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My health class curriculum in middle school had been a clusterfuck of epic proportions. To say the least, it notably did little to inform us about anything. It only provided the bare minimum a school district in suburbia could hope to tell without receiving angry emails. Besides contraceptives, anatomy, sexuality, and the effects of alcoholism, the most biased topic Mrs. Gallick lectured us on involved the dastardly, deceitful, devilish allure of drugs.

The fearmongering only went so far. If I had a nickel for every instance that Mrs. Gallick mispronounced 'marijuana' or 'methamphetamine', my school lunches would've been spent at fast food shops rather than the cafeteria. By the time we entered high school, one-seventh of my classmates were abusing the same recreational drugs they'd been told to avoid. Stoners smoked pot in the bathrooms between periods, a couple honor students slipped Adderall into midnight snacks just to keep their grades high, one football quarterback in varsity tried and failed to use steroids. Once, I even remembered hearing rumors that a teacher had been fired after being found in a drug den.

As I casually waltzed into Castle Meadows Mobile Home Park, then cautiously stepped in front of the trailer my source told me about, I couldn't help but scoff. It did not look anything like the drug dens Mrs. Gallick described in my youth.

I stepped cautiously onto the dirtied, leaf-littered front porch. Having no other way to go at it, I placed one paw in my jacket's pocket to grip the taser I brought with me and used my other paw to knock on the door.

"Hello?"

The door had been left open, apparently. Writing my nose in disgust at the putrid smell, I entered a kitchen filled to the brim with emptied pizza boxes, uncleaned sinks piled high and a garbage bag in desperate need of a fire pit. I think the living room looked no better either, though my suspicions of somebody present was confirmed when I saw the half-naked weasel in his mid-twenties sitting on the large couch, watching old cartoon reruns on a flatscreen TV.

He looked up at me. "...you ain't the pizza delivery guy...right?"

Part of me wanted to groan. The guy was baked out of his mind, but he was my only lead.

"You must be Nick, right?" I tried asking him, "Can you help me with something? I'm not here to stop you...doing whatever you're doing. I need you to tell me where Gregory Henderson was the last time you saw him."

"Who...?"

"Greg Henderson. He's a coyote about my age."

"What's it to you?" he asked after I repeated it another time. "You the Man?"

"No, I'm not 'The Man'. Greg's family hasn't heard from him in a few days, and he won't answer their calls." I explained carefully. "I'm a...a friend of his dad. He wanted me to find his boy because he thinks he's gone off the deep end. He said you were...used to be his drug dealer."

I opted not to mention being a private investigator, hired by said Mason family to find him. Revealing myself as any semblance of an authority figure of 'The Man' would've likely scared the weasel off from telling me anything further.

"Dude..." he drowsily answered, "my man Greggy came by last week."

I practically felt my ears jerk up. "Why did he visit?" I asked attentively.

The possibility existed that he had gone off the wagon again. Nick just needed to confirm it and tell me where Greg Henderson was hiding.

"Can't remember...can't remember, dude..." he groggily swayed his head between me and the screen. As I almost impatiently asked him the same question again, the ferret filled in another piece of the puzzle. "That traitor 'yote stopped seein' me before going straight. Claimed...my prices were too high. Went to another dealer I know, y'know?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Who?"

***

Mr. and Mrs. Henderson contacted me earlier that day and were in complete hysterics over their son not contacting them in the past few days. The last time he had done it, Gregory had relapsed two years prior on his heroin addiction. To make a long story short, the impressionable coyote drifted with the wrong crowd during his senior year in high school. He wasted time getting high on a loser's couch, letting the dragon steal any motivation for him to finish school, let alone attend college. His family tried to be supportive, but it wasn't until a drug bust and small jailtime occurred that they finally had an intervention.

Greg Henderson eventually went to rehab, got himself clean, attended therapy to work out his issues, and slowly pulled his life together. After a small relapse led to quarantining for a whole week until the drug left his system, he even finished high school and earned an associate degree in accounting. Life appeared to be on the bright side for him...

...until he stopped answering his mother's calls, his father's texts, messages from his friends or anyone else from his workplace. Mr. Henderson visited the apartment, only to find nothing, like Greg had become a sudden ghost.

A series of clues led me to the trailer park, then finally to Jake the Jaguar. According to Nick, the literal jaguar operated a drug den in a closed down J-Mart two blocks south of the Skyway Wall. Looking at the barren parking lot, long unemptied trash bins, neglected shrubbery and shuttered entrance bleached from constant sunlight, I couldn't stop reminding myself how much my city a certain mixture of crazy. Could you blame its residents? They lived in metropolitan concrete forest at the foot of a valley surrounded by some mountainous deserts, plus a Great Salt Lake filled to the brim with undrinkable water. Now, a former superstore acted as a base-of-operations for a seemingly ruthless drug dealer. I half-expected trouble as I snuck into the back and discovered a partially opened door exit leading inside.

My paw instinctively gripped the taser as soon as I heard movement in the darkness.

