Life of the Party

by Christine Anderson

  “Not just drug addicts, everyone. The good people that go about their good lives without harming anyone and only trying to do what’s right … even they have a hunger inside of them for God. But they don’t know it. They worship music instead, or video games, or sports—movies, money, clothes, people … cooking, even. Whatever they choose to live their life for. But every single one of us, no matter how good or bad, is in desperate need of God.”

  I smirked again as a thought occurred to me. “Even Marcy?”

  “Especially Marcy.” Riley smiled at me. He pushed the Bible across the table. “Just, try reading it. See if anything speaks to you. It’s amazing you know, once you discover him. You won’t understand how you’ve been able to live without him for so long.”

  I put my hand on the soft leather cover and looked up at Riley. I didn’t know if God was real or not, but if he was, he’d probably want nothing to do with me. Not when I was so horrible, not when I was such a miserable mess. Not after I’d pushed my boyfriend, the love of my life, to kill himself in an attempt to save me. I was selfish and brutal and … wrong. It felt like every part of me was wrong. But I had decided to try ….

  “You’re going to be okay, Mackenzie.” Riley placed his warm hand on top of mine. “I really believe that, you know.”

  I stared down at our hands for a moment. He stroked mine delicately with his thumb, and for some reason, it made me uncomfortable. His dark eyes gazed down at me with such tenderness, such affection … it was unsettling. Undeserved. As causally as I could, I moved my hand from his and tried to change the subject.

  “So, what’s Emily think of you being here?” I wondered.

  “Oh, she understands.” He answered flippantly. “She hopes you get better.”

  “She does? Where is she, at your mom’s?”

  “No, she’s back at school. The semester started last week.”

  “Wait, your semester started already?” I blinked in surprise. “So what are you still doing here?”

  Riley scoffed. “What, you think I’d just put you in here and then go back to school like nothing ever happened? Give me a little credit.”

  “You’re missing your school?” I frowned. For some reason, this upset me. “Don’t wreck your life for me Riley, I’m not worth it.”

  “I’m not wrecking my life. Man, you’re dramatic.” He laughed. “I can just pick up where I left off next semester. No big deal.”

  “Yeah, but, you’ve worked so hard, and you really like it, I can tell—”

  “Mackenzie, just stop.” Riley shook his head at me. “All that matters to me right now is that you get better. I’m not going anywhere, okay? So just drop it.”

  I stared at him a moment. “Fine.” I wouldn’t ever admit it to him, but the selfish part of me was nearly drunk with relief that he had chosen to stay. For me. I honestly couldn’t imagine my life without him again, without the subconscious comfort of knowing he was so close, only a phone call away. How quickly I had come to rely on him. I needed him now, even more than I had before.

  We just looked at each other for a moment. I stared into his deep, dark eyes as he gazed at me. I wanted to thank him for everything—for putting up with me, for trying to help me—but the words wouldn’t reach my lips. The air felt tense, heavy.

  “I guess I should be going.” Riley decided suddenly, ripping his eyes from mine and looking up at the clock, breaking the spell.

  I cleared my throat. What the hell was that? “Well … I think we were fairly successful today.” I offered casually.

  “Oh yeah?” He chuckled. “Are you cured?”

  “Uh … not yet ….” For an instant, the picture of a needle flashed into my mind, and with it, the intense craving for heroin knotted my stomach with need. I breathed through it, trying to shake the image from my head. “I mean, this visit didn’t end in a fight. That’s a pretty big deal, don’t you think? For us?”

  Riley stared at me a moment, his lips curled in amusement. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “So you’ll come back tomorrow, right?”

  “I’ll be here every day.” He promised.

  CHAPTER 65

  The days and weeks passed, as they often do. I had bad days and good days—mostly bad, with a few good sprinkled in. The fact that I could have any good days at all was amazing to me. But they came. I don’t know what brought them about, but I’d wake up in the morning after a fitful, tenuous sleep, and I’d feel some hope. Some strength. Like I could get through it all. Like I was going to make it.

  And then came the bad days.

