Juliet the Maniac

by Juliet the Maniac (retail) (epub)

  There was the time the boys took Angel’s Nair and put it on a patch of his hair while he slept, waking up to a bald spot and a chemical burn, pink and raw. There was the time the boys tricked him into masturbating with Tiger Balm. When he first arrived at the school, long before I got there, everyone convinced him to take a fat lip of chew, then told him you were supposed to swallow the juice it made. Tommy puked. It happened outside during chores, right onto the dirt, and Vinnie saw it and saw the tobacco in it, and they all got in trouble even though Tommy refused to rat anyone out, because Vinnie was smart enough to know Tommy wouldn’t have chewed dip on his own.

  Then there was the one that was my fault. A few Saturdays ago, it was cold and wet all day, so we had been cooped up and bored in the great room. We started measuring ourselves—foot to foot, hand to hand, back to back to compare heights, just to have something to do. In everything, Tommy was the smallest, coming up only to my shoulder, fingers reaching only halfway up my tips. Somebody said he was so tiny he could fit in the dryer, and we managed to talk him into it—just as an experiment, just to find out.

  I hadn’t thought about turning it on until he made me promise I wouldn’t. That was the thing about him—it never really felt like bullying so much as something we were obligated to do in response to his behavior. The only option was for me to hit the button.

  I opened the door a fraction of a second later. He was curled up like a fetus, nearly upside down, his eyes all big and round and afraid like a big dumb baby. I couldn’t help laughing, we all couldn’t help but laugh. Tommy was mad, you could see it in his face, but it didn’t take too long for him to be laughing too.

  I couldn’t get the way he looked when I opened the door out of my head. Helpless and hurt.

  * * *

  —

  So it seemed wildly unfair for this adult to pick on him. It was bad enough that we did it, but at least we knew him. And of course Tommy wasn’t like Adrian. Tommy started crying immediately, as soon as he got to the mush pot. You could tell he was trying to hold it together at first, his mouth quivering, but Martin was only a few lines in before Tommy’s face was blotchy and streaked with tears, his mouth pinched up and whining.

  Martin used it as ammunition, telling him this was exactly what he expected, for Tommy to act like a pathetic, blubbering baby, because that’s all he was, a spineless puddle of Jell-O.

  I wanted to say something. I wanted to stop him from berating someone who was helpless and so easily hurt. But I didn’t know how. I sat there, squirmy, a feeling not unlike needing to take a shit. I considered it for a second, just standing up and loudly announcing I had to use the bathroom, in an attempt to get Martin off track. I looked across the room, where Vinnie was standing in the corner for some reason. I thought I could catch his eye. Vinnie wouldn’t allow this type of cruelty. But Vinnie didn’t look at me, or anyone.

  I twisted my bracelet around my wrist. Martin was trying to get Tommy to name one positive quality about himself but he just kept crying. The bracelet was the same as the one on Alyson’s wrist, plastic beads we’d strung in matching colors. I picked at the biggest bead, a sparkly butterfly, snapping it against my wrist. I was trying to figure out what to say, but instead I accidentally muttered under my breath.

  “God, shut up.”

  I knew I’d said it too loud because Martin stopped immediately.

  “Who said that?” he said. He wasn’t yelling anymore. His voice was low and hard.

  “Um,” I said. “I did.”

  “What did you say? I couldn’t quite hear.”

  “Um.” I stared at my bracelet, pulled the bead again. Snap. “I just thought you could stop yelling at Tommy. I think he got your point.”

  He stood up from where he was sitting, in the big recliner, a dictator on his throne. He walked slowly across the room, until he was standing in front of me, hands on his hips, khaki crotch right in front of my face. He must have realized because he quickly leaned down, so close I could see tiny blackheads on his nose. “You want to help him? Is that it?”

  “Um,” I said again, like an idiot. I didn’t know what to do or say, which pissed me off because the last thing I wanted was to be intimidated by this dumb sadist.

  Martin smiled. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. And then he told Tommy to get out of the center, and for me to take his place.

