Out of Reach

by Carrie Arcos

  “If that’s where you think he’ll be. We should check it out.”

  “I think you should be prepared.” Tyler faced the ocean, and I had to lean in close to hear him over the sound of the waves.

  “For what?” I followed his gaze out to the horizon and watched a wave form far offshore, and swell higher and higher, finally crashing into white foam.

  “It’s been a while. I don’t know what shape he’ll be in.” Tyler squatted close to the sand. He took off his hat and shoved it into his back pocket. “Have you been around a lot of junkies?”

  That wasn’t the first time I had heard the term in regard to my brother. The first time was when my dad had caught him with a joint. My dad yelled at Micah, asking if he wanted to end up as some loser junkie. I’ve always wondered if Dad ever thought back to that moment and wished he could take the words away. Words stick, even when we don’t want them to.

  “No, have you?” I pictured the gaunt face of the meth addicts on the website I had found.

  “He may not look or act like Micah anymore, is all. You need to prepare yourself.”

  What planet did Tyler think I lived on? Micah hadn’t looked or acted like himself for months. There were times I’d thought an alien had entered his body and his mind was under siege, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something. I half expected to go into his room and find a pod or shed skin wadded up in the corner of his closet. What else could explain his silence? Screaming, “I hate you!” I could deal with, but indifference dug a crater between us and swallowed everything we once had.

  Tyler turned toward me. “Let me do the talking. Keep your mouth shut unless I ask you to say something.”

  I looked at him like he was crazy.

  “I don’t mean to be harsh, but I’m serious.” He gave me a look like I was a little kid who needed scolding. “You can’t trust these people.”

  He said “these people” again, and it hurt to think that Micah was now included in a group I wasn’t part of—that I wanted no part of.

  I didn’t protest. Tyler spoke as one in authority. As a general rule, I tended to submit to authority, at least outwardly. And it did feel good to have someone else taking charge. “Okay. You’re in charge.”

  * * *

  We left the shore and walked toward the tall pier. Most of the piers I’d been to were sturdy and wide enough for a car to drive down. This one looked frail, as if at any moment a large wave could come and smash it into the ocean. Out at the end stood a solitary white building with a blue CAFÉ sign.

  I wanted to suggest we walk the pier, maybe Micah would be with the guys who were fishing, but Tyler headed under the pier, to the cement boardwalk by the parking lot.

  We arrived at an old, dilapidated building. It looked like it had once been apartments, but now sagged empty, tagged in meaningless black scribbles. Two teenage guys sat in front of a thin, shirtless man like apprentices before a great bearded sage. One of the boys handed the man a cigarette. He took it and exhaled smoke that rose like incense above them.

  Nearby, a woman with a large, professional-looking camera pointed a long lens at a small band of surfers. She wore a string bikini top and cut-off jean shorts that barely covered her behind. Her deep cocoa skin, probably the result of hours of sunbathing, sparkled in the partial light. She nodded in our direction when we passed, but drew her attention back to the water as one of the surfers caught a wave.

  I watched. In one fluid motion he was up on the board. He kept the top of his body low, almost hunched over, as he followed the curl of the wave. Spray trailed from his hand in the water. His feet moved quickly up and down the board.

  Click click, click click, the woman’s camera fired.

  I imagined Micah on the board, but I knew it wasn’t him. He talked a good game, but he had never been that good.

  “You coming?” Tyler called from down a few steps on the path that led to a group of rocks.

  Crossing the rocks proved more arduous than I expected. The water sprayed us as it came in with the tide. My foot slipped once, but Tyler caught my arm before I fell. He helped me the whole way across, and didn’t let go until we reached the sand on the other side.

  Right away, it felt different. There were no sunbathers or families, no volleyball games or flying kites. There was also no sand. Large, flat boulders with tide pools in between them separated the land from the water. If it were another day, I’d probably have wanted to explore and collect shells or something. Today I jumped over the pools without giving them a second glance.

