Out of Reach

by Carrie Arcos

  Anyway, what I didn’t like about the show was that he seemed to think an addict didn’t have a choice in the matter. He said the addict suffered from a disease and should be treated like someone who needed to be in a hospital. He was speaking against the justice system in particular, and how so many addicts were locked up and treated as criminals, instead of the sick individuals they were. He advocated for better treatment programs.

  Part of me grew angry as I watched the show. I could understand that once someone became a full-blown addict, overcome by their drug of choice, it had become a disease. Their brain chemistry even changed in some cases, like with meth users. They needed help. But calling it a disease or saying that addiction was based on predispositions or hereditary seemed to negate the personal choices it took for someone to become an addict.

  To become addicted to something meant you had to choose that drug or that drink. Not just once, but many, many times. A person didn’t become an addict after taking one hit, or every human being would be an addict of something.

  Micah chose to do drugs even though he knew they were bad for him. He chose them over his friends. He chose them over his family. He chose them over his future. Not in just one moment, but in many moments. Every time he used, he chose death.

  All of us are going to die. Jessica Slater, a girl from my history class, died last year in her sleep from a brain aneurysm. It could happen, anytime. But watching Micah slowly kill himself was too much. I hated it, and I hated how it made me start to hate him.

  Why had he decided to take that path? Was it because of the family history that lurked within both of us? Possibly. Was I destined to make the same choices? Maybe.

  My dad had screamed at him one night, “Why? Why are you doing this to yourself? How can you do this to your mother? Don’t you care about anything?”

  Micah shut the door in my dad’s face. Dad looked like he was about to tear it down, but he stopped himself, placed both hands on the door frame, and leaned his forehead against the door. He whispered something I couldn’t hear. Then he pushed himself off and walked down the hallway toward his room and closed the door.

  I remember watching the scene with my bedroom door cracked open and seeing the hallway between the two of them widen and expand, becoming a large chasm I was beginning to doubt could ever be crossed.

  Chapter Seven

  I told you not to talk,” Tyler said.

  “He said he’d seen him around.” I tried not to slip again on the wet rocks.

  Tyler turned and faced me, right as the surf hit and sprayed, almost getting us. “The guy didn’t know shit. He was just screwing with you.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.” My eyes started to moisten, and I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. “I’m fine.” I matched his gaze. “We’re fine.”

  “It’s not fine! If anything happened to you . . .” He glared at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. “What would I do? Tell your parents they’ve lost another kid?” He started moving again.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, following behind him. Tyler was right. I should have let him handle it. Who knew what that dealer could have done to me?

  “Whatever.”

  Tyler stopped, and I almost ran into him. He took out another cigarette, lit it, and closed his eyes while he inhaled. “Let’s go up there.” He started climbing the steps that led to the pier.

  The pier was wider than I had first thought and very sturdy. Out a little ways, it felt as if we were walking on the water. I could hear the waves breaking below. Their white foam peeked out at me from the spaces between the boards. About halfway down, Tyler stopped and leaned over the side of the rail that faced the surfers. I joined him and we both watched.

  Three guys with black wetsuits sat equidistant from each other, their hands on their hips, still as a painting. They all looked in the same direction, toward a small ripple forming in the distance. Heading quickly from the shore, a fourth guy paddled toward them. As if there was some kind of understood respect, he stopped the same distance apart from the others and mirrored their stance on his board.

  As the ripple grew and neared, one surfer came to life and began paddling toward the now expanding wave. No one challenged him; he would get there first. He got up on the wave in one motion, and twisted and turned with the water, riding it in. The other surfers watched him, but dropped their gaze before he finished, watching the horizon for the next ripple.

  Micah had learned to surf when he was in junior high. During the summers, my parents lugged us to the beach every Saturday. Micah always begged for a better surfboard, and I secretly wished for thinner hips. I was in my shorts-over-the-bathing-suit stage, a little self-conscious about my body. It wasn’t my fault that I had hit puberty early and had stupid Brad Billings snapping my bra strap during social studies.

