by Carrie Arcos
“He’s in a bad place,” said Reeves. “He may need to go through some stuff in order to come out the other side. I know it’s hard. It sucks, and it’s difficult for families, but he needs to surrender, you know? To try and stop controlling his life. To learn that there is a higher power and purpose for everything.”
I recognized some of his language from the Twelve Steps of recovery that Micah had been given in rehab. I had memorized the steps from the pamphlet, which now sat in a drawer next to my bed.
“Were you an alcoholic?” I asked. “You said you’ve been clean.”
“I have a sexual addiction. It’s a little different, but it’s basically the same idea when it comes to addiction.”
“You’re kidding, right?” But Reeves looked so serious that I wished I could take back my question.
“It almost ruined his marriage,” Spencer said. “Look, the hardest thing is that, in the end, it’s not really about you. It’s about getting out of the way so Micah can find himself.”
I wanted to smack Spencer and Reeves. They acted as if they knew Micah better than I did after only a couple of months. They had no idea what he had put our family through. They had no idea what he had put me through. My pain was real and had everything to do with me.
“Thank you for explaining my place in the universe so clearly.” I turned and headed for the door.
“Rachel—” Tyler began.
“No.” I didn’t even look back. I stopped Tyler with my hand. “You are not allowed to say anything.” I tried to slam the door behind me, but it was on some hinge, so it closed slowly as the chime rang.
I stood on the sidewalk. In one direction were rows and rows of houses. In the other direction was the roller coaster. I started toward the screaming. I knew I was overreacting to their assessment of Micah, but I had to get out of there.
A few minutes later, Dillon’s car pulled up alongside me.
“Where are you going?” Tyler asked.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him leaning out of the backseat with his arms folded over the side.
I ignored him.
“Come on, Rachel.”
I kept walking.
“Look, you can be mad at me all you want, but I’m not letting you take off by yourself out here. And it’s not gonna help us find him.”
The car door opened and slammed shut, but I kept my gaze ahead. Dillon gunned the car. Tyler suddenly walked alongside me, keeping pace with my steps and silence. Tyler had let me down. I wondered what else he had kept from me.
“Is this a joke to you?”
“What? No. What are you talking about?”
“Taking me around today, seeing my reaction. Setting me up?”
“Rachel, I didn’t know those guys.”
I stopped and faced him. “Why did you even come today?”
Tyler looked angry, like he did down by the pier. “You asked me, remember?”
“You knew Micah was selling and you didn’t tell me. Why?”
He lowered his voice. “I found out a couple of months ago, before he left. He told me he had it handled, that he was stopping. I should have told you, but I didn’t want to worry you any more than you already were. I promised him I wouldn’t say anything. That’s got to count for something, right? I couldn’t rat him out.”
He talks about you all the time, that’s got to count for something, right? I looked at Tyler, confused. Could he have sent the e-mail?
Tyler took out a cigarette, and this time I held out my hand for one. He gave it to me without question or comment.
Sometimes Micah and I shared a smoke on the roof of our house late at night. We’d pass the cigarette back and forth between us like words in a conversation. From a distance it might have looked like a small firefly darting back and forth. I’d always give him the last hit. When he’d finish, he’d flick the butt into our neighbors’ yard, which pissed them off, but we didn’t care. They had a mean little dog that barked like a rooster at the crack of dawn every morning. We considered it payback.
I placed the cigarette between my lips. Tyler leaned in close and lit the tip with his lighter. As I puffed, the embers caught the flame. The smoke tasted good in my mouth.
“Someone’s been keeping secrets.”
“You don’t know everything about me.” I cradled the cigarette between my pointer and middle finger.
“I can see that.” He looked at me seriously, like he was going to ask me something, but he decided against it and remained silent.
We waited at an intersection for the light to turn green. I shifted my backpack to one side and hugged my free arm against my chest. I watched the familiar gray ash begin to form on the end, and I waited until the last possible moment to flick it.
“Here, let me take that,” Tyler said, referring to my backpack. I gave it to him.
“How old were you when you started?” I asked Tyler. Green. We began to walk again.
He didn’t hesitate. “Fifth grade.”
“Fifth grade? Yeah, right.”
“Truth. Mark Carter sneaked a pack from his dad and brought it over. We thought we were the shit, smoking in my room.” He laughed. “We didn’t even know what we were doing. Then we heard the front door opening, which meant my mom was home, so we freaked out and opened the window, turned on the fan, and put the lit cigarettes on the roof. I know, crazy. We could have burned the house down. My mom came in and asked what smelled funny. I told her we’d burnt some popcorn. She told me we didn’t have any popcorn and sent Mark home. That night my dad made me smoke a half a pack while he watched.”
“That sucks.”
“I threw up. He told me that the next time I wanted to smoke, I should remember that moment.”
“Obviously that didn’t work.”
“Nah, I just wasn’t stupid enough to smoke them all at once or inside the house.”
My smoking had increased after Keith and I broke up and then when Micah left. I smoked in my room late at night, by an open window, of course. Though thinking of Tyler’s story, I wondered if my parents knew but didn’t really want to deal with it.
