Last Night On Earth Read online

  Maddie Kopecki

  Last Night On Earth

  Copyright © 2021 by Maddie Kopecki

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Maddie Kopecki asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This cover was designed using stock photography from Joshua Rawson Harris on Unsplash.

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  For my mom, Stacey. Thank you for loving me with everything you have… and then some.

  And also, for Larry. Love, fish girl.

  “We are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we’ll never know most of them. But even if we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.”

  Stephen Chbosky

  Contents

  Foreword

  Acknowledgement

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Maddie Kopecki

  Foreword

  Last Night On Earth is a new-adult contemporary novel. Though the characters are seventeen, this novel contains adult content and mature themes. This a trigger warning for sexual assault, predatory relationships, emotional abuse, family violence, graphic depictions of drug use, neglect, bullying, strong language, and trauma. Proceed with caution, mind your limits, and remember that mental health is of the utmost priority.

  Acknowledgement

  The funny thing about writing a book is that you never think about all the moving pieces woven into it until it’s finally finished. I wrote this book in 2018 over the course of eight long months. At first, I thought it was a book about my own profound sadness—my desire to find a place to fit. I thought it was a book about all the people I loved and all the ones I didn’t. Since then, I’ve come to realize that Andi Morley is not a real person, nor is the version of Oregon I constructed in the late 1990s a real place. In fact, nothing about this book is real at all, and I think that’s what makes it so honest and raw.

  I have to thank my family for their unwavering support and the fact they believed when no one else did. Thank you for buying/reading my books and filling the printer with ink so I could tear into another draft. Thank you to Dad and Jen for editing and revising and supporting. Really, this is all the result of my village. From my mom(s) to my aunts to my third cousins of various removals, I appreciate the unfailing love you’ve shown me in every creative endeavor. Thank you, as always, to my grandparents for reading my stories first, my parents for loving them most, and my siblings for sitting next to me while I type ferociously at my computer.

  Thank you to my friends, old and new. Thank you to Ashley for reading that 2018 draft and not hating it. Thank you to Duan for drying my tears and buying me chicken nuggets. Thank you to everyone who inspired the real love between the cast of characters and helped me experience being 17 in every sense. Thank you to George for reading a few lines and being wise enough to help me out when I found myself struggling creatively. Thank you to Kaitlyn for being my biggest fan and sitting next to me in AP Lit. Thank you to all of you.

  My final note of gratitude goes to the reviewers, editors, beta readers, and all the hard workers who made the final publication of this little book possible. Because of you, Andi is finished, and she’s so glad you’ve stuck with her to the end.

  Prologue

  A dimly lit cigarette clung to life in the glass bowl on the coffee table. A faint stream of smoke curled from the end of it, dancing upward, sky-bound. It was as still as the woman lying beside it.

  Her pale blue eyes were glassy and empty, but her pink lips gave way to the smallest of smiles. One alabaster arm dangled over the side of the couch. Her skin was lighter around the space tied off by the band as the circulation weakened. A needle, blood dribbling from the tip, had fallen onto the floor. At first glance, she might’ve seemed dead. Her chest was rising and falling so faintly you could miss the movement if you weren’t paying close enough attention.

  The marks were all over her arms, small puncture wounds in the middle of blue and purple spots. She was always so clumsy when she was getting a fix, so desperate for the poison that she injured herself in her rush.

  The TV was on, an old sitcom playing in the background. She had a record player cranked up high, the sound of a scratched vinyl filling the air. She was gone, but everything around her indicated she was still sort of there. She was surrounded by stimuli, jumping between things until she finally calmed.

  And then there was the girl in the corner of the room, frozen, staring blankly ahead. She shrank into herself, horrified.

  The girl was me.

  I watched her for a few seconds. I couldn’t do anything else. I was fourteen, finally seeing the monster face to face. I knew about the rehab Uncle Curtis had forced her into just a few months ago. I knew what heroin was in the abstract. I knew it was a strange substance injected into the bloodstream that Mom bought from God knows where. I knew that she loved it more than she loved us, even though Uncle Curtis would never say so, but I’d thought she was over the addiction.

  I was wrong.

  Dustin and Callie, my younger siblings, were at a birthday party. I had just gotten home from dance class, my duffel bag still hanging from my fingertips. It was a late February afternoon, and no one was supposed to be home. This was probably why she shot up in plain sight; she didn’t think she’d get caught.

  I’d never seen it like this before. Up close, she seemed so different. So relaxed. I could tell she wasn’t even in the room anymore, even though her body was. Wherever her mind went, it was somewhere far away from me, from us, from responsibility.

