Christa had been in her chair when the mail truck stopped in front of the house. When the doorbell rang, she grabbed the plush arm rests and pushed herself lower into the chair; chances were he couldn’t see her, but best be certain. If she pretended not to be home, the possible psycho serial killer rapist could go about bothering someone else. It rang again. After a few moments, she heard the truck moving on to the stop sign, and then across Charles Avenue and the remainder of his route. Her brief fits of paranoia always felt silly after the threat had passed. Anyways, better safe than dead.

The man had left the package on the porch. It was brown and looked heavy. She read the return address, Boulder, Colorado, and remembered that she had purchased a drug test. After all of the time researching and customer reviews that she had read, the last two weeks had been so busy. She was the treasurer at the Women’s Council down town, and they had a ton of spring time festivities to plan.

Then, she got an idea. She brought the package upstairs to her son's room. The door was shut. She knocked and walked in. He sat in the chair facing the computer, with the blinds drawn; the only light in the room came from the monitor. “I got you something,” she said.

“Put it on the bed,” he said. He signaled without turning his head; his brown hair looked unwashed and he had a fresh zit on his forehead.

“No,” she said. It felt good to say no, like a martyr defying a tyrant. “I want you to open it.”

“Give me ten minutes,” he said. But she knew: ten minutes meant thirty minutes, meant an hour, meant a lifetime.

“It’s a drug test,” she said. “You get to pee in a cup.” She gently shook the package and the contents rattled around.

He turned from the computer. He looked like he’d been awake for six months, or sleeping on concrete, like the addicts looked on the HBO special: skinny and vacant, skin like melting plastic seeping over a skeleton. “A drug test? What for?” He said. She respected his attempt at incredulity.

“Just do this for me,” she said. “And then I’ll leave you alone. And then you can stay on your computer for the rest of your life.” She opened the box. She had already done her research, read how to read the results after she dipped the ten-pronged device into the sample.

“Fill it up,” she said. She pushed the cup towards him.

“With what?”

“Just do it,” she said.

“You’re wasting your time,” he said. “I don’t do drugs.” Then he laughed. He stood up, and he smiled. He swiped the cup from her hand and acted the exact same way he acted when she would ask him to set the table for dinner, to vacuum the rug, as if all she could ever do for him was waste his precious time.