“OK,” she said, in a voice that sounded like I’d finally pleased her. She stopped staring at me, turned to the desk where she had a binder out, and wrote something down. “Now would you be willing to testify about this, about what you think you might have seen. It doesn’t matter if you know what you saw or not. You’d just say what you thought you maybe saw.”
“What? What do you mean testify?”
“In court. We’re trying to get a case together to prevent him from doing this kind of thing again.”
I imagined myself in court, leaning into a microphone, Hank sitting across from me in a suit, watching me with a hurt look on his face. I knew I couldn’t do it. “No way,” I said.
Carly protested. She told me this was important, that he’d hurt people irrevocably, that if I testified I would be doing my part to ensure he didn’t harm future victims.
“But you don’t understand,” I said. “He was our friend. He helped me. I don’t think I would want to be sober if it wasn’t for him. I can’t do that, can’t pretend he never did anything good, that the only thing he ever did that mattered was something I maybe or maybe didn’t see.”
She was silent for a long while, again staring at me, hoping to get me to do what she wanted. I must have sounded convincing enough because she finally told me I could go. As I was closing the door, she said, “I hope you change your mind.”
A LETTER FROM THE FUTURE #5
It took years for me to realize Hank wasn’t my friend.
* * *
—
It took years for me to realize this was just one more way I’d hurt Christina.
CULTIVATION
When the weather was finally beginning to get warm again, Rosie decided we would plant a vegetable garden. She had Bill and Kiran till a plot of land, right next to the lambs. That weekend, she brought in big pallets full of baby plants. We’d each be in charge of a certain vegetable. I told her I needed something easy because I was always killing things. She smiled, told me that Jason and I were in charge of the peas, that I’d be fine.
We were all given gloves and a brown paper bag to kneel on. We were quiet as we worked, the soil cool and moist between our fingers, the sunlight bright on our faces. I discovered I liked gardening, the stillness that came from collectively working with our hands, the exactness of digging holes just the right depth and width, the simple monotony of patting the soil into place.
Every day, Jason and I walked down there together after breakfast, making sure no birds or bugs had gotten to our little plants, and watering the soil when it was dry. We never spoke as we worked, because we didn’t need to. Being with Luke had felt like a riptide, something barely perceptible between us that was strong enough to kill. With Jason there was none of this. When we were finished with the garden, we’d go feed and pet Fuzzy, and the constant tight feeling in my chest morphed into something different, something softer, lighter, more warm.
It happened so slowly it was hard to notice, but the little plants turned into bigger plants, the pale shoots deepening into a rich green as they widened and grew. We installed a trellis, helped the thin vines wrap around the rails, the new leaves reaching upward into the sunshine. Fuzzy grew larger too, her once high-pitched bleat finding its way into a bray, her knobby legs growing longer and stronger, less a lamb, more a sheep. I would leave soon, too soon to eat the peas or cry when Fuzzy left us to be sold for her wool or mutton (nobody knew which because we were all afraid to ask). But it was nice to know that for a while I’d have something growing, a good piece of me, in my absence.
BACKCOUNTRY
In April, we all went to Death Valley for ten days—the girls who weren’t allowed to go to Mexico, and also Kiran and Beto because they were now on Phase Four and could do what they wanted.
The first five days, we would go backcountry camping, away from the road for a night or two, then returning to the van to drive to another area of the park and get more water. I had been backpacking with my parents many times as a child, and so the idea of carrying everything on my back wasn’t a foreign concept. But this was more intense. We weren’t staying at campsites, just along the trail, so that meant we had to carry all our water. When I’d gone camping with my parents, my dad carried a little stove and a set of dishes that nested inside each other, food that came in packets like oatmeal and rice. We had no such luxuries. For food, we were each given a giant bag of gorp, a hunk of cheese, a sausage, and several hard, tasteless disks called pilot crackers. The tents weren’t like the tents I’d used with my parents; these were ultralight, didn’t even have bottoms. And we had no pads to sleep on, just the ground, no pillows, just our bunched-up clothes.
The weather was hot and the sun was brutal. I got sunburned the first day, but by the fourth, my arms and face had turned golden, a color my skin hadn’t seen since I spent my days playing on the beach as a child. The hikes were brutal too, winding up and down mountains, no trails because the land was so barren. There was nowhere to bathe, and each of us had brought as few clothes as possible, so we just stunk. Every night, I’d get in my sleeping bag, not even caring about the hardness of the ground, and in the moments before I fell asleep I felt like I was still hiking, my body moving up and down at the even pace we’d kept all day.
The scenery was dry and wasted and brown all around, everything looking the same, same, same—but only from a distance. Once we were hiking, I saw life, the dusty puffs of green in the creosote and sagebrush, prickly outlines of cholla cactus and yucca. As we went deeper and farther from the roads, the land erupted upward, with caves and crevices, in reds and oranges and yellows. And the sunsets came in colors brighter than you could imagine, the brilliant blue scorched with neons. Even the most boring sunset I saw there was beautiful, an unusually cloudy evening, the clouds blotting out the rays of the sun, and everything streaked pastels.
