Chasing The Dragon Read Free Page A

fact, I kind of want to do it again. A lot. Is that weird?”
    “I . . . what . . .” Georgia tried to focus her thoughts. “You have a girlfriend.”
    Drew leaned close again, propping himself against the wall with one hand. “Not anymore. It wasn’t her I wanted to be with. It was you. Right from the start. There’s something different about you. I felt it the moment I met you. I don’t know what it is, but sometimes I see you across the quad or in class and it’s like you’re . . . glowing. You’re all I can think about, George.” George was his nickname for her. She didn’t particularly like it because George was also her father’s name, but suddenly it sounded kind of cute the way he said it. “I know this is weird and sudden and crazy, and I wouldn’t blame you at all if you never wanted to talk to me again after springing this on you.”
    Drew’s face was right in front of hers, the tip of his nose touching her cheek, his breath warm across her lips. Their faces were so perfectly aligned that Georgia wasn’t sure exactly when they’d begun kissing again, or who’d started it this time, or if it even mattered. She thought it was the most perfect night ever created. A night that had come into being only so this kiss, too, could come into being.
    Sitting in her car, watching the kids shout and roughhouse and make out on the sidewalks, Georgia remembered that kiss, remembered a passerby telling them to get a room, and they had, eventually deciding to live together the first year after graduation. But then her parents —
    She swallowed hard, pushed away the image of what the Dragon had done to her mother and father.
    After that, everything went to hell. Suddenly it was her turn to take up the hunt. The legacy of her forefathers. She had to quit her job at the graphic design firm. She couldn’t tell Drew why she’d quit, where she kept disappearing to, or why she would come back sometimes wide-eyed and shaking. He accused her of doing drugs, threatened to leave, and so she told him the truth. She thought he’d believe her the way her mother had believed her father, so she told him about the Dragon and about who she was and who her ancestors were, and he’d gaped at her like she was the cat-crowned Queen Elizabeth . . .
    “You need help, Georgia,” he said. Georgia, not George. Drew shook his head. He looked sad, defeated.
    “I can’t. This is something I have to do alone. It’s too dangerous for — ”
    “No,” Drew interrupted. “I mean you need help.” And he’d walked out. She never saw him again, only received a terse letter from Topeka telling her to box up his things because a moving company was coming for them.
    Orphaned, jobless, alone — there’d been nothing left for her but the chase, and the vast, insurmountable loneliness of knowing she could never share her life with anyone. The Dragon had done that to her. Destroyed her life. Taken away everything that mattered.
    Lost in her thoughts, Georgia almost missed the red light at the intersection in front of her. She slammed on the brakes. A young couple had just stepped out into the crosswalk, and when Georgia’s car screeched to a halt, the girl sneered at her and the boy flipped her the finger. Charming. A continuous parade of happy young couples passed in front of her, each seemingly happier than the last. Georgia turned away, annoyed, and spotted a man in stained, shabby clothes sitting on the sidewalk beside an ATM vestibule. His hair was long and stringy, a knotted beard drooped off his jaw, and he shook a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup whenever someone walked by. Most kept moving, but a few dropped change into the cup.
    The hobo looked in his cup, counting his take. Then he stood up, scrawny in his oversized clothes, and started walking. Georgia recognized the way his body trembled and shook with each step. The junkie dance. She turned back to the steering wheel just in time to see another young couple staring at her from the