Her eyes touch mine briefly, then jump away. “I can’t help it.”
I feel an odd impulse to comfort her. This place must be getting to me.
“This time is going to be different from the others, Amy.”
“How can you tell?”
“I just can. I’m a very good judge of character, you know.”
The corner of her mouth twitches. “Oh yeah, just like all of us here.”
“Seriously. You’re going to do great.”
“From your lips to God’s ears.”
There he is again. Maybe Amy can tell me where to find him?
I hear the van pull up outside the front door. Amy picks up her bag.
“I guess this is it,” she says. “Candice will be OK, right?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Will you let me know?”
The van toots its horn.
“Of course. Now quit stalling and get out of here.”
We walk outside. The sky’s clouded over and it smells like it might rain. I hug my sweatshirt close to keep out the chill. Evan gets out of the van and helps Amy load her suitcase in the back. He closes the doors with a soft thud and walks back toward the driver’s seat.
Amy reaches out and hugs me. I hug her back without too much effort. When she lets go her lip is quivering.
“I’m glad I met you,” she says.
“Me too.” My throat feels tight and there’s something wet sliding down my face.
Oh God, I’m actually crying about someone I met a week ago. Sign me up for the next season of Big Brother.
I wipe my tears away. “Now get into your pumpkin and get out of here.”
“All right, I will.”
She climbs into the passenger seat of the van and closes the door behind her. The engine roars to life, and in a moment, she’s gone.
What with the crying and all, I arrive at group a few minutes late.
As I search the room for a seat, I see that Amber wasn’t joking when she told Zack that she had a performance to prepare for. She’s wearing brown cords and a brown shirt, and her hair is in two side ponytails. Her tongue is even protruding slightly from her mouth.
I stifle a giggle as I take a seat next to her. The air in the room is tense. Saundra’s shoulders are hunched, though she’s trying her best to keep her tone light and professional.
“As I was saying, I think it’s important that we discuss what happened to Candice last night, and how you’re reacting to it. I know some of you have addressed this already in your individual therapy sessions, but I thought it would be good to discuss it together. Would someone like to start us off?”
“Where were you?” Amber pants out of the side of her mouth.
“Working on your escape plan,” I whisper back.
“Really?”
“Amber, Katie. Is there something you want to share with the group?”
Amber narrows her eyes. “Katie just wanted to know where you got that sweater.”
The room erupts in laughter. Saundra’s wearing a sweater that makes her upper body look like a poodle.
“I’d ask you both to be more respectful, especially considering the topic.”
“Sorry, Saundra, it won’t happen again,” I say.
Amber shoots me a dirty look. “Suck ass.”
She slumps down in her seat, staring fixedly out the window. Her posture would be more convincing if she wasn’t in a dog costume.
The Screenwriter raises his hand and starts to recount his own suicide attempt, but that’s not what’s got my attention.
Or Saundra’s. “What is it, Amber?”
Amber’s sitting there, dumbstruck by something she sees out the window.
“Amber? Are you OK?” I ask.
Amber raises a shaking hand and points her index finger. “What the fuck is he doing here?”
Our eyes follow Amber’s finger. A gasp escapes someone’s lips. The van is back from dropping Amy off. And climbing out of it is . . .
“Isn’t that James Bond?” The Lawyer asks.
“No,” says Amber, in a dead-sounding voice. “It’s the Young James Bond.”
Chapter 9
The Monkey on My Back
I’m standing at the edge of the path slowly, slowly lacing up my running shoes, trying to put off running as long as possible.
It’s after breakfast, and the air is already hot and cloying.
A heat wave in May! Go, global warming, go.
I’m here to run. I don’t want to, but I’m going to do it. I’m going to keep the resolution I made yesterday to run at least five minutes even if it kills me. Or was it six?
I adjust Amy’s watch on my wrist. I found it on my bed when I returned to my room after the commotion caused by Connor Parks’s arrival. Her simple gesture brought me to tears for the second time that day.
Alcohol-free Katie is getting too bloody soft. I need to get out of here before I lose all my self-control.
When I was done with the crying, I checked the web. Amazingly, no one seemed to know that Connor Parks was in rehab. And here I was in the perfect place to learn all sorts of confidential things about him.
Things were looking up.
I stand up slowly. My movement startles a bird from its nest. The loud thawp, thawp, thawp of its wings echoes through the forest.
I wonder what YJB is doing here. Does he really have an alcohol/drug problem, or is this just about Amber? And how the hell does the world not know he’s here?
Well, whatever the reason, I took care of that. Or rather, Bob did.
I can’t sit on this kind of scoop, he responded to the email I sent him. Even if it blows your cover, it’s worth it.
The story broke quickly. When I checked Amber Alert a few hours later, it had a red flashing headline that read CAMBER REUNITED above a picture of Connor and Amber with their arms around each other at some red-carpet event.
