You know when you're sleeping, and you feel like you're falling? Well, when you're going through withdrawal, it feels like that, except when you wake up, you feel like you've hit the ground. Hard.

Every bone in my body ached, and every nerve shuddered as if I had cut them out of my body and laid little individual slivers out on ice, like the display of dead fish in the seafood section of the grocery store. Kai's nerve filets - $6 a pound.

The sun glared through my window, and I knew without looking at the clock that it was well past noon. I didn't know what time I had slunk back into the house, but someone had figured it out, since there was a glass of water and a bottle of Tylenol on my tiny, paint-speckled bedside table. My chest burned thinking about my mother tiptoeing through my room, trying not to wake me with a sad, discontented look glazed over her eyes.

As I sat up and tried to reach for the water, my throat scratching and clawing for hydration, a wave of nausea ripped through me. I knew after going through this cycle enough times that there was no point in taking any medication if I was just going to be puking it up all afternoon.

With my head spinning and my legs trembling, I somehow managed to make it to the bathroom without collapsing, until I finally did in front of the toilet and spewed out whatever little food was in me. It was mostly just stomach juice, and stomach juice smelled like rotten oranges.

I kept heaving even though nothing came out, and it made my head pound. I couldn't breathe, and little stars flashed in the corners of my eyes the way fireworks did if you stood too close.

Some people claimed addiction was a choice, and in a weird backwards way maybe it was - the choice that you'd rather keep doing drugs to avoid the absolute shitstorm of going through withdrawal every time you tried to stop. Literally and figuratively. I spent the entire afternoon alternating between dry heaving, shitting, and sticking my head under the shower so my face didn't melt off.

"Kai? What the hell are you doing?"

My sister's shrill voice cut through the sound of the shower running, and when I turned my head the lid of the toilet slipped, coming crashing down right on the back of my head.

"Fuck off, Stella," I groaned, clutching my already aching head and rolled over onto the frilly baby blue carpet on the bathroom floor.

I heard her jiggle the door handle, but I had locked it an hour ago.

"You're un-fucking-believable!" she screeched. "There's two goddamn bathrooms in this house and the lighting in the bathroom downstairs sucks. I have a pageant committee meeting to get ready for!"

"You know, for someone on a prissy pageant committee, you curse like a delinquent," I grumbled, rolling over onto my other side in hopes of dissipating the crippling nausea.

"God, you're such a fuckwad," she spat before stomping back down the hall.

I wasn't sure how long I laid huddled on the bathroom floor, but it was long enough for me to watch the strips of sunlight dance on the walls with the passing clouds and eventually dissolve into shadows. The tiles of the floor became cold under my clammy skin, and it gave me just enough of a push to get up and trudge back to my room. I tore off my sweat-stained shirt and replaced it with my comfiest hoodie, even though it reeked of cigarettes. The chills were back, and they radiated down into my bones. My stomach had settled, at least for the time being, and I figured I could house down a bowl of cereal and it probably wouldn't taste like battery acid coming up.

I tried to slink through the dark of the house inconspicuously as night completely took over. It seemed like the lights downstairs were off, but before I could breathe out a sigh of relief, I saw the two lights over the kitchen island flicker, where my mother was sitting quietly with a cup of tea, flipping through Good Housekeeping.

She glanced over her mug at me, and I couldn't read her expression. "Hey," she said softly.

I shuffled over to the pantry and grabbed a box of Cheerios.

"Hey," I answered when my back was to her. I fumbled around for a bowl and a spoon, keeping my head down to avoid her hazy eyes. It was the worst kind of quiet - like a deep breath before jumping off a cliff.

"Kai, can we talk?" she asked, her voice as steady as ever.

I dropped my spoon into the bowl with a clatter, and in the silence the sound of metal against glass was almost deafening.

"About what?" I tried to keep my voice as steady as hers, but I could feel the lump in my throat tighten and shake my vocal chords.

There was a pause. "Do you really not know?"

She wasn't angry. It was worse. A soft, miserable apathy.

"Just say it, Mom."

"I don't want to send you away again, Kai." She swallowed, and finally her voice cracked. "I want you home."

I turned to face her, and even in the dim of the kitchen lights, her eyes glazed over with unshed tears. The knot in my throat grew.

"I want to be home too," I mumbled to the floor.

"Then why do you keep doing this?" She slammed her hands on the countertop, and it made me jump. My mom was never angry. She approached every situation and every problem with calm and tact and lavender tea. Seeing her mad made my insides twist, especially because it was my fault. The guilt began to take over the aching and misery of the withdrawal, and it felt so much worse.

"Because I'm a fucking addict." I heard the defeat in my voice.

The storm of her anger had quickly subsided, and she popped up from her chair and shuffled through a drawer in the kitchen island. I heard the rustling of papers before she produced a pamphlet that looked far too similar to the community college one that had conveniently appeared in the kitchen last week, except it was a pamphlet for addiction counseling at the local medical university hospital. A soft look of pleading washed over her face.

