PATIENT LOG
PATIENT NAME: Juliet Escoria
AGE: 15 yrs 11 mo
SEX: F
DOB: 8/23/83
DATE: 08/10/99
HISTORY: Patient’s acclimation to school—fair. Involved romantically with other patient LUCAS WEBER. No reported hallucinations. Experiencing anxiety, suicidal ideation. Self-harm incident in past week.
Reported side effects of lethargy, muscle pain, upset stomach, hair loss (mild), weight gain.
PREVIOUS MEDICATIONS:
Zyprexa—discontinued 01/99 once stabilized
Wellbutrin—discontinued 03/99 (ineffective)
Tegretol—discontinued 07/99 (risk of overdose/replace w Depakote)
Paxil—discontinued 07/99 (replace w Remeron)
Remeron—discontinued 8/99 (weight gain/replace w Zoloft)
TREATMENT:
Increase Depakote to 1500mg/nightly over course of 1 week
Begin Trazodone 25mg/nightly (for insomnia)
Begin Zoloft 50mg/nightly (for anxiety/depression)
Cont. group therapy, indiv. therapy
THE KIDS THAT LEFT #1
We were sitting on the logs, me and Luke and Kiran and a couple of the others. The new kid, Dennis, was with us. It was his second day. Yesterday was orientation, and like everyone else during orientation, he didn’t talk much, unsure, trying to get his bearings. We took him to the logs to find out who he was.
He was a big kid, tall, overweight, with a grown-out buzz cut and acne. We asked him why he was here.
“No idea,” he said. “My parents are dickheads. Just wanted to get rid of me.”
This was a fairly standard answer so we didn’t press him. The conversation shifted, as it often did, to drugs. Dennis hadn’t done coke, hadn’t done E, hadn’t done acid. He didn’t like pot. He didn’t like drinking.
“I only like one thing,” he said. “Huffing.”
I’d never huffed anything before I came here, and the first and only time had been a few weeks before Dennis arrived. We were making crafts, popsicle houses decorated with paint and glitter. There was a big craft box, full of all types of art supplies. We were supposed to only use the stuff required for whatever shitty craft they came up with for us, but still I liked to go through it. Sometimes it was hard to imagine that it hadn’t ever been just us, that there were dozens of kids who had come to the school before we had, and there would be dozens after, and, just like us, they all had their own unique problems and pains and joys and desires, yet we would never know each other. We had one big thing in common. This school. These craft supplies. And you could see the traces of them in that box. Who knew where they were now, if they were better or the same or dead. The only thing I knew was that at one point, they’d sat at this same table, making the same bullshit crafts, writing their name on a collage: Kelly, or carving their initials on the foot of a misshapen clay elephant: J.S., or at the bottom of a really good, really detailed drawing of a tree: Taylor. I’d been going through the box, looking at the scraps. That’s when I saw it. Airplane glue. The thing that stood out was the label on the back, the big yellow skull and crossbones. I slipped it into my pocket for later.
I didn’t know how to huff, but Alyson did. She got us a brown lunch bag from the kitchen, and we squeezed the glue into it, and then breathed in and out through the paper bag until we got high. I don’t know why, but I was surprised when it worked. It made me warm and tingly and we giggled, over nothing.
Kiran was trying to be nice and started asking Dennis questions. Why did he like huffing, how often did he do it, what did he prefer to inhale—paint or gasoline? Dennis answered all the questions sullenly, looking at his feet instead of us, until Kiran got to the last question. That last question got him excited.
“Nah, man, that shit’s for pussies,” Dennis said. “If you’re really down with it, you huff fucking Raid.”
I thought maybe he was mistaken. Maybe he was saying Raid but meant Rave, the hairspray. Kiran thought the same thing.
“Raid? Are you sure?” he said.
Dennis insisted yes. “Roach spray is the best, gets you super fucked up. Way better than lame pussy shit like glue.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Kiran said. He pointed out that Raid was used to kill bugs that supposedly would be the only things to survive a nuclear war, that huffing Raid was beyond idiotic. “I don’t believe you,” he concluded. “You’re just trying to front.”
