A Kidnapped Mind

by Pamela Richardson

  “It does sound positive, but Stephen, I hope you don’t mind if I get Rick Brennan to call you anyway? He has worked with Dash for over a year, and perhaps it would be best to hear from him why Cascade is the best place for Dash.”

  They did talk, but Stephen still believed his approach was the best one. When I went back for a second appointment, Stephen dropped his bomb: “I phoned Sunny Weir at Cascade today to discuss Dash’s test results.” I went cold. Oh, no, Stephen. “She told me that Cascade cannot accept him if my results are correct.” Of course they can’t. Cascade was a school where emotional issues were paramount. During my visit there, I had asked the staff for a profile of the average student (if there was were such a thing as “average”), and learned many children were like Dash. They came from broken homes, either through divorce or drugs and alcohol or some other form of family dysfunction. And while I was comforted by the fact that Dash would be able to relate to many of them, I was also saddened that so many children had to suffer because of issues beyond their control. What I saw and what made Cascade extremely effective for me was the school’s ability to recognize and supply the care and nurturing that was missing in these young peoples’ home lives. More than anything in the world, Dash needed to feel loved unconditionally in a safe, nurturing place. In my research, Cascade was the only school that wouldn’t punish Dash for who he had become, because people there believed it was not his fault but the fault of his circumstances. I did not want Dash to suffer any more. He needed to be where having a childhood toy on your bed was okay. He needed to be where it was okay to feel the pain you were in. He needed to be where it was okay to share and work through his pain and be with other children who may have gone through something similar.

  Stephen had not tested Dash psychologically, and so Cascade was not told about the trauma and depression that would have certainly shown up on test results. But, there was something else; the elephant in the room once again was Peter. In my heart I knew that Sunny was reluctant to accept Dash, not because of the dyslexia or any other learning issue; I had spent too much time talking to her about Dash’s history for that. She knew, as I did, that both parents needed to be on the same page and willing to support Dash on his journey for the next two years; otherwise his ability to succeed would be sabotaged. I was praying that I could get Dash into Cascade, because I knew it was a safe haven, and then I would have gone back to court and begged for a court order that supported Dash being there, and if necessary secured an order that protected Dash by having Peter’s phone conversations and visits monitored. Sunny and I had already discussed the importance of those court orders, because, after talking to Peter for over two hours, she knew that he would not be able to commit to Dash going to Cascade.

  I was buying time. I knew Stephen would not believe me when I told him I had to get Dash to a safe place as quickly as possible. I knew if I had gone into detail about Sunny’s concerns, it would not have helped the situation. So I took a deep breath and hoped that I could just get him there and then deal with everything else. One telephone call ended all that, though. All the research, the hours of talking to Rick, the phone calls with Sunny, the trip to Cascade, and endless conversations with both Rick and Sunny to strategize about how to bring Peter along. Gone. What I hadn’t counted on was that, without the context of psychological test results, learning issues combined with negative family dynamics equalled trouble, and, in a school already full to capacity, this combination was a no go.

  I called Rick as soon as I got home. “Oh God, Rick. Stephen called Sunny at Cascade and told her the test results and said Dash was severely dyslexic and had ADD, and they said they do not have the resources to handle such severe learning issues. Please call him, Rick. Cascade was our only chance. Now what are we going to do? Where do we start? Stephen continues to feel that Dash would thrive in a school that specializes in learning issues.”

  Rick gave a long sigh. “Pam, a non-compliant child like Dash needs a specific environment that can treat him in a safe but secure place. He has tried that and he didn’t even do well here with our flexible program and home-school set-up.”

  “There has to be another school, maybe not as ideal as Cascade, but somewhere? A school that combines learning issues with counselling? There are other schools?”

  “There will be some with everything we need. Something Stephen and Peter will buy into, that address the learning disability but also provide the therapeutic side and won’t expel Dash for non-compliance. I’ll start looking.” He went silent a moment. He knew things had slipped a little.

  “Rick, I’ve lost control of this again,” I said. “Peter is dead set against Cascade. Stephen doesn’t mean to, but he’s bolstering Peter with these test results. If we find another school we can go around them again. If we can find a school that deals with learning disabilities, too, then Peter can tell everyone it is for Dash’s academic problems. Whatever gets him on board. As long as the school understands PAS and trauma, I can accept it. Even a ranch in northern B.C., or Arizona, or something for a year. No schooling, just ranch-hand stuff. Something. If he is away from here for a good whack of time, he might stabilize. What’s a year if it means a second chance for him? If he can start to heal … the school and other things can come after.”

  “I agree. I have a colleague in the States I can call. I’ll track him down and get the names of some schools or alternatives.”

  In the meantime, while Dash had agreed to go to New York to look at the school, when Peter had gone to wake him the morning of their flight, Dash had run away. He didn’t stay away long, but he made sure they missed their flight. When I spoke with Stephen later that morning, he was sceptical as to whether Peter had even bought tickets or not. For once I was glad about Peter’s inaction. It bought me time to work on Stephen.

