Controlled

by Patrick Jones

  “Look, they’re just trying to help you.” We’re all trying, but we don’t know how. I wonder if she’s still cutting. I’m afraid to ask, more afraid of the answer.

  “If I’m crazy, they can commit me. Lock me up.”

  “My parents wouldn’t do that.”

  She laughs. “Rach, you got a lot to learn about adults. They need to show you they’re always in control.” I don’t disagree with her. You can’t argue with Misty because there’s no logic in her world.

  “They’ve got to get rid of me before Thanksgiving so Denise has a place to sleep,” Misty says. Now that Denise’s room is basically trashed, I do wonder where she’ll stay.

  “It’s been nice knowing you.” There’s a seriousness in Misty’s voice that scares me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, I’m used to it. County took me away from Mom more than once.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Foster homes most times. Sometimes I ran and stayed with friends before they got me.”

  Another piece of Misty’s life I’ve never known about. But my parents must’ve known. Must’ve known and chosen to do nothing, until Misty had no mom to be taken away from anymore, until there was no one else to be responsible for Misty.

  “Why did they take you away?”

  Misty laughs. “You’re sounding like that head-shrinker.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Look, Rach, that’s my life. I thought it might change. I guess not. I’m human garbage.”

  I swallow. “You’re not, okay? Come on. Tell me how I can help.”

  She sighs. “Maybe you could help me with my homework. I’ve got this project for history class. I’ve been blowing it off so far, but the teacher seems okay. Most of the teachers there are pretty cool, actually, considering they’re trying to teach a bunch of head cases. Anyway, I gotta try to do things right for a while.”

  I stand up, move toward the foot of my bed. “I’ll help as much as I can.”

  Misty sits up, hugs me way too tight and for too long. “You won’t regret it.”

  With her face so close to my nose, I smell alcohol and cigarettes, and know I already do.

  17

  “So Kevin finally asked me out—well, in—to hang out at his house,” I say to Dana, all excited. Sarah doesn’t sit with us at lunch anymore. She’s all about Todd.

  “Do you want to study this weekend or what?” Dana picks at her food.

  “Did you hear what I said about Kevin?”

  “Yeah, good for you, Rachel—you and Kevin, Sarah and Todd, Nathan and Misty.” She pushes her tray away and pulls out her chemistry book.

  “Nathan and Misty? She’s good at keeping secrets, but I’ve never seem them together since the dance.”

  “Oh, you didn’t know about that?” Dana snaps. “I thought you were the information hub where everybody goes to get their Misty fix.”

  I put down my fork. I don’t feel hungry. I feel like I’m being punched in the gut by Dana after Sarah already slapped us in the face. “Dana, what’s with all this attitude?”

  Dana opens her book. She won’t even make eye contact with me. “Rachel, I’m sorry, but you’re a mess. I can’t deal with you right now, okay?” She takes a slow breath. “I think I need a friend break.”

  “A friend break,” I whisper. “Just like that?”

  She finally looks up, which is good, so she can see that I’m about to cry. “Just … for a while. It’s just been different since Misty moved in with you. You’ve been different. It’s too much to handle right now.” She breaks my stare and fumbles with the pages of her chemistry book.

  I’m not breathing. Maybe this was bound to happen, but it seems so sudden. It’s one thing for Misty to destroy friendships she made two weeks before. But I would’ve thought something that’s lasted this long, something that’s always fit so well, would’ve been harder to break.

  I reach across the table, rip the book from Dana’s hands, and slam it shut. It’s not the same satisfaction that Misty gets from slamming doors, but it’s close. I leave my mess on the table behind me. Outside of the cafeteria, I find an empty hallway and break down in tears. I stop crying long enough to call Mom and tell her I’ve got cramps. She promises to pick me up as soon as she can.

  Mom pulls the car in the driveway, drops me off, and heads back to work. I trudge inside.

  I walk toward Misty’s room, pull the white sheet that acts as her door, but the room’s empty. Then I hear it. Laughter. It’s coming from the hall. No, wait, it’s coming from my room. I open the door. In my bed, I see Misty on top of someone, grinding against him in just her bra. “Misty! Get out of my bed!”