I watched Dennis’s face slowly turn from pale to red to pale again. I watched his pupils get tiny and sharp.
Kiran was angry now. “That’s bullshit.”
“I huff Raid,” Dennis said again. “Raid is the best.”
“You do not huff Raid,” Kiran said.
Dennis lunged forward, grabbed one of the big rocks that made up the fire pit in the center of the logs. I assumed he was going to throw it at Kiran, and moved to get out of the way.
But instead he hit it against his own head, and then he did it again. And again. His eyes zoned out, and there was something scary and dark in them—two holes. The noise it made. Bowling pins. A noise a head wasn’t supposed to make.
I felt something like fear rising in my stomach, along with nausea, sick and afraid I’d see a cracked skull and brains falling out. “Stop him!” I yelled at Luke. “Get him to stop!”
Luke didn’t move. I didn’t either. Blood began to appear and then pour out of Dennis’s forehead, and then a small trickle ran out from his ear.
The noise had drawn attention, and soon Nathan and Vinnie were out there, and with Luke and Kiran’s help, they tackled and restrained Dennis on the ground like he was an animal. He was moaning like one, drool coming out of his mouth like he was rabid. Once they finally got him calmed down, Nathan told us to leave. We all went back to the house in complete silence.
Dennis didn’t come in for lunch. He didn’t come in for group either. In the middle of it, I watched an unfamiliar van pull up. I watched Nathan lead Dennis into it, his hands bound together in what looked like zip ties. The van was black, unlabeled, had mesh on its windows, the kind they sometimes have in the back of police cars. I watched the van drive away with Dennis in it. He had his head down the whole time, and I couldn’t see if it had been bandaged or if he was sad to be leaving.
We never saw him again. When we asked, all anyone would say was he went somewhere better equipped to deal with his diagnosis. They wouldn’t even explain what that meant. A lot of us had diagnoses the other reform schools wouldn’t touch—me and Luke with bipolar, Stephen with schizophrenia, Angel and her bulimia. Until then, I’d thought that Redwood Trails School was the worst place you could go, the place to hold you when there was nothing else left. I was wrong. I could slip further.
FARMER TAN
I learned that late summer is hay time. The fields of long grass surrounding us weren’t just fields. They had a purpose, had been growing for a reason, and now that the sun had bleached them blond it was time for the harvest. We would be the ones to turn them into hay.
There were two tractors behind the barn that I hadn’t noticed before. We learned that making hay is a three-step process. First you cut it, then you rake it, then you bale it. The tractors had separate attachments for each step. The cutting and the baling were dangerous, so I wasn’t allowed to do it. Only Bill and his favorites, Kiran and Gavin, were. I said this was sexist bullshit. I was told I could help with the other steps if I wanted to spend six hours of my free time training with Bill, the way Kiran and Gavin had done. I said no thank you.
But it turns out it didn’t matter. It turns out that one of the spokes of happiness is raking hay in a field at the end of summer as the sun glints off the grass and the tractor’s windshield, and you’re listening to country music because that’s the only channel the radio picks up (previously, I’d had no idea tractors had radios), chewing tobacco because there’s no one around to tell you to stop, spitting out the open doors of the tractor, feeling just like a farmer, feeling just li
ke a man.
Hell yeah.
THE BANISHING
Two of the other girls had been caught with cigarettes, so that meant the rest of the school got searched. Alyson and I were out of chewing tobacco. We had nothing to hide.
Bill stood in the doorway and watched as Rosie looked under our beds and under our mattresses and through all of our makeup and clothes, arms crossed over his stupid pearl-buttoned cowboy shirt. When she didn’t find anything, he got mad.
He went over to our bookshelf, where I had my books and Alyson had a bunch of photos in frames, and he looked through them until he found something he didn’t like.
It was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The book I’d entered the school with. The book my father had bought for me.
Bill took one look at the cover, with Johnny Depp’s distorted face, and one look at the back cover, which cataloged all the drugs Raoul and Dr. Gonzo brought on their trip, and declared it contraband. I tried to explain that my dad gave it to me, that I’d had it since I’d arrived, that I wasn’t hiding it from anyone, just ask Nathan, but Bill didn’t care.