  “Do you see, Stephen? Even Peter can’t get Dash to go see this school. It is not going to work. I think Peter is clinging to Dash’s learning disabilities because that lets him off the hook. Or maybe Dash is now so difficult to live with that Peter will do anything. Maybe he’s only doing it to justify his renewed guardianship. I don’t know, it doesn’t even matter, but suddenly it’s chaos there again. Dash could have finished the wilderness program and be in Cascade by now. It was all done. It was all paid for.”

  I believed, after the missed flight to New York, that Stephen was coming around. He stopped advocating the New York school and seemed to finally concede that Dash was not truly willing to go anywhere, and that Peter wasn’t on board either.

  “When Rick finds out about these other schools, I really hope you think about them and perhaps help us work with Peter,” I said.

  “Well, let’s see what else there is. Obviously we have to be able to get Dash to the school, whichever one it is, for it to be successful.” He said he would speak with Rick’s colleague in the United States, who knew of some special schools for non-compliant children who were also learning disabled, and I left Stephen’s office feeling for the first time in weeks that we were finally on the right track. Peter would probably go with whatever Stephen recommended, and Stephen was now open to another school as long as it addressed the dyslexia and ADD. I tried to push away my frustration at the ticking clock, which had been picking up speed since Justice Sigurdson’s decision. Everything took so long. So many days passed between waiting for the various experts and professionals on our case to get around to focusing on Dash — who wasn’t their only priority in life — or returning my calls. Finding the right school, even with the influential and knowledgeable people I had on my team, might take weeks. Then I had to go and see them and speak with the directors; then we had to get Peter to go and visit and maybe Dash, too; then I had to apply and negotiate space for Dash in whatever program we all chose. They are always so heavily booked. Then we would have to get Dash psychologically tested, which all these school required, which would mean more chances for the whole thing to flounder or be sabotaged or for Dash’s angry will to prevail and for Peter to let
it. Now that we were joint guardians again, there would be no getting Dash there in secret. There might be no getting Dash there at all. As ever, it came down to whether Peter would truly support sending Dash anywhere.

  How long did we have before Dash did something that had real consequences attached? As far as I knew he was just hanging out at home, sleeping the days away, staying up at night, waiting for his friends to finish school for Christmas. With all this time slipping away, I forced myself not to worry about how long we had before Dash got into real trouble and ended up in Juvenile Detention, or until his depression dragged him under, or until his drug-taking graduated from dope to something worse. I didn’t know anything. I just had to focus on schools and getting Rick and Stephen and this American colleague all on the same page.

  First, we had to find a school. Peter and Dash could come later. Over the next week, Rick and Stephen tried to connect again, but kept missing each other. Rick had a school in Seattle, too, and was shuttling back and forth between it and Glen Eden; he was also working on a book. We were days away from Christmas, and everyone was nailing up their shutters and going off on holiday. Dave and I were going up to Whistler with the boys, and although I planned to do another round of calling to get us all refocused on Dash in the first few days of the New Year, for now I had to accept that everything had to sit, untouched, for the holidays.

  I spent my days anxious, though, because exactly what I had been trying to avoid for two years had of course happened during this whole process. Stephen and Peter had told Dash that he had real problems and they had done it in the unsafe and unsupportive environment of Vancouver, the home of Peter and Dash’s folie á deux. I could have had Dash tested any time in the last two years — I had sole guardianship and I knew Dash needed it to get into any of the special schools I had been researching — but I had been unwilling to risk Dash being told any more bad news without a structure and proper support behind him. Dash’s self-esteem had already hemorrhaged.

  The relationship between him and his father couldn’t sustain Dash’s anger any more. Peter could control neither himself nor Dash now. I had deliberately, impatiently waited to test Dash until he was in the safe surrounds of the full-time, therapeutic program at Ascent because he wasn’t healthy enough to deal with it otherwise. He couldn’t take information in the way a healthy child could. Instead of him being bummed out by, but accepting, the testing results with a “Phew. So that’s why I am struggling. I have dyslexia. That’s why I behave this way and can’t do my work. I have ADD,” Dash was long past being able to deal with critical or negative information on any level. All his emergent fears about being “dumb” would be made true. And how do you treat ADD? He knew: with drugs. With Ritalin. He had talked to me about it years earlier, because a friend of his at school was on Ritalin. Dash would think he was going to be drugged up and sent off to boarding school.

  He was so fragile. Why couldn’t anyone see that? He would have seen Stephen’s diagnosis as proof positive that he really was a misfit. A loser who would never fit into a school environment. A hopeless case. I knew intuitively that introducing hopelessness to a child who was depressed was a recipe for disaster. Dash doesn’t “act” like a depressed child, Stephen had said, and Oliver had said the same thing to me. “He doesn’t seem depressed.” Dash still was a clown, fun to be around, sometimes. But that was Dash! He’d been born with a natural talent, but for a long time now had used humour to cover his pain. Bob Lewis knew it. He saw it. I did see Dash’s depression. I did see Dash’s pain. I saw it in his anger, his inability to stay on-task, his lethargy and insomnia. I saw a lack of hope when I looked into his beautiful but increasingly soulless, increasingly lifeless, brown eyes.