  “Crap!” She turns around but doesn’t cover herself. “Uh, what’s up, Rach?”

  More laughter, but it’s not Misty. It’s from the person in the bed, my bed. “Hi, Rachel.”

  I swallow hard and pretend to look the other way as I mumble, “Hi, Alix.”

  18

  “When are your parents getting home?” I ask Kevin. We sit together on the sofa in his basement. On the TV is an anime series we both liked as kids. It’s only been a few minutes since he picked me up and brought me over. But he’s not wasting any time. He keeps moving closer, putting his arms or hands behind me, around me, over me, against me.

  “Later tonight,” he says. “Sorry, Rachel, I don’t know how I messed up. I thought they’d be here.” He’s a terrible liar. Like me, he’s not the kind of person who messes up.

  I cross my arms. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here without your parents around.”

  Kevin laughs nervously. “No worries. I’m a perfect gentleman.” I shift in my seat. He uses that as an excuse to slide his hand over my left knee. “So what do you want to do until they get home? Watch TV or something more fun?”

  Why is he asking me? He knows my answer. No. Not yet. “TV is fine.”

  “Cool. Let’s change channels, though.” When he reaches for the remote, he brushes against my breasts. “Oops.” I have on a big sweater over a T-shirt over my A-cup bra. What does he think he felt?

  A few minutes later he clicks the remote and turns the TV off. Clears his throat. “So. Want to have some fun? My folks won’t be home for hours.”

  “Kevin, I’d rather just keep watching TV for now, okay?”

  He sighs. “You know, Rachel, this isn’t fair.”

  “What isn’t fair?”

  “We’re going out, so what are you so hung up on?” Kevin says. “I mean, Nathan and Misty—”

  “What about them?” His hand is back on my knee and creeping north.

  “He doesn’t want anyone to know they’re dating.” I don’t respond since this is news to me, so I suspect it’s not really dating. In addition to new stuff, Misty always seems to have cash as well.

  “If that’s what you’re worried about, I wouldn’t tell anybody anything we do,” he whispers.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” I say. “I think maybe I should—”

  He makes his move: a kiss on the lips, a hand near my left breast, the other between my legs.

  I make mine: a push away, feet on the ground, and sprint. Half a second later, I’m locked behind the bathroom door.

  He knocks on it lightly. “Rachel? Come on, you don’t need to freak out. Rachel?”

  “Drive me home.”

  “Look, why don’t you just come back out here and we’ll sit and watch TV? All right? Come on, relax.”

  Relax relax relax.

  “I want to go home.” My voice shakes.

  “I’m almost out of gas. I don’t think I can get you that far.”

  More lying. How did this happen? How did I think that I knew him? He always seemed so perfect. So safe. “My parents can give you a ride when they get back. Let’s just chill till then. Okay?”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be going out,” I mumble. “Maybe we should just go back to being friends.”

  “Just like you, Rachel—you neve
r want to change anything,” he snaps. “You’ve got a comfort zone the size of a closet.” Or a bathroom, I think, in the part of my brain that can still think.

  I say nothing. Minutes go by. I hear him sigh and trudge back to the couch. What would he do if I came out now and marched upstairs to the door? He wouldn’t stop me. He wouldn’t go that far.

  At least I don’t think he would. I wouldn’t have thought anything like this would happen with him.

  I look around. There’s a tiny window on the outside wall of the bathroom. Tiny, yes, but so am I. I could climb out and … and what? Once I get outside, where would I go? How would I get home?

  My stomach hurts and I’m sweating. I sit on the edge of the toilet. Scroll through the contacts in my phone. Dana. Sarah. The friends I thought I could always count on. I scroll through again. Then I see the name of the only person I could trust with this.

  “Misty, I need your help,” I whisper when she picks up. “Who do you know that has a car?”

  She lists her “good friends” with cars, all Rondo people I’ve never met. Then she asks, “Why?”

