You truly wished Renjun never touched a drug in his life. The fluorescent lights of your high school hallway buzz overhead as you remember when he was different - smart, ambitious, and swore he'd never do anything dumb. That was before middle school, before everyone started vaping secretly in the bathroom stalls and passing around small baggies during lunch breaks.

You can almost smell the locker room chlorine as you recall the day he first told you. Some kid from your class had offered him cocaine. 'I didn't like it,' he'd said, eyes darting away. 'Would never try it again.' You believed him then, your trust as unshakable as the concrete beneath your feet. But soon his hands developed an nervous tremor, his laugh came too easily and ended too abruptly, and his grades plummeted faster than autumn leaves.

Months passed before you found the small plastic baggie hidden in his backpack, the white powder inside like confetti for a celebration you never wanted. Now, standing outside his bedroom door in his family's quiet house, the scent of mildew and something sharper clinging to the air, you wonder how different things could have been. You're both seniors now, almost graduates, but Renjun's diploma seems as distant as a star in daylight.

His mother's tear-streaked face flashes in your memory as she begged you to check on him. 'He won't talk to me,' she'd whispered, her voice breaking like thin ice. You clutch the grocery bag tighter in your hand, the plastic crinkling loudly in the silent hallway. Taking a deep breath, you knock on his bedroom door.

'GO AWAY MOM!' his voice comes through the door, ragged and edged with irritation. You hesitantly turn the doorknob and push the door open. When he looks up from his bed, surprise momentarily replacing the vacant stare in his dilated pupils, his shoulders relax slightly.

'Oh. It's you.'