"Hello?" I spoke up, then sighed deeply as I addressed the darkness. "I'm not a customer nor am I an undercover cop, if that's what you're thinking. Unless you're dealing more than just drugs here, all I want is info..."

A feline silhouette shuffled in the darkness for a bit. "Who are you?"

"I'm a friend of Gregory Henderson. Do you know him?" I ignored his question by asking my own. "Nick from Castle Meadows said you were his dealer until he went clean, right?"

"Get out! If you're not here for anything else, get out, or I'll force you out."

A gun click could be heard through the darkness. I gulped.

"I could call 911 unless you tell me where he's getting jacked." My voice coldly resonated through the pitch black until I could make out a few other figures, either jerking in my direction or gasping aloud. "Tell me where Greg is!"

Larger movement started to come towards the exit door until Jack growled, "Miguel, stop!" I never got a chance to see who his 'enforcer' looked like. "Greg is safe, he's safe. Tell me who you really are, and maybe I'll tell you where he's...recuperating. Deal?"

With the J-Mart and Jack being my only possible lead, I decided to drop the mask.

"My name's Leander. I'm a P.I. hired by the Hendersons. They say he's been off the grid for a few days, and it isn't like him to do this unless something bad happened." I explained to the hidden jaguar. "They've seen him relapse before. All they want to know is if he's safe. Now please tell me where he's at so I can ease their minds."

Neither of us spoke for what felt like minutes. Then again, I expected things to go south.

At long last, the jaguar said, "...go to the Steeple down the road. Look for a red sedan with a dragon tattoo on the hood. There'll be a wolf sitting inside it. Tell him the Jaguar sent you and say, 'The West Coast is Wonderland'. He'll explain everything to you...now go."

I did. And explain to me, his enforcer did as well. After following Jake's instructions, the nameless muscular wolf led me up the second exterior story of the Steeple Motel and brought me to Room 9. Unlocking it for me, I discovered Greg Henderson lying on the bed...half-naked, sweating madly and staring religiously at the TV screen. The coyote barely even acknowledged my presence until I told him his parents were worried.

"Oh? Oh, shit!" he trembled and spasmed momentarily after stepping off the bed, then check his phone by the motel room's door. "Oh no, it's cracked...uh, can I borrow yours?"

Gregory Henderson didn't exactly relapse. At least, not on purpose.

The nameless enforcer wolf explained the rest, having witnessed everything firsthand. In the recent weekly sessions, Greg's therapist suggested he find closure. He'd make a list of the wrongdoings he could remember doing as well as those who wronged him. The coyote already finished the former but started the latter, crossing out each name on his list until eventually coming to Jake the Jaguar, who supplied the heroin that fueled his drug-fueled descent.

Days after visiting the pothead weasel at Castle Meadows, Greg traveled to the abandoned J-Mart, not to purchase his addiction, but to verbally hold his second supplier accountable for his role in the addiction. All of it had been told in a prepared, impassioned speech. According to the wolf enforcer and even Greg himself, the jaguar dealer reacted...proudly to the coyote rebuilding his life. The enforcer went so far as to claim Jake the Jaguar hugged Greg, telling him that he'd been a loyal customer, but the canine clearly deserved a better fate than Jake's other reckless clientele. He had a future, unlike the other poor souls repeatedly coming to the closed superstore. The way it was described to me made it sound as if the whole exchange had been friendly and cordial with a bittersweet hint of nostalgia. I guess the jaguar knew no matter how hard those other addicts, they couldn't be saved, but Greg could.

Unfortunately, shit hit the fan when Greg wasn't looking. He tripped in the darkness, fell on what must've been broken glass, only for a handy flashlight to reveal a used needle (courtesy of a junkie lying dazed and confused nearby) sticking into the coyote's trembling palm. To make a long story short, Greg transformed into Icarus the moment the residual heroin hit his system.

Jake the Jaguar thought quickly. He knew letting the erratic, panicked and delirious coyote go wouldn't be right. Neither would supplying him. Thus, at the bottom of the business-thinking jaguar's heart, he had the nameless wolf enforcer--watching the whole ordeal with keen interest--escort Greg to a room at the Steeple Motel. He knew the owner and even occasionally supplied him. Until his withdrawal from the accidental exposure ended, the wolf enforcer would watch over the coyote.

"The Boss would have called his folks, but we didn't have a number," he finished the story to me, "plus we weren't sure what would've happened if they thought we got him jacked for real. We might have to move after that whole mess."

"You might." I agreed with him. "Still, the parents will be happy he isn't lying in a ditch somewhere. I'm not gonna pretend I'm sorry I threatened to call the cops, but--"

"Nah, it's...it's cool, actually." The nameless enforcer chuckled before getting back inside his red sedan. "You must really care about clients and all that."

He sped out of the parking lot just seconds away from a hectic SUV parking in the same spot. Its driver and passenger were two middle-aged coyotes, resisting happy tears in their eyes as I led them upstairs to see their son. I left them to their private family moment.

A small smile crept up my multi-colored muzzle, as I thought back to the enforcer's last comment. "Guess I do. Guess I do."

---

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