  Above, gray concrete buildings perched at the edge of a tall cliff and looked like one large jolt would send them tumbling into the sea. I stepped around a big lump of brown seaweed that sprawled on the rock as if it had crawled out of the ocean and died. Thousands of tiny gnats buzzed around it.

  We approached a small group of kids who looked our age, huddling in a close circle in the sand. They were smoking pot.

  “Hey,” Tyler said.

  A girl with long black dreadlocks and a bloodred hoodie smiled at Tyler and offered him a hit.

  “Come on,” Tyler said to me, and we walked around them.

  “Don’t you want to ask them?”

  “They’re too high. Waste of time.”

  Up ahead, a blue sleeping bag pushed itself against the base of the cliff. It moved a bit, and I thought I heard a moan. Through the opening at the top, I could see brown hair—Micah had brown hair. I had to check. Carefully, I walked across the rock, but the person’s back was to me, so I had to bend down to get near.

  “What are you doing?” Tyler called.

  The guy rolled over. It wasn’t Micah. He opened his mouth and two big holes stared at me where his front teeth should have been. His hand reached out to swat my leg.

  “Get out of here! Ain’t no show. Ain’t no show unless someone’s paying.”

  I backed away and almost slipped on the wet rock. Tyler caught me.

  “Wait, don’t go. I just need a little. Not much, just need some change, maybe a dollar or two. Pretty girl like you’d understand that.”

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” I stammered.

  The man struggled to sit up. The sleeping bag slouched to his waist, revealing his naked chest, gray like old meat. “Come on, man. You wake me up. You gotta pay.”

  “Let’s go,” Tyler whispered.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you—” I said again.

  “You gotta pay! You bitch!”

  Tyler pulled me away while the man kept yelling, “You gotta pay!”

  “I told you it’s dangerous here.” Tyler’s voice was sharp. He led me back to the water’s edge. Spray splashed over the rocks as the tide came in. “He could have had a knife or something.”

  I tried to pull away from him. “I’m not a baby, you know.”

  “Then don’t act like one.” He released my arm.

  “I’m probably going to bruise.” I rubbed the spot where he had held me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but his eyes still looked angry.

  What’s his deal?

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced up the beach. “See that guy up ahead? He’s a dealer. I want to talk with him. You ready to behave?”

  Tyler spoke to me with that older-brother tone again, but I detected softness behind it, so I backed down.

  “How do you know he’s a dealer?”

  “He just is.”

  I started to wonder how Tyler knew so much about this crowd. “You think he knows Micah?”

  “Maybe.”

  We walked over to the man. He wore only board shorts; his muscular arms and chest were tan. A few tattoos covered his shoulders—one of a cougar, the other the face of a woman. He didn’t look like a dealer to me, though I only knew what movies and TV had shown me: guys with goatees or mustaches wearing dark leather jackets who hung out in alleys and strip clubs, or stepped up to cars that then rolled down their windows. I didn’t expect one to b
e out in the full daylight working on his tan.

  “What can I do you for?” the man asked when we were in speaking distance. He flicked the last of his cigarette out onto a wet rock. The tiny embers continued to burn.

  “Not buying today,” Tyler said.

  “That’s what everyone says.” He took off his sunglasses and looked directly at me. “How about you?”

  I shook my head. He was older than us by only a little, though his eyes said he was ancient.

  “Well then, I suggest you keep walking. I am a businessman.” He put his glasses back on and turned his face toward the sea.

  “Want to know if you’ve seen someone.” Tyler held out his hand for the picture of Micah, and I gave it to him.

  The guy ignored the photograph. Tyler reached into his pocket and pulled out a bill; I couldn’t tell how much, but I knew it was more than a dollar. He gave it to the guy.

  “Nice picture.” His fingers touched the edges of Micah’s face, covering me in the seat next to Micah. He handed it back to Tyler. “I’ve seen him around.”

