Spin

by Catherine McKenzie

  “Is that why you chose this place?”

  “I guess.”

  “So forthcoming with the personal details.”

  “Sorry. It doesn’t come naturally to me.”

  She looks sympathetic. “It must be rough for you in here, then?”

  “I’m managing. Better than Amber seems to be, anyway.”

  “That’s not saying much.”

  I try to imitate the way Amy leans over her leg and touches her forehead to her kneecap. Is my back supposed to be making that sound?

  “Do you think she’s trying to get kicked out, you know, acting out like that in group?”

  She shrugs. “Maybe, but I heard she’s here on a legal hold, so I think she’s stuck here.”

  “What’s a legal hold?”

  “It’s when you’re court-ordered into rehab. The facility has the power to hold you for a certain amount of time and makes recommendations to the court about when you can leave.”

  “Would you have to file legal papers to get that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is that stuff public?”

  She sits up from her stretch and gives me a quizzical look. “Why are you so curious?”

  Oopsy daisy.

  “Oh . . . I’m not, really.”

  Amy springs to her feet and I follow suit much more awkwardly.

  Jesus. I think I pulled something in my back. And I’m guessing rehab means no painkillers. Perfect.

  Amy looks concerned. “Katie, can I give you a word of advice?”

  “What?”

  “Amber’s trouble. I wouldn’t get caught up in her little drama if I were you.”

  “I won’t.”

  She persists. “No offense, OK, but I know girls like her, and you’re not going to be friends. She might make you think you are, but you won’t be.”

  I feel a flash of annoyance. Who says I can’t be friends with TGND? I was popular in high school, goddamnit.

  “If you say so.”

  “It has nothing to do with you, Katie. It’s just what she’s used to. It’s this whole fucked-up world that you don’t want to be involved in. Trust me. I know.”

  I look into Amy’s troubled eyes and can’t help thinking of the emotional and physical scars she carries around. Maybe she’s right. The only problem is, it’s my job to get into TGND’s whole fucked-up world.

  “All right, I hear you.”

  I sit gingerly on the bed and pick up Hamlet while Amy gets her shower things together.

  “Hey, Katie?” Amy says from the doorway.

  “Yeah?”

  “Still friends?”

  I look into her uncertain face and make a decision.

  “I haven’t been going outside because I don’t want to run into my ex-boyfriend,” I say.

  “Your ex-boyfriend’s a patient here?”

  I sigh. “No, he’s one of the gardeners. I ran into him the other day, and I’m scared I might run into someone else I know and they’ll tell my parents they saw me here.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Your parents don’t know you’re here? You really keep it close to the vest, don’t you?”

  “I told you.”

  “So why did you come to this treatment facility? You could have gone anywhere.”

  Anywhere where there’s a celebrity who’s crash-landed.

  “Well, obviously, I didn’t think things through. In my defense, though, I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

  She smiles. “Your secret’s safe with me, Katie.”

  I sure hope so.

  “Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,” Saundra says during our session on Day Seven: Accepting Our Higher Power. She’s wearing a white sweater that has several breeds of dogs scampering over it. They move every time she breathes, and they’re kind of freaking me out. “Do you feel ready to do that?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  I hesitate. I have a feeling Saundra’s not going to like what I have to say.

  “Because I don’t believe in God.”

  She regards me impassively. “You don’t have to believe in God to take the step, Katie. Your higher power doesn’t have to have a religious connotation.”

  That is such a load of crap.

  “Can’t I just skip this step, if I do the other ones?”

  “No, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Then I guess AA isn’t going to work for me.”

  She looks concerned. “You have to make it work for you if you’re going to stop drinking.”

  Good thing I don’t really need to stop drinking then.

  “Are you saying that AA is the only way to stay sober?”

  “It’s the only thing I know of that works consistently.”

  “But I thought it only works for like 12 percent of patients.”

  She speaks carefully. “Yes, that’s true. Most treatment programs only have a success rate of between 10 and 20 percent.”

  I wonder what the success rate is for undercover rehab operations. They probably don’t keep stats on that sort of thing, right?

  “Including this one?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come you never told me that?”

  “Do you think it’s helpful to know that you’re more likely to fail at this than succeed?”

  “Maybe not, but I’m not sure unrealistic expectations work, either.”

  “Do you think it’s unrealistic to say that you have the power to overcome your addiction?”

  “I thought I was powerless.”

  She shakes her head. The dogs move. I’m so going to have dogmares tonight.

  “No, Katie. You’re only powerless to change the things you cannot change. You’re an alcoholic. That will never change. But you have the ability to make choices about what that means for you.”

  “But what does that have to do with God?”

  “Your higher power is where you get the strength to make the right choices.” She gives me a patient smile. “Let’s come at this from another angle. Why are you so resistant to the idea of a higher power?”

  “Because I don’t believe in it. I never have.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  I think about it. “Have you read that book Eat, Pray, Love ?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “It’s about this woman who decides to spend a year exploring three aspects of life: pleasure, faith, and finding a balance between the two.”

