by Ina Carter
Our small group of friends was a gathering of misfits. We came from opposite sides of the track, but all of us were trying to escape our shitty lives. It was like “The Breakfast Club,” but in our case, “The Midnight Club.”
That particular night Ty had snuck out a bottle of cheap tequila from the party, and we passed it between us. We were not planning to get drunk, just get a little buzzed, but then Max showed up. He was banged up pretty badly. There was still fresh blood on his chin, and he was sporting a huge shiner, courtesy of his abusive stepfather. Max was usually a quiet guy, but that night he flipped the lid on his emotions. He told us how the asshole went ballistic on him for being late. Max worked after school and was held by his manager at McDonald's to do a double shift because some other employee was a no show. His phone was dead, so he didn’t call to let his mother know he’d be late. His stepfather was just a monumental jerk and looked for a reason to unleash his fists on someone -- mainly his stepson. My friend was 18 and trying his best to survive - going to community college, working two jobs… unfortunately not making enough money to move out of his mother’s house.
His stepdad got him before Max walked through the door. He started swearing, hitting him like a dog, and then kicked him out of the house with just the clothes on his back. Max was upset and swore he was not going back, even to get his stuff. I didn’t ask why his mom never defended him nor did anything to stop the abuse. If I had to guess, she was probably another silent victim of domestic cruelty.
Max was upset, so before we knew it, we finished the bottle of tequila. All three of us just laid on the beach, looking at the stars and getting lost in some drunken dreamland. It was me who asked what would happen if we just took off and left this shitty town. Where would we go and who would even care that we disappeared? Max and Ty were wasted and tossed around the ideas of Vegas, surfing in Hawaii, or beach-combing in Miami. I told them where I wanted to go—Texas. To find Kevin. I missed him. He was more of a family to me than my real one.
I don’t remember if I told Ty and Max my whole sordid life story since I was too drunk, but I remember when Max jumped up. He declared that we were doing it and leaving town tonight. All we needed was a car and some gas money. We were still inebriated and stupid, so at the moment, his idea sounded sane. He suggested we go back to his Mom’s house and take the asshole’s Jeep. Max had said a few weeks earlier he had found over a hundred grand of cash, hidden in an empty coffee can behind the washing machine in the garage. Ty was 100 percent on board with the stupid idea. I just followed.
Max lived not too far from Santa Monica beach, which surprised me. His house was not what I expected either. It was a nice contemporary structure, unquestionably worth a few million dollars. For someone who busted his butt working for a minimum wage at McDonald’s, it was shocking that his stepfather was well off. A rich bastard was as bad as a poor one, I guess. Ferragamo boots felt the same kicking you in the ribs as Dickies.
By the time we reached the house, I was starting to sober up and was the first to realize this was a bad idea. I tried to reason with the guys, but they didn’t listen. They just told me to duck behind a car across the street and ran towards the house. I was frozen in place, scared, figuring out that what we were planning might be considered a felony.
I heard some noise coming from the house; it was muffled but sounded like breaking glass. The windows stayed dark. The garage door opened and my two friends drove out slowly in a big red Jeep Wrangler. It was a car fit for a douche. They stopped where I was hiding, and Max gestured for me to get in. I didn’t know what to do but getting away from the scene fast was essential - that much I understood. I jumped in. Max stepped hard on the gas pedal, and the tires screeched as we took off at full speed.
There was this moment of an adrenaline rush when the air hit my face, and I felt like a bird finally soaring free. Soon we were cruising down Pacific Coast Highway heading South. We probably drove twenty miles or so before the alcohol effect started to wear off. After we screamed and hooted, we all suddenly got quiet, the realization of what we had done hitting us all at once.
Max pulled over somewhere near Laguna Beach. We were all sobering up and the excitement turned into fear, the fear into paranoia. I started listing all the things I’d overheard from my father when he talked about some of the cases he prosecuted. Breaking and entering, grand theft auto, burglary… If only I knew how real these accusations would turn out to be, and that my friends would stand trial for all of the above, including possession of an illegal substance. We didn’t know it at the time, but in the glove compartment in that car was a bag of cocaine, likely property of Max’s step farther.
We decided to go back before his stepfather woke up, return the car and the money, and sneak out. We got arrested three blocks from the house, the whole block surrounded by police. None of us resisted the arrest. We were all sober by then and clearly understood the circumstances. Before we exited the car, Max turned to Tyron and firmly said to him. “Lauren didn’t know we stole the car or the money. We picked her up after we did it.” I started arguing because I didn’t want them to lie for me. Ty cut me off, “You told us not to do it, boo. We should have listened. You are not going down for this. We have your back.”
And they did. My two friends stuck to the story throughout the arrest, the initial questioning, and the trial. Or so I was told. I was in a hospital – the mental ward.
