by Paige George
Garrett Jackson was a 16-year-old sophomore high school student; he had good grades, always went to school, and would always listen and obey his parents. He never once thought about touching any type of drug. That was until he met Tommy, the school’s most serious drug dealer. He and Tommy would hang out after school constantly, getting to know one another and becoming pretty close friends. They become very close friends after about 5 months. Tommy always had different kinds of people in his house: meth-heads, stoners, and those who were addicted to heroin. Garrett would watch them come and go every single day. Tommy didn’t have to say much to him, just “here, man, that’s $45,” and “alright, see you soon.” He offered Garrett drugs one time, but he rejected it. It was heroin, and Garrett knew that he always had heroin on call for people to buy.
“Sooo… Tommy, is being a drug dealer hard?”
“Nah, not really, you really just have to keep up with what you’re selling and who you sell to. You can’t sell to the wrong people and you can’t get ripped off.” Tommy said while getting together his next transaction.
“I’m not going to lie, I’m really starting to get interested in trying something.”
“Really? Well here, I’ll start you off with the basic bowl.”
Tommy got together his stash and packed his glass pipe fat. He hit it, and then handed it to Garrett and he did the same. This went back and forth for about a good fifteen minutes until Tommy said it was “out”.
“How do you feel, man?” Tommy asked him.
“I feel… good. Like I really don’t have to worry about shit anymore,”
“You want to try something else?” Tommy asked.
“Sure, like what?”
“Well, I have a little bit of heroin that is my own personal stash,”
“Alright, break it out, dude.” Tommy went back to his bedroom and Garrett could hear him opening and closing drawers and stuff being thrown across the room.
“Garrett! You good with needles?” Tommy yelled.
“Uhhh, I guess. Frankly, they scare the shit out of me,” Garrett said back. Tommy came back out with a needle full of heroin; he grabbed one of his shoelaces and tied it around his left arm. There was a moment of silence as Tommy injected the drug into his bloodstream.
“Okay, your turn,” he held the needle in front of him.
“Okay… tie that around my arm and get it all ready for me, I guess,” Garrett took off his jacket, exposing his left arm. Tommy tied it, and told Garrett that he would inject it for him, since it was his first time. Garrett felt a slight pinch then he could feel the heroin going through his veins. He felt all his pain leave his body and he felt safe and warm sitting there on Tommy’s couch.
“I like the way this makes me feel, Tommy,”
“Do you? Me too, man. Me too,” Tommy stood up and began to clean his living room.
“So, am I supposed to feel super hyper and just want to clean the entire house with you?”
“Yeah, basically. Heroin makes you feel like that.” He said throwing stacks of paper onto his coffee table. Garrett sat down on the couch and watched Tommy clean his living room; he began to start nodding off and slinging his head trying to stay awake.
“Dude, this crash though,” Garrett said sluggishly.
“Oh, yeah, I should’ve told you that the aftermath of it is a bitch,” Tommy started to do the same as Garrett.
“I think I’m going to head home.”
“You good to drive home? You can crash here, you know that.”
“Yeah, I know. But it’s pretty late, and mom will have my ass if I don’t wake up for school.”
“Alright, peace, and be careful,” Tommy hugged Garrett.
“No homo,” Garrett said laughing. Garrett got into his car and started it, the rumble of the car made him more alert.
“Okay, gotta stay focused,” he thought. He pulled into the driveway of his parent’s house, the porch light was still on.
“Shit,” Garrett said while getting all his stuff. He walked into the house and his parents were sitting in the living room, watching The Brady Bunch or something. Garrett’s dad didn’t even turn around before saying,
“Where have you been, son?”
“Tommy’s, like always.” Garrett’s mom whipped her head around, “Tommy?”
“Yeah, Tommy Shepard, I’ve been friends with him for a little over five months, mom,” Garrett said.
“Well… okay. Goodnight, Garrett. We love you,” They said.
“Goodnight,” Garrett turned and headed to his room and closed his door.
The next day, Garrett woke up, got in the shower and got ready for school. His mom peeked her head in the crack of his door,
“Are you decent?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m dressed. What do you need? I’m about to leave.”
“I just wanted to give you some gas money for school and if you wanted to go to Tommy’s, I’ll give you more than this,” she said, holding out $30 dollars.
“Nah, mom, this should be okay. I have half a tank already. Thank you,”
“I love you, and have a good day at school,” she said hugging him.
“I love you too,” he said, walking out his front door. Garrett put the money in his wallet and drove to “school”. He called Tommy and told him he was on his way to his house. He felt the urge to get high, to feel that security he felt the last time. He drove to Tommy’s house and walked inside, Tommy already had everything set out. Yeah, Tommy knew what was up. He sat down beside Tommy and they began injecting the drug into their arm. An hour went by… two hours went by… When they were finished, Garrett looked at the clock,
“Holy shit! Dude! It’s already noon!” Garrett said freaking out.
