by Amy Reed
We eat and we bullshit and pick on the skinny new girl. Jason’s an asshole and tries to hit on her right in front of me, but she just acts like none of us are good enough for her. Christopher acts like his usual choirboy self, and Eva just eats her greasy three-thousand-calorie breakfast and acts like her usual bitchy self. Sometimes we talk to kids from the other Groups, but we always end up back with each other for some reason, even though in the real world we would probably never acknowledge one another’s existence. Except for me and Jason, I guess. We’d be the same on the outside as we are in here.
After breakfast it’s one of the day’s many smoke breaks and more bullshitting. Gas Man tells some story about how he passed out in a ditch in Alaska in January and almost froze to death. The Compulsive Liar with the expensive baggy pants makes up something about being in a gang, but we all know he comes from a small town by the Snoqualmie ski slopes. Then it’s time for community meeting, where we sit in a circle and clap for the new people and introduce ourselves by name, city of origin, and drug of choice.
Kelly.
Seattle.
Cocaine and alcohol.
The Compulsive Liar lists off every drug he’s ever heard of. Today he adds ketamine because he heard the Scary Heroin Addict say it yesterday.
Then it’s time for the first Group of the day. Fucking Group. It’s not even ten in the morning and we’re supposed to go into tiny rooms with no windows and get deep with total strangers. We have to look at the cartoon faces on the wall and pick one that describes how we’re feeling: angry, bashful, confused, anxious. Then we all take turns pretending to bare our souls.
It’s bad enough that all thirty or so of us in this place have been assigned to one of six random counselors whose job it is to fix us, and that we’re stuck with four other random kids we don’t even know and we’re expected to talk to each other like we’re the best friends we ever had. But it’s worse for us, the unlucky few—me, Olivia, Christopher, Jason, and Eva. We do not have one of those sad-eyed counselors who did too many mushrooms in the sixties and are always talking about “honoring you” and “empowering you.” We do not have one of those wisecracking ex-junkies who has a joke to disarm everyone. We do not have one of those sweet old mothers who beat her addiction to chardonnay, found Jesus, and got her master’s in social work when her kids went off to college. No. It’s worse.
We have Shirley.
GROUP
SHIRLEY: You must be Olivia.
OLIVIA: Yes.
SHIRLEY: I’m your counselor, Shirley. You’ve probably heard a little about me.
OLIVIA: No.
SHIRLEY: Well, you will. Have a seat.
EVA: Not there. That’s my seat.
OLIVIA: What about this one?
EVA: No, that’s where Christopher sits.
OLIVIA: Are you serious?
JASON: You can sit here by me.
SHIRLEY: Don’t be a shithead, Jason.
JASON: I was just being polite.
SHIRLEY: Everyone, sit down. Why is it so hard for you to do something as simple as sit in a goddamned chair?
EVA: Because we’re drug addicts.
SHIRLEY: Thank you, Eva.
OLIVIA: Shirley, I have a paper for AP English due in two days, and I was wondering if I could skip afternoon Group to work on it. I have the outline and the research done, but I really need time to actually write it, and I was wondering if there’s a computer I could use to type it up, because my teacher doesn’t allow us to turn in handwritten assignments.
SHIRLEY: Olivia, honey, this is rehab, not study hall. You get one hour a day during free time to work on homework, and that’s it. You’re supposed to be focusing on your recovery here, not getting into Harvard.
EVA: Amen.
SHIRLEY: Eva, shut it.
OLIVIA: But shouldn’t you be supporting healthy behavior? Shouldn’t I—
SHIRLEY: Olivia, I’m not so sure it is healthy behavior with you. Let’s move on.
JASON: Welcome to Group, Olivia.
OLIVIA: Is it always like this?
JASON: This is nothing.
SHIRLEY: Hey. Shut it. I’m talking.
JASON: Sorry.
SHIRLEY: Kelly, let’s start with you.