Amber Alert can confirm that Camber are now both patients at the Cloudspin Oasis, a $1,000-a-day rehabilitation center. As we were the first to report, Amber checked into rehab after a much publicized video showing her smoking crack appeared on a rival website (damn you, TMZ!). Insiders report that Connor also suffers from drug and alcohol addiction. All patients staying at the Oasis commit to a minimum 30-day stay. Conditions are said to be rustic but comfortable. The residents take part in both individual and group therapy. One can only assume that Camber’s reunion in such circumstances was bittersweet.
Surely this means my future at The Line is secure?
I place my earphones in my ears and queue up Matt Nathanson’s “Come on Get Higher.”
OK, OK. No more putting it off. One, two, three, run!
I take a couple of running steps, and it’s not so bad. It’s cooler here under the tall, green trees. Step, step, hup, step. Step, step, hup, step. It’s pretty, in fact. I should’ve done this a long time ago. I feel healthier already. Five minutes will be no problem.
Shit. I didn’t start the watch.
I stop and press the buttons to get the chronograph to show. Amy’s time from her last run is still displayed. Fifty-six minutes! How is that even possible?
OK, focus.
I clear the clock until the zeros appear. Beep! Run along, Katie.
Good. I’m in the woods. I’m running. I kept my resolution, big step for me. I just need to think of something to distract myself from the running.
My mind wanders to Zack, and a guilty tingle creeps up my spine.
I push the feeling back down. Our breakup wasn’t my finest moment, but that was a really long time ago. Besides, he’s married to Meghan. He married Meghan? How did that happen?
OK, this is not helpful. Think of something else.
Got it! I have to find something outside myself to appease Saundra and her desire for me to believe in a higher power. That tree’s really big. Maybe that’d work? Oh, Big Tree, will you help me stay sober even though I don’t really have a drinking problem? Will you help me
play along with Saundra so I can stay incognito and learn things about TGND and her ex-boyfriend? What’s that, Big Tree? You don’t want to help me with my nefarious deeds? Can’t really blame you.
Shit. My lungs hurt. I must’ve been running for . . . what? At least five minutes. But maybe it’s less. Should I look at the watch? No, that’d be a mistake. I should run until I really can’t anymore and then look at the watch. Maybe I’ll make it up to ten minutes, and I’ll be way ahead of myself. Yeah, if I make it to ten, then I can take tomorrow off.
Step, step, hup, step. Step, step, hup, step.
What the hell is that pain in my shoulders? I know this sounds crazy, but it feels like there’s some monkey-sized thing sitting on my shoulders bouncing up and down.
Hey, monkey, get the hell off my back! I mean it, monkey! Go away, shoo! Fine, you want to play that way? I’m going to stop and you’ll disappear!
I stop running, and the weight eases off my shoulders.
What the hell was that? Running is making me cuckoo.
Well, at least I did it. I ran way more than five minutes, for sure.
I pull the earphones from my ears and look at Amy’s watch. It says I’ve been running for four minutes. Even with forgetting to start the watch there’s no way I ran for five.
Goddamnit. I did five minutes yesterday. I was supposed to do six today. Well, at least five and a half. But I can’t take another step, I can’t. Running clearly doesn’t agree with me. I mean, it has me talking to imaginary monkeys!
“Are you all right?” a deep voice asks me.
I turn around in a panic. There’s a man with short red hair and a smattering of freckles across his nose standing on the path. He’s about six feet tall, in his early thirties, and he’s wearing gray running shorts and a matching sleeveless T-shirt.
I’ve never seen the guy before. My mind spits out possibilities. New patient? Staff member? Escaped convict? Ax murderer?
Fight or flight? Fight or flight? I can’t run anymore, so I guess it’s going to have to be fight.
Only, I don’t know how to fight.
“I got a cramp,” I say.
Idiot! Now he knows you’re helpless.
He looks sympathetic. “In your side?”
But he doesn’t sound like an ax murderer. Is this his MO? Distract me with kindness before going in for the kill?
“Kind of all over . . .”
And yet you keep answering his questions. You are a moron.
“Did you just start running?”
“No.”
That was better.
“Well . . . if you’re OK, I’ll be off.”
Shit. Maybe he was being nice, and I’m totally overacting?
I try to make my face seem friendly. “Thanks for stopping.”
“No problem. See you around.”
He pushes some buttons on his watch, and I watch him as he lopes off through the woods with the easy gait of a long-time runner.
Well done, Katie. A nice man asks if you need help, and you scare him off. No wonder you’re single.
Shut up, monkey.
“I think I found my thing,” I say to Saundra in therapy later that morning. I’m wearing designer-knock-off black yoga pants topped by a pumpkin-orange hoodie. My hair is tied back and still wet from my shower.
She gives me a puzzled look from across her desk. “Your thing?”
“You know, my replacement-for-God thing. Like you asked me to.”
“It’s not supposed to be a replacement for God, Katie. It’s supposed to be what you place your faith in so you can work the steps.”
“Right, I know. I get it. Anyway, I think it’s running.”
She shakes her head. Her miniature-dog dangle earrings dance. “I don’t think a higher power can be a sport, Katie.”
“It’s not the sport. It’s how I feel when I’m doing it.”