“Well, what do you want me to do? We can go to school, for what? Two hours? Or, we can stay here and keep getting higher?” Tommy said, holding up the needle.
“You’re right, there’s no use in going now,” he sat back down and they continued.
Garrett woke up to his phone ringing, he answered it,
“Hello?”
“Where the hell are you!? Get your ass home right now!” his dad yelled into the phone.
“Daaaad, chill, I’m at Tommy’s. It’s only ten o’clock,” Garrett said, he noticed Tommy was asleep too.
“Son…. Look at the time. It’s ONE IN THE MORNING, GET YOUR ASS HOME NOW.” He hung up the phone.
He didn’t even wake up Tommy; he grabbed his keys and went home.
When he got home, that’s when they yelling really started. They were telling him how it was okay for him to go to Tommy’s house but not to skip school and not to be there until one in the morning. They eventually grounded him for a week.
Garrett couldn’t go anywhere during his grounding, not even Tommy’s, just school and back home. He had to do all the chores in the house and after he was done with his chores, it was straight to homework. The entire time he was grounded, all he thought about was heroin. He wanted to feel the high while he was doing all these damn chores.
After his grounding was over, he went straight to Tommy’s.
“Tommy! Get that shit ready; I’m seriously in need,” he told him over the phone, “I’m on my way.”
“Alright, that’s straight. I’ll see you when you get here,” then he hung up. The same routine happened when he got there, the tying of the arm, the injection, and then the high. This continued on for about a year, until Garrett become heavily addicted to it. He couldn’t go a day without it, he went to school so he could still come to Tommy’s but he really didn’t care about school anymore. He just worried about when he was going to get high again. Every week he’d manage, somehow, to get a little over $100 from his parents for “gas money”. They believed the gas money story, knowing that he had to go to school and everyday he’d go to Tommy’s after school, he knew he was set for a while.
Garrett’s high school career began to decline seriously, but he didn’t care. All that he really cared about was his drug, his everything. He asked Tommy if there was anywhere he could get involved with him in his drug dealing. He wanted to be just like Tommy, always having drugs whenever he wanted. So Tommy introduced him to his “guy”, and that was it, Garrett was in. He began to deal to all the addicts at school and he started to realize that he couldn’t close his wallet from all the money he was getting. He pulled it all out of his wallet and started counting all the twenties that were crumbled and gnappy looking. “Twenty… Forty… Sixty… Eighty… Hundred…” he kept going on and on, “Wow, Two Hundred dollars.” He decided to just buy a shit ton of heroin and have the time of his life, two hundred dollars’ worth. He went to his guy and got all his drugs, came home and sat in his room. He thought about calling Tommy but he didn’t want to bother him. He grabbed a shoe string and tied it around his arm; he grabbed the needle with the drug in it and started injecting himself over and over again. By the time his parents came home, he was so high, higher than the highest cloud in the entire world. He had so much energy and couldn’t help but clean the entire house.
“Garrett, why are you cleaning so much?” his dad asked.
“He probably wants more ‘gas money’, right Garret?” his mom said with a very smartass attitude.
“No… I just felt like cleaning, okay? I have money for your FYI,” Garrett said then walked to his room. He was extremely mad about what his mom said and her attitude towards him. He could hear his parents talking mad shit about him, which made him even more pissed. He looked at his stash of heroin and grabbed all of what was left, which was more than half. He grabbed his shoe string and began to inject every single little bit of heroin. He started to feel tired, so he laid down on his bed after all his drugs were gone. His breathing started to become shallow and he could feel his heartbeat becoming slow. He then closed his eyes and started to drift into the darkness.
His mom walked into his room because she decided to apologize for what she had said, but when she found him he was already gone. She screamed for her husband to come into Garrett's room. They tried waking him up, slapping him in the face and yelling his name.
“Garrett, please! Wake up! Please…” his mom collapsed on top of his cold body and began to weep.
Garrett Jackson was pronounced dead at 10:42 p.m. that night, September 24. There was no recovering him because of the huge amount of heroin he had injected into himself. Tommy came to his family and told them that he felt guilty for what had happened. He went on telling them that it was him that got Garrett hooked on the drug and that he understood if they wanted to press charges or anything. Garrett’s parents didn’t want anything to happen so they told him it was okay. It wasn’t Tommy’s fault that Garrett took all the drugs in his room alone. They just knew that Garrett wouldn’t want anything to happen to his best friend.