Lola Carlyle's 12-Step Romance

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  He gazes at me for a long moment, his eyes parallel with mine for once, because of my being on the steps. Suddenly the stairwell feels just a little bit…small.

  “Actually, there’s more than one. There are a few. But come on.” He breaks away and starts walking. “Let’s go.”

  We head down a long, echoing basement hallway with polished concrete floors and stop at a nondescript door. Adam takes out a key, unlocks and opens the door, and ushers me into a small, windowless office complete with a metal desk and two chairs.

  I look for something fun, some nice kind of surprise. Balloons, even. But all I see is a tiny woman in glasses and a navy pantsuit sitting in one of the chairs.

  She could practically be my grandmother.

  Maybe she’s my long-lost grandmother come to take me to live with her.

  Yeah, she could be my fairy godmother too, come to give me sparkly red shoes and set me on the road to Emerald City.

  “Lola, this is Dr. Owens. Dr. Owens, Lola Carlyle.”

  Yeah, not.

  Dr. Owens beams a sweet-quirky-old-lady smile, but the steel in her eyes is unmistakable.

  Madam.

  “Adam, I’m going to drive you into the desert and feed you to a carnivorous plant.”

  “I’m simply adjusting to your unique needs.”

  “You? Are not my friend.”

  “See? I’ll be outside.”

  And with that, he closes the door and is gone.

  “Welcome to therapy, Lola,” Dr. Owens says. “I believe we have some catching up to do.”

  I dive into pleasantries and small talk, to no avail.

  Then I jump to excuses and justifications; still nothing.

  Dr. Owens just blinks at me with her owl eyes and lets me talk until I run out of steam, which happens faster than you’d think. And then she allows for this long, awkward pause that leaves me sweating and shifting in my chair.

  Finally, into the excruciating silence, she says, “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  Annoyed, yes. Nervous? Sure. I’m a fake alcoholic in rehab, and it would be embarrassing—not to mention inconvenient—to be unmasked. And for sure it would submarine my forbidden-but-budding rehab romance/rescue with Wade, which is the whole reason I’m here.

  The problem with therapy is how to hide that I don’t need it, that’s all.

  I am Lola Carlyle and a celebu-spawn. I am not afraid. Please.

  Dr. Owens says, “You’re not afraid of anything?”

  I say, “Well, sure. War, tornadoes, certain kinds of fish, super viruses, a world without chocolate.”

  “But not therapy?”

  “Nope,” I say, shaking my head and looking her directly in the eye.

  Dr. Owens whips a large metal bell out of her purse and starts ringing it.

  “What the—”

  “Bullshit!” she says, ringing and ringing. It’s loud. Really, painfully loud. The sound gets under my skin and jangles my insides and I cover my ears, but it doesn’t help.

  Finally she stops, and I carefully uncover my ears.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Why are you so afraid of therapy?” she says, her light blue eyes like lasers.

  “I’m not—”

  She lifts the bell again, starts ringing it.

  “You’re insane,” I shout.

  “Why are you afraid?” she shouts back.

  “Stop, stop!”

  This time she doesn’t answer, just puts the bell right up in my face and rings it harder and harder, rings it until I’d do almost anything to make it stop, and then something wells up, pushes through me, and I go to shout, again, that I am not afraid but instead what comes out is, “Because I shouldn’t be here.”

  The bell stops but I can still hear it. Dr. Owens leans in like she’s caught the scent of something.

  “Shouldn’t be here?” she says.

  I nod, swallow, try to get my brain working because obviously I’ve got to start backpedaling, stat.

  “What I mean is…I often feel like I don’t belong. And, like what am I doing here? Not in rehab, but here, you know, on earth.”

  Dr. Owens’s eyes widen.

  “Because sometimes everything seems pointless.”

  “Ahh…”

  The rest of the session chugs along painfully as we dive into my not-entirely-fake existential angst. The whole thing gives me a headache and I hate every second of it.