The moment I got in the police car, I had a horrible flashback from another time, when I was a different girl. Years of terror engulfed me. Once again, my life was falling apart and the people I cared about were being taken from me. When my parents arrived, I was in a complete state of shock and catatonic. I didn’t speak for two weeks…. When I came out of the fog – my father – the DA was there, and the deal was on the table…
Chapter 2
(Four Years ago)
I do remember when I was sixteen and showed up at the house after I had an impromptu makeover. My parents almost had a heart attack. I cut my hair, dyed it black, got a nose ring, and the barbell. Ty had a friend who owned a tattoo parlor in Santa Monica and the guy was a genius with a needle. Not that I have ever shown anyone my tattoos. They were my secret.
My new look wasn’t meant to piss off my parents exactly. I was trying to make a point and conform to the image they assigned to me for years—a wild child. Growing up, I was an embarrassment to my parents, no matter what I did or said. I was the secret they wanted to hide. They always cut me off when I tried to speak in front of company. My clothes, manners, and speech were critically assessed and censured. To them, I would always be trailer park white trash.
The family arguing and fighting didn’t do much to change my mind about my new image.
Anyway, my Goth phase lasted for two weeks. The principal of Carlton Academy called my father to address the issue. Apparently, I was put on the school’s official suicide watch because of my dark appearance. Every nonconformist look or behavior was addressed in my private school like it was a capital offense. I am sure it was written in bold print somewhere in the student handbook – “If you don’t look like a douche or a classy escort – you are not allowed in.” Discrimination ran deep in the veins of the elitist school, and they were proud of how openly they advertised it. I bet it was a selling point to some of the rich people who sent their offspring to the ostentatious institution.
My father gave me an ultimatum – to change my hair or be pulled out of school and sent back to therapy since, in his opinion, I was relapsing and having a hard time adjusting. The story of my life.
I was done being silent and wanted my voice to be heard loud and clear. My dad had to pull out the big guns to contain me. He followed through with his threats, pulled me out of school, and put me on an individual plan for health reasons. I was literally locked in my room and kept as a prisoner. The stipulation was that I’d be given my privileges back, aka my freedom to leave the house, only if I complied. As part of the punishment, I had a daily vis
it by my then therapist Dr. Moor.
I hated that woman more than any other shrink I ever had. She reminded me of my mother – stuck up bitch with a condemning look and opinions. I refused to utter a word to her, so it was an hour of listening to an unsolicited lecture about what an ungrateful, spoiled brat I was, and how much my behavior was traumatizing my poor parents. I wished that she was at least partially right – that they gave a crap about me or my feelings. All that bothered my parents was how I affected their perfect image. They were afraid the world might still be interested in my story, and if some paparazzo took a picture of me looking like this, I could become news again. All they wanted was for me to keep my head low and to stay invisible.
I had enough. After a week of being kept in my lockup, I made a prison break. I packed spare clothes in my backpack, and climbed out of the window. I somehow managed to crawl my way down from the third story house without breaking my neck in the process. For the first time in my life, I was free. For three months I was on my own and those were probably the happiest ninety days of my life.
I am not saying being homeless was easy. I can’t venerate the harsh reality of how harrowing homelessness is. The people I met on the streets were devoid of choice to have a roof over their heads and didn’t choose this lifestyle like me. They were the lost children of society, but more than anything, they were lost inside. They carried the burden of their stories, dulled the pain with any substance they could get their hands on, and along the way, had misplaced their worth and their dignity.
I was lucky I had my friends. I slept on Ty’s couch for a while, but his brother’s friends started giving me the creeps, and I left before one of them jumped me.
Marina, one of the other girls in our group, also offered me shelter for a while. Her family was from Russia and none of them spoke English but her. Her mom liked to feed me though. They were great, but their small apartment was bursting at the seams – four people sharing one bedroom. Marina and her younger sister Sveta slept on the couch in the living room. I was grateful to my friend and her family, but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome and become an inconvenience for them. It was May and the nights in California were warm, so I stayed on the beach.
There were a lot of homeless people around Santa Monica pier at night. Thank God no one turned out to be dangerous, and I was never attacked or raped, but I knew for a fact I was just lucky.
One night when Ty, Max, and I were walking around the pier, we heard a piercing scream and scuffle right near the stairs leading to the shore. We rushed towards the noise just in time. The boys pulled a homeless man off of a crying woman. My friends got in a few hits before the rapist broke free and ran. Cuddled in a ball, the woman was still silently sobbing and holding tight to her oversized dirty coat.
We tried to talk to her, but she just flinched, afraid of the hand we extended towards her. A deep animalistic growl came out of her throat. I recognized her. She was also homeless, and I’d seen her around the pier before. She always carried a small teddy bear and talked to it like it was a person. People moved out of her way, afraid to make eye contact with the apparently mentally ill person.
It always made me sad to see her around, and I wondered what her story was. She didn’t look young, more like in her forties. It’s difficult to tell the age of someone who has been beaten up by life, and who had lived on the streets for a long time. Had she lost a child I wondered? Who did that teddy bear once belonged to? Seeing her that night, I knew whatever traumatic experiences she had in her past that made her lose her mind were not over. Carrying her satchel and hugging her bear, she scuffled away, screaming for us to leave her alone. The poor soul had lost trust in humanity, and it didn’t matter that we saved her from being brutally raped.
