Night Light by Terri Blackstock Page A

long does it last?”
    “A week really bad. Some of the symptoms go on for weeks. Months, even.”
    Clearly, Lacy was still in bad shape herself. “You said you found syringes?” she asked, desperation tightening her face. “Did she have any dope?”
    If she had, Deni knew Lacy would have done whatever it took to get her hands on it. “No,” she said. “We didn’t find any.”
    Lacy shrugged. “Figures. Nobody has any.”
    “So the outage basically saved your life,” Mark said.
    “Or ended it, depending on how you look at it.”
    Deni tried to imagine what that meant. Did Lacy really feel that her life as an addict was more real than this one? How sad. She hoped Lacy could stay away from drugs long enough to think rationally again. “Jessie’s kids say she hasn’t been seen since two weeks after the outage.”
    “Sounds about right. She probably had some dope on her or was able to get some for the week after the outage. After that, with no transportation to bring the stuff in, the dealers were running out, and there was no cash to pay for it. She probably got sick.”
    “Do you think she would have put herself in harm’s way to get more heroin?”
    Lacy started to laugh. “Of course. She would have sold her body … one of her children … all of her children. Those cravings, they control you, and a lot of people I know were in dire straits when the drugs weren’t coming anymore.” She studied their faces, then flipped her stringy hair back. “You know, people like you think they’re so much better than us. But you’re not.”
    “I wasn’t thinking that.”
    “Yes, you were. You’re judging me just like you’re judging her.”
    Deni swallowed. She didn’t want to fight with the girl. Lacy looked beaten down enough. “I wasn’t judging you, Lacy. I feel bad for you. As much as I drank my first year of college, I could just as easily have been in your shoes.”
    “You?” Lacy breathed a disbelieving laugh.
    “Yeah, me. It just happened that my cravings for being a big shot were stronger than my cravings for a buzz. So I quit drinking.”
    Mark looked down at her, clearly surprised.
    Lacy seemed moved too. “You were always a big shot,” she said.
    Deni swallowed. “Well, I’m trying to change.”
    Lacy crossed her arms and looked down at her feet. “Jessie was raped by a neighbor when she was fourteen. She got pregnant, and everybody turned on her.”
    Deni hadn’t known that. Everyone had just thought she was easy. If someone had just told them…
    But who was she kidding? It wouldn’t have stopped the gossip.
    “So she started using to numb the pain?” Mark asked quietly.
    “Something like that.”
    “She was pregnant again in tenth grade,” Deni said. “She never came back to school.”
    “No, her folks took her and moved to Tuscaloosa after that. They wanted her to start over clean. But she was in too deep. She kept running away. She loved her kids, though. She always brought them with her. Some guy was always willing to put her up … for a while, at least.”
    “Then you don’t think she would have left her kids intentionally?”
    “Not for more than a few hours, or maybe a night.”
    Deni pulled the notepad out of her back pocket. “Could you tell us some of the guys who’ve taken her in? Maybe she’s with one of them.”
    “Doubt it. Most of them dumped her after she got pregnant. They always wanted her to get rid of the babies, and she would say she was going to, then before you knew it her stomach was growing. Some of them got real hot about it. One dude beat her to a pulp, but it didn’t hurt the baby.”
    “Who was that?” Deni asked.
    “Moe Jenkins, though he’ll deny it if you ask him. He’s the little girl’s daddy.”
    “Sarah’s?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Can you tell us where he is?” Mark asked.
    She shrugged. “He’s a jerk. I don’t know where he lives. I see him around sometimes, so I know he’s still in town.”
    Deni wrote his name