  I did so, walking fast like I didn’t care but I kept my eyes on the ground. My face began to burn. My knees went quivery, and I felt thin and naked like a skeleton. I was trying not to care but it wasn’t working. I snapped my bracelet again, hard this time, just to keep myself from crying.

  “Typical,” he said. “Typical, typical, typical. Can’t stand to not be the focus, to be off to the side. Ego so big it almost masks your insecurity, but we all know very well how much you hate yourself. And all that makeup, all that eyeliner, you might think it makes you look glamorous but really you just look like a cheap whore.”

  It seemed so insane for him to call me a whore that I just didn’t care anymore. I felt the old throb in my temples, the blur of black anger at the edges of my vision.

  “What the hell is your job anyway?” I said. “Are you paid to point out the obvious? Because it’s really not that hard to figure out that yes, I hate myself, considering I’m here for suicide attempts and can’t even have razors because I’ll cut myself. Or that Tommy doesn’t stick up for himself, or that Adrian thinks he’s a thug. I don’t understand the point of this, and I don’t understand the point of you. You’re pointless. You’re worse than pointless, you’re a bully, a fat-boy bully disguised as a grown-up. In fact, you can go fuck yourself.”

  I wasn’t thinking, not really, as I was talking, but I meant every word. Once I shut up, I knew I had to get out of there, so I walked out of the circle, and then I ran out of the room. I ran through the hallway, the kitchen, the front door. I ran across the lawn, the parking lot, past the logs, the little house, until I was in the forest, my feet crunching the dead leaves. The forest a blur of thin trees. And even though I was running as fast as I could, I could see the beginnings of springtime, the sprouting of pale yellows and greens in the branches, the first true spring I’d ever seen. The brightness startled me, but I didn’t let that slow me down either. I felt like Athena, I felt like a deer.

  I didn’t stop until I reached the path, at the far end of the property. My heart was pounding and I was breathing hard and jagged. But I felt clean.

  The path ran by the fence that was the property line, wood posts and rusted barbed wire. On the other side there was a field, owned by the neighbor, a horse rancher, and in the field stood a single horse, head in the tall brown grass. He heard me, looked up. I didn’t know anything about horses but I could tell this one was young, with thin legs and knobby knees, its thick mane a golden yellow, a color I wasn’t aware horses came in.

  I heard something coming through the forest toward me, fast, and I thought I was caught and in trouble. But it was only Little Dan, Carly’s collie dog. I hadn’t known she was at the school that day. She must have just gotten there. I went to go pet him, but he ran away from me, not afraid, but like we were playing, except then he ran under the fence, heading straight for the horse, who got spooked, rearing up on its hind legs and snorting. Little Dan didn’t seem to notice.

  I knew I had to save him. Not thinking too much about what I was doing, I hopped over the fence. It caught on my jeans and cut me. I didn’t care, didn’t even feel it. I ran to the horse, grabbed Little Dan, wriggling and heavy in my arms.

  Then I heard somebody yelling. It was Carly. She was coming down the path, a tiny outline, but even from that far I could tell she was freaked out. That was when I realized how close the horse still was, frightened, legs kicking and eyes wide and wild. I felt a whoosh of air and I ducked and ran like an army man, waiting to be knocked out, waiting to be dead. I made it to the fence, pushed Little Dan under and Carly grabbed him by the collar. This time, I gingerly pinched a hole in
the fence, dipped through, careful not to cut myself.

  I didn’t get in trouble. Carly took me back to the little house, cleaned off my cuts, bandaged them. She said I was stupid for going over the fence, unbelievably stupid. Little Dan could think for and take care of himself. But she said nothing about me running away, or me yelling and swearing, and, once I was back at the big house, nobody else did either. Martin had left. He wasn’t there the next day. He didn’t come back. Nobody asked about him. Nobody missed him. It was like he’d never existed, nothing more than a collective bad dream.

  PROMOTION

  Even with me flipping out on Martin, they promoted me to Phase Three. I called my parents as soon as I saw my name moved up on the whiteboard, next to the other people on Phase Three.