  Afterward, I am shaky in yoga and quiet in group, and only start to feel normal again during the afternoon aquafit class. (Finally the pool! Although one of my bikinis is missing.)

  Before Reflection, Adam reminds me I’m expected, no excuses, at AA tonight.

  “Yay. I’m having such a good day already.”

  “Buck up.”

  “I’ve had a lot of fantasies about you since you tricked me into that lovely appointment earlier today.”

  “Fantasies, huh?”

  “Oh yes,” I continue. “Fantasies about how to cause you bodily harm—the mortal kind.”

  “Funny, I have similar ones about you. Daily. Sometimes hourly.”

  “Oh yeah? What happens in yours?”

  “You don’t want to know,” he says.

  “Well,” I say with an impish smile, “maybe we should wrestle.”

  “Wrestle?”

  “Yeah, like, to get that stuff out.”

  “No wrestling. Just go to AA tonight, please.”

  “Fine.”

  “Do you need an escort?”

  “An escort?” I raise my eyebrows.

  “Yeah, like a police escort,” he says.

  “No need. I’ll get there.”

  “Promise?”

  I heave a sigh. “What is it with you making me promise things all the time?”

  “I don’t know—it seems to work.”

  “Fine. Yes. I promise.”

  At least Wade will be there.

  Back in my room, I’m edgy and anxious and my hair almost ruins everything. I don’t want to go to AA. I don’t want to be in AA. Regardless, I’m in rehab so I guess I’m going. I try deep breathing and finally put the hair in pigtails.

  Then I change six times and go crazy trying to find my second-favorite pair of jeans, before finally deciding on a Twenty8Twelve denim dress with orange and blue crinoline peeking out from under the skirt, paired with orange leather flip-flops and a matching belt. It’s all very “rehab-upscale.”

  “Woo!” Talia whistles and then comes to stand beside me in the narrow mirror.

  “What?” I say, pointing at her perfectly draped black-and-blue leopard-print top, fitted jeans, and curled eyelashes. “You always dress up for the meetings.”

  “Sure. But someone’s going to want to spank you, just to see up your skirt. I think I might want to spank you. What are you wearing under? You should have lace frills on your butt!” Talia says, and proceeds to whip up my skirt and laugh like a maniac.

  I shriek and leap away.

  Jade, in her usual black everything, rolls her eyes and heads out the door.

  “She loves us,” I say.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s missing,” Talia says.

  When we get to the old chapel, I see practically everyone is there—Mary, Clarice, most of the teachers, Dr. Koch in a well-cut white dress shirt with sleeves carefully rolled up, the top three buttons undone and expensive-looking dark blue jeans. And of course Adam, who gives my outfit an amused once-over when he sees me coming in the door.

  “I’m here,” I tell him.

  “Very much so,” he says. “Nice, um, dress. That’s a dress, right?”

  “As opposed to what?”

  “I’m not even sure,” he says. “A tutu?”

  “Don’t you kinda want to spank her?” Talia says, holding the back hem.

  “Talia!” I give her a warning look—I would not put it past her to whip up my dress again, even here.

  “This is the wei
rdest job,” Adam mutters, and then wanders off, and we go to find seats.

  “Okay, let me give you the lowdown,” Talia says as I try, surreptitiously, to look for Wade.

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  She explains about the blue book and the twelve steps and why she thinks tempeh is better than tofu and the time she was twelve and went to Mexico and drank so much tequila her parents found her passed out in front of the TV with half a quesadilla stuck to her face.

  My temples are still throbbing, but I tell myself it’s just an AA meeting and can’t be worse than therapy.

  Wade finally arrives, looking magnetic, healthy, and slightly sunburned in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. I know lots of good-looking people. Usually you get used to them, or you start to find them less attractive over time. Not Wade. He gets more gorgeous every time I see him, and I can’t get used to it. Sure, in this circumstance it’s partly due to the healthy living, but still it doesn’t seem fair. How am I supposed to act normal and chill around him when he sucks all the air out of the room, when a large part of me wants to just grab him and drag him off somewhere and— Crap, I have to stop with this line of thinking.

