You'd Be Home Now

Content Warning: The source material contains discussion of substance abuse, overdose, self-harm, and suicide.

It’s a rainy night and the unnamed first-person narrator has just been in a car crash. The car is upside down and Luther Leonard’s feet are hanging above. The narrator calls out for her brother, Joey, but he is unconscious and lying across Candy MontClair in the backseat. Glass and blood are everywhere and Candy’s breathing sounds wet and strange. Pinned by the seatbelt and in shock, the narrator can’t move but hears the whine of approaching sirens.

Sixteen-year-old Emory Ward awakens in the hospital heavily sedated with pain medication. As her sister, Maddie, sits by her side, Emory remembers when they visited the beach as a family. Maddie senses that Emory needs more meds and presses the pain pump button.

Emory’s parents, Abigail and Neil, are in the room, but when she asks where Joey is, they don’t answer. Emory overhears that Joey had heroin in his bloodstream and remembers that when they picked Joey up from the party, he seemed intoxicated. Abigail says, “I will fix this […]. He’ll go to rehab, he’ll get better, he’ll come home” (6). Neil argues that rehab can’t fix the fact that someone died.