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Until finally he called my cell phone later in the afternoon, relief swept over me when I heard his voice on the other end. "Thank God you called, I have been so worried about you, are you alright?" I jumped in without letting him get past saying "Hello". "Yeah, I'm fine. Ritchie told me you called his house looking for me yesterday and gave me shit for it saying you were upset or something, what's up?" I knew I would have to be delicate about asking what happened to Adam, thinking he'd be a mess over it. "I heard from Marcus that something happened to Adam and I got worried about you, what is going on?" T.J sounded scared, for what reasons were beyond my knowledge but I was going to find out, he replied " I don't want to talk about it over the phone. Are you in town so we can meet up or something?" It was obvious I wanted him to know that I was more than willing to lend my shoulder for his problems. "I'm home now if you want to come over whenever you feel like it." He didn't hesitate in taking me up on the offer. " But I won't be able to get there until later, I'm downtown at Ritchie's place unless you want to come pick me up."
It was more of a request than a favor to myself which is what he was making it out to sound like, knowing him all to well I didn't make a fuss of his ill-contemplated attributes. I got the address off him and made my way into the ugliness of the not so dazzling parts of the Palm Beaches downtown area. Rolling up my windows and locking the doors to my truck I nervously drove through the rough streets trying to find Ritchie's apartment complex. Knowing all too well the history of the area, it's not a place a lone white girl in a nice truck wants to be seen, many reports of the locals rushing up to a vehicles with a weapon demanding money, cars, or just angry and out to hurt someone. I was speeding through the streets wanting to get out of there as quick as I could. A sad world we live in with so much hurt everywhere you look and nobody wanting to do anything about it, just accepting the hopelessness of never being able to achieve anything more than what our civilization has succumbed to. Being among one of those people, we were similar in so many ways. Only separated by our own personal fears and the different direction they pulled us into.
I drove straight through the open gates at the entrance to the complex and parked on the gutter in front of Ritchie's block of units. A crowd of people stood outside the blocks I was entering. Being hit on and offered drugs simultaneously my cheeks went flush and I put my head down not saying a word. Walking up the corridors of the staircase looked like a scene out of a horror flick. Graffiti covered the peeling of green paint on the walls and the pungent stench of something rotting, only to the worst of my imagination, filled my nostrils. I could hear babies screaming through the thin walls and trying to find the unit number was difficult from the sporadic flickering of the fluorescent lights above me.
At last I found Ritchie's one, quite astonished with myself that I even made it this far. I had to knock loudly on the door a few times before a young girl answered the door with eyeliner bleeding down from her eyes, her jet black hair was strung out and a mess and she looked off her face on some hard drug. She had only her bra and a short skirt on to cover her private areas and a cigarette hung out of her mouth to complete the full picture of terrible state she was in. She looked me down with contempt and snubbed at me "What do you want?" I maintained my politeness and told her T.J was expecting me. She opened the door and walked away, leaving me by myself to venture through looking for T.J.
Passing through the kitchen it looked like a hospital lab with syringes on the counter tops and medicine containers lying around everywhere. Minding my steps through the dirty house, I walked to the back to the living room and found T.J in a K-Hole strung out on a filthy couch. "Hey...there" he acknowledged me with a giant smile spread across his face. He probably didn't even know who I was from the dreadful state he was in. My first look at him in months and I was in utter shock. My jaw must have dropped to the floor at the very sight of him. Never seeing him so skinny and unhealthy looking I took pity and wanted to help him before things got even worse and he ended up like Adam, dead.
"T.J, hey buddy its Jenna, remember I was coming to pick you up today. You don't look so good, what are you doing so messed up?" I don't think he could even understand what I was even saying because he could only reply by giggling and rolling over, patting the couch as if it were a fluffy animal. I stood over him now and raised my voice so he'd know I was serious and snap out of it a bit. "Get Up T.J, Now!" I ushered at him to get off the couch, repeating myself a few times over and with no response I knew I had to get physical. Rolling him back over to face me again I smacked his face hard and I'm sure it stung but I got the reaction I had wanted. He sat up and looked at me confused.
At least now he was able to focus on my words requesting him to come with me. He was getting up from the couch and stumbling around before falling down to the floor again. Putting his arm around my neck and carrying the majority of his weight, I helped him up many times over and down three flights of stairs into my truck and drove him back to my place. It was a triumph on it's own arriving downstairs in one piece. Being the only person who really cared if T.J lived or died I felt like the responsibility of helping him was my concern alone.
Thankfully Jeffrey was in Palm Beach for the next couple weeks entertaining royalty, which gave me a little time to try and clean T.J up. I called a few of his friends that I knew and asked them not to score any

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