KELLY: Start with me, what?
SHIRLEY: How are you feeling?
KELLY: Fine.
EVA: Bullshit.
JASON: Bullshit.
CHRISTOPHER: Bullshit.
OLIVIA: What?
KELLY: Dammit.
EVA: We all said “bullshit.”
KELLY: I forgot.
SHIRLEY: Christopher, would you like to tell Olivia what “F.I.N.E.” means?
CHRISTOPHER: “Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional.”
OLIVIA: I don’t understand.
EVA: It’s an acronym.
OLIVIA: But why did everyone say “bullshit”?
SHIRLEY: Christopher, why do we say “bullshit” when someone says they feel fine?
CHRISTOPHER: Because it means they’re hiding something?
SHIRLEY: Good.
OLIVIA: But what if you really do feel fine?
SHIRLEY: Christopher, care to answer that?
CHRISTOPHER: Um, there’s no such feeling as fine?
OLIVIA: Why does she keep calling on Christopher?
JASON: Because he’s working on his self-esteem.
SHIRLEY: Good job, Christopher. Let’s get back to Kelly, shall we? Kelly, look at all the pictures of faces on the wall. Each one has a feeling word associated with it. There are about forty different emotions to choose from. Pick one that fits.
KELLY: I don’t even know what some of those words mean. What is “ambivalent”?
OLIVIA: It means the inability to make a choice. Or feeling two opposite things at the same time.
JASON: Whoa, we got a genius here. How many points is that worth on the SAT?
KELLY: Okay, I feel ambivalent.
SHIRLEY: Explain.
KELLY: What do you mean? I did what you asked.
SHIRLEY: What are the two conflicting feelings?
KELLY: I don’t have two conflicting feelings.
SHIRLEY: You just said you feel ambivalent.
OLIVIA: This is ridiculous.
EVA: Just do what she says and no one gets hurt.
KELLY: Uh, well, I guess I’m pissed off.
SHIRLEY: At what?
KELLY: At being in here.
SHIRLEY: And?
KELLY: And, uh, I don’t know. I guess… scared.
SHIRLEY: Scared of what?
KELLY: I don’t know.
SHIRLEY: Yes, you do, Kelly.
CHRISTOPHER: We’re all scared.
JASON: I’m not.
EVA: Fuck you, Jason.
SHIRLEY: What are you scared of, Kelly?
KELLY: That this is a waste of time. That nothing’s going to change. That everything is going to be exactly the same when I get out.
SHIRLEY: Good.
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, you did really good.
KELLY: Thanks.
SHIRLEY: But I’m not quite sure you understand the definition of “ambivalent.”
KELLY
It’s movie night tonight,
so we’re all sitting or lying in the community room in various configurations around our pillows. Rumor has it that they used to allow blankets until someone was caught giving some guy a hand job beneath the sheets. There are now strict rules that everyone must be at least two feet away from the person next to them, so now hand jobs can only be accomplished via telekinesis.
Olivia’s over there with her perfect posture like this is the first time she’s ever sat on the floor. She’s probably fantasizing about all the homework she could be doing right now, or she’s writing the rough drafts of all our rehab assignments in her head. I bet she wet her pants in excitement when she found out they give us homework in here, too. Instead of history and math and science, we get these really long writing assignments wh
ere we’re supposed to pour our souls out and prove how fucked up we are and how everything we do is wrong and stupid.
I just don’t get it. I consider myself a pretty smart person—I mean, I got mostly B’s all this year even though I was completely wasted the whole time—but I just don’t understand the point of all this forced introspection. It’s like they think constantly talking about depressing shit will somehow make you less depressed. Either that or they’re obsessed with suffering and they get off on listening to everybody’s sad stories. That must be it—they get paid all this money to supposedly make us sane when actually they’re the psychos.