  “I don’t see the connection.”

  “Well, I really liked the book, especially the eating and loving parts. Those are things I can believe in. But the middle part, where she’s in this ashram in India, meditating all the time, and she has this, I don’t know, out-of-body experience or whatever, and she thinks she sees God, well, all I could think of when I was reading it was yada yada yada.”

  “Is that some kind of yogic chant?”

  “No, it’s the noise my brain was making when she was talking about seeing God.”

  “Why was your brain making that noise?”

  “Because I didn’t believe it, and the only time I connected with it was when she was kind of making fun of her experience.”

  Saundra looks pensive. “So, the only connection you felt to her experience with God was when she expressed her uncertainty that she really had experienced God?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Well, Katie, I haven’t read the book, but from what you tell me, I think you might have been missing her point.”

  No shit.

  “Maybe.”

  Saundra and the creepy moving dogs consider me. “Katie, as I said before, it doesn’t have to be God. It merely has to be something outside you. A constant that you can hold on to. So, homework. I want you to spend some time over the next few days trying to find something that’s stronger than you. Do you think you can do that?”

  Do I have a choice?

  Pretty sure you sig
ned your choices away when you took Bob up on his offer.

  Maybe that explains the malicious glint in his eye?

  “I can try.”

  After dinner, I follow the crowd to watch yet another romantic comedy. Tonight’s offering is Kate & Leopold. It’s about a rich inventor from the nineteenth century who discovers a way to travel to modern-day New York and Meg Ryan.

  Amber sits down next to me about three-quarters of the way through the movie, just as Kate and Leopold are discovering that their relationship might not work out, given, you know, the whole time-space continuum thing. The television’s glow makes Amber’s face look ashen.

  “I can’t believe the shit they make us watch here,” Amber says, rather loudly.

  “Shh!” The maybe-gay Director hisses from behind us.

  I shoot him an incredulous look, though, come to think of it, he’s been at the movies every night (as, clearly, have I) and seems to enjoy the genre.

  We watch the movie. Leopold goes back to his own time and is sad. Kate stays in her time and is sad. Then Kate figures out that being happy is more important than being a successful career woman in the twenty-first century and that she has, like, twenty minutes to get to the Brooklyn Bridge before the hole in the time-space continuum closes forever. She hurries from the party being thrown to announce her huge promotion and . . .

  I give a disgusted snort. “Oh. My. God. She’s not going to run there is she?”

  “Looks like it,” Amber says.

  “Have you ever noticed how these kinds of movies always end with someone running after their one true love to tell them how they really feel?”

  She giggles. “Like in When Harry Met Sally.”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe it’s just Meg Ryan movies?”

  “No, it happens in The Holiday too. Cameron Diaz runs through the snow to get to Jude Law.”

  “You can’t blame her for that.”

  “True.”

  Amber looks thoughtful. “I guess if it’s not worth running toward, it isn’t true love.”

  “Not in the movies, anyway.”

  “Shh!”

  Meg/Kate leaps from the Brooklyn Bridge into the wormhole. After a little more running, she finds Leopold, and casts aside her old life of lonely independence. I guess the fact that she could, you know, vote in the twenty-first century wasn’t enough to keep her there. “Suffragette City,” eat your heart out.

  The credits roll and someone flicks on the lights. I catch The Director’s eye as he gets up to leave. The look he gives me could wither a hundred-year-old tree.

  “What’s his problem?” Amber asks.

  “I guess he was in some doubt about whether Kate and Leopold would make it back together.”

  She snickers. “He must really be starved for entertainment. I know for a fact that he won’t touch a rom-com script in real life.”

  “Maybe he’ll be more open after this?”

  “Maybe. Bet he still won’t cast me in his next picture, though, the asshole.”

  Something clicks into place. “Is that why you’ve been doing all that stuff during group? So he’ll notice you?”

  “Partly,” she confesses. “But it doesn’t seem to be working, and I’m running out of ideas.”

  “But aren’t you worried that everyone will think you’re . . .”

  “Just another Hollywood brat?”

  Nailed it.

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t care what anyone here thinks about me.”

  “But what if someone told the tabloids?” I say without thinking.

  My blood runs cold. Am I a complete idiot?

  She shrugs. “I pretty much assume that’s going to happen, these days.”

  Is it possible to hear someone else’s heart beating from this distance?

  “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “Sometimes . . . I guess I’m used to it.” Amber stands and stretches her hands above her head, giving a big yawn. “I think I’m going to turn in.”

  For once, I’m happy to see her go. This whole conversation has my blood pressure through the roof. Though, come to think of it, maybe I could score some points here . . .

  “Hey, Amber.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Try a dog next time.”

  She smiles broadly. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  I wake up with my heart pounding, pounding, pounding. My first thought is that Amy’s fallen down another K-hole, but the room is eerily quiet. Too quiet, in fact.

  I look over at Amy’s bed, listening for the sound of her breathing. I hear nothing, and as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see only the tangle of her sheets.

