

We were watching Adam, who was totally spun, writing feverishly in his notebook. He was oblivious to us and anything else around him. I was too scared to check his temperature, but the last time Hex did it, before he smoked, it was 101.

"I got my first doctor appointment Monday. I already told him if he's high, I'm going alone. He needs to know I'm serious about this," she told me.

I have a feeling she'll soon be faced with the same choice I've been faced with, and that makes me sad for her. It's not like any of this makes me happy. No matter what I choose, I lose something.

Gus comes back into the room, a sullen ghost that sits down next to Adam and gives me one last cold look. Hex and Gus are taking shifts to look after Adam. He's starting to say some really crazy shit. I can't tell if it's the fever or meth psychosis. He'll look into dark corners and scream like he's seeing something there, and it freaks all of us out.

Gus curls up next to Adam and wraps his arms around him. I hear him whisper, "Don't die."
And I realize I never said that to Jesse.

********

When I'm well enough, I decide to go to one more NA meeting so I can say goodbye. Well, if I'm honest it's because I wanna see West one more time. I'll sorta miss these meetings. I like listening to people's stories and comparing them to my own. But Cricket is the only reason I went, and since I've given up on that dream, what's the point?

West is waiting for me outside at the picnic table. He's smoking, as usual, and not smiling, as usual. The poster boy for "brooding hot guy." When he sees me he gives me a little nod.

"Hey," I say, taking the empty seat next to him.

"Ember," he says.

"So this is my last night," I say.

West scoffs. "Cured?"

"No." I blush. "I've just changed my mind about my son. I'm letting the state keep him. He's a white baby, he'll get adopted quick."

West looks at me intently, like Gus looked at me in the kitchen. Cold. Only it's worse because West has these stormy gray eyes that look like hurricanes and stone and hail. God's wrath raining down on me.

"Why?" he asks.

I shrug. "It can't work out. I held him, and he hates me. All he did was scream and cry. I fucked him up by using drugs. He'll never forgive me for that. Plus the guy I'm with... I can't bring Cricket home to him."

"So your boyfriend and your ego matter more than your kid? Nice."

I roll my eyes. "Why is everyone giving me such shit about this?"

"Because you have the chance to do the right thing, but you don't care. And fuck your white privilege. That shit doesn't work for dope babies. Too many potential behavioral and learning disabilities for suburban mommies and daddies to deal with."

"Well someone will want Cricket! Plus, I'm the world's shittiest human being. He's better off away from me even if it's in permanent foster care!" I shout.

"Who did you murder?" West asks me out of nowhere.

"What does that have to-"

"You said you were the world's shittiest person. I'm just trying to understand why, 'cause if that's true I probably shouldn't be talking to you."

"Murdering someone isn't the only thing that can make a person shitty," I say.

"Yeah but shitty people never try to do the right thing. Shitty people are either oblivious to their shittiness or they're proud of it. You aren't shitty. What you are is a goddamn coward."

The word hits me square in the chest like it did when Gus said it. They're both right, and it hurts.

"It's just too hard," I whisper pathetically.

"It's too hard because you're not trying. If you tried, it would get easier," he says.

I look up at him. His jaw is tense, like he's grinding his teeth.

"Has it gotten easier for you?" I ask him pointedly.

"What part?"

"The cravings."

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On how I feel that day. Some days I don't think about it at all. Other days, it's all I think about."

"How do you get through those days? The ones where it's all you think about?"

West shrugs. He takes a long drag of his cigarette before answering the question.

"I detoxed in prison, and it was hell. No meds, no help, no one who cared. I think about having to do that again. I think about how nothing is worth feeling like that, ever again. Because even my worst day clean is gonna be better than my best day high, because it's real, and I'm actually living it. The good and the bad. It's all mine."

"You're saying I should do this for real. Stay clean, get Cricket back?"

"You already know the answer. You just don't like it because it's hard."