I stopped and placed my hand on Tyler’s chest, blocking him from moving forward.
“Okay. Is that it? I mean, is that everything?”
“What do you mean everything?”
“Everything about Micah. You’re not keeping anything else from me?”
He cocked his head a bit to the side and half smiled. “No more secrets.”
“No more secrets,” I repeated. “Pinky swear.” I lifted my hand.
Tyler didn’t laugh. He crossed his heart and held out his pinky. I took it and we shook. It was a good gesture on both our parts, but I knew that neither of us could promise such a thing. No human being could.
Chapter Fourteen
When Micah entered the six-week rehab program, the people at the facility gave my parents a copy of the Twelve Steps for recovery. Micah was supposed to “work” the steps, which, from what I could tell, meant he was to take an honest assessment of his life.
The steps surprised me. The first one had to do with admitting you were out of control, because of the drugs or whatever addiction you had, and that you couldn’t live life without help. The third step revealed that the help would come by giving your life over to a Higher Power or whatever you thought of as God.
The steps dealt with character, humility, and faith. I had expected them to be more psychobabble and scientific, not some kind of spiritual awakening. I wondered if Micah bought any of it. He had never mentioned a Higher Power or God. I don’t think he was much of a believer in anything except his music.
Step Number Two was about how believing in a Greater Power could restore sanity, which I understood because, really, Micah did become insane. That’s the only way I could reconcile it in my mind. If you thought about it, most people suffered from some type of insanity at some point in their lives. And it was comforting to believe that there was a God or something bigger out there that cou
ld help reel you back in, that could help get you back to normal, whatever that was.
I never talked about it, but one time I actually thought I felt God. It happened the summer I went camping with Michelle and her family in the Sequoias, where there was nothing except miles of huge trees and rivers and waterfalls. We had camped along a river marked by large round boulders. We had two tents at the site, one for her parents and little brother, and the other just for Michelle and me.
The first night we grilled chicken kabobs over the fire and roasted marshmallows and made s’mores. Her parents always went all out, doing everything by the book, as if they had taken Camping 101. They even told us ghost stories around the campfire, something about a car and handprints on a foggy window. I didn’t believe it; I had heard it before, but I gave them an A for effort.
That night, after everyone was asleep in their tents, I heard dragging footsteps outside. I froze in my sleeping bag, thinking it was a bear. I tried to remember what the pamphlet Michelle’s father had picked up at the ranger station said about bears, something about how waving one’s arms and making lots of noise would scare them away. I couldn’t remember anything about what to do if they came to your tent. I stayed very still, trying not to make a sound with my breathing. Michelle snored softly. On the side of the tent, I saw a silhouette in the moonlight. It moved near the fire pit. I was convinced it was a medium-size bear, although it could have been a deer or a raccoon, or even a very large squirrel. The footsteps walked all the way around our tent and away from it. I was too scared to unzip the opening to see for sure and had a rough time sleeping for the rest of the night. As soon as a subtle light crept over the tent, I got out of my sleeping bag and slipped my running shoes over the socks I had slept in.
Cool air met my face when I left the tent. I zipped up my sweatshirt, pulled the hood over my head, and started to jog, following the line of the river. I loved early-morning runs. There was something special about getting up before everyone else, something magical about seeing the world as it opened its eyes. Everything was clean, in focus, and full of possibility.
A couple of boulders pressed together formed a narrow bridge across the river. I leaped across them, my feet barely resting on the smooth, wet stones. On the other side, I veered away from the stream and ventured deeper into the forest. Soon tall trees surrounded me.
I found what looked like a narrow path and chose it. My feet made barely any sound on the forest floor, padded from years of decaying vegetation. I could see some kind of a hill up ahead and decided that would become my goal. Since I wasn’t used to running at such a high elevation, my breathing became loud. I sounded like one of those girls being chased through the woods in a scary movie.
I reached the top of the hill and bent over. My hands fell on my knees and supported the rest of my body. I watched my small bursts of breath rise into the chill of the morning. Looking below, I saw that the path lead into a field of deep green grass. I hadn’t seen terrain like that in the mountains. Intrigued, I walked down the hill.
Trees surrounded the meadow, so it was cool and shaded, much like the rest of the forest. Soft beams of light shone between branches and trunks. I put my hand through one and actually felt heat. A tiny stream of water collected in the spot; where it came from, I didn’t know. I walked as far as I could without getting my shoes wet and then stood still.
Because it was so early, or maybe because I was finally paying attention, my senses seemed heightened. Small blue dragonflies hovered and darted over the grass. Gnats collected by a felled tree, then flew away to another spot as one big swarm.
I closed my eyes and felt as if I were not alone. I opened my eyes and saw only trees and grass and muddy water. But I could still sense a presence, so I closed my eyes for a second time. From somewhere behind me came a light wind. I heard it playing on the leaves, moving slowly. The grass began to stir. The breeze came to me and moved through my hair. Small, invisible hands pressed themselves against my face, careful not to leave a mark, and then I felt it sweep past me, picking up speed. Opening my eyes, I watched the grass sway in front of me. The swarm of gnats trembled and hummed. The trees seemed to open their branches and embrace the wind. They shook. And then all was still again.
