Knox
My nails dug into my bottom lip as I picked at the skin there. The man sitting in the guest chair beside me didn’t seem all that impressed with the movement but I couldn’t force my hand away as I stared at him.
His brown eyes bore into me, his dirty blond hair widely spread across his face as if he didn’t have time to style it before he was forced to come here. There was a frown on his face but had yet to say a word in the few minutes since he sat down.
“Why are you here,” I finally asked when I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. He smiled softly as his hands played with themselves.
“I’m just here to have a conversation with you,” he said with a shrug.
“For what reason though? What is all of this for?”
“Did they not tell you?” I shook my head and his frown deepened. “We, Mary and I mostly, are trying to see if you would be well suited at camp rather than rehab.”
“I don’t need rehab,” I said with a light smile. The same light smile that I pulled during interviews when I didn’t want to answer certain questions. “If that’s what all of this is about, I’ll save everyone a lot of time. That night was a one-off thing. Things got a little out of control, I’ll admit, but you don’t have to worry about it happening again.”
“And how often do you use?”
“Almost never,” I waved off. “Honestly this was only the second time. I won’t do it again if it makes all of you relax.” It was a blatant lie and I had no intention of following through with the half-ass promise but if it got me out of this conversation then I would say whatever I needed to.
“Your medical file notes several scars on your arms, indicating this is nowhere near the first time,” he said with a disapproving frown. I openly glare at him now.
“Then you have the wrong file,” I said simply. He looked down at a bundle of papers in his hands.
“So you aren’t Knox Beckett,” he asked with a small smile that made me want to slap the look off his face. “Childhood actor and pop singer? That’s not you?”
“It is,” I said, keeping my sentence clipped. “That doesn’t prove that they didn’t mess up the file and put my name on the wrong one.”
“Would you be willing to roll up your sleeve for me? To prove there’s nothing there?”
“I will not disrobe in front of you, no.” The man nodded with a light frown.
“Then I won’t ask again,” he said simply. “Did you always want to be an actor?”
“I wasn’t exactly given a choice. I don’t know if you noticed or not but I started when I was two,” I scoffed.
“And you didn’t start loving it as you got older?”
“Who wouldn’t love the fans and cash being thrown at them,” I asked with a shrug.
“So you are choosing the career now that you’re older?”
“Of course I am. I’m living every teenager’s dream. What’s not to love?”
“So what happened a few nights ago? If you love it so much why would you want it to end?”
“I didn’t think it would go public,” I defended.
“What does that have to do with your life almost ending?” My glare hardened as I stared at him.
“I didn’t think it would do that or I wouldn’t have done it,” I spat.
“Then there are two explanations for this. You either have been dosing for so long that your old dose wasn’t working anymore so you kept pushing more to get that high, supporting the multiple scars in your file, or you knew the dose was too much and took it anyway because you wanted to end your life. Which is it?”
My heart stopped for several seconds as I continued to glare at him. There was no correct answer to this. If I sided with the first option, I was getting shipped off to rehab and my face would be plastered across every gossip outlet within the hour. If I sided with the second, the farthest option from the truth, I would likely have a nice stay at a mental health facility and there would be even more of a scandal.
Everyone knows child stars go off the rails often enough. While rehab would most certainly have the world thrown into chaos, a facility would have my name dragged through the mud. Because drugs were easier to wrap their head around than depression. How could someone in my life be depressed? I had it all, what right did I have to be less than pleased with how my life was going?
I would be seen as a selfish brat who was beyond spoiled and spat in the face of the lower class. Rehab would be hard to come back from. Depression would be a death sentence.
“And those are the only two options?”
“The only ones I can figure,” he said with a shrug. “If you have another story I would be open to hear it.”
“It was a long month,” I said with my own shrug. “I had been in front of cameras and lights so bright they can blind you and I was tired. I went to a party to blow off some steam and saw the heroin on the table. I had used it a few times and decided I could use a pick-me-up. It has been a while since my last dose and I forgot how much I was safe to take. I took too much. End of story.” The man nodded but I could tell he didn’t believe me.
“Did you know that most children in your age range suffer from depression or anxiety if not both?”
“So what?”
“So, if depression is something you’re battling, it’s normal and treatable and I want to help but I can’t do that if you won’t let me help you.”
“I don’t have depression.”
“So the first option then.” I ground my teeth.
“No, my answer is the only option. I am not depressed or an addict. I just shoot up when I need to chill out and relax after a hard month.”
“And how often would you say you have these ‘hard months’?”
“Maybe twice a year,” I answered quickly, knowing if I took the time to think it would be too suspicious. I could only hope that the answer wasn’t damming. The man hummed before looking up at me, pulling his eyes away from the notes for the first time in a while.
“I need you to know that I don’t believe you,” he said with another frown.
“You don’t have to believe it, it’s the truth.”
“Right. But how am I supposed to know where would benefit you the most unless I know the reason why you’re here?”
“You could let me walk,” I said simply, shooting him an easy smirk. The oversized hoodie Tony had bought in an hour ago fell off my shoulder, exposing the skin underneath as I scooted closer to the man beside me. “Tell all of them that this was all a mistake that will never happen again. Convince that cop to drop the charges and I’ll be on my way. I, of course, will owe you a favor for it. Anything you want.”
His eyes zeroed in on the pale skin of my shoulder as my hand inched off the bed before landing on his knee. I barely had the chance to touch him before he was shooting up off the chair, staring at me with wide eyes as he tried his best to put as much distance between us as possible.
The light frown that had all but been stapled to his face over the course of this past hour was now prominent as he went impossibly pale.
“Come on honey,” I said as I got on my knees and crawled down the bed to him. “I know how bribes work. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.” The man cringed farther away from me, pressing himself as far agaisnt the wall as possible as he stared.
My arms were stiff from not using them for the week I was out and strained at the weight I was putting on them. I was shaking from the strain but I needed to find a way out of this.
“We don’t have to do it now,” I soothed. “Go talk to the cop first, have them release me, and we can go back to your house. If you have a partner they can join too. We can make this work.” He looked like he was about to throw up and I couldn’t help but feel offended.
This usually worked. How bad did I look for this to not be the same reaction I had gotten so many times before? I knew my hair was probably a mess and a quick look at my arms told me I was paler than usual but that shouldn’t warrant this reaction.
“I’ve made my decision,” was all he said as he moved to the door, keeping his back pressed firmly against the wall as he slid away.
“What do you mean,” I scoffed, leaving the flirting smirk behind. “You can’t just leave me here!”
“I’m not,” the man said as he paused at the door, seemingly far enough away now to stop long enough to explain. “I’m going to go talk to your parents and get you discharged. I’ve decided you’re going to camp. We’ll come to collect you after the paperwork has been signed.”
“I don’t even know what this ‘camp’ is,” I said, not bothering to keep my anger to myself anymore. “None of you have told me anything about what is going on. Can someone please just fucking tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Camp refers to Camp New Life. It’s a government-funded camp that is meant to keep first-time offending minors out of jail. We’ll get everything set up for you. Just stay here and try to relax for a while. Take a nap if you can.”
“I can’t go to a place like that. The press-,”
“No media outlet will know you’re there. Camp is discreet. No one even knows it exists unless they came from camp themselves or a business we work with in order to better kids’ lives after they leave. Anyone who knows what camp is will keep their mouth shut. Let us worry about all the details. You just stay there and rest.” He didn’t give me a chance to fight anymore before opening the door and slipping out of it.
I forced myself to sit back against the headboard as I stared at where the strange man had just disappeared behind.
What in the actual goddamn hell just happened?
Comments (0)
See all