  “Hold on,” I say, stalling. “I’ll text you.”

  I hang up and pound out a typo-filled message with shaking hands. At Kevin’s. Need to leave NOW. Then the address and the words first-floor bathroom.

  Misty calls me two seconds after I send the text. “You stay right there. I’m coming to get you. Stay in that bathroom. That scumbag gets anywhere near you, you kick him in the balls.” She hangs up before I’ve registered that her words almost, almost, make me want to laugh.

  In less time than I imagined, I hear tapping on the window glass. I look out. It’s Misty.

  I open the window and crawl out, grabbing Misty’s outstretched arm for balance. “Thank you,” I gasp as my feet touch the ground. “My pleasure,” she says. Too loud, as always. “Let’s blow this joint.” We break into a run.

  I’m expecting an unfamiliar car to be waiting for us, someone from Rondo in the driver’s seat. But the car parked in front of Kevin’s house is my dad’s Lexus. “You told my dad about—”

  “I didn’t tell anybody anything. I don’t tell friends’ secrets.” She holds up the spare car key and beeps open the doors.

  “So you just took my dad’s car?” I ask.

  Misty yanks open the driver’s door and laughs at the open sky. “I borrowed it.”

  19

  Misty wants to know everything. She’s this combination of curious yet totally self-centered. Still, I’m almost relieved when she demands the details. The story spills out of me before she’s driven more than two blocks. When I’m done, she says, “Kevin Liu, who’d have thought?”

  “Not me,” I say, with a burst of air that’s half-laugh, half-sob.

  “We should go back. I haven’t punched out a scumbag in a while.”

  “He’s not a scumbag,” I say. “He just—”

  “Didn’t know how to take no for an answer? Yeah, I know the type.” My mind flashes to ten-year-old Misty, the story she told me.

  “I’m not ready, that’s all. Like he said, I’m never ready for things to change. He’s right about that …”

  “Don’t go there,” snaps Misty. “Don’t make this your fault. He’s the one who was out of line. People take from you and they hurt you and then they blame you for it. They let you blame yourself. And it’s crap. Don’t ever blame yourself for things you can’t control. This is not your fault!”

  This is the strangest pep talk I’ve ever gotten. I wonder if anyone ever told Misty not to blame herself for everything she’s gone through. I think of those scars on her wrists and can guess the answer.

  We drive the rest of the way without talking.

  As we turn onto my street, we can see that all the lights are on at the Kelly house. This should be fun.

  By the time we pull in, my parents are both outside. “I had a fight with Kevin, and he wouldn’t drive me,” I explain as soon as we get out of the car.

  “About what?” Mom demands.

  “Stupid school stuff.” My eyelids barely flutter when I lie anymore. Just like viola, practice makes perfect.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Dad’s turn.

  “Because I didn’t want to have this conversation,” I say. Misty walks past us toward the house.

  “But Misty?” Mom again. Misty doesn’t turn. She’s not walking, she’s almost strutting.

  “Misty doesn’t judge me.” I put a spin on the word judge that’s a thing of beauty.

  “When have we ever judged you about anything?” Dad asks. All the time, I don’t answer.

  Back to Mom. “We’re calling Tasha in the morning. We told Misty that one more—”

  “But Mom, she sneaked out of the house to help me. Doesn’t that matter?”

  “It’s not just this, Rachel.” Dad again. “She’s having problems at Rondo. The staff has been in touch with us almost constantly. Teachers have given her plenty of one-on-one attention. But it isn’t working.”

  “Isn’t there another alternative school?” I ask. They don’t make eye contact.

  Dad leans closer and whispers. “Misty’s going into a different kind of placement.”

  “Where she can get the help she needs,” Mom whispers.

  “Misty has more issues than we or Rondo can handle, so Tasha, your mom and—”

  “And Misty gets no say in this? Nice. You’re just another set of adults screwing her over.”

  Mom slaps me, for the first time ever. “You will not talk to us like that!” I absorb the blow, swallow my tears, and fix a hard stare on Mom, but I don’t apologize.