  Those days I didn’t even want to get out of bed. Those days my heart ached as if it were on fire, my thoughts knew no peace, my mind no rest. Those days I missed Grey abominably. Overwhelmed with guilt and sorrow and loss I’d plod on through the day, sullen, arms crossed defensively, snapping at those around me. Snapping at Riley. Poor Riley always suffered the brunt of my emotion, especially during my bad days. But it didn’t seem to faze him. He apparently had a never-ending supply of patience at his disposal, for all he put up with—my moroseness, my bitter gloom, my cruel remarks. He seemed to understand that it wasn’t about him, but of course, he wasn’t shy about telling me when to shut up, either.

  Riley continued to talk to me about God, and for some reason every time he did, it made me want to cry. I tried fitfully to read the Bible he had given me. The first few chapters were enjoyable, the whole Adam and Eve story and Noah and all that. Of course I had heard those stories before, but it was kind of neat to read them in their original context. I found it hard to believe they really happened—like nursery rhymes or fairy tales—and I asked Riley a trillion questions, most he couldn’t answer. Like, did Noah take mosquitoes with him on the ark? If he did, why? He could have saved us a whole bunch of trouble, not to mention a bunch of diseases, if he’d just left those pests behind. And Adam and Eve. If they were the first two people on earth, who did their sons marry? Their sisters?

  I couldn’t help myself. It was easier to make light of the situation, to keep things casual, shallow. I didn’t want to tell Riley about it, but whenever he got into the real stuff, the heart stuff … it made me teary. Teary and uncomfortable. I just couldn’t explain it, like there was this … voice inside of me, one I was trying fervently to deny. One I didn’t want to have. One I didn’t want to need.

  But still I struggled through. Until I reached Deuteronomy, that is.

  “There’s an awful lot of begotting in that book.” I admitted sourly to Riley one particularly ugly day.

  He laughed outright at me, more heartily than I had heard him laugh for a long, long time. I waited, seething, until he was finished. I didn’t see what was so funny about it.

  “I’m sorry.” He managed between chuckles. “I’ve just never heard it put that way before.”

  “Well,” I defended stiffly, “maybe I just won’t read any more, if what I think is so amusing to you.”

  “Wow. Touchy.” He smiled at me, his dark eyes warming. “No. Don’t stop reading it. I’m glad you are. Just … maybe try something, a little closer to the middle. Like the Psalms, or the New Testament. I think you’ll like that.”

  “I don’t know, Riley.” I shook my head in frustration. “I just don’t think I get it. You know? It’s just … words. I don’t get any … it’s all kind of … meaningless, to me. I don’t understand any of it.”

  “Try asking God to show you,” he suggested, “he’d love to speak to you, you know. He wants to speak to you.”

  Tears pricked my eyes. I couldn’t explain them, I blinked them away.

  “Yeah.” Whatever.

  “You’re going to get through this,” Riley grasped my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Just take it one day at a time. Ask him for help.”

  I nodded and stared silently at the floor. Sometimes it felt like my sorrow was engulfing me—that it was all I had left, that I had lost every part of me to it. I missed Grey so much. I blamed myself for his death. I couldn’t bear
to look at myself in the mirror, to face what I had become—everything I had done. I was wasted. Broken. Lost.

  Miserable.

  “I know you’re hurting right now, Mackenzie.” Riley’s voice reached my ears, low, serious, as if he’d been reading my mind. “But you need to hurt. You need to hurt if ever you’re going to change.”

  “But you changed.” I realized glumly. “You totally changed, and you didn’t feel any hurt. Not like this.”

  Riley hesitated, his dark eyes scanning the drab interior of the room as he thought out his reply. He took a sip of coffee. “Maybe I didn’t hurt like you do now. But I hurt, Mac. More than you know.”

  “How?”

  “It … it hurt to know what a … what a piece of shit I had become. Even when I look back now, when I think about the way I acted, the way I was. So selfish, you know? So … destructive. It hurt to think about what I was doing to my mom. I’m all she has in the whole world. And what I was doing to all those kids, kids younger than me, giving them drugs, taking their money ….” He paused thoughtfully, hesitating as he met my eyes across the table. “… It … it hurt for me to think about what I’d done to you, too. I mean, if it weren’t for me … we probably never would’ve gotten high that first time. I felt guilty … responsible … just … wretched. I hurt. But it helped me. It made me see that I had to change.”