  While I anchored myself to a blanket, Micah surfed. He stayed in the water from the time we arrived until it was time to go. At first he wasn’t any good. But he learned by watching the other surfers, and by eighth grade he could hold his own. When he could drive, I would tag along and lie out and read while he and his friends hit the waves. I didn’t mind wiggling out of my shorts by then.

  “Did Micah ever tell you the Boogie Board story?” I asked.

  “No,” Tyler said.

  “It was when he was in eighth grade. He was out in the water on his board, like these guys.” I motioned to the surfers below. “He’s sitting there all cool—well, trying to be, because there were older kids around. My mom comes paddling out on her Boogie Board. Her hair’s all wet and messed up. She’s got raccoon eyes from her mascara running. There’s a wave approaching, and my mom says to him, ‘Come on, we can catch this one together.’ ”

  I laughed, picturing the scene. “Micah totally ignored her. And my mom pretended like she made a mistake. She said, ‘Oops, sorry. You looked like someone I know. My mistake,’ and she paddled away. She overheard the guys saying, ‘Dude, was that your mom?’ Micah told them he didn’t know who she was, and they all laughed.”

  “Sounds like Micah,” Tyler said, chuckling.

  “I think Micah felt bad about it, because he always put his arm around her when she told the story.”

  “Micah liked to look cool.” Tyler pushed himself off the pier’s railing.

  “He did.” I realized we were talking about Micah in the past tense again. It scared me.

  We walked to the café at the end of the pier. A CLOSED sign hung on the front door. Next to the restaurant was a small bait-and-tackle shop, also closed, with different sizes of fishing poles hanging in the window. I wondered if they had any of that fluorescent-colored bait my dad had gotten us while fishing in Mammoth one year on vacation.

  Dad had bought fishing licenses and poles for the whole family so we could fish on the huge lake. Micah caught two trout, the rest of us nothing. At one point I thought I had something, and Micah came over to help me pull in the line, but we ended up with an empty hook, a tiny bit of fluorescent orange still hanging from the tip. Though I was bored most of the time, I liked throwing the line and sitting there in the quiet, waiting. The lake was ice cold, still, and dark.

  “Micah never let us cuss around you, you know,” Tyler said.

  “Is that why he’d get all weird when I’d walk in on you guys during a practice?”

  “Yeah. He’d say, ‘Guys, not in front of my sister.’ Like he was all protective of you.”

  “Like I’ve never cussed before.” The truth was, I went through a cussing phase when I was a freshman. I spent the first two weeks of school adding “shit” and “asshole” and the occasional f-bomb to my vocab to establish my new identity. Micah frowned and told me to knock it off. I felt kind of cool at first, like I was playing a part, but it got tiring trying to be someone else. I guess that’s why I stopped.

  “I think he wanted to keep you safe. Like he knew you were special or something.”

  “It’s impossible to keep someone safe.”

&nb
sp; Tyler and I reached the end, where a couple of older men were fishing. They sat in weathered beach chairs, the yellow nylon straps fraying at the ends. Their poles rested against the pier rail beside old five-gallon paint buckets. I looked inside one and saw the day’s catch: two small gray fish.

  A few paces ahead, another man started to clean a fish. Like an experienced surgeon, he spread out his knives on a newspaper. After choosing one, he stuck the knife in the fish and ripped through its belly in one cut. He reached inside, pulled the guts out, and deposited them on the paper. He dumped the gutted fish into the bucket to rinse it off. Before he began scaling it, he picked up a white towel, wiped the knife clean, then tossed the towel next to the fish’s insides. I stared at the blood and guts, at the crumpled towel, and the awful stench of fish and rust and sweat turned my stomach. I felt sick.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded yes but wobbled toward the wooden railing. “I just need to clear my head a bit.” I swallowed the bile that rose from my stomach.

  Stop being such a wimp, I told myself. It was a fish.