I felt as if I were in a holy place, like how I should feel in a cathedral. I didn’t tell Michelle about it when I got back to the campsite. The moment was my private gift.
After that camping trip, I would sense things before they happened. Like the night Michelle rolled Kim’s car. We had been coming home late from a friend’s house and weren’t even going that fast, but the car began to fishtail and Michelle lost control. We hit a bank and flipped three times. I remember it happening in slow motion. For some reason I knew we’d be fine, so I was completely calm as the car skidded to a stop on its roof.
Like the accident, I also knew that Micah had started using again a week after he left the rehab program, although that wasn’t too hard to piece together. I had heard him again, late at night, through the thin wall.
My parents wanted so badly to believe that he was well. The day they picked him up, he walked through the front door, and I could read it in his eyes. He wasn’t ready. Knowing the steps on the list, I don’t think Micah had made it past number one. He hadn’t given up control. He had gone to rehab because he was underage and my parents made him. I didn’t know much about the program except that it was like a very expensive military boot camp. I would hear my parents discussing the cost in low murmurs after dinner. Insurance covered only the treatment of major illnesses and diseases, like the flu or leukemia. I guess they didn’t consider drug addiction major.
I found the Twelve Steps online and printed out my own copy, calling them Micah’s steps. I hid them in my top drawer, the same drawer where I later kept the anonymous e-mail. At night I had a little ritual: I would take the list out, unfold it, spread it before me, and read it before bed. After a while I could recite all twelve by memory. I whispered the words, careful that no one in the house heard me if they passed by the door.
Saying the steps reminded me of how my mom would have me repeat a prayer, one of the only ones she remembered from her childhood, when I was very little. It went like this,
“Now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
It was kind of a morbid prayer, thinking back on it now. Making a kid pray about her death before she slept seemed a bit extreme, but it had the opposite effect. The routine and familiarity comforted me.
Micah’s steps became another prayer that I’d release each night into the universe, to God, to the Higher Power, whatever it was out there that could help me. The steps became my own personal creed, though I never struggled with addiction. I tried to say them as I imagined one would say a “Hail Mary” or an “Our Father,” as if some kind of magic lay in the words themselves. I meditated and longed for that contact with God that the steps spoke of, so that Micah would come back, because really, part of his leaving was my fault anyway. I was the one who had wanted him gone in the first place. I would free the words and picture them floating away from me, drifting to Micah, wherever he was, and keeping him safe.
Chapter Fifteen
It was midafternoon and the boardwalk was beyond crowded with beachgoers. People played volleyball, calling for the ball and yelling when it went out of bounds. The girls on the court all wore bikinis and had lean, muscular bodies. As we passed, a girl threw the ball into the air for a jump serve. She grunted as she hit it, and the ball streaked over the net. Point.
Even though I had gotten over my junior high fear of wearing a bikini, I still was more of a tank or sports-bra type than a string bikini girl. Keith always said that I had nice legs, and I knew it was true because he obsessed over such things. I was athletic, but I didn’t have the guts to play volleyball in a two-piece. Besides, volleyball players were always picking the bottoms
out of their butts, even on national TV during tournaments. It didn’t look comfortable to me.
On our right were triple-story beach homes; to our left, a low brick wall ran alongside the sand of the beach. All kinds of people sat on the wall, talking or watching the ocean. Many smoked cigarettes or drank from paper bags. Posted signs said no alcohol, though I guess that meant no visible alcohol.
Most of the guys who were drinking had the same look to them, shaved heads or short cuts, tatted up, and mainly white. They all seemed to belong to the same tribe, though none of them verbalized it. I wondered if Micah had a shaved head now. They leered as people passed by. I tensed, waiting for some kind of comment that never came. I just heard it in my mind.
When I was younger, I had a route I’d run on the weekends. It went through our neighborhood, past the skate park and the fields, to and through another neighborhood, and back again. One summer, construction teams tore up the fields. I had to run by the workers, and every time I did, I felt embarrassed because I could feel their eyes on me.
The guys on the wall were much the same. I thought about asking some of them about Micah but decided against it. There was an undercurrent to the place that the weather and water and sand could not cover, a pervading ugliness that beauty could not stain. Drugs. Sex. Homelessness. Poverty. Lust. I could touch the emptiness and pain; it was everywhere.
A young man in a button-down white shirt and red tie stood up on the wall and began speaking.
“God knows,” he said. “You may not think He does, but He does. He knows all of your secrets. Your lies. Your thoughts. He knows about the time you stole or when you drank yourself senseless.” Spots of perspiration formed on his brow, and when he raised his arms, yellow patches stained his underarms. “He sees everything. He knows your pain, your suffering. Can’t run from God. Where you gonna go?” He asked those walking by and a few who had stopped to listen, though I felt as if he were talking to me. Did he know something I didn’t?