* * *
—
There were, of course, no tissues, which might not have been that big of a deal if we were in normal weather. But we were in Death Valley, where the air was dry and dusty. So Carly showed us how to do snot rockets, by closing one nostril with our finger and blowing out as hard as we could, the snot and boogers shooting out of our noses, falling like a rocket to the desert floor.
There was something I loved in blowing snot rockets, as though I were a little boy, somebody innocent and dumb enough to take pleasure in snot.
The lack of bathrooms was even worse than the lack of tissues. If Carly was a normal person, she would have let us take a roll of toilet paper with us, bury our trash in the sand. But she was hardcore—bring nothing in, take nothing out. And there were no leaves or anything to wipe with either. The rule was: find a rock the size, shape, and texture of your elbow. So we all concluded we’d just hold our shit until we got back to civilization.
On the third day, all that poop started to become uncomfortable, so I decided to suck it up and take a shit. It was embarrassing, because when it really started to hit me, we were in the middle of hiking, which meant everyone knew what I was doing. “Carly,” I said. “I need to find a rock.”
Everyone started laughing, and we looked together as a group to find one. For the first time that trip I was glad Jason wasn’t there, so he couldn’t help find a rock for me to wipe my ass with. The rock selection was meager; the best we could do was a piece of sandstone. We were on a shallow ridge, and I found a small cave to do my business.
It felt so good.
It felt like I was ridding myself of something large and disgusting that had been building up for too long, because I was. The sandstone made my ass hurt, but I didn’t have to wipe much because my shit was as hard as a rock.
When I came back, Christina said, “Did you do it?” and I nodded, and then everyone broke out in cheers. It was like I’d won something. It was like I’d done something incredible.
CIVILIZATION
We had to cut the backcountry trip a night short because we ran out of water. If I’d known that, maybe
I could have held my poop another day.
That fifth night, we stayed in a hostel, dormitory style, on thin mattresses on cold metal bunks. Spartan. But that night, after four nights on the hard ground, those beds felt luxurious, like we were kings. Even better—the shower. I waited to take mine after all the others, long enough so the water would have a chance to get back to hot. I took off my dirty clothes, got in the water as it streamed over me, the rivulets dripping off my body a murky brown, stinging the rough patches on my shoulders and hips where the straps of my backpack had worn them raw, the blisters on my heels and toes. I saw my tanned limbs, the pale white that had been guarded by my shorts and tank top, the white scars on my thighs, the bright red of my still-healing Adderall war wound, and with the miracle of a little bit of soap and a little bit of water, I was clean again.
My hair was a different story. I’d given up on it by the second night, hiding it in a ponytail under the ball cap we were required to wear in the sun. No matter how much conditioner I used, I couldn’t unknot this chunk at the back of my head, fat and long like a dreadlock. I decided to just keep it, a small part of myself still dirty and wild.
After we were clean and settled, we ate in a restaurant, a diner. Almost all of us ordered steak and eggs. It was the single best meal I’d ever eaten.
We went out for one more night of backcountry camping, this time feeling like we knew what we were doing and what to expect. In the morning, we hiked out to the Badwater Basin, the most famous part of Death Valley—the lowest point in North America, almost three hundred feet below sea level. Maybe it was because it was a Tuesday, or maybe we just hit some luck, but the basin was empty; we were seemingly the only living things in it.
There was a wooden plank path, and we walked over it solemnly, like we were on hallowed ground. The parched earth surrounded us, hexagons of dirt and salt, crystallized and almost sparkling in the blinding sunlight. The mountains yawned in the background, high and purple, and you could even see Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the forty-eight states, tip still shrouded in snow—the highest and the lowest visible at once, a metaphor.
We sat there for a while, drinking water and eating our gorp, before deciding we should race on the salt flats. We faced off in pairs, me beating all the girls. I remembered the days when I still cared about sports and was the fastest runner. Finally I had to race Kiran, who had beat Beto. I ran as fast as I could, ahead at first, but then Kiran caught me and I lost, the difference between childhood and adolescence. But it didn’t matter, the sun was shining and my footsteps crunched and left clouds of dust, and I felt magical and wonderful, this sainted existence of my body.
Every day that I could, I sent Jason a postcard, telling him simple things, everything we’d done since the last postcard. The days were full and long—shorter day-hikes, soaking in a hot spring to soothe our sore muscles, a tour of Scotty’s Castle, bonfires, scouting out the few wildflowers. But nothing compared to running across Badwater Basin.
SOLO
The last three days were spent on something we’d all been anticipating the whole trip, hanging unmentioned but always in our minds. The solo trip. Three days by ourselves. We drove out early morning, just after dawn, the sky a benevolent swirl of peach and pale blue, to the Harrisburg Flats. Each of us was given a tarp, some cord, more of the same food, two big jugs of water, a flashlight, our sleeping bag and clothes, and a whistle. We were allowed one book and a notebook.
The whistle was for emergencies only. “No joke,” Carly said. “If you blow on these and there’s not an emergency, that will be the end of the trip for you.”
