He pulled a baggie out of his pocket and tossed it toward one of the girls. She opened it up and poked her finger inside, pulling out what I only imagined was a pill of some sort. She handed one to her friend before slipping another under her tongue. Then she gave one to Maxx. He held it in his palm, not moving. Slowly, his head came up, and I saw him scouring the crowd. He was searching. Looking.

For me.

I ducked behind the people dancing closest to me, not wanting to be spotted.

After a heartbeat, Maxx lifted his hand and dropped the drug into his mouth.

I couldn’t help but stare as he pulled out another baggie and shook several more pills into his waiting hand. They followed the first onto his tongue. Without another look at the boob twins, he turned away and walked back through the club.

X was in his domain.

This wasn’t the first time I had seen him do this. So why was it hitting me like a ton of bricks this time?

It was because now I loved him. And that made the reality of what he was doing even harder to swallow.

But wasn’t it being the worst kind of hypocrite to get into a relationship with him, knowing exactly who and what he was, and now to be disgusted by it? How could I expect him to change in such a short period of time? It wasn’t fair to him. It wasn’t fair to me. It wasn’t fair to the relationship that we had only just started to build.

Yet as I stared after him, the sight of him selling pills to those girls who grabbed at them greedily, willing to do just about anything for them, I couldn’t see anything but the memory I had never wanted to think about again.

I had exactly thirty minutes to get home and changed before meeting a few friends at the diner downtown. I had a paper to write that night and was already outlining it in my head.

I had stopped to talk to a few people in my English class, waiting for the mad rush out of the parking lot to die down before I headed to my car.

Finally it was clear, and I walked out of the school by way of the side entrance that led past the football field. It was a bright, sunny day, so I slid my sunglasses down over my eyes.

I hurried underneath the bleachers, which served as a shortcut to the parking lot.

I heard a coughing, then a laugh I recognized all too well.

I veered back the way I came, curving around until I was approaching a pocket of bleachers tucked into the side of the building. It was dark back there, and it was a place the stoner kids liked to congregate between classes. You could smoke a joint or snort a line without getting busted. You would think the teachers would have gotten wind of the druggie hidey-hole by now, but it remained a safe place to engage in all kinds of nefarious behavior.

“I want another,” I heard my baby sister demand, followed by the throaty chuckle of a guy who was clearly very pleased with himself.

“You know what I want first, Jay.”

I peeked my head around a steel beam to see a small group of kids seated on the ground beneath the bleachers. A few were smoking cigarettes. One guy had a pipe and a lighter. A girl looked passed-out beside him, her head in his lap.

But that’s not what caught my attention. Blake, my sister’s loser boyfriend, dangled a baggie in front of Jayme. She laughed and tried to grab it from him. He pulled it just out of reach, making it a game.

For a second they looked like any other couple goofing around. How I wished that was all they were. But watching them, I knew a lot more was going on.

“I’m not doing that here. In front of everybody,” Jayme said, casting a nervous look at her friends.

She was such a pretty girl, finally growing into her body. Her acne had begun to clear up, and she had lost a lot of the baby fat that had clung to her frame until recently, much to the detriment of her self-esteem.

“I don’t care, Jay-Jay. You know what you have to do if you want any more. You’re a greedy girl,” Blake taunted, and there was something in his tone that made my skin crawl. I hated that guy. I hated how he treated Jayme. I hated how she defended him even when it was obvious what a jerk he was. Most of all, I hated that he was introducing my naïve sister to a world she should never have to know, one that I didn’t know at the time would ultimately kill her.

Blake unbuckled his belt and pointed at his crotch. “No one sucks my dick like you do, baby,” he crooned, as if that should be a compliment. No way would Jayme fall for that sleazy line of bullshit. I could tell she was uncomfortable.

So it was with complete and total shock that I saw her drop to her knees in front of him, her dress filthy from the dirt she took no notice of. She tilted her head up and opened her mouth. Blake laughed, knowing he was getting his way. He opened the bag and dropped two pills onto Jayme’s tongue.

Then her hands were on his zipper, pulling it down, and Blake’s hand went around to the back of her head, pushing her forward.

I looked away then, feeling sick. I stumbled away from the scene without intervening. I hadn’t done a thing to stop my sister’s degradation. I had walked away, wanting to forget I had seen anything at all.

And I never spoke to Jayme about it. I never offered any sisterly advice, explaining that no guy would ever respect her if she didn’t have any respect for herself. I should have said those things to her.

But I never thought to until it was too late to say anything at all.

I left the disturbing scene behind me and hurried home, taking a shower and going out with my friends, trying to pretend I hadn’t seen my sister barter a blow job for drugs from her shithead boyfriend.

And I spent years trying to forget that I had done nothing when it had mattered most.