  I listened to him, wide-eyed, totally able to empathise. I knew what he meant about the guilt, the misery … the hopelessness that came with realizing how terrible I actually was, in every single way. How nearly every one of my actions for the last few years had been entirely selfish, entirely wrong.

  I didn’t deserve happiness. Not after what I’d done.

  “So … you changed … and now, everything is good?” I wondered.

  “… Yes … and no.” Riley shrugged. “Just because I’ve got … God now, doesn’t mean my life is just a total cake walk. I mean, sure, I’m not doing those bad things anymore, but truthfully, I’m still a piece of shit. Everyone is, Mac. Compared to God’s goodness, every single person you meet, no matter how ‘good’ they may seem … they’re disgusting. We’re all disgusting. None of us deserve him, it doesn’t matter what we do.”

  “That seems pretty grim,” I realized despondently. “So what’s the point then?”

  “The point is … He doesn’t see us that way. We are precious to him. He knows how brutally terrible we all are, but he loves us anyway. And he forgives us. All we have to do is ask, and he’ll forgive us, for everything. See? We need him in such a desperate way.”

  I bit my lip doubtfully. “But how does it …?”

  Riley sat up, leaning forward towards me. “Okay. You know the Christmas story, right? How Jesus was born in a manger and everything?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. More fairy tales.

  “Jesus is God’s son, right? He walked this earth, like physically walked the earth. He went through every trial and experience that we could ever face, but he did it perfectly. Without sin. His entire life, he didn’t sin once. Not even once.” Riley scoffed. “I can’t even go five minutes without some kind of sin.”

  “Go on.” I insisted impatiently.

  “So, though he’s God’s son, though he’s utterly blameless, he ends up getting arrested. And in the end, he gets put to death. They beat him, and whipped him, and completely shredded his body. They tortured him, Mac. They made him carry his own cross, and then they nailed his hands and his feet to it, and hung him there until he died.”

  I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until Riley paused. I let it out, hanging on his words. “And …?”

  “He died for us, Mac. The only person alive who’s ever lived without sinning. But it was all a part of God’s plan; it was the only way he could save us from our sin. He became sin. He became what is killing us. And then he died, so that we could be free of it. And then he rose again, so that we could live with him. Truly live Mac, free. Totally free. Jesus is alive today, Mac, he’s alive in you. And you are his desire.”

  I raised my eyebrows at the story. “I’m sorry … Ry, I still don’t really … get it. I mean … its great and all … but doesn’t it seem kind of … fictitious?”

  “Of course it does.” Riley smiled, like he knew some great secret. After a moment he sat up again, leaning forward conspiratorially. His voice dropped lowly. “‘Cause you know what really saves you, Mac?”

  “What?”

  “Faith. Faith in the impossible. Faith that Jesus did die for you, as crazy as it may seem. Believing in God, believing that he exists, believing that Jesus is as alive today as he was back then. Faith. Like that of a child. Ignoring all the voices that tell you none of it could be real, that none of it could actually happen. Just … believing. Believe everything. Believe him.”

  “Believe it?”

  “Yes.” Riley stared at me a moment. “Believe that Jesus willingly died for you, to save you. He knew how sinful you’d be, he knew how terrible all of us would be. We’re sinful from birth, it’s in our very nature, but still, he loved us enough to die for us. He chose to sacrifice himself to give us life.”

  “He did?”

  “Think about it, Mackenzie. He’s the son of God. He preformed countless miracles here on earth, he turned water into wine, he fed five thousand people with a few loaves of bread. He healed the sick; he raised people from the dead! Do you think a few measly nails could’ve held him to that cross?”

  “No?”

  “No. Of course not.” Riley smiled at me. “Only his love for you could do that.”

  Riley had given me a lot to think about. I still didn’t know how I felt about God … it all seemed so … crazy. All of it. Something I’d never really needed before, and wasn’t sure I needed now. I sat pensively, quiet at the cafeteria table while the girls around me laughed and joked with each other. They had given up trying to extricate me from my shell. For the most part, I was invisible to them, but I didn’t really mind. Idly, I brought my fork to my mouth and chewed a bite full of lukewarm, sticky macaroni. Another month and a half and I’d be going home.