  They were happy, proud of me. Lately they’d been discussing me leaving and this seemed to cement it. Late spring they said, April or May. They didn’t care if I officially “graduated.” They just wanted me well enough to return home.

  STARSEED

  We were driving back from Wal-Mart. It was raining and Vinnie was taking the turns too fast. I was sitting in the back next to the window, Alyson on the other side. My body slammed, no seat belt, as the van grinded the curves, her hips and the hard plastic. The electric thing was back in my bones, and I’d missed it, missed feeling wild and special. I could feel my pupils dilate, my brain chemicals sizzling in my skull and getting me high. The rain on the windows pelted by in streaks, and the headlights from the van sliced the trees into spears, black shadows pooled like blood. Everything felt black-white, strobe light, the cockpit of a spaceship or a shooting star. We were listening to Metallica loud, all of us singing, and I felt something lifting me like wires hooked in my sternum, pulling me from the van to the sky, and I was no longer human, I was dazzling.

  ATIVAN DAZE

  We got a new psychiatrist. His name was Dr. Hult. What an ugly name. He was an ugly guy too, balding underneath a frizzy blond comb-over. A big nose, red and acne scarred. The square and yellowed teeth of a horse. Disgusting.

  He asked me for my diagnosis, which seemed strange because my file was sitting right in front of him. Maybe he was trying to see if I’d lie. He asked if I’d been having any issues, and I told him as always I was having problems sleeping. He said he’d add a new medication. Ativan.

  It felt like winning the pharmaceutical lottery.

  I was getting a prescription for something that got you high.

  I left the office feeling giddy.

  PATIENT LOG

  PATIENT NAME: Juliet Escoria

  AGE: 16 yrs 6 mo

  SEX: F

  DOB: 8/23/83

  DATE: 02/22/00

  HISTORY: Patient exhibits aggression, impulsivity, grandiosity, distractibility.

  Reported side effects of lethargy, muscle pain, upset stomach, hair loss (mild) (cont.), dizziness, dry mouth, tremor (mild).

  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 7/99 (tremors)

  Remeron—discontinued 8/99 (weight gain/replace w Zoloft)

  Buspar—discontinued 01/00 (somnolence)

  Trazodone—discontinued 2/00 (replace w Ativan)

  TREATMENT:

  Incr. Depakote from 1500mg/nightly to 2000mg/nightly over 1 wk

  Decrease Zoloft from 100mg/nightly to 50mg/nightly over 1 week (for anxiety/depression)

  Begin Ativan 4mg/nightly; up to 6mg additional as needed

  Cont. group therapy, indiv. therapy

  The only problem: almost everybody got a prescription for Ativan, either for anxiety or insomnia or both. Word must have gotten to someone who actually knew what they were doing, Carly or Stacy. Either way, the Ativan prescriptions went unfilled. I kept asking about mine, trying not to sound eager, just concerned. All the horrible medication and now finally one that was actually fun. Not a “relapse,” a prescription. But all anyone would say was they were working on it.

  In the meantime, the staff must have been given a big bottle of Ativan to use on us as needed. If someone threw a fit, or if they still couldn’t sleep and it was really late, we got a pill.

  I started throwing fits a lot. There’s a way to have an anxiety attack that is sort of real and also sort of fake. If you’re feeling anxious, all you have to do is breathe shallow and think about all the things you hate about life and yourself. Like this:

  I’m a piece of shit.

  I’m a fuck-up.

  Batshit crazy.

  A fucking mess.

  A failure.

  A piece of shit.

  A piece of shit.

  I should die.

  And soon enough, you’d be hyperventilating. Soon enough, they’d be handing out Ativan. If you did it well enough, you’d get two. Like magic.

  FLIPSIDE

  I’d woken up feeling like I was going to die soon, like a shroud had descended over my head. I kept seeing my parents’ deaths, sometimes bloody and violent, sometimes decrepit and blanched. We were supposed to go grocery shopping, something I normally enjoyed. But I couldn’t get rid of this feeling, that if I left the house I would die or my parents would die or at least my brain would spin out of control. I tried to push it away, explaining to myself that I was being illogical. I put on my boots and I put on my hat, but my chest felt so heavy I thought my ribs would crack if I moved.