  But seeing and smelling the blood reminded me of when Keith and I were hanging out at CJ’s house a couple of months ago. It was a spontaneous get-together because CJ’s dad had restocked the garage fridge with beer and was away for the weekend. Parents were clueless sometimes. There were a handful of us, mainly the guys from the basketball team and their girls. Music played in one room, and a TV blasted ESPN in the den, where Keith and Josh were debating something about college teams and who would come out on top.

  I couldn’t have cared less. I opened the sliding glass door to the backyard to get some space.

  Outside, the yellow pool lights set an eerie glow, so that’s probably why I didn’t see Charis, the point guard’s on-and-off-again girl, in the lounge chair until I practically sat on her.

  “Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was here,” I said. I knew who Charis was, of course, because she and I had been in the same math class all year.

  “Oh!” She appeared startled. She sat up and began smoothing her brown hair so it fell over her shoulder in one long tail.

  “Just getting some air. Cool pool,” I said, not really sure how to engage in small talk. We had barely spoken a full sentence to each other. I sat toward the front of the class and she sat near the back.

  “Yeah. It’s new, I think.” She slurred her words a bit and didn’t look me directly in the eyes. A beer can lay on its side on the ground next to her.

  “Looks it.” An awkward silence followed. I became irritated because I really just wanted some time alone. “Well. Enjoy.” I turned back toward the house.

  “Rachel?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.” She turned in the chair and placed her bare feet on the patio so that they faced my direction like a compass. “It’s killing me, you know? I thought I could handle it, but I don’t want to be this person.” She moved her hair from one side to the other in a fluid sweep. “And seeing you in class every day—I thought it would be easier, but it’s not.”

  Instinctively, I folded my arms across my chest, bracing myself for whatever she was planning to dump on me. I didn’t want to know what she was talking about, but I asked, “What’s going on?”

  “We didn’t do anything, really. Only made out and stuff. Just a couple of times. I had just broken up with Brian, and Keith said that you guys were going through something. But then I saw you together.” She started to cry a bit. “I’m such a jerk. I didn’t know, really. I thought he meant you guys had broken up. I’m so sorry.”

  I stared at the sky to avoid her eyes asking forgiveness. All I could see was black, as if the stars had gone into hiding.

  “Are you going to say anything?” she asked.

  It must feel good, I thought, to dump your secrets. Quite cathartic, really. I held my breath and exhaled very slowly. I wouldn’t give her absolution. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought only God could do that. “See you in class.”

  I was surprisingly calm as I walked back into the house. Keith sat next to Josh, watching the TV. They high-fived each other to something on the screen.

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  “What?” Keith asked. “Where you going?”

  I shrugged. “Charis is outside. I think you guys know each other.”

  He stumbled to get up from his seat. He had been drinking, so he wasn’t his usual smooth self. He looked at me like he was a scolded puppy complete with an expertly placed lopsided grin. Even drunk, he was good at manipulating people.

  “Come on, baby. Don’t leave. Let’s talk.”

  I didn’t want a public scene, so I headed for the front door. Then I realized we had taken Keith’s car to CJ’s. It would take me about a half an hour to walk home.

  On the sidewalk, I thought about how stupid I was. How I was “that girl.” The one whose boyfriend kept cheating on her. Pathetic, sorry-ass girl. Everyone probably knew. What a joke.

  Keith called to me from the front door of the house, “Rachel. Where are you going?”

  “Home.” My legs felt tired already. Could I even walk half an hour?

  He started down the steps, but slipped, his legs crumbling beneath him.

  “Shit!”

  I rushed to his fallen body, which was sprawled on the lawn.

  “Shit,” he said again, and turned his face up to me.

  “Oh my God, Keith.” Even though I was pissed, I was still compassionate. I bent to touch his face. Blood flowed from a large gash on the side of his head. He must have hit it on the corner of the stone steps. It scared me. All that blood.

  “Don’t leave,” he mumbled.