I can make a list a mile long about all of the stupid things I’ve done when I’ve been high or drunk, all the ways I’ve been hurt and all the ways I’ve hurt other people. Just thinking about it makes me want to get high, and I haven’t even gotten into the details. How is that supposed to help me? How is feeling like a failure supposed to help me? The way I see it, they should invent some pill that just makes you forget whatever you want, some pill that makes you numb and functional like the one in that book Brave New World. If we had something like that, we wouldn’t need any of the drugs and alcohol that got us in here.
But instead they’re making us sit on the floor and watch the movie where Sandra Bullock goes to rehab. All the movies they show us have something to do with addiction, and the ending is always the same: The hero either chooses recovery or dies. My first night here they showed a made-for-TV movie about some high school jock in the eighties on steroids. Really? Steroids? Did they run out of movies about real drugs to show? Most everyone fell asleep, and I just sat there in the dark, hungover and shaking from the night before, strung out from the line I snorted before my parents drove me over here, paranoid and miserable and wanting to die, convinced that these people have no idea what they’re doing and there’s no way in hell they can help me.
Surprisingly, this Sandra Bullock movie isn’t too bad. For one, it’s a real movie with real actors, not some bullshit Lifetime crap. Not that I’m a fan of Sandra Bullock or anything, but I like how her character doesn’t take any shit. The movie’s not going to win any Oscars, but it’s entertaining enough that I can lie here and try to forget where I am for a couple of hours. Except someone always has something stupid to say. When Sandra Bullock crashes her car when she’s drunk, someone says, “Hey, Kelly, is that you?” And everyone laughs, and I say “Very funny” like I don’t care, but it really does hurt my feelings. And then when the gay German guy comes on, Compulsive Liar says, “Oh, look, it’s Christopher,” even though no one actually knows if he’s gay, and he’s definitely not German, but everyone laughs again and Christopher says absolutely nothing. I can see him in the corner looking straight at the TV in the front of the room, not moving, probably not even breathing, trying to pretend like he didn’t hear anything. And I want to go over there and slap him. I want to tell him to stick up for himself for fuck’s sake. But he’d probably just nod and look down at the ground and say something Christian like, “Oh, they’re just having fun. They don’t mean it. It doesn’t bother me,” when inside I know he’s unraveling. How could he not?
Eva says, “Shut up, you fucking Nazi.” As annoying as she is, she’s pretty fearless when it comes to speaking her mind, which is more than I can say for myself. Tonight’s AC, the Ponytail Guy, says, “Eva, that’s enough,” even though he’s always trying to act all sensitive, so shouldn’t he be on her side and sticking up for the maybe-gay kid? Eva says, “Why didn’t you say that to the homophobe?” So Ponytail says to the Compulsive Liar, “You, too. There will be no hateful language in here.” And that’s that. Everyone goes back to watching the movie. I look over at Christopher and we make eye contact for a second, and there’s this weird look of surprise on his face. Then he looks away, and it’s back to Sandra Bullock like nothing happened.
I look over at Jason, and no surprise—he’s looking at me. I guess if I have anything in common with anyone in here, it’s probably him, though I’m not really sure what that would be. It’s just that some people look like they have things in common. And we look like that. We are the kind of people who look like they belong together, even though I couldn’t really give you a good reason why. As soon as I saw him, that little buzzer in my stomach went off that means we’ll hook up. Then he hit on me, then I flirted back, and now I guess he’s my boyfriend. But I don’t know. I guess I was hoping things would be different here. Like maybe I wouldn’t have to get a boyfriend the second I got here. Maybe I’d actually get a chance to start over like people say. But maybe that kind of thing doesn’t really happen. Maybe I’m stupid for thinking this would be a place I don’t have to be who I’ve always been, somewhere I can be somebody new.
I keep thinking about the lady who took my evaluation test, when she looked me in the eye and said, “Honey, don’t you want a break?” And all of a sudden my throat closed up and my eyes started stinging and I felt like crying even though I haven’t cried in forever, and I had no idea where it came from. It was the strangest feeling, like it hurt and felt good at the same time, like I was more exhausted than I’ve ever been, but I also felt like I could run a marathon.