  Rosie crouched beside me, put her hand on my knee. “Are you OK, sweetie?”

  I couldn’t say anything. I remembered what I was supposed to do. I tried to take deep slow breaths from my stomach but the air came in shallow and jagged. “I’m having an anxiety attack,” I finally managed to say.

  One of the other kids was sick anyway, so Rosie stayed with the two of us at the house. She gave me Ativan, and I lay out in front of the TV with my blanket and a pillow. The only thing on was the Snorks, so I watched the Snorks. I fell asleep, and dreamt I was a Snork. I guess I was missing Luke, because Luke was also a Snork and we were floating underwater, alternating between fucking and holding hands, blowing bubbles out of the Snork tubes in our heads, and the lights and the seaweed glittered. Then I woke up and Alyson was beside me, sitting on the sofa, her body warm. Her green eyes were bright and she was smiling, and in that moment I loved her so much. My best friend, here with me and not with stupid Adrian. They’d stopped at the candy store on the way home and she’d brought me two pieces of marzipan shaped like flowers. I felt so soft and floaty, from the pills and the dream and her presence, that I wished I had anxiety attacks every day.

  BLACKOUT

  But then something with the Ativan started to misfire. A couple nights later and Vinnie told me I couldn’t watch the movie with the others. I had to go to my room. I asked him why and he looked at me like I already knew. I didn’t. Finally he said it was because of the incident the other night.

  I hadn’t done anything bad lately, not since Martin had left. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  Vinnie sighed deep like I was being annoying on purpose. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go look at your behavior log.”

  I followed him into the office, and he pulled out my binder from the big filing cabinet. We sat at one of the kitchen tables, while everyone else went into the great room for the movie. He pointed to one of the entries, the night of the Snorks. Tilting blue cursive reported I’d broken into the office and stolen my Discman, which had been taken away for a month because a while ago I’d called Bill a fucking asshole.

  But I never broke into the office. I didn’t even know how to go about it. I was good at picking locks, but I had no idea if that particular lock required a card slipped through the door or a bobby pin in the knob. I looked at the door, trying to figure out if it was even pickable. A tiny hole next to the lock. Bobby pin. The easiest kind.

  “Who wrote this?”
I asked Vinnie. It seemed a little extreme, even for Bill, to write some random thing to fuck me over.

  “Let me see,” he said, checking the signature. “CR. That’s Carly.”

  Carly wouldn’t make shit up about me. I really had done it. The Ativan made me completely black out. I thought about the other times I had taken it, the fuzzy mornings and afternoons, hours soft around the edges. Finishing a novel in school but not remembering what happened at the end, a blank space when I thought about what I’d had for dinner. But nothing like this. Hours gone, a prank pulled by myself on myself. I opened my mouth but didn’t say anything. I’d sound like a liar, and even if he believed me, it’d guarantee that I wouldn’t get the Ativan again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said instead. “I must have forgotten.”

  An elevator dropped in my chest, a betrayal. I looked down at my hands, and they seemed both darker and paler at the same time. A graying. As though I was shifting into a ghost.

  THE KIDS THAT LEFT #4

  I wasn’t the only person who’d had weird shit happen to them because of Ativan. One day they took us to the public park, which had a playground and big fields and was down by the river. It was the first warm day in weeks. It was supposed to be a good day, a reward. Me and a couple of the other girls were hanging out down near the water, throwing stones and talking. The boys were playing baseball. Then Tommy started crying, which didn’t seem odd at first. He cried a lot. But then he was clawing the air like he was swatting at bugs, and saying stuff about food and animals and fights. Soon after, he was totally melting down, sobbing and flailing his limbs around. It was so extreme, they packed us back in the van, Tommy wrapped up next to Carly in a blanket, shivering like someone who’d been saved from drowning. We figured he’d had some sort of psychotic break.