“You feel good?”
“No, I feel awful.”
“That doesn’t sound like a promising beginning.”
“But that’s just it. It’s the only thing I can think of that takes me outside myself. It’s the only thing that’s bigger than me . . . like when I was running today . . . well . . . this is going to sound crazy . . .”
“Don’t worry about that, just tell me.”
“Well . . . I was running earlier, and all I had to do was five minutes, or maybe six . . . anyway, that’s not important . . . so, I’m running, and I’m hating it, and I hurt everywhere, and I’m trying to distract myself by thinking of something that could be my higher power when it happened.”
“What happened?”
I hesitate. She is so going to think I’m bonkers.
“The monkey showed up.”
She stares at me blankly, her hand poised above her yellow pad.
“It sounds crazy, right?”
“I’m sorry, Katie. I was just surprised. Keep going.”
“It wasn’t an actual monkey. It just felt like there was one.”
“What was the monkey doing?”
“It was sitting on my shoulders.”
“And?”
“That’s it.”
“I don’t get it.”
Neither do I now that I’m saying it out loud.
I try again. “I don’t know. It felt like it was something outside myself. Something I can hold on to.”
She contemplates me. The dogs wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. “I think what you experienced is a feeling that runners often get when their muscles are oxygen-deprived. What you need to find is something permanent. Something that’s always there. It can’t be something transient.”
“Well, that’s what I’m going to use as my higher power,” I say petulantly.
“Then we still have a lot of work to do,” Saundra replies gently.
After lunch, I wander to the library, hoping desperately that something a little less taxing and depressing than Hamlet has magically appeared on the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
A mad hope.
Sobriety, Moment of Clarity, Working the Steps, it goes on and on, and there’s not a beach read among them. I know we’re supposed to be working on ourselves (that’s why I’m killing myself through running, right?), but this is taking it way too far. Reading any one of these books would stress me out, not dry me out. No surprise that most of the books look like they’ve never even had their spines cracked.
“It probably doesn’t matter which one you pick up,” a man says behind me. “I’m sure they all say the same thing.”
I turn around. It’s the potential-murderer guy I met on the running path earlier. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a blue-gray Oxford that matches his eyes. He has a book tucked under his arm.
“What’s that?”
His eyes twinkle. “Don’t drink. Don’t do drugs.”
“Good point. What are you reading?”
He shows me the cover. It’s Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs’s really bleak tale about his depraved childhood. It’s full of gay sex, drugs, and Oedipal feelings. I bet he’s a fun person to party with.
“There’s no way you found that here.”
“Mr. Drink and Do Drugs? Of course not.”
“Didn’t he dry out in his next book?”
“Really? How disappointing.”
We exchange smiles and move toward the comfy navy armchairs tucked into the corner of the room. As we sit down, I catch a whiff of his aftershave. It smells spicy and expensive.
“So, how did your run end up?” he asks, tapping the fingers of his left hand against his knee.
“End up? Oh no, you saw the end of my run.”
He smiles. “It’ll get easier if you stick to it.”
“That seems to be the theme of this place.”
“Right. But I can promise you that it’s true for running.”
“And for the rest of it?”
A bleak look crosses his face. “Who the fuck knows? I hope so.”
Who is this guy? He’s definitely n
ot a patient.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
I gather my courage. “Well . . . I know this is going to sound . . . odd, but when I was running, I had this weird feeling in my shoulders . . .”
He nods. “Like something was sitting on you?”
Oh, thank God.
“Yes, exactly. Do you know what that is?”
“Maybe your muscles weren’t getting enough oxygen?”
“That’s what Saundra said.”
“Who’s Saundra?”
How can he not know who Saundra is? Now I’m really confused.
“You’re not a patient, are you?”
“Nope.”
I cock my head to the side. “But if you were on staff, you’d definitely know who Saundra was . . .”
“A leading character, is she?”
I smile. “Kind of. She leads group, and she’s my individual therapist.”
“That sounds like a lot of therapy. Does it get boring?”
“Sometimes, though it can be entertaining listening to some of the other patients.”
Nice. I just said I enjoyed listening to other people talking about the most painful moments in their lives. I’m a bad, bad person.
“I’d hate it,” he says.
“Listening to others, or talking about yourself?”
“The latter.”
I flex my feet, trying to stretch out my calves. “That’s pretty definite.”
“When you know yourself, you know yourself.”
“What made you so enlightened?”
He gives me a rueful smile. “Well . . . when every girl you go out with says the same thing, you can either accept it or put your head in the sand.”
“Every girl?”
“Yup.”
“But don’t women like the strong, silent type?”
He shrugs. “Apparently, not so much.”
“Maybe you just need to be with someone who’s spent time in here. After listening to twelve narcissists spill their guts day after day, you learn to appreciate someone who can keep the cap on.”
“So, you’re saying I should focus my dating strategy on women who’ve spent time in rehab?”
Yo, dum-dum, you’re a woman who’s spent time in rehab.
“No . . . I guess not,” I stammer, a blush spreading across my face.
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