  I shrank away from her, wondering what I was supposed to do with her now.

  “Mom?” I called, my small voice broken.

  No answer.

  “Mom?” I said again, louder.

  She said nothing.

  “Siobhan?” I tried. I’d never referred to her by her first name before then, but the scared part of me knew it would work. This time, her head shifted, and those eyes we shared fell on me, still vacant, but holding the barest of acknowledgment. She was so high she didn’t recognize me.

  I realized then that she wasn’t my mom anymore. She was my mother, but she wasn’t going to be there to pick up the broken pieces of this family. She was gone, lost to something more important than me, than us kids.

  Siobhan. That’s who she was to me now. br />
  I picked up her needle and threw it in the trash. Though it pained me to touch her, I took the tie off of her arm and tucked a blanket around her. I turned off the TV, turned down the music, and walked away as though nothing had happened.

  It took her a while to come down. I kept my distance, not wanting to deal with her. I wasn’t even sure if she realized I’d come home. It seemed unlikely by that point.

  The worst part was, she never spoke to me about what I saw. It was like she knew I would be her perfect soldier, the perfect child who would never say a word, no matter what it did to me. I couldn’t even tell you why. Blind hope, perhaps? Something was motivating me to do it, even if I couldn’t place it.

  Over the next few weeks, every time she got a fix, I perfected the lie for Dustin and Callie’s sake.

  She’s just sick, I would say, as she loaded up in her bedroom behind the locked door. She just needs space because she’s taking time to get better.

  She would never get better.

  Instead, in the coming weeks, she quit her job and filed for welfare benefits. Our monthly checks kept us afloat as she got wrapped up in another life, one that made a little extra cash when she needed it.

  In the coming weeks, the money she used for my dance classes became her money for heroin.

  In the coming weeks, I became the head of the family. I covered for her, I lied for her, and I became the closest thing the kids would ever have to a mom.

  I hadn’t turned fifteen yet, but I didn’t know who I was anymore.

  Chapter One

  It was on nights like this that I was convinced that the sky was gonna split open. I looked up at the limited stars peeking through the grey veil of clouds blanketing the night. I couldn’t cry, but this pressure in my chest was keeping me pinned to the thick green grass of the bluff. It was paralyzing, breaking me.

  If you rode your bike down my street back in 1999, exactly 1.5 miles from my house was the end of the hilltop that overlooked Portland. Every time life got to be unbearable, I would head up to that bluff and be alone for a while. It was all I could do to keep sane.

  This night merited a hilltop visit—one of the worst nights of my life.

  I felt like I was standing on the shore as the tide rolled back, waiting for the wave to hit me. I kept asking myself if that horrible thing just happened. My brain tried to trick itself into thinking that the sting between my legs was just from the seat of the bike and riding too long. I didn’t register the warm blood on my thighs.

  I was composed of the ingredients for a perfect personal disaster, waiting for it to happen. I’d lit the match and dropped it, but I hadn’t caught fire yet.

  I knocked back my head and let my hair fall against the soft earthiness of the ground. City noises howled at my feet, down the hill about a mile away. It hit me then how utterly small I was, this minuscule girl in a city of over five hundred thousand people. My Levis, my only good jeans, were stained.

  My throat closed up. The weight of a sob choked me, but I couldn’t let it free.

  I stared at the city for what felt like hours, letting my eyes trace over the tops of buildings, the glow of lights from lamps and cars. I listened to the hum of traffic, of voices, and tried to box myself into perspective. I was a small being, one of inconsequence, and my problems weren’t really that bad in the grand scheme of things. Or at least that’s what I told myself. It made everything hurt less.

  I took a few seconds to loathe myself, to hate my life, to wallow in my self-pity before I climbed up off the ground and forced myself to walk back to my bike. I rode away trying not to think about anything at all.

  My calves ached as I pushed my sneakers down on the pedals, and my legs trembled. I looked down at the circular blur of my feet, of the tires on my bike, then back at the vast expanse of empty suburbia. At this hour, there was no one outside except me. I passed Brent’s house, that horrible house, and looked away as if to shake off the memory of what happened.

  * * *

  I was in the middle of making a bottle for Jamie when Brent had gotten home early that night. It was an average day. I didn’t have a bad feeling that something was going to happen. I didn’t think anything of that night, not until shit hit the fan.

  “Hey, Andi!” he greeted me cheerfully as he dropped his briefcase on the couch. “How’s the little guy doing?”

  “I’m about to feed him,” I replied, setting the warm formula on the counter. “He’s in his playpen in the other room.”

  “What would I do without you?” Brent mused, his grey eyes crinkling with gratitude. “I was thinking of ordering a pizza, would you like to join me for dinner?”