  “You know where we can find him?” I asked.

  Tyler shot me a look, but I didn’t care.

  “Did I say I was his personal babysitter?”

  “We just want to know if he’s okay.” I felt my voice crack a little. I tried to make my face look concerned but tough.

  The dealer looked at me for a few moments before he spoke. “What’s he on?”

  “Meth.” I figured the truth was the best at this point.

  He said, almost reluctantly, “I’ve seen him with a guitar, playing for money.”

  “Where?” I started to hope for a lead.

  But he decided to give us a little lecture instead. “Everyone always thinks they can handle it, but they can’t. Meth addicts are the worst. Start getting paranoid; losing their mind and shit, their teeth fall out.”

  He reached for a small tube of sunscreen that lay next to him and smeared it across his chest. For a guy who sold drugs for a living, I was surprised at how concerned he was about his body.

  Tyler handed the picture back to me. I took the bottom of my hoodie and cleaned the fingerprints from the faces.

  “Do you know where he is?” I asked again.

  “Let me give you some advice: forget about him.” He lay back on the concrete and folded his arms underneath his head. “Go back the way you came. Give it another half hour,” he said, jutting his chin toward the sky. “It’s gonna be a beautiful day.”

  Chapter Six

  Something like 80 percent of teenagers try some kind of drugs or alcohol before they leave high school. How the government came up with that statistic, I don’t know. Maybe there were narcs or secret agents with clipboards at parties monitoring the exits, checking to see how many students were high when they left. Or maybe they got their information through random high school surveys, like the ones we had to take in health class sophomore year. The surveys that teachers tell you are “confidential” and “optional,” but they make you take anyway. I remember filling that one out. My answers had all been no.

  I had never tried drugs, not even marijuana. Not because of the lame celebrity antidrug marketing campaigns or the school’s attempt at educating me, it was because I didn’t like the feeling of being out of control. I drank a beer here and there at a party, but never more than one. People did stupid things when they were drunk. They said things they didn’t really want to say and did things they didn’t really want to do. They were annoying. I knew, because I was one of the only ones who wasn’t drunk or high.

  Jenn got herself date-raped at some guy’s house last year when she was plastered. She didn’t even know about it until the next day when she found some blood in her panties. I heard she cried about it because she had been saving herself for some football player.

  After this one party, Keith and I had to give this guy who was too drunk a ride home. Less than five minutes in the back seat of Keith’s blue Ford, and he announced that he had to throw up. Keith yelled at him to stick his head out the window. He did, but some of the vomit got inside the car. The next morning there was a streak of dried mustard-colored puke down both sides of the window. Even though I had helped Keith clean it with super strong, Pine-Sol–smelling stuff, every time I rode in his car I could still smell it.

  If I had wanted to smoke pot, I knew exactly where to go. The potheads kind of stuck together in school, like every other high school group. They were mostly harmless. Pacifists. I didn’t pay much attention to where the hard druggies hung out. But Micah knew. Somehow he knew.

  I thought maybe I could keep my eyes open, watch him, see what shady people he hung out with. I never caught anything going down at school, but he didn’t seem to have a problem finding the drugs.

  Micah didn’t know it, but I’d sneak into his room when he wasn’t home. It wasn’t hard to guess where he kept his stash. His Cali Girl guitar case always leaned against the wall in the same position, as if it lined up with some invisible mark on the wall. I would sit on his bed with the lights off and stare at the case.

  Sometimes I’d open it and run my hands across the faded pink lining. I’d reach inside the compartment where he kept extra strings. Underneath spare picks, I could see the dirty white powdered crystals through the plastic wrap.

  It was my way of keeping tabs on him. I always knew how much or how little he had been using by what I found in his case. It became an obsession of mine, though I made sure to put everything back exactly how I found it.

  From what I could tell, Micah most likely snorted the crystals, which was probably why he had a chronic stuffy nose. Then he started smoking it.

