Juliet the Maniac

by Juliet the Maniac (retail) (epub)

  Except that Saturday Alyson wasn’t around, and I couldn’t even remember where she was. We hadn’t been spending that much time together lately, all because of this new guy named Adrian, who’d arrived right after Alex.

  Adrian seemed to think he was a cholo. He buttoned his shirts to the top, sagged his Dickies, even had stick-and-poked three dots on his hand to signify his crazy life. It was bullshit. I wanted to tell him that nobody whose parents could afford this school was a thug, and Adrian Calabrese was obviously an Italian name and not a Mexican one, so he could cut it out with the bad accent and saying shit like how so-and-so could chupa his verga. I wanted to tell him that I knew the city where he was from, Laguna Beach, and that it was full of rich white people and not Mexican gangs. But I didn’t say any of this. Instead I kept my mouth shut. And Alyson fell for it. He arrived on a Sunday and by Tuesday she’d broken up with Kiran. Now all they did was hang onto each other, arms draped around their shoulders like they were broken, whispering together all day long like they were conspiring against the world. It was disgusting. And Kiran, who was awesome and handsome and not a phony fuck, was left to mope around alone.

  I thought about doing the coke by myself except it seemed important to have someone do it with me, just in case we got caught—two people meant bad influences, while one person meant you were just bad. I ended up asking Christina. We’d been hanging out a lot lately, ever since Adrian had arrived.

  I chopped the coke in my room while Christina stood in the hall, pretending to be doing her chore, which was dusting and then removing grime off all the baseboards. I snorted my lines and then headed to the great room so Christina could do the same.

  I didn’t even notice the high until I was back in the great room, and then suddenly I felt the whoosh straight into my heart. I turned on the stereo, the oldies channel, and it was the Shangri-Las with “Leader of the Pack.” It made me remember how when I was little, I listened to oldies at night, and the songs telling stories about teenagers seemed so far away, so impossibly tragic and glamorous—broken hearts, early deaths, the era of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe—the songs in the speakers fuzzy and crackling. Christina walked in, on her knees scrubbing at the baseboards, and we sang to the songs, dusting and cleaning until the pale oak gleamed golden. We kept looking at each other, smiling, our secret, and Christina’s cheeks were flushed pink and she looked so happy and pretty.

  And I know people act like you can’t have any real feelings on drugs, that everything that happens to you on them is a lie, but cleaning and singing with Christina while our hearts beat fast in our chests felt like something real, realer than real, electric and on fire.

  PRESCRIPTIVE

  They were always saying “Take your medicine.” The therapists and the doctors, my parents, the counselors—anyone with an opinion about my illness. They all told me about people who started feeling good again, or decided they weren’t actually bipolar, or missed the energy, and stopped taking their medicine and ended right back in the hospital. Back at the visions, back at depression, back at death.

  What they didn’t say was how much psych meds sucked. They went over the long list of side effects, but nobody seemed to care when I said yes, the medicine made my stomach hurt and hair fall out and gave me diarrhea and turned everything stupid and flat and boring. The sluggishness, the flat gray of the sky and the old snow, the days all the same, same routine, same people, same dramas. I didn’t want to go back to hearing things and I didn’t want to go back to trying to kill myself, but I also wanted to feel something real and true, life in neon, rather than this dull blanket.

  A compromise. At RTS, they didn’t check your mouth after they gave you your pills. They were supposed to, but generally the staff was in a hurry and didn’t have time. Every third night, sometimes every second, I would swallow my Zoloft, same as always, and then I’d put the big pink ovals of Depakote in my mouth. I’d go straight to my room and spit them in a sock.

  The first time, part of the coating wore away by the time I got there. The bitterness of the pill took over my whole mouth. I brushed my teeth, carefully around each tooth and the entirety of my tongue. When I spat in the sink, the bubbles were foamy and the color of Pepto-Bismol. Nothing happened at first.

  THE KIDS THAT LEFT #3

  I think we all felt sorry for Stephen, the schizophrenic. We might’ve been fucked up, but we could interact with other people like we were normal at least some of the time. Stephen couldn’t. Every once in a while he’d say a complete sentence to someone who wasn’t Kiran, but mostly he responded in one- or two-word phrases, head nods, and hand gestures.

  This changed after Angel’s home visit. She came back with gifts for everyone, cheap little toys. She gave me a My Little Pony. Other people got weird sunglasses. Stephen got a plastic microphone.

  When the Beastie Boys album The Sounds of Science came out, we listened to it in the van all the time. It was one of the few albums everyone agreed on. One day we were singing along to “Intergalactic.” I didn’t know who first noticed Stephen singing with us, but somebody did. We tried to not make a big deal out of it because we didn’t want to embarrass him. But it felt like a big deal, as though we’d finally gotten through to him. As though we’d helped him.

  Ever since, we’d ask him to sing the song, and he always would, always happy to oblige. It got so he could do the entire song, hitting each beat perfect. Angel’s microphone was for him to sing in. He smiled so big when he unwrapped it, not just with his mouth but his whole face. He tapped the microphone, miming to check if it was “on,” and then he said his lines: intergalactic planetary, intergalactic.