We weren’t supposed to speak the entire three days. The silence was supposed to let us learn to live with the noise of our minds, then the noise was supposed to fade, and eventually we’d find peace. Three times a day, Carly would come check on us and give us our medicine when we needed it. We were also allowed to fast, for a “more intense spiritual experience,” but Beto was the only person who took her up on it.
We were to find our own place in the basin, the only rule being that we had to be far enough apart so we couldn’t see anyone else. The eight of us formed a circle, and then we were told to face outward holding hands. Christina squeezed mine, and I could feel her nervousness and excitement, could feel mine too, hoping it would work, afraid it would work. Three whole days with only myself, the maniac, the alien, the ghost. Three whole days of just me.
“I want you to close your eyes and think about what you want to accomplish during this time,” Carly told us. “Set your intentions. Whatever you ask for will be given to you, if you have an open mind and an open heart.”
It was the kind of thing I might normally find corny, but after all the time in that desert I was able to hear her. I didn’t know what my intentions were at first and I stood there for a moment, the sun behind my closed eyes a radiating red, my mind blank and empty. But then I figured out what I wanted.
I want to know myself, my true self, whether it is maniac or ghost or something else.
“OK. Now go!”
And we all went with our packs, in eight directions.
Once I could no longer see anybody, I found what looked like a good spot, next to a couple creosote bushes and a dried out riverbed. I strung the rope from bush to bush, hung the tarp over it, making a tent, rolled out my sleeping bag. There. Camp made.
I didn’t know what to do next. I felt like an explorer, wishing I knew edible plants so I could pick them and either poison myself or not. I figured I’d draw for a while.
Solo drawings, April 2000.
The first part of Carly’s promise about what would happen during the solo trip came true quickly—my mind would not shut up. It was like tuning into a radio at first, mostly static—bits of songs, random phrases. Then the voices, my mean self, got into the act, telling me what a piece of shit I was, how hopeless, how pathetic, how useless, how crazy. So finally I imagined all the bad thoughts were a game of Whac-A-Mole, and each time one came up it was my job to beat it back down, counter it with a positive thought. It felt corny, reminding myself I was smart and talented and not hopeless but hopeful.
At first, it felt like it wasn’t working, but then it did. My brain shut up.
Near dark, I felt lonely. I pretended I was a little kid again, stuck a ball of feathery plants onto a short stick and it became a doll. I named it Jenna, the name of my best friend when I was six and we lived in Arizona. Then I thought about what I was doing. I threw the doll in the riverbed.
Carly came after dark. I didn’t know what time it was because I had no clock, but I was guessing it was around nine. She was wearing a headlamp, filled up my water jugs and then gave me my medicine, her face solemn and betraying nothing.
The next day, time started to blur, the only thing to gauge it was the movement of the sun and Carly’s visits. When she came at noon, there was warmth on her face, and excitement, and I felt I could read her thoughts like telepathy.
Her face: How’s it going? Are you feeling it yet?
Mine: Things are getting weird. I don’t know if I like it.
Hers: But isn’t it MAGIC?
And as she left, I thought her face might actually be right.
A wind picked up, and I saw a jackrabbit, its ears big and black. It looked at me, unafraid, both of us silent, both breathing, alive and a part of the world.
I lay on my back as the stars came out, a handful multiplying into thousands. It seemed insane that they were just whirling balls of gas and dust, that in a way, we were the same, chaotic particles of matter that had somehow come together to make something that was similar to but not quite like anything else.
A LETTER FROM THE PAST
On the third day, we were supposed to write a letter to our future selves. Two years from when we left, whatever that date was, Carly would mail us the letter. I imagined the me of two years from now but the picture was fuzzy. I’d legally be an adult. When I was a child, I used to imagine myself at eighteen, looki
ng something like Sandy at the end of Grease, a babe all in black. In my imagining, I was always next to an ice-blue Stingray. I don’t know why that car, that color.
Now that version of an adult me seemed childish, ridiculous. Now I imagined myself mostly the same, just hopefully better at life, calmer, more sane, with longer or maybe shorter hair. I hoped that eighteen-year-old was clear-eyed and sober.
I thought a long time before I began to write. I sat there, cross-legged like a yogi, waiting for divine inspiration. The sun was setting, spreading gold across the basin, long shadows and cool air. I waited for quiet, for peace. It took a long time, but eventually I figured out what to say.
I folded the letter in half, and then I folded it in half again. The wind picked up, pushing against my skin and hair, and I felt pieces of myself loosening to be carried along with it like dust. In that instant, I saw what was to come. The suffering. The grace. In the desert, the dots connected, the dots between me and her. Bowing my head, I gave up my spirit. It was finished.
AFTERWORD
REDWOOD TRAILS SCHOOL CLOSES DOORS (CHARLOTTE ATKINS, THE SISKIYOU TIMES, MARCH 31, 2002)
Redwood Trails School, located in northern Siskiyou County, will close permanently next month due to a mounting array of legal problems, resulting from issues with licensing, regulation violations, prescription drug misuse, and a sexual abuse conviction of a staff member.
The school was termed a “therapeutic boarding school,” and housed ten to twenty teens at any one time, who were being treated for various behavior issues and psychiatric disorders.
Juliet the Maniac Page 22