  I wondered fleetingly what Charlie was doing. What Alex and Zack were up to. My mind scanned quickly over my parents and my sister, trying to picture them going through the daily routine of life, trying to imagine where they were. Mom would be at work at the hospital, Dad would be on a plane somewhere. Marcy was probably studying.

  Hopefully, Greg was smoking a pipe somewhere with his bedroom slippers on. I smiled to myself at the image. It was so strange to think that outside of rehab, normal life was continuing just like it had before. To me it seemed like everyone’s life should be on hold, just as mine was.

  I wondered if they worried about me at all, my family, or if they had shipped me off without a thought, chalking me up as a “goner,” hopeless that I’d ever get better. I wouldn’t have blamed them. But secretly, I hoped they were rooting for me. I hoped they wanted me to take part in their lives again—soberly, a new version of the old Mackenzie before the drugs had taken her away. I wondered what the new Mackenzie would be like. I wondered who she was.

  I put my fork down and sighed, taking a sip from my Coke. As gross as the cafeteria food might’ve been, it was doing its job. My pants fit again—they weren’t straining by any means, but they weren’t sagging off my protruding hipbones anymore either. And the few times I allowed myself to glance into a mirror, I noticed the new fullness of my face. Slowly I was losing the sallow, gaunt cheekbones; the more weight I gained the softer my appearance became. A slight blush of color was returning to my skin, so I looked less and less like death and more and more alive with every passing day. I was looking healthy again. On the outside, anyway.

  After supper was finished, we headed down the bland old hallway towards the TV room. I trailed behind the other girls, my fingers dragging absently down the wall. There was something kind of off about how I was feeling. Introspective, definitely—but with that came … anxiety. A new kind of anxiety,
distantly related to how I felt when the lights went off at night. But more … panicky. Like, stressful. And I didn’t know what was causing it.

  Maybe it was Allison. I bit my lip and looked up at the back of my roommate as she led the way towards the TV room. Her blonde hair was in messy spikes around her head, her ripped jeans tucked loosely into large black boots. She’d been distant with me lately; I think she was resentful of all the “special” visits I was getting from Riley. What’s more, she hated the fact that I was actually trying. Well, trying to try. Paying attention in group therapy now, journaling, opening up a little more with my ancient one-on-one therapist—though that was extremely hard to want to do. I knew that all the resentment would stop if I told her about Grey and the overdose, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Deep down, I think it was more than that.

  From the moment I’d arrived, we’d had sort of an unspoken agreement between us, a willingness to fail, a suffer-through-until-we’re-out-and-can-get-a-hit kind of mentality. Now that I wanted to get better, not only did we disagree, but she refused to try and understand how I felt … my sudden desire to … live again.

  I sighed. That wasn’t what was making me anxious though. I considered Allison a friend but really—I barely knew her, she only had weeks left of her stay, and it was doubtful we’d ever see each other again after rehab. It sucked that she was perma-mad at me, but that wouldn’t be enough to make me feel so … unsettled. Troubled. Like I’d forgotten something—something important—but couldn’t figure out what it was. Just relative … unease. Tension. Apprehension.

  I tried to ignore it, tried to push it away and focus on the mindless chatter coming from the TV for the rest of the evening.

  But by the time we made it back to our room, despite all my efforts to the contrary, the disquiet within me had reached a near fever pitch. This new unexplained restlessness—combined with my usual angst once the lights were shut off—threatened to make me nearly crazy. The darkness in the room pressed against my open eyes. My heart hammered wildly in my chest. For a terrible instant, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I sat up in bed and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself down. I didn’t really know what to do; I’d never experienced a panic attack before. What I needed was light. As quietly as I could, I took the little pencil flashlight that Riley had smuggled in for me one week from the bedside drawer. As a second thought, I grabbed the Bible he’d given me as well. Then, my heart still racing, I ducked under my covers and turned the flashlight on. If Allison was aware of my activities she didn’t say anything. Her slow, even breaths told me she was enjoying that rare skill she possessed for falling asleep instantly.