  When an unfamiliar van pulled up a few weeks later, similar to the one that had taken away Dennis, we were surprised. Nobody had gotten in trouble recently, no drama, no outbursts. We were even more surprised when we found out the student they’d come to take away was Stephen. The staff didn’t want to tell us why but we wouldn’t stop asking.

  Finally Carly told us to sit down in the great room. We were prepared to hear about some great injustice, the unfair reason he’d been taken away. “We found things,” she began. “Troubling things.”

  Notebook drawing, January 2000.

  Which seemed an unfair description. I was imagining, I don’t know, naked-girl drawings or something. I wasn’t prepared for what she told us: nearly a hundred dollars in cash, a milk jug filled with water, three loaves of bread, a jar of peanut butter, the big butcher knife the staff concluded had accidentally been thrown away when it didn’t turn up in a search. The kind of things that take a long time and a lot of planning to steal. The van keys were the thing that got him caught. He’d lifted the spare set kept in the office and thought no one would notice.

  The most troublesome thing, though, was a hand-drawn map of the school, and a checklist that involved students smothered with pillows, a night staff with slit throats. Carly wouldn’t let us see the list or the map. She said it was too disturbing.

  THE BITCH

  I’d been out shoveling snow and I was cold and wet. When I went to my room to change, Christina was in there, sitting on my bed and crying. She looked so sad and broken that I ran over to her, sat next to her, put my hand on her shoulder.

  “What happened?” I said.

  Her crying broke into sobs, thick in her chest, snot running from her nose. I plucked a tissue from the box near my bed, and she wiped away the tears and snot. “Oh God,” she moaned.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, thinking she’d had a fight with Angel and that’s why she’d come to me.

  “I have to tell you something,” she said, her voice momentarily clear before breaking again. “I feel so terrible.”

  A cold feeling shot through me, as though before I knew, I knew.

  “I slept with Luke,” she finally said, a pause between each word. I. Slept. With. Luke. Her voice quiet but wobbling.

  Each syllable drove itself home, a series of pinpricks. She was looking at me as she spoke, b
ut she wasn’t looking at me. It was as though she wasn’t looking at anything at all, as though she was dead, her eyes blank, and suddenly I wished that she was. I didn’t feel anything. I wanted her out of my room. I wanted to get out of my wet clothes. I told her as much and she left, slowly like she was going to her death, the door closing behind her.

  I didn’t know what to do once she left. I changed and then just sat there on my bed for a while, trying to figure out what, exactly, I felt. I could not name the feeling.

  * * *

  —

  When it came time for dinner, I told Rosie I wasn’t hungry. I said I was feeling sick. I was still sitting there on my bed. I decided to write in my journal. I figured I’d write a letter to Luke, but I didn’t get very far.

  Luke letter (draft), January 2000.

  Alyson came in after dinner to check on me. I was still sitting there, my journal next to me, the letter unfinished.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she said, laughing. I must have looked so silly, just staring into space.

  I told her, the words sounding different out loud than they had in my head.

  Her mouth dropped open. “What?” she said. “That little fucking bitch.”

  That was when the feelings finally hit me. Brokenness, but also rage, hot and boiling. My chest tight, shaky hands. A tilt to the room, something thick and viscous like milk.

  I didn’t want to cry but I started to cry. “I’m so fucking pissed,” I said.

  “You should fuck her up,” Alyson said.

  “I should totally fuck her up.” I imagined pounding her face with my fists, ripping out her hair.

  “Let’s do it,” she said. “I’ll back you up.”

  We went down the hall to Christina’s room. I opened the door without knocking. Christina was curled on her bed in a pathetic little ball, which made me even angrier. I walked over to her. She didn’t look at me. I wanted her to look at me. I punched her in the face, my knuckles sliding off her cheekbone.

  I didn’t know how to fuck up anyone. I didn’t even know how to properly wrap my hand into a fist. She looked surprised, her hand covering where I’d hit her, but also like she deserved it.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. I didn’t care.

  So I fucked her up the only way I knew how. I stood in front of her, hands on my hips.

  “You little slut,” I said. “This is just like you. Desperate to be liked, desperate to be loved. You’re a nothing. You’re a shadow of a person, weak-willed, personality-less, spineless.” I went on. Because we’d been in group together for months, I knew just what to say, all her weak points. I hit every one:

  Your parents don’t love you. You’re stupid, passive, have nothing to offer the world. Fat. Dykey haircut. Ugly clothes. White trash. Luke just did it because he feels sorry for you. For Luke, you could have been anyone. You mean nothing. Alyson and me and Luke and everybody else are here for good reasons, because our parents were afraid for us. But your parents just put you here because they wanted to get rid of you. This is what everyone who’s ever encountered you wanted to do, to ignore you, to forget you, because you’re forgettable. Your pussy smells bad anyway, it smells bad because you’re a slut, because that’s the only reason people like you, except they don’t like you, because you’re a nothing. You probably even liked it when your brother’s friend raped you, wanted it, it wasn’t rape at all, because you deserve to be used. You probably even liked it as a kid, with your uncle, because nobody loves you and that’s the only way you know how to be loved. You deserve to be raped, should be raped again. Fuck you.