I was sent out to the logs.
It was after dinner but before it got dark. I sat on the logs and because there was nothing else to do I watched as the sun lowered in the sky through the trees. I watched as the shadows they made changed from silvery gray to black, as they stretched out long and thin inching toward me. I listened as the bird sounds grew softer and the cricket sounds swelled, until it was the only thing I could hear.
It took me a while to notice. I felt a tickle on my leg, and then when I went to itch it I saw blood. Mosquitoes. And there was one on my other leg, and my elbow, and my forearm, and my face, and my neck. By the time I was allowed back in, I was covered in bites, all red and swollen and itchy.
I itched so much I couldn’t sleep that night. Rosie put calamine on all the bites but it didn’t matter. The bite on my ankle would start itching, and then the one on my leg, and then the one on my forehead, and then they’d all be itching, so bad I wished I could slip out of my skin. I tried not to scratch because I knew it would just make it worse, but I couldn’t help it. In the morning my sheets were streaked copper with blood.
FIRST TIME AT THE RODEO
It was Vinnie’s idea. Sometimes on Saturdays the counselors took us to Yreka, the closest city, for bowling or a trip to the movies. But that weekend, he hadn’t taken us anywhere. It was now Sunday afternoon, and we were bored.
Vinnie said that when he was a kid, he’d visit his uncle who lived on a farm, and when he was there he was never bored, so there was no reason for us to complain. He insisted there were more things to do on a farm than in a city. When we pressed him, all we got was tipping cows, fresh milk, fishing. So we pointed out that the farm was only fun because he was probably high, which made his tan skin flush red, his glass eye staring hard at nothing.
It was just him and his wife, Shauna, on staff that night, so there was no one more sensible to talk him out of it. The two of them were our favorite counselors. Neither cared too much about our behavior as long as we weren’t blatantly breaking the rules. They were recently married, childhood sweethearts, had met and grown up in Redding—two hours away, which seemed close because we weren’t really close to anything. They both got sober a couple years ago, he from heroin and she from alcohol. That was the only thing that made them qualified to work with us. Vinnie was stocky, prone to wearing things like basketball jerseys, and Shauna was beautiful in a casual way, with brown eyes and shiny hair always up in a ponytail. With just the two of them on, it felt like being left at home with a babysitter.
So we all went down to the barn. I’d never seen anyone but Bill move the pigs from the dark pens, where they spent most of their time, to the big pen where they got exercise. I thought we’d have to do something to guide them, but they knew the way, seemingly anxious to get out, noses snuffing the air and eyes blinking in the sunlight.
I had a strange fascination-repulsion to the pigs. I’d heard pig meat is the closest thing to human meat, and it was easy to see the truth in that. They looked like old men, pale pink flab covered in sparse and wiry hair poking out in tufts from their veiny ears, eyes heavy lidded with pale lashes, noses thickly pored and obscene. Their feet were especially disgusting, with toes cleaved in a way that seemed vaginal, if vaginas concluded in nails. I loved looking at them, I couldn’t stand looking at them. It probably didn’t help they were named Helga and Betty.
Once we crowded into the pen, it was time for the rodeo. We decided the smallest of us should be the ones to do the riding because we were worried about hurting the pigs. That left us with Tommy, the skinny kid I’d seen the first day, and me and Alyson, who were the same size. We decided between the two of us with a coin toss. I won. I didn’t want to win, but I was more afraid of looking like a wuss.
Before I could think of a way out of it, Vinnie had set his watch and the rest of them started counting down … 3 … 2 … 1.
I hadn’t really thought about what I’d do to stay on once I got there. I ended up wrapping my arms around Betty’s neck, which caused her to scream. I could feel the vibrations against my wrists, shrieking so loud it hurt my ears. She bucked and started to run, and I tried to hang on but I slid off and landed smack in the mud. I was filthy. Betty was now all the way across the pen from me, glaring like she was offended. I expected everyone to be laughing, but Luke was the only one paying attention. The rest were all standing silently in a circle around Tommy. He’d fallen off right away and Helga had trampled his leg. Luke helped me up and we walked over there, wiping the dirt off my face and pants. Tommy was crying silently, and Vinnie was crouched over him inspecting where he’d gotten hurt. He was fine; his leg was red and would later swell into a bruise, but no blood. Still, Vinnie had a panicked look in his one good eye. I think this was the first time it occurred to him that the pig rodeo was a bad fucking idea.