  I snap on the light and look at my watch. It’s 1:37 in the morning, a time when everyone should be tucked into their beds, fast asleep. Hell, even the infernal crickets have stopped rubbing their legs together.

  Something about her absence doesn’t feel right. Maybe I should go looking for her?

  Why the hell do you care? She’s not the mission.

  But she’s been really nice to me. And she has those creepy scars on her arms . . . maybe she’s in trouble.

  Whatever. It’s your funeral.

  I step out of bed and creep quietly across the cold floor toward the door. They do bed checks periodically throughout the night, and I have a feeling that being caught out of bed is a punishable offense. By extra sessions with Saundra, most likely.

  I hold my breath and listen for sounds of life in the corridor. Hearing none, I turn the door handle gently and say a little prayer to the Gods of Night-Time Capers who have kept me out of major trouble until now. If they helped me avoid detection when sneaking out of my parents’ house, my altruistic motives should be enough to keep me safe tonight, right?

  I look down the hall. The lights in the corridor are dimmed, but there’s a bright light escaping from under the bathroom door.

  It’s probably just my two-in-the-morning brain (which has had all kinds of bright ideas in the past, let me tell you), but something about that light doesn’t feel right.

  You going to go check it out, or just stand there until you get caught?

  I thought you didn’t want me to check on her?

  Better to be stupid than indecisive.

  Can it.

  I close the distance to the bathroom with a few quick strides and open the door.

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  Amy is crouched on the floor in front of one of the shower stalls, holding someone’s bright blond head in her lap. The shower is running full blast, beating down on the unconscious woman’s pale, twisted legs. And there’s blood, everywhere.

  “Amy, is that . . . ?”

  She turns toward me. She looks terrified. “It’s Candice. She tried to . . . I need help.”

  The sight and smell of the blood escaping from the horizontal cuts on Candice’s arms freezes me to the spot. I want to move, but I can’t. I’m not sure my heart is even beating anymore.

  “Katie! Please! Get help!”

  My heart starts up again. I turn and wrench open the door. Mary is standing in the doorway of her room across the hall pulling her robe closed. Her gray hair makes a frizzy nimbus around her head.

  “What’s all the fuss . . . ?” Her mouth falls open as she gets a look at the carnage behind me. “Aw, shit.”

  We cross each other in the hall, and I rush into her room, looking for the white panic button. I find it above the lamp and push it. Long, long, long. Short, short, short. Long, long, long.

  Goddamnit! I did not sign up for this.

  I sprint back toward the bathroom. Mary’s on the floor next to Candice holding a towel to her left wrist. Candice’s face is white and her eyelids are fluttering. Amy is trying to rip another strip of towel with her teeth while holding the wound on Candice’s right wrist closed with her fingers.

  I look down the empty hall. What’s taking them so long? She could die, for Chrissake.

  Wasn’t I just saying somet
hing about a funeral?

  You’ve got to be kidding me!

  I think I hear the sounds of clattering footsteps in the distance, and I run toward the end of the hall, my bare feet slapping against the wood floor. As I turn the corner, I almost smack into Dr. Houston and one of the orderlies. They’re wheeling a hospital gurney between them.

  “This way!”

  I lead them to the bathroom. Inside, Dr. Houston quickly takes charge, tying tight tourniquets on Candice’s upper arms with rubber tubes that he takes from his medical bag. The blood stops flowing, and the orderly wraps a blanket around Candice’s torso and turns off the tap in the shower, soaking his arm up to the elbow.

  The bathroom is suddenly incredibly quiet, with only Amy’s whimpers echoing off the walls. Mary is standing in the corner with her arms wrapped around her chest and her eyes wide with shock. I realize that my hands are shaking, and I ball them into fists to try to stop them.

  “How long ago did you find her?” Dr. Houston asks Amy.

  “I d-d-don’t know . . .”

  “Think. It’s important.”

  “Ten minutes . . .”

  He looks grim and turns to Mary. “Do you know when she left your room?”

  “Maybe half an hour ago. I was sleeping.”

  “All right. Go back to your rooms. Someone will come check on you later. Evan, let’s lift her.”

  They lift a limp Candice onto the gurney. She looks like the little girl she used to be.

  I hold open the door so they can wheel her out. In the distance, I hear the approaching whine of an ambulance. Mary follows them down the hall, holding tightly to Candice’s hand.

  I let the door close and turn toward Amy. “Are you all right?”

  She wipes her tears away with the back of her hand. She leaves streaks of blood across her face.

  “I’m cold.”

  I walk to one of the other shower stalls and turn on the hot water.

  “Get in here. I’ll go get you a towel and a change of clothes.”

  She moves slowly toward the shower, and I head back to our room. I change quickly into a fresh pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, and gather up clothes and some towels from Amy’s dresser.

  When I get back to the bathroom, Amy is still standing under the spray, fully dressed. The parts of her toffee skin that aren’t covered by her sleeveless nightshirt are red from the heat.

  “Amy?” I say loudly.