  I thought for a second. Callie and Dustin were pretty self-sufficient, and our mother was home for the night anyway, so I had time to spare. It wasn’t the first time I’d eaten with him. There were no warning bells in my head at the offer. Why would there be? I trusted him.

  I was seventeen. Of course, I trusted him. My naivete made me a perfect target, a perfect girl to tear into.

  With a glance at the clock, I said, “Yeah, sounds good. I’ll go get Jamie his bottle and put him to bed.”

  I did just that. It didn’t take long since Jamie was an easy kid to take care of. After he’d fallen asleep in the crib, I found Brent at the base of the stairs, finishing the pizza order.

  He hung up the phone and turned to me. “Andi, doll, how’s school coming?”

  He was closer to me than normal, and the distance seemed a bit more intentional than I would’ve liked. Dismissing it, I stepped back. “It’s good. I got an A on my math test today.”

  “Smart girl.”

  “I do my best,” I replied, becoming shy at the compliment.

  When you watch a romance movie, you learn the look a man gets when he wants to kiss you. That look was in Brent’s eyes as he came forward until there we were so close I could feel his breath as he exhaled out of his nose. I was uncomfortable, but I was stunned into standing still. I couldn’t fight him. I wouldn’t. I was boneless, locked into place.

  The next thing I knew, he was kissing me. He kept one hand on the back of my neck, his fingers pushing through my hair and his mouth on mine. I’d kissed boys before, but this was different. He was different. He knew what he was doing.

  It was a good kiss, the kind of kiss that would’ve made my toes curl if I wanted it. But this wasn’t a kiss I wanted. It was an invasion.

  His wedding ring was cold against my cheek as he cupped my face.

  I wanted to push him away and ask him what the hell he was doing, but I couldn’t muster any action. I couldn’t do anything except stay there, limp. Inactive in my own life.

  “You’re so beautiful, Andi,” he whispered, backing me into the wall. “So beautiful.”

  I was seventeen, and an attractive older man was paying attention to me. Looking back, I wish I could’ve been stronger, more determined to tell him no. Instead, I caved. I gave in.

  Brent was the type of man who got better with age. Like wine, as his wife would say. His teeth were white and straight, and his laugh lines only made him more handsome. He was kind. He invited people over for barbecues and drove me home on the nights it rained.

  Before now, he’d never done anything like this before. I trusted him.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I tried to tell myself that it was okay, because it was just kissing. More importantly, I couldn’t lose this job. I was on my own for college and working as a nanny for this family paid more than a standard minimum wage job might. This was my security fund, in case Siobhan lost it all and I had to take care of us.

  This was my lifeline. This was the only way.

  It’s only kissing.

  He lowered me onto the couch and pulled my shirt over my head. My heart started beating too fast as he kissed my neck, then my shoulder, then his mouth was on the swells of my breasts. My hands were shaking as he started to peel my bra away.

  No. No. No.

  “We don’t have to do
this, Andi,” he told me as he took his clothes off. “But I think we would be so good together. You understand, don’t you?”

  I nodded. If I say no, I’m as good as fired.

  The money he held over my head was his silent way of saying that I needed to be here, even if it meant giving my virginity to a thirty-something married man. So I laid back down on the couch and let him do it.

  He took off my jeans, then my panties.

  The sex wasn’t bad. It hardly hurt at all. In a sick way, it almost makes it better. Like the good part was a consolation prize for the fact the main event was horrible and ugly.

  He kissed away my tears when he thought I was crying because of the initial pinch of him entering me. When it was over, I cleaned the blood off my thighs in the bathroom and prayed none of it got on the couch. We ate dinner like we would any other night. My stomach never stopped heaving in sheer horror.

  He even kissed my cheek before I left and handed me my paycheck. So casual. So unassuming. Like nothing had happened. Because of everything else that was going to hell in my life, I had gotten good at pretending I was keeping it together.

  * * *

  When I got home, our mother was there, a mess on the couch. Thankfully, the kids were asleep. They hadn’t seen her shoot up.

  She looked over at me all glassy-eyed, and I wondered if maybe she was thinking about greeting me but the words never made it to her lips. The tie-off was still on her arm, the pink skin of her bicep turned white by the grip of the rubber against her skin. There was still a little bit of blood left behind. The needle was gone. At least she had the decency to take care of it this time.

  Her habit was real and impossible to ignore.

  I hated her for it.

  “Hi, Siobhan,” I spat at her. “Now would be a great time for you to decide to be my mother again.”

  I never called her ‘Mom’ anymore. She sure as hell didn’t deserve it.