None of us wanted to see Vinnie and Shauna in trouble, so when he said the rodeo was over, we listened. Shauna and Tommy headed up to the house so she could put ice on his leg. The rest of us went to put the pigs back.
Except the pigs didn’t want to go back. It had been fine getting them into the big pen because they wanted the space and the sunshine, but they absolutely did not want to go back into the barn. When we opened the pen, they bolted. We split into two groups, each chasing one pig. They were fast. Vinnie was with my group, going after Betty, and totally freaked out. He kept on saying, “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit” over and over, not caring about cussing in front of us.
A pig is not like a dog. It doesn’t wear a collar and it has no bred-in desire to please. It turns out pigs can be incredibly deceptive. Betty ran us like a losing football team, faking us out by going left and then heading right, and a couple of the boys went to tackle her but missed. Finally we cornered her, all the way past the parking lot, in the circle of log benches. Once we trapped her, we had to figure out how to get her back to the barn. We ended up surrounding her like pallbearers, Vinnie in the front in case she decided to charge, Stephen at the rear, hitting her on the butt with a stick and saying “Yah yah” in his monotone voice, like she was a wayward horse. It took a while to make it back down the hill, but finally we got her in the pen.
Helga didn’t get as far and was already inside, with the other kids waiting for us to come back with Betty. By then, a good forty-five minutes had passed. Most of us were filthy, covered in dirt and sweat and briars. Before we went to shower, Vinnie made us promise to say nothing about the pigs. The dirt on our clothes and the bruise on Tommy’s leg were from an especially competitive soccer game. The grass had been muddy and we all got really into it, but it was a good release for our aggression. The score was tied forever, two to two, until finally Kiran made the scoring goal.
He made us repeat this. He made us promise. We repeated. We promised.
The pigs had won.
REVENGE IS A DISH
The next day, Luke and I
were assigned to feed the pigs. I snuck two raw eggs and some leftover bacon up my sleeves.
The barn was mostly quiet and the sunlight sliced through the cracks in the wood. The pigs were making little grunting noises, their hairy backs the only things visible. The noises were making me sick so I made Luke put the feed in their trough by himself. He didn’t know I’d brought the bacon and eggs.
I threw the eggs. I missed with one but hit Helga, the spotted one, square on the neck. Betty, who had been snorting in wait for her grain, suddenly lurched at the egg-covered neck, licking it off hungrily, shells and all, making slurping noises that sounded oddly sexual, and I hated the noises so much that I threw the bacon at them. They ate it down so quick it was like they’d been eating bacon their whole lives.
Like all they’d ever wanted was to taste themselves.
ALYSON’S MOM
A few days later, I had a session with Nathan that ran over and so I was late to school. I went into my room to grab a sweater before I headed to class. The heat of the summer was dying off and lately I was always freezing in the classroom, which was downstairs in what probably used to be a cellar.
I expected the room to be empty. But Alyson was in there, curled up in a ball on her bed, so all I could see was her folded-up limbs and her hair. Rosie was sitting next to her, not saying anything, just stroking her hair in silence.
I knew what had happened immediately, but I stood there in the doorway for a second. A good friend would rush to her, hold her, tell her everything would be OK. So I crossed the room, stood in front of her, snaked my arm behind her back.
She screamed into her lap when I touched her. It wasn’t a scream, though, not really. It was just a noise, something jagged and loud that tore into my bones. I pulled my hand away. I stood there in front of her but she didn’t look up, didn’t even move. I waited for Rosie to tell me what to do but she just looked at me and I couldn’t tell what the look meant. I patted her again, on the head this time, like a puppy, and it felt so stupid I left.
Juliet the Maniac Page 13