3. Eight and free. Eight and golden. Eight years old with eyes yearning for the world outside.

It didn’t take her long to reach that world.

It didn’t take that world long to devour her.

“Everything okay?” the voice behind the door said.

Stephanie stood in another bathroom that didn’t belong to her. She’d grown used to this in the last ten years. Especially the last few years. Sliding inside stranger’s doorways in order to get what she wanted.

The plastic bag in her hand was what she wanted. Needed. Longed for in order to breathe. And if sleeping with the guy she got it from worked, so be it.

You’re getting older and less enticing to those opening the doors.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said.

She snorted another bit and then began to touch up her makeup. When you drove over a road too many times without patching up the rough spots, the wear and the tear began to show. She could try to cover it up but it was so obvious to her. She looked sick. Tired, sluggish eyes and a sunken face and bony features. Only thirty-five years old but looking more like she was almost sixty.

Or almost dead.

Stephanie opened up her hand and looked at the plastic bag. She rarely snorted it unless she was stuck somewhere without a needle to use. She’d been busy enough last night—now she was just being greedy. But this was just one of the many bags she’d be leaving this house with. A quick taste before the fifteen-minute drive back home was all she needed.

Every now and then she’d picture that eight-year-old girl. So many hopes and dreams. So full of life. There wasn’t one big thing that happened. No ship striking the iceberg in the middle of the ocean that would eventually sink it. In her case there had been hundreds of hidden holes that steadily leaked. She had grown used to wading around in these flooded waters.

Stephanie opened the door and headed back into a house that didn’t belong to her.

Neither did this life.

“Nothing on the news?”

He looked at her from the driver’s seat. Barron was a small man, one of those who didn’t carry an ounce of fat on his body. It wasn’t because he used. Barron liked being in control. He thrived on it. He was fine selling his drugs and taking his money and bypassing the business when he could get a little something extra in return. But Barron wasn’t a user. He was simply tiny in every way possible. Especially deep down in his soul.

“There’s news everyday that only gets worse so what kind of ‘news’ are you looking for?”

His tone sounded like the kind a sober man would use with a completely soused one. Barron was used to talking like this. Most of the time, the people in his life were in fact completely wasted. But Stephanie hadn’t arrived at his place bombed. And she wasn’t leaving high either. Well, not that high.

“I’m talking about anything suspicious?”

“You in trouble?” Barron asked her.

She shook her head.

“You better not be coming around me if you’re in trouble.”

“I’m not,” she said.

He was driving her back to the apartment. This way, if Stephanie saw anything worrisome outside the building, she could make up an excuse and get Barron to keep driving. Little men would act on little lies and little threats. Yes, Barron was a nutjob and dangerous in his own way, but she knew she had complete control over him.

When the door doesn’t open anymore then my use will be done with these men.

“Well, there’s was some massive tornado that destroyed Columbia last night. You see that? That’s all they’re reporting.”

“I didn’t see that,” she said.

She hadn’t seen that because she’d seen a corpse floating in a tub of blood yesterday morning. Then she’d gone home and found the remaining heroin in her apartment and had promptly shot up to get rid of the bad mojo she’d left behind. That afternoon, she had called Barron wondering what he was doing.

“You gotta go easy,” he said to her, looking over at her with those eyes that wandered up and down.