From that night forward, my two friends never left me alone. Max never invited me to his house, and later I learned why, but he brought sleeping bags and some camping gear, and the three of us camped on the beach at night for a few weeks.
There was this one surfer dude Clyde who was a backpacker that carried his life in a duffel bag and his surfboard and guitar over his shoulder. He hung with us around the bonfires we set, played us sad songs, and told us stories of his travels.
Clyde was in his thirties with tiny wrinkles around his eyes from smiling. He was a happy guy- tall and tanned, with blond dreadlocks- the epitome of a hippy drifter. He taught me how to play guitar. After I picked up the cords and joined him singing “Sweet Home Alabama” and “California Dreaming,” Clyde declared I really had a talent and I should pursue music. Before he left chasing his next destination down in Mexico, he left me his guitar. I found it next to me in the morning when I woke up and he was gone.
It’s strange how a stranger can show you that you are worth something with one generous gesture that means everything. His selfless gift inspired me to this day. I would never part with the beat up, covered-with-stickers-from-all-over-the-world guitar. Clyde gave me purpose. I was so glad that my parents didn’t take the instrument away from me when I was caught and returned to them, like a package they had misplaced.
We got busted one night by a police patrol, and once I was taken to the station, I was recognized. There were posters of me. I was a teen runaway and my parents were searching. I bet they reported me missing for public pretenses, or worse - because my father needed to make a political move and talk about teen delinquency, promising he would dedicate his next term to ensure every runaway minor roaming the streets of L.A . would be reunited with their families. The DA was up for re-election in a few years and he made an example out of me.
My punishment for running away was to be sent for six months to a mental hospital. In the press conference my parents gave, they told the world that their younger daughter still suffered from PTSD, had a mental breakdown, and had run away as a result. She was getting help.
I was heavily medicated and drugged until I was so fogged and numb, they were able to make me dance like a string puppet. Like that woman and her teddy bear, I clung to my guitar throughout the whole torture. I talked to it in songs. I started writing lyrics in the journal the doctor insisted I keep to record my thoughts and emotions. My medicated, crushed soul found a way to escape.
I was sixteen.
I didn’t see my friends for a long time. Not until a year later, when I was “well enough” to return to school, dressed in my preppy uniform and with an acceptable appearance. I was not monitored that closely in the house, so I learned how to hide the “Prozac” and dispose of it in the toilet. When my parents thought they had tamed me, I managed to sneak out again and go see my friends. Until the next jail sentence.
Chapter 3
Bianca had to call in reinforcements, aka our mother, to make me change out of my jeans and t-shirt. Dana, as I called her in my head, just pursed her silicon lips, and with one cold look told me to go change before she talked to my father. She didn’t have to voice the threat anymore. I’d heard it enough in the last two years – we had a “deal” that I signed that said, “I’ll clean up my act.” As an inmate, I had to wear the orange suit, or in my case, the wardrobe my mother and her stylist had selected for me.
I counted my blessings that in my closet there were still a few pairs of old jeans and some concert t-shirts I had bought online. I wore them only in the house where no one could see me, and those were the only moments I kind of felt like myself. When the door of my room was closed and they left me alone, I put on my barbell and sat on my bed with my guitar. When I wrote and my hands started shaking, the emotions were too overwhelming. I started picking at the fabric on my knees to calm my fingers down – therefore my jeans ended up with big holes and rips. It drove my mother nuts to see me wearing something looking like a rag.
I stared at the assortment of skirts, blouses, and dresses I had in my closet. They were color-coordinated by the housekeeper, and most of them still had the outrageous price tags that made me cringe. It always made me sad to think that one of those designer dresses could fee
d Marina’s family for a month. Her parents were hardworking people and my friend was also helping her family as much as she could. Her mom cleaned houses and her dad worked in a car dealership.
Marina was a smart girl, and for the last two years, she had transferred from community college to UC Santa Barbara. She still managed to work part-time as a waitress in some restaurant, so she was not a burden to her family. With the amount of student loans she had taken, she’d be in debt up to her neck when she graduated, but she wanted to be a registered nurse and help people. I was proud of her. I didn’t see her much since she had moved to Santa Barbara, but I knew she was home for her sister’s birthday this weekend.
I picked a few dresses and threw them on my bed. I seriously hated the explosion of pastels my mother liked so much. Wearing short pink skirts was part of her midlife crisis. Dana was desperately trying to look way younger than her 45.
At least her stylist was wise enough to suggest pink was not my vibe, and I was more Charlotte than Samantha. The guy was still hung up on Sex in the City. I ended up with a wardrobe of a Stepford wife, which I guess was better than a whore. The stupid fashion guru had put whole outfits together for me like I was too dumb or clueless on how to select things that matched.
Thank God at least I avoided being dressed for this game in my sister’s clothes. We didn’t share the same size or even look alike. She was blond, big boobs – complete Barbie. She and Mom looked more like sisters than Bianca and me. I had the same blue eyes as her, but my hair was reddish-brown like my father’s. I looked like him too – my mouth a little too wide, my nose straight and tipped at the end.