  Stop.

  I breathe deeply, really deeply—one helpful skill I’ve learned here—while he goes to sit nearby. I try not to look at him but I can feel him. I can feel almost every other female in the place looking at him, too, which again makes me want to grab him and—

  “Oh my God, Lola,” Talia whispers. “Drift boy is staring at you. Don’t look!”

  “Shh.”

  “Wow. No, he is really staring at you. Did you put a spell on him at the beach yesterday?”

  “Very funny.” I let my eyes slide over to Wade, who is indeed staring at me. Our eyes meet and I get a full-body heart palpitation.

  And then he gives me a two-dimpled smile and waves.

  Beside me, Talia gasps.

  “He’s flirting with you,” she says in the loudest whisper ever.

  “Shut up,” I say under my breath, and wave back.

  It might be inappropriate and I know this twelve steps stuff is serious business and I’m sure we’re not supposed to be flirting in AA, but suddenly I’m feeling much better.

  The meeting begins.

  There are rules and regulations, some thanking and sharing, and then a reading from the blue book, then more sharing. The population of Sunrise, and therefore the meeting, is composed of drug addicts, cutters, food addicts, opiate addicts, cross-addicted alcoholics, coke addicts, meth-heads, a huffer…

  “What the hell is a huffer?” I whisper to Talia.

  “Oh,” Talia whispers back, “she inhales nail polish remover, cooking spray, that kind of thing.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Of course on purpose.”

  “Eww. Jeez.”

  “Shhh,” someone says, obviously meaning us, but I’m not paying attention because something is hitting me. Hitting me again, that is, because it’s been hitting me all week in different ways, and suddenly it’s coming on like more of a wallop.

  These people look normal.

  As a group, they look really good, actually. I mean, this is California.

  But most of them are wack. They’re wack and their lives are wack.

  Emmy from group, for example, started smoking pot after accidentally witnessing her parents having a threesome. She doesn’t sleep and she’s angry and paranoid to the point you can’t have a conversation with her. And Jenny, the Barney girl, got drunk to oblivion and woke up one morning in another city with no idea how she got there. She’d been raped, lost all her belongings, and someone had shaved her head. Now she has this thing where she wears five hundred layers of clothing no matter how hot it is and she has panic attacks every time she’s supposed to read for a part, which makes it pretty hard to get work, much less break out of her kids’ television persona, which makes her think she’ll never work again and die in depressing obscurity. A kid named Stephan found some coke on his dad’s dresser when he was eight years old and ate it, thinking it was sugar. He looks about thirteen but he’s already been to rehab four times.

  Crazy, right?

  And all of this adds up to my life looking not so bad.

  I may be unlucky in love (so far) and not particularly well understood or cherished by my various parents, and I’m pissed off that their divorce made such a mess of my life when it happened, but compared to some of these people, my life has been a model of normalcy and wholesomeness.

  “And now”—the chairperson’s voice breaks into my thoughts—“this week’s new members are invited to share.”

  My stomach drops. All day I’ve been walking around feeling confused and messed up and kind of naked (I blame therapy), and now everyone is looking at me and I’m not sure I can do this.

  Not today, anyway.

  Plus, right before me is Camille—the girl I saw moaning on the floor that first day—and she moved from alcohol to painkillers after her boyfriend and best friend died in a car that she was driving, while drunk. By the time she’s done talking, I’m so sad for her I’m ready for some painkillers, too.

  Talia propels me to my feet and whispers something in my ear, but I don’t hear it.

  I shake my head, clear my throat, look at all the faces turned toward me.

  “Uh…”

  I can’t do this. I shouldn’t be here.

  “Um, my name is Lola.”

  I take a breath in. Everyone seems to lean forward in their seats.

  “My name is Lola and I’m…I’m…”

  I’ve got Dr. Owens’s bullshit bell crashing around in my head, which is throbbing, and I’m a big, fat fake.