  Christina didn’t look at me once, looked down at the ground, curled in her ball, silently crying the whole fucking time, whispering over and over, “I know. I’m sorry.” Pathetic.

  Once I’d finished, I looked over at Alyson, who was standing in the doorway, her face wide. “Come on,” I said, and we left the room, laughing.

  “Oh shit,” she said once we were back in our room. “Shit, girl. That was some fucked up shit. You fucked her up. You fucked her up!”

  I smiled. I had fucked her up.

  * * *

  —

  That night before bed, I wrote a better letter to Luke. This time I knew exactly what to say. I didn’t sign it. He’d know who it was from.

  Luke Letter (final: copy, made for personal records), January 2000.

  AFTERMATH

  I kept waiting for Christina to rat me out, for somebody on staff to notice that Alyson and I no longer spoke to her, refused to sit with her, in the van or class or at meals. I kept waiting for it to come up in group. But it never did. Except for the broken look I’d sometimes catch on Christina’s face, it was like nothing had happened at all.

  * * *

  —

  A week later, I got a letter back. Something something, I love you. All lies. I crumpled the note up into a ball, threw it in the trash.

  Luke response (retrieved from trash), February 2000.

  A LETTER FROM THE FUTURE #4

  These remain the cruelest words I’ve ever said to anyone. These remain the words I feel the worst about. It is hard to believe I said them. It is especially hard to believe I said them to someone like Christina. But I did.

  Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Hail Mary, full of grace. Our Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!

  SEEDLINGS

  My pill sock got crusty and full. I finished my morning chores early, said I felt groggy and was taking a quick walk. I went down by the lake. It had snowed and then gotten warm again. The path was sludgy and sticky, sucking on my boots. I found a place in the cattails thick enough that no one could see me, the dry brown blades rustling like feathers. I found a stick and dug away the muck until I had a little hole. I put the sock in it, a baby grave. I patted the mud down. You couldn’t tell anything was there.

  MARTIN THE MYSTERY MAN

  We didn’t realize the quiet guy in the glasses and button-down wasn’t somebody’s visiting parent until after dinner. He hadn’t been introduced. Nobody explained his role. We only knew something was different because he hadn’t gone away.

  In the weeks that followed, the only thing we found out was his name—Martin—and what he wasn’t. He wasn’t a counselor, because he didn’t do anything with us, didn’t tell us to knock it off when we swore, didn’t come up with activities when we grew bored. He wasn’t a therapist, because he never led group—although sometimes he sat in—and never really talked to us, except for light chitchat during meals. The only thing we ever saw him do was scribble in a notebook, which he was too careful to leave laying around. The few times we’d been able to slip a glimpse, we discovered his handwriting was too messy to read anyhow. For a while we speculated that he was from some accreditation board, but he stayed too long and once said something to the boys during lunch about good food being just as sensual as good sex, so that no longer made sense. Eventually we gave up, called him Martin the Communist in secret, pretending he was a spy from the KGB.

  It took a whole month for us to find his purpose, before we realized he was indeed at the school in order to spy on us. Not for the Russians. But to make us feel like shit.

  Confrontational therapy (research), January 2016.

  VERBAL ABUSE

  The first time, he did it to Adrian. Martin called
us all to the great room, slid the coffee table behind one of the sofas, told Adrian to stand in the blank space. So he did, reluctantly but with a smile, as though he was expecting a game.

  Adrian’s smile turned plastic as Martin spoke, his voice thorny and cold at the beginning, gradually growing louder, so subtle it was difficult to register the change until it had risen to a yell. The things he said were things I’d wanted to say: Adrian was a phony, a fake, a liar. His gangster masquerade was disgusting, completely failing to hide the fact that he was pathetically insecure. His haircut was stupid, only “illuminating the odd mushy shape” of his head. I might have liked what was happening, but all at once just seemed cruel.

  And then there was the fact that the rest of us had to listen. We’d all been called in to sit there and watch, the counselors and Bill and Stacy and even Linda, the cook. I watched everyone’s faces. They all looked blank, refusing to look at the center of the room. All eyes on neutral things—the ceiling, the window, their shoes. But I wasn’t afraid to see. I watched Adrian’s face, as he stood in the center of the room, the mush pot, his arms crossed and his mouth streaked in a sneer. I watched Martin’s face, sparked eyes and the occasional spittle flecking out of his mouth, as though he was enjoying this, as though he was genuinely angry and not acting. I didn’t feel creeped out until I looked across the room, saw Stacy standing near the doorway, hands at her sides, head down so I couldn’t see her eyes. But I could see her mouth. It was shaped like something. It was shaped like a smile.

  The next week, he targeted Tommy. Tommy, who had never done anything to anyone. He was always so good it was confusing why he was at the school in the first place. I’d never seen him angry or unruly, even when he was the target of our jokes, which was often.