"Your father thinks-"

"Oh come on, you called Dad?" I snapped. "Why?"

She sighed. "He's very worried-"

"If he was so worried, he'd be home."

I stormed off and up the stairs before she could respond, slamming my bedroom door behind me. Side effects of withdrawal included nausea, chills, fever, bitterness, irritability, and denial.

✗✗✗

It smelled like a dentist's office, all Pine Sol and latex gloves. After a week of alternating between sleeping, throwing up, and changing my clothes every 3 hours after sweating through them, I was almost back to normal (as normal as normal was for me), but that smell made me taste acid. At least I didn't feel like someone was putting my body through a meat grinder anymore.

In the end, my mom had given me a passive aggressive ultimatum. Go to this addiction youth group therapy at the university hospital, see an addiction counselor, and get my shit together enough to make it through one year of community college...or get the fuck out.

Except she said all that a little nicer.

I needed a consultation at the university hospital first before I actually got into any addiction counseling program, which was ridiculous because I had seen enough therapists to know they were all full of shit. Even so, I fidgeted nervously in the sticky plastic chair, and the lady behind the desk in the waiting room glanced over at me every few moments, as if she thought I was going to bolt the moment she took her eye off of me.

The addiction center took up the entire 5th floor of the medical university hospital, and the pristine waiting room made me feel more out of place than I already was in my dirty Vans and wrinkled button-up shirt. Big glass doors separated the waiting room from another hallway that led to the elevators, and there wasn't much people watching I could do, save for a girl that came walking out of another room, chatting with an older woman that looked like that fairy princess witch lady from the Wizard of Oz.

I felt myself following them with my eyes as they continued to walk slowly down the hallway and talk, and the older woman seemed so engrossed in everything the girl said.

The younger girl's back was to me, but as I glanced up her tanned, toned legs in her tatty jean shorts, and her shining brown hair just brushing the small of her back, I felt my heart implode in my chest. I knew her without her even needing to turn around. Before I knew it, I had leaned so far over in my chair in an attempt to follow them, I fell over and went tumbling to the hard linoleum floor.

I didn't think twice as I stumbled to my feet and threw my body against the heavy glass doors, out into the hallway and towards the stairs. Someone might have called after me, but I was too in my own head to register it.

Suddenly it all clicked. The knowing glances, the complete lack of judgement and searing glances I got from everyone else, and most of all - seeing right through all my bullshit lies. I couldn't wrap my head around it. She was fresh and clean and perfect like a tall glass of ice water in the summer. She couldn't be like me, dark and mangled and hurt. There was no way.

I finally made it outside, where the afternoon sun and heat assaulted me, and sweat began to drip down my back.

"Hey, AJ wait," I called after her. I heaved to catch my breath as I jogged up to her. "What...uh...what are you doing here?"

She stood on the corner of the sidewalk as she fumbled around in her bag for her keys, but the moment she heard me, she looked up at me, and I swore it was like the sun and the ocean lived in her eyes. She gave me a half smile. "Same thing you are, I suppose."

No. No fucking way. I played dumb. "Meaning...?"

"Well, you're here for the addiction counseling, right?" She said it so nonchalantly, as if she was asking me where the peanut butter was at the grocery store.

I gulped. "I uh...well, it's...complicated."

"I figured as much, especially after picking you up the other day." She shrugged, and I realized it's complicated was just as much of a yes as I could have given her. "It's not too hard to figure out when you've been there yourself, you know?"

Been there yourself. The words were like gunshots.

"...so, you knew about me? Even then?" I sputtered out.

She nodded in response, that flicker of light never leaving her eyes.

I felt like a bomb had exploded inside my stomach. "Why didn't you say anything to me? That's kind of fucked up, don't you think? You didn't wanna tell me you were going through the same thing? Maybe make me not feel so shitty about it?"

She rocked back and forth on her heels, still holding that sweet, faint smile. "No, because you'd tell me when you were ready to tell me. I wasn't going to force it out of you or call you out. That's even more fucked up."

"How do you know how I'd feel?"

"I don't. But I've learned to figure out what the right thing to do is. Listen Kai, I've been sober for six months. You've been sober for what...three days?"

"Like a week." It was more like five days, but I wasn't going to split hairs with her.

"Right, and that's great. Really, it is. But I think I know what I'm doing. More than you do right now."

Somehow, she was still perfect, and it wrecked me. I wanted to hate her, but there was no way in hell that was happening. It was more like the opposite.

"Anyway, I'll see you at the youth group meeting next week, yeah?"

"Maybe you will, and maybe you won't."

She gave me another one of her knowing glances. "I'll see you next week, Kai."

She sauntered off to that same Jeep she picked me up off the side of the road in, leaving me standing dumbfounded on the corner, trying to piece together the severity of the situation I had just stumbled into.