  “Shh,” I said. “Let’s get you inside.” I bent down and, using my shoulder for leverage, helped him to his feet. Blood trickled down the side of his face.

  Back inside, Josh and CJ helped me get Keith to the couch. CJ got a wet cloth and I held it to Keith’s head. The others started to crowd around, but CJ made them back off.

  “He didn’t black out, did he?” CJ asked me.

  I shook my head.

  “Hey, man.” CJ held two fingers in front of Keith’s face. “How many fingers do I have?”

  Keith tried to swat them away.

  “He’ll be fine,” Josh said, after looking at the wound. “Head bleeds a lot.” He revealed a faint scar on his temple. “I ran into a doorknob as a kid. It looks worse than it is.”

  By the time I went to the bathroom to clean myself up, I looked like someone in a horror movie. Keith’s blood had dried on my hands, the side of my face, and my shoulder. I was overwhelmed by this sweet, rusty-nail smell. I reached the toilet just in time to throw up.

  * * *

  “He’s going to be all right,” Tyler said, bringing me back to the pier and the reason we were here.

  Tyler misinterpreted my silence, but I wasn’t about to bring him into my personal business. As far as I was concerned, Keith was stuffed into the file in my head labeled Do Not Disturb. Maybe someday I’d be forced to open it up in future therapy sessions, but not today, not when I needed to be strong.

  All of a sudden, the pier didn’t feel very safe. If I wanted to, I could slip through the space between the rails and fall into the ocean, where I’d be swept away. Instead, I leaned on them and looked out to the sea. Tyler stood next to me, engrossed in his own thoughts.

  The ocean gave the illusion of ending in a single line at the horizon, though I knew it continued beyond and beyond. The clouds didn’t hang so low anymore, and sunlight hit the water, making diamond sparkles on the riffs and current.

  “We’ll find him,” Tyler said.

  I wasn’t listening. The ocean moved thick like blood.

  “Yeah, we’ll find him.”

  Chapter Eight

  Keith hadn’t always been an asshole. He used to leave my favorite flowers, blue irises, on my doorstep late at night. Micah would roll his eyes and laugh at how “whipped” he was, but I d
idn’t care. Keith pursued me, and even though the current version of the story told it the other way around, I knew the truth.

  Keith asked me out sophomore year after a soccer game. We had stood just a little to the left of the concession stand. I was holding a Coke, and he had a hot dog with a thin line of mustard down the middle. He gave me that smile of his, which made me feel like I was being seen for the first time. I didn’t even think about it. This was Keith Brandon. His physical attributes were already a given: white smile, brown eyes, deep voice, and great abs. Keith was athletic, and anyone could see those abs in the parking lot after school. He’d always pull off his workout shirt and throw on the one he had worn earlier in the day before climbing into his car and driving away. I would come to find that he was also kind and funny, though maybe that was an act.

  We were way casual at first. Talking on the phone. Eating lunch together on the quad. Walking to class. I couldn’t go out on school nights, but we saw each other on weekends. We became one of those envied entities: a couple.

  Micah didn’t like Keith, but I didn’t like every girl he dated either. He thought Keith was arrogant and acted as if he was better than he really was. Maybe Keith was cocky sometimes with the guys, but he wasn’t with me. He was a perfect boyfriend: he held the door, waited for me after class, texted me when he’d be late, walked with his arm over my shoulder in that kind of possessive, but secure way.

  I hadn’t planned to sleep with Keith—it just sort of happened. He wasn’t a jerk about it; the only comment he ever made was something about being on second base for a long time. He told me he liked dating a good girl. When he kissed me, it made me feel wanted and beautiful and hungry for more.

  After we’d been together for a year, everyone assumed we had sex. I noticed that Keith never really corrected anyone on the matter. I think I got tired of all the pressure, and I just wanted to get it over with. I was going to have a first at some point, and I cared about Keith, so what was I waiting for? I knew it wouldn’t be like the movies with music swelling in the background.