  “What was that about?” Misty shouts from the front door and runs back toward us.

  “We need to talk,” Mom says. I flash back to a day in August and those same four words.

  “Rachel wanted me to come get her,” Misty says. “It was wrong, I’m sorry, but deal with it.”

  “Rachel, could you go inside, please?” Mom’s back to her polite fake self.

  “No.” Looks of surprise surround me. “Whatever happens, I want to be part of it.”

  Mom and Dad do the eyes-darting-back-and-forth thing. This is new territory for them. For all of us.

  “Misty,” Dad starts, “we realize you did this for a good reason, but that doesn’t change the facts.”

  Mom finishes. “You were told you were out of chances. Actions have consequences, and—”

  Misty finishes. “So you’re putting me out on the street with the rest of the garbage?

  Just because I borrowed your car to save your daughter from being raped?”

  “What?” Mom and Dad stare at me and then back at Misty.

  “Forget it!” shouts Misty before I can say anything. “You don’t want me here anyway!” She pushes past us. Bolts for the Lexus.

  “Misty, come back here right now!” Mom shouts after her.

  “Misty!” I shout louder than Mom. She rescued me. I need to rescue her. “Misty, don’t go!”

  “So I borrowed your car, big deal.” Misty flings open the driver’s door. “Well, now I’m stealing it.” Dad lunges forward, but he’s not nearly quick enough.

  “Misty, please!” I don’t know why I’m still shouting. She isn’t hearing me. “You’re only making it worse for yourself!”

  She’s already backed out of the driveway when she rolls the window partway down and shouts back. “That’s what I do best.”

  20

  “It’s called a seventy-two-hour hold,” Mom explains over takeout Chinese.

  As best we can figure, Misty drove Dad’s car up to Hibbing and then maybe reality set in too deep. She’d run away but had nowhere to run to. Her friends had turned their backs, just like I had. And she had no backup plan.

  My parents do, though. Mom spells it out to me as she fights with her chopsticks. “In Minnesota law, a person can be involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric—”

  “You put Misty in a nut house because she took your ca
r?” I know the car’s just an excuse. But aren’t these the people who told me, just a few months ago, that we were going to make room in our lives for Misty? That they couldn’t just abandon Dad’s only niece? She was going to go Woodbury, I was going to tutor her, and everything was going to work out.

  “First of all, it’s not a nut house,” Dad says now. “It’s a regular hospital. She’s undergoing a series of tests.”

  “Tests we should have had done before she moved into this house,” Mom says.

  Dad nods. “It’s obvious that Misty’s behavior is beyond her control. This evaluation will help us get to the root of what’s going on with her. Then we can figure out what’s best for her. Maybe a group home. Maybe foster care.”

  “Maybe our home.” The words fly from my mouth like sparks. “Why can’t she come back?”

  Mom says nothing. Dad reaches across the table, puts his hand on mine. “I doubt that’s going to happen.”

  Damaged goods, I remember her saying. Then I think of what she told me in the car. Aren’t we all damaged goods, one way or another? “But if you knew what was wrong, then we could fix it. We could support her. We could—”

  “It’s more than that,” Mom says. “We’re also concerned about her effect on your behavior.”

  “My behavior?”

  “Since she moved in, you’ve become disrespectful, made bad choices …”

  “You’ve changed,” Dad adds. “You’re not the same person. We miss our little girl.”

  Their good, quiet little girl who had everything figured out. I miss her too. But I’m not sure she ever actually existed. Maybe the only real difference between Misty and me is that Misty doesn’t bother pretending. “Well, I think people deserve a second chance. We’re not all perfect like the two of you.”

  Dad grunts. “We’re far from perfect, but we’re trying to do what is best for everyone.”

  “Shouldn’t Misty be able to decide for herself?”

  “The problem with Misty is she doesn’t know how to make good decisions,” Mom says.

  “And the problem with you two,” I say, “is that you don’t know how to deal with bad decisions. Including your own.”