  Movies liked to hype smoking meth. There always seemed to be the gratuitous shot of the camera panning the drug lord’s lair; his women sprawled on leather couches and shaggy rugs. The camera would then stop on someone taking a hit, where thick white smoke would creep out of her mouth and rise into the air like an angel.

  I talked to Michelle about Micah, though she was better at commentary than listening.

  “I bet something in Micah is predisposed to being an addict,” she told me one day. “You know, kind of like the stuff we’re learning in AP bio.”

  Interesting theory. Supposedly, certain illnesses run in families, like cancer, diabetes, even obesity. I wondered how disease started. What was the impetus? I mean, were cavemen sitting around discussing predisposed genetic disorders, like who was more prone to getting eaten by mammoths or by pterodactyls?

  Disease, or the potential for disease, could be hereditary, so I decided to do a family tree of illnesses. I compiled a list.

  My parents were both in good health. Since they were still in their forties, it was probably too early to detect anything, although I could tell by my dad’s increasing waistline that he could have trouble with his weight in the future. My mom complained of occasional migraines, probably more due to stress than genes.

  My paternal grandparents were both dead. My grandmother had died of lymphoid cancer. She felt sick for a while but didn’t want to go to the doctor. By the time she did, the cancer had spread throughout her entire body. She died a month after her diagnosis.

  My grandfather died three years later, after his third heart attack. He had been an alcoholic since he was eighteen years old, so his liver was also pretty shot.

  I made a note on my list: the first signs of abusive behavior exhibited themselves with him.

  On my maternal side, both of my grandparents were still alive. My grandmother was in good health; however, she suffered from heart disease. She had a heart attack last year, but from what I have overheard from Mom’s phone conversations, it sounded like she was doing well. My grandfather was healthy too, at least as far as I knew. His problem was being in a constant bad mood. He carried anger like a trophy. Most of us just laughed it off when the tension in the room started to thicken, but every now and then he’d whack you with it hard.

  I made a couple more notes: anger, heart dis
ease.

  My mom had two brothers. One found out last year he had some kind of cancer. My other uncle was also an alcoholic. Currently, he was ten years sober.

  More notes: cancer, alcoholism.

  My dad had one sister who was on her fourth husband. The first two were supposedly abusive. Why she didn’t stop after the first one, I don’t know; maybe she felt she deserved it. Recently, a doctor had diagnosed her as clinically depressed and put her on medication.

  Added to the chart: divorce, depression.

  I didn’t know much about the greats, except that one was an alcoholic, one was mentally ill, and one suffered from depression and anger. Lots of people in the extended family had some form of cancer. One cousin had a gambling problem and lost all of his family’s savings. I had a second cousin who lived in Chicago and had that disease where you can’t go outside, ever. Plenty of people were divorced and remarried.

  After taking a brief inventory, I realized that I was doomed to inherit some negative trait, and I could see an emerging pattern of addiction.

  Maybe scientists would find that addiction had a gene. It wasn’t so far-fetched, and really, every human being could be a carrier. It seemed like most behaviors were already tied to one’s DNA. There was the obesity gene, the depression gene, the antisocial gene, the greedy gene, the drug-addict gene, the “Oops, I didn’t mean to kill my parents” gene, the child-molester gene, and so on.

  We did this basic lesson in AP bio on heredity and eye color. Our teacher had us make out these charts with two parents’ eye color, then we’d have to figure out the chances of the offspring having blue, brown, or hazel eyes. Brown was always dominant and blue was a recessive gene. Imagine if our teacher had us draw out a grid with all of our family’s generational baggage? Who knew what was lurking in a person’s DNA? Clearly, having children could be more hazardous than I had thought.

  I watched this show once with a famous doctor who talked about addictions and how they were really diseases. He argued for the hereditary nature of addictions, which in my case meant that I should stay away from alcohol and drugs and gambling and food and sadness and stress.