I don’t know what any of this means. All I know is I feel crazy, like I want to cry and laugh and scream at the same time. I wonder if anybody else feels this way, if anyone in here is as scared as I am. Are they as sad and angry and confused and ashamed? Is that even possible? Is it even possible for one building to hold all that pain?
PERSONAL ESSAY
JASON
What do you want, Shirley? Should we delve into our childhoods so we can realize how awful our parents are? Do you want us to blame everything on them? That seems pretty lazy, if you ask me. Because everybody has fucked-up families, even the normal kids, even the ones who aren’t in here. Everyone’s parents are either divorced or abusive or don’t give a shit. There’s no magic math equation that makes us addicts, nothing that separates us from everyone else. We just are what we are. We’re just fuckups. There’s nothing special about my life, no clues to explain why I ended up in here and not on the honor roll or the varsity football team.
OLIVIA
The thing you need to know about me is that my family’s perfect. My grandfather had a high position in the State Department, and my father is following in his footsteps. There’s been talk lately about him running for Senate, but I try not to pay attention. His world is not my world. I live in the kids’ world, where we’re supposed to be perfect and not make any noise. My older brother is a junior at Princeton, fourth generation, bound for Harvard Law, etc. My younger brother is a violin prodigy. Me, I’m my own brand of perfect, I guess. The kind that has to work a little harder than everyone else.
CHRISTOPHER
I don’t know where to start. There’s nothing particularly interesting about my life. I mean, look at me. I’m dressed in clothes picked out by my mom from the Sears online catalog. I have these old-fashioned glasses and this ugly mop haircut and these stupid brown shoes. Every time I look in the mirror I expect to see someone else, but it’s always this pale, squinty-eyed geek who looks like he hasn’t gone through puberty yet.
KELLY
I’m pretty sure I know what the point of this assignment is. And don’t get me wrong—I think it’s a great idea. Just not for me. It makes sense for everyone else to think about their childhoods and parents and stuff, because maybe if they realize they have no control over any of it, then they won’t feel so bad about the way they turned out. I mean, kids like Christopher are pretty much doomed to be weird. And Eva with her dead mom, and Olivia and Jason with their pressure to be a certain way—kids shouldn’t have that much stress.
EVA
She was the girl with the pigtails. She was the girl with the smile and the laugh like seashells, with the magical powers possessed only by perfect children. The mom in the PTA. The dad who’d take her to Mariners games on the weekends. Rosebushes. A vegetable garden full of nutrition. Th
ree square meals a day made by soft, loving hands.
These memories are shades of pastel, smoky and warm, like drifting off to sleep, like a velvet painting of heaven. They live in a box strangled by chains. To keep them safe. To keep them from the dark that took their place.
JASON
My family’s not that bad, really. It’s not like I was raised in the ghetto and my dad was in prison and my mom was a crack whore. My dad is an ex-Navy SEAL with, like, a million medals. He owns his own contracting company and makes a shitload of money. My mom makes fancy Jell-O molds and volunteers as a tutor for poor kids. I should be fine. I should be on my way to a great future. So your theory is wrong, Shirley. Nothing made me the way I am. Nothing but me.
EVA
Do you remember? Do you remember the world before the dark? Do you remember the world with mothers and fathers and a stillness that did not feel like death?
OLIVIA
My mother’s her own brand of perfect, not brilliant like the men in the family, but regal, I guess because she comes from old money. I don’t know that she’s ever had a real job. I don’t even know what she majored in in college, just that she “met” my father there, even though their parents knew each other and had been trying to hook them up for years; kind of like an arranged marriage, though no one would ever call it that. They were a match made in heaven: Old Money + Old Power = World Domination. It makes sense that their offspring would be required to follow in their footsteps.