  “Sorry. Right. My name is Lola and… Oh, damn it…

  “My name is Lola and I’m not an alcoholic.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  For a beautiful moment, the bell in my head stops ringing and I am a zillion pounds lighter. Floating, almost. If it were a movie, a choir of angels would be singing.

  Then, of course, I look at the surprised, puzzled faces around me and magnificent Wade Miller with his brow furrowed in confusion and Talia with wide, wounded eyes and Jade slightly triumphant and Adam standing stock-still and shocked and I think…

  No, no, no, no, noooooo…

  I open my mouth to take it back.

  Nothing comes out. The clarifications and justifications are there in my head and I know they’ll work, but I can’t get them through the roadblock that is my throat.

  I close my mouth. Swallow. Open it again.

  “I’m not an alcoholic,” I say again.

  Shit. My body has turned on me, gone rogue, and it looks like I’m going to be telling the truth whether I like it or not, and then every single person here will hate me. Fun.

  “I’m really sorry. I’m not an alcoholic or an addict of any kind, unless you count chocolate. Right, some of you do count chocolate. I guess it’s not that funny when people say, ‘I’m addicted to such-and-such’ when all they mean is they like it a lot, when there are actually people whose lives are being ruined by chocolate, or drugs, or…dish soap…or whatever. Anyway my point is, I shouldn’t be here.”

  “How do you know?” It’s Dr. Koch, and despite his velvet demeanor, I have no doubt he’s going to be pissed when I confess the rest of it.

  “I know because…”

  I faked it…

  Somehow that part sticks in my throat. I was ready to say it but now it won’t come out. Everyone will really hate me if I admit that part because it’s premeditation.

  Dr. Koch might even sue me or throw me into some kind of juvenile jail when he finds out because he’ll be embarrassed. Vengeful. It’s possible I have committed some kind of fraud-type crime by faking my way in here, and that would mean that my next stop after I leave here is…jail! Jail will be like solitary, but so much worse. And the next thing my mom or dad will hear about me is that I need bail, and the charges will be worse because of the premeditation thing.


  They’ll find Sydney and let’s be real: she’ll have no compunction about selling me down the river—she’ll tell them everything. She won’t tell them I did it with the intention of helping Wade, because I never told her that part. Even if I had, it wouldn’t have made sense to her, since she’s a person essentially without a soul. So, she’ll just tell them the really stupid-sounding part—that I faked my way into rehab because of a boy.

  Then Mom will kill me for the bad press (there is such a thing) and Dad will feel further justified in cutting me out of his life. Both of them will hate me.

  The entire world will think I’m a liar and a fool.

  Adam will feel justified for trying to ditch me as a mentee.

  Wade Miller will not date a girl with a record—in fact he’ll think I’m a cheesy fangirl. Or a stalker! Next thing I know he could be getting a restraining order against me. At best, he’s going to think I’m the most desperate, ridiculous, pathetic loser of all time.

  I may be the most desperate, ridiculous, pathetic loser of all time.

  I stand there, momentarily speechless, panic rocking through my blood, shame burning me from the inside out.

  One clear thought coalesces: honesty is lovely, but I am not going to ruin my life.

  Exactly.

  And I can stop lying about things, without telling everything.

  Everyone is staring at me, waiting for my answer. I take a few meditational breaths and try in vain to find my quiet place, then face Dr. Koch and go ahead without it.

  “How do I know I’m not an addict?” I say. “I just know. I had…some bad experiences with alcohol, uh, one main bad experience, and it freaked me out, and so I kind of maybe…exaggerated…the amount of drinking I’ve done because I felt like I needed…to be here and…take a break.”

  Total silence. I keep hurtling forward into it.

  “It’s not like I don’t have it in me to be an addict, but now that I’ve spent a week surrounded by the real deal, I know I’m not one. You guys are all really brave and you have big stuff to deal with and overcome and, no offense, but most of you are really, really screwed up. Like, I probably shouldn’t make a habit of drinking, even once I come of age, but I just am not that screwed up. Which leads me to believe that I shouldn’t be here. That I should go.”