  Telling Dash he was learning disabled, and then sending him off home back to daddy, did what I had dreaded: it pushed Dash closer to the edge. Taught to be the master of his own destiny, Dash was out of control now. When Peter took Dash out of the wilderness program, Dash’s counsellor, Lana, had warned him that he was throwing away his last chance to draw the line with his son. Dash had spent years figuring out his dad and now could work him like a puppet to get him to do anything he wanted or get him out of anything he didn’t want to do. The power struggle was over. Dash had won, and this was the result. He would no more agree to go off to a uniformed boarding school in New York than live on Mars, and there was no way Peter would rise above his son’s opposition and put Dash’s best interests before his loyalty to him. As well as simply running away, I am sure he fought with his father about it. From the bruises Dash had shown me driving to Seattle that day in the car, I was terrified of what would happen in that household now.

  A couple of days before Christmas, around lunchtime, it started snowing. By the time I went to pick up my boys from school, it was snowing hard and the roads were slippery and slushy. I turned slowly onto Dunbar Street to take an easier route home and, as the car crawled along, I glanced over to the right at a little strip mall. There, outside a liquor store, was Dash, wearing the new snowboarding jacket he had chosen so proudly months before. He was with a friend, and they were talking amiably; Dash was smiling. They looked as if they were waiting for someone else to come out of the store with their alcohol.

  “Look, Mom!” cried Quin, pointing. “There’s Dash! Can we stop?”

  I hadn’t seen Dash since he left my house in his father’s broken-down car weeks earlier, and my first instinct was to pull over, get out of the car, and call the name I had so lovingly picked for him at his birth. But a bigger part of me couldn’t. Everything was still too fresh. I had felt the same way that day when the police dropped him off. What would he say in front of the ever-eager Quin and Colby? “Lick my balls”? Would he simply ignore me, ignore my eager little boys? I saw him jump up and down in the cold, then look around briefly toward the store, then onto the street. I had a new car that he wouldn’t have recognized. I watched him for a few seconds, drinking him in, as we coasted slowly and then decided — no. I would let it lie this time.

  “It looks too dangerous to stop right here,” I told Quin. “It’s so slushy! We don’t want to get stuck. We’ll see Dash soon, don’t worry.” I kept driving. Dash never even knew we had been there.

  As we prepared to go up to Whistler I sent Dash a little Christmas card telling him I loved him. Dave and I had given Dash a new computer for his birthday four months earlier, and the card I sent showed Santa in deep frustration, trying to make his computer work. It had a funny holiday greeting inside, and I wrote some loving words, but I left it at that. I didn’t beg him to spend Christmas with us the way I had every other year. I didn’t buy him an armload of presents and ask him to come up and open them. No pressure.

  Dash spent Christmas Eve at a friend’s place. I was told that he had had “issues” with Peter throughout the Christmas period. Dash had left the house, stealing one of Peter’s cars, and lived in it for two weeks, parked in a lane behind a friend’s house. A long-time friend of Dash’s told me it was a familiar thing between Dash and Peter for the two of them to fight and then for Dash to run away and stay away for days. A friend of mine had told me two years earlier that Peter once called her out of the blue and asked if she’d seen Dash around, giving her the impression that Peter hadn’t seen Dash in days and had finally started to panic.

  And so, when Peter and Dash had a big fight on New Year’s Eve, Dash left the house and crashed a party in the neighbourhood. He didn’t stay long, leaving, along with dozens of other kids, when the police were called to eject anyone who wasn’t on the guest list. At the party, Dash had sat cross-legged, looking down into his lap, with his head sunk low. He was dejected and morose. Dash told a boy called Nick, “I got nothing for Christmas. My dad kicked me out. And I have nowhere to go.” To anyone who knew him, his cry for help was a scream. Outside the confines of the wilderness program, Dash had never, ever, expressed any negative feelings about his father and their life together. He had never said anything publicly to discredit the myth the t
wo of them lived — and Nick wasn’t even a friend, he was just a boy Dash knew from the neighbourhood. The “perfect” life Dash and Peter led had finally, after all these years, hit the wall.

  At some point the group of teenagers broke up and went their own ways. Dash went back home. According to Peter, Dash asked him for five hundred dollars. Peter also claimed he and Dash toasted each other at midnight, but that seems unlikely. Peter said he went to bed sometime around two, and when he awoke the next morning Dash was gone. These are lies. Dash and his dad had squared off. There were no Greco-Roman rules this time. The fight must have been physical and ugly. Peter had a big bruise under his eye for days afterward. Dash was a strong boy of 180 pounds, and he was filled with rage.

  Somehow Dash managed to put on his pyjama bottoms, two pairs of sweat pants, a T-shirt, four shirts, a sweatshirt, a jacket, and a purple toque. I’m told children do that when they are planning to live on the streets. What Dash’s state of mind was when he left that evening we’ll never know. Where was he going? All his friends had gone home; it was too late to try and stay with one of them. Another cold and damp night in the back seat of a car? Would he walk or hop the free buses that run the length of Broadway on New Year’s Eve? He chose the bus and was probably heading downtown, where all the other teenage runaways go.