"You fucking liar. You fucking lied to my fucking face and actually thought I wasn't going to find out."

Stella was angry, and I knew that without having to look at her. My sister's voice was more identifiable than anyone else I knew - South Carolina Buttercup Princess mixed with grating nails on a chalkboard, and it slammed into me like a truck the moment I slipped through the back door. She sat on top of our kitchen island, legs swinging and sipping her standard morning cup of tea. Morning light spilled in through the series of big open windows facing our back deck, and with it came the sound of the ocean.

"You'll need to be a bit more specific." I could hear the apathy in my voice, and I didn't make eye contact with her as I fumbled over to the fridge and yanked out a bottle of Sunny D. Before I could even unscrew the cap, Stella swooped in beside me, gently taking the bottle from my hands and replacing it with a warm mug. Stella had all the grace and reflexes of a stealthy cat, and I was more like a sloth that had fallen on its head a few times.

"Drink this," she said, her voice softer than before. "You need it."

"It smells like dirt." I wrinkled my nose at it. "I don't need any of your weird beauty pageant health rituals."

She scoffed. "It's not a weird health ritual, Kai, it's fucking tea. Green tea is a detoxifier. You need to be detoxified...from several things."

She returned to her spot on the counter, legs still swinging and eyes studying me as I took a small sip, cringing as it hit the back of my throat. Not only did it smell like dirt, it tasted like dirt too.

"This still doesn't get you out of the fact that when I asked you yesterday if you were going to see Sage, you were so overdramatic when you told me no fuck off, and for a moment I actually believed it." Venom coated Stella's words, but when I looked up into her eyes, the same stormy gray as mine, hurt shrouded them like a cloud.

I groaned and set the mug down a little too aggressively, sending hot liquid splashing all over the counter and my hand. "Don't start with this shit. I don't need you pointing fingers at me, enough people do that already."

"You told me you were going to Hunter's house." She kept her narrowed eyes on me, like a lioness stalking prey.

"And I did go to Hunter's house," I replied with a shrug.

Her gaze didn't falter. She was ready to pounce. "Then why do you smell like cigarettes, incense, and Thai food?"

I was caught in her jaws. My sister had a knack for drawing blood in every argument she'd ever been in - it was part of what was going to make her a good lawyer, but it never benefitted me, since I was always the one that ended up bleeding.

"You know maybe you should just quit your summer job at the Junior League and go work for the fishing and game association instead," I said casually, watching her smirk twist into a sneer out of the corner of my eye. "I'm sure they could use more bloodhounds."

"All I'm saying is if you look up toxic in the dictionary, you and Princess Sage are right up there next to those 50 Shades of Grey people." She held up her hands in defense and shook her head.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pamphlet for the local community college on the counter by our outdated landline phone that nobody used. I glanced back up at Stella, who continued to work her glare over me.

"Don't call Sage that," I groaned and dumped the tea down the drain without even trying to finish it. "And last time I checked, where I put my dick is none of your business."

Before Stella had a chance to fire back another stinger, my mother came waltzing into the kitchen, already dressed for the day and smelling like lavender.

"Both of my children are up by 8? Are pigs flying outside too?" My mother grinned and cocked an eyebrow at both of us before polishing off the pot of coffee sitting on the other side of the fridge. I turned my back to her and shot Stella a withering glare over the counter, to which she responded with an impassive shrug.

My mom had to stand on her toes to kiss my cheek, her voice soft against my skin. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," I answered with a shrug. "I'm fine. I'm great. Really, I am."

She gave me a half smile, one that didn't quite reach the corners of her eyes. "Well that's good. I'll see you at the flower shop in about an hour, yeah?"

"Sure thing." I responded with a quick nod.

When she was out of earshot, Stella returned the glare I gave her earlier. "You know Kai, one day everyone is just going to stop caring about you. You should take advantage of it now while you still can."

✗✗✗

I took a longer than usual shower in an attempt to scrub the awkward mix of smells and sex off of me. I always had to duck in our tiny shower in the upstairs bathroom for the water to get anywhere above my chest.

After drying myself off and still faintly smelling of my Marlboro Lites and Sage's charred incense, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and frowned. I had always been skinny and tall, like someone had thrown me in one of those weird medieval tourture machines, but I'd lost at least 15 pounds in the last few months, and skinny had turned into something more sickly. The bags under my eyes and creases in my forehead seemed like permanent additions to my face, and I desperately needed a haircut as my mop of dark hair took on a mind of its own. Seeing myself for what I had become, all gangly and awkward and damaged, made my stomach roll.

My arms were like a mini universe, dotted with stars of dried blood and freckles, and deep marks of reddish blue discoloration and bruises, like what I'd imagine a dying supernova looked like. I hadn't fallen back into straight heroin use in over two months, but my track marks were as fresh as if I'd shot up yesterday. I ran my hand over the bruises, and the urge itched at me, like tiny spiders living under my skin.

That was the thing about my relationship with drugs. They found ways to constantly remind me that they were there. Even when I wasn't using. Even when I didn't want to use. My addiction was like a shadow, constantly on my heels, dark and breathing down my neck. By the time I had put on a fresh t-shirt and the same pair of jeans from yesterday (since they were the only pair that fit me) and shuffled my way downstairs, Stella was already gone.

I slipped a tiny plastic bag out of my back pocket that I found lying around Sage's room last night and crushed half of a little white pill up with a spoon. I rubbed it on my gums and almost instantly felt a wave of euphoria wash over me, unraveling my insides and unhinging my skull from my neck, putting my aching head up in the clouds. Whether it was my pettiness that drove my addiction, or vise versa, I didn't know and I didn't care.

After jamming the spoon in the dishwasher and stashing the bag in an old cigar box under my bed, I grabbed my skateboard from the garage and made my way down our street and towards the tiny center of our island town. The municipal groundskeepers usually kept the palm trees and other foliage neat and trimmed on the one main road in town, but they were wild and overgrown on the side streets. Most of the branches and leaves blocked out the mid-morning sun, but sweat still trickled down my forehead and back as I rode down the street.

There were normally a lot of downsides to having your license suspended, but living on an island as small as Folly Beach, where I could stand on one edge of the island, spit, and it would land on the other side, my skateboard was enough. It wasn't like I went anywhere besides the flower shop and Sage's house. But there were different downsides to living in a small town. My "recommended removal" from the College of Charleston and two months stashed away in inpatient treatment was the only thing that happened in those two months, so it spread like wildfire. By the time I came back, the whispers had reached everyone's ears, and people shot me judging glances as I rode by them on the street and got my coffee in the morning. Every small town had a token fucked up guy, and that guy was me.