Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 215

You guys,

I’d stolen adderall from my closest friend’s stash for nearly a year. This time I snatched the whole bottle. 

How could I go from stealing a pill or two or three, tops, from time to time, to taking Amy’s entire prescription in one grab? How did I think she wouldn’t notice? 

I’d gotten comfortable and careless in my thievery. That night I’d waitressed at The Masonry, then drank a couple glasses of wine, no more than three, and surely no more than three shots of Jameson during my shift, then drove to Amy’s Santa Monica condo which was a short five minutes away. I never drank and drove far.

I turned the spare key in the lock then quietly took off my shoes. The place was dark. Amy and her fiance, Matt, were asleep. I was staying with them until I figured out my next move after being dumped by the guy I thought I was going to marry. When he broke up with me over the phone he said, “Charlie, I already broke up with you.” This was news to me. “I still want to be friends,” he added. “I don’t want it to be weird when I come to The Masonry.” 

I tiptoed into the kitchen where I knew a bottle of adderall lived. The kitchen was small with a row of overhead cabinets above a peninsula island. The cabinets opened from both sides, so you could grab a water glass from the kitchen side or walk around to the dining room side for vitamins or almond butter. Amy kept one bottle in the cabinet in the kitchen, where it sat in front on the right. There was also a second bottle in the cabinet on the opposite side—the dining room side—where it sat in back on the left. Surely she wouldn’t miss one bottle when she had a spare. 

The next morning I blinked at the aggressive sunlight streaming in through the massive windows. The condo was all white walls and green plants and eclectic art. I was laying in bed on the pull-out couch in their third-floor loft. No one was home. Amy and Matt were the kind of adults who woke up early and did things, like go to work or a meeting or the gym. I typically slept until 10:00 and moved sloth-like for an hour but a text from Amy made me sit bolt upright.  

“Hey, have you seen my adderall prescription? I couldn’t find it this morning.” 

I dug through my Vera Bradley overnight bag and found the bottle at the bottom. Suddenly a very obvious thing finally became obvious to me. There was no dividing wall in the kitchen cabinets, as I’d always thought. It was all one cabinet, which meant the bottle in the front right on the kitchen side would be the same bottle in the back left from the dining room side. 

It had always been one bottle, never two. 

You fucking idiot.

I buried the bottle further into my bag, hid it so snugly in a pair of socks that it wouldn’t shake when I carried it. 

“Hey!” I texted back. “Sorry, I haven’t seen it… weird!” 

“So weird,” she replied. 

I squeezed my eyes shut. No one would ever find out about this, ever. I would never tell a soul. I would pretend it never happened.

—

Until next week,

Charlie