by Cyndy Etler
Now Sandy’s steering me to the end of the long line and pushing me into the back of the girl in front of me. I mean it, she shoves me into the poor chick. My nose cuts through her perm like a shark fin slicing water; her butt is flattening my pubes. Sandy’s fist is all steel, so I’m locked into place. Then Sandy kicks my feet in, first one, then the other, so they’re perfectly lined up with the pube-crusher’s sneakers. Her shoes and mine are like those wooden toy trains, the ones with magnets on the ends that link one train to the next.
Sandy wedges herself up tight in line behind me, and I feel my butt pillow against her. It’s gross. She spreads and re-curls her fingers against the skin of my back.
A teen drill sergeant goose-steps along the line bawling out, “Heel to toe. Heel to toe.”
When she gets close to us, Sandy pulls my jeans up even tighter; she jams her tits in my back. I’m starting to turn around, to give her a What the fuck? look, when fingers force my head straight.
“Heel to toe.”
We all stand there, teetering shoe to shoe. The girls’ line makes a ninety-degree turn when it reaches the wall; I’m in the back section, so I can see how long, straight, and not normal this is. We’re a centipede of teenagers, one latched onto the next.
We’ve been standing here an hour, I bet, when the whole line goes still. There’s no more coughing, no shifting. Finally, the marching Nazi stops and stands at the front of the line.
This grown lady shows up out of nowhere. She’s doesn’t like us; you can tell by her dead-worm mouth. As she click-clicks her way down the line, I drill my eyes into the permy skull in front of me. I’m terrified, though I don’t know exactly of what.
“Goodnight, group!” the lady calls at her final click.
“Goodnight!” the hundreds of mouths yell back.
And the line breaks apart. Just like that, all that work, gone. Chains of twos and threes—of heads, arms, and asses—splinter off the line and start walking toward the door.
The door!
God, I want to breathe night air, inhale a cigarette. A cigarette! Without even realizing it, I semi-try to run—but I’m attached to a human leash. A person has a lot of control when her thumb is through your belt loop. I’m dragged to the right and then stopped, so other human tricycles can leave before us. She’ll teach me to try to go first! That’s totally what this is: a lesson. We wait, and wait, and wait. Finally, when everyone else is gone, I’m steered through the door, down a dark hallway, and out into fresh air. Which would be way more heavenly if I didn’t have to share it with Sandy.
We’re in a parking lot. There are stars overhead. And maybe God, too, somewhere. There are dinosaur-sized cars, and no one’s talking. The only sound is the skidding of pebbles as we kick them across the pavement. Then there’s the ding-ding-ding of car doors opening, but no loud sbap! of doors slamming, after. We are a dark, quiet secret. But at least I can smell the night air. The fucked-up thing is, we’re pretty much in public. There are cars driving past us on the street, and if they looked hard enough, the people in those cars could see this girl’s hand on my butt.
I take my eyes off the stars, drop them to my toes. Is my mother still at Shirley’s house, a mile and a half away? Where’s Joanna right now? What’s Dawn doing? They’re somewhere, right? Doing something. Normal life.
An old-looking kid, his hands in the backs of two other guys’ pants, comes up next to us. His eyes are laser-locked on Sandy, like he’s refusing to notice I’m here. Freeeeak shoooow.
“Hey, Sand,” he goes.
He’s gotta be her brother, ’cause they look pretty much like twins. I studied Sandy as she walked toward me inside. She has a round face, blond hair, and cream-colored teeth. Her eyes are small, and there’s live acne on her chin. Her brother, who’s as lumpy round as she is, has big, fresh zits too. They look like potatoes, Sandy and her brother. These are drug addicts?
Finally, Sandy speaks to me. “You’re very lucky. You’re my only newcomer tonight.” She’s pushing me across the parking lot toward a maroon minivan. “Dad, this is Cyndy. She just had her intake today.”
“Oh!” the dad says from his generic face. But he’s smiling at me. “Glad you’re with us, Cyndy!”
Are his spread-eagle arms a cue for me to hug him? Do I have to? Sandy decides for me, plowing me right into him. And actually, the hug feels friggin’ good. Actually, I could stay right here. Maybe forever. But um, do you know what I did wrong, Sandy’s dad? And how have you forgiven me for it?
“Okay guys, pile into the back of the van,” the brother says from behind me.
Sandy pulls me back from the hug, and I watch as the two guys get pushed into the van. Then the brother leans toward the front passenger seat.
“Mom,” he says, “can you sit back here, between Sandy’s newcomer and me?”
The front passenger door opens, and out steps Mrs. Potato Head. She looks right through my layers of eyeliner and fear.
“Of course I will, honey. Can’t have you sitting next to the boys, now, can we Cyndy?”
Oh my God, she’s the anti-Azores. She’s so not the mom who lets you smoke inside. Or outside. Or anywhere. My cigarette fantasy goes AWOL.
• • •
The UFO light over the backseat is on. Everyone but me is deep into writing in notebooks. God only knows what they could have to say after being locked in a room for the world’s longest Wednesday. But they’re all into it.
I look out the window as we approach, then slip under, green highway signs. When we pass a blue one that says, “Thank you for visiting Virginia!” and right after it a white one that says, “Welcome to Maryland,” I’m suddenly talking.
“Where’re we going?”
Sandy’s moon face rises from her legal pad.
“To my house, your new host home. In Delaware.”
Sandy’s mom turns to study me, and my heart does a stutter step. She doesn’t say anything out loud, but in her eyes I can read those words: “…a three-day evaluation.” For the first time in my life, I close my mouth and look down.
After a while, Sandy’s pen makes that quick noise, shrrrrip, saying The End! to her writing. She slaps her pad to the floor and turns to face me. This girl would never make it in the smoking pit. She belongs in, like, math club.
“Okay, first things first! Now that my M.I.’s out of the way, Cyndy, you can meet my parents. You already said hi to my dad—” he lifts his fingers off the steering wheel and twinkles them at me—“and next to you is my mom.”
“Hi, Cyndy,” says her mom, with a buttermilk smile.
“That guy—” Sandy jerks a thumb at her brother—“is my brother, but you can’t talk to him, because no girls talking to boys before Fourth Phase. You can talk to my parents, though. Call them ‘Dad G.’ and ‘Mom G.’ So. Tell me about your first day as a Straightling.”
We’re out in the sticks where there’s no streetlights, but the dome light’s still on, showing me my reflection in the window. “As a what?” I ask my own face. The right side of my lip is doing the best Billy Idol sneer.
“I’m over here, Cyndy. Behind you.”
She’s waiting for me to turn and look at her. So are her parents. And the guys have all put down their pencils. The whole fucking van is waiting for me. I turn from the window and face her.
“As a Straightling,” she repeats. “You know, ‘Here at Straight, feel great! Nine to nine, feel fine!’”
She’s singing. She’s singing this “song” that the whole beast sang after eating. And she’s hand signaling, too: one arm cuts through the air on “Straight.” She flashes nine fingers, twice, for “nine to nine.” She actually hugs herself for “feel fine.”
In three days, I tell myself, I’ll be sucking a Marlboro hard and inhaling Bridgeport through my nose. But maybe I’ll keep this one little piece of the story from the Zarzozas. I don�
�t think this is their kind of song.
When Sandy stops singing, I’m supposed to say something, but I have no idea what. Then she talks again.
“Why are you at Straight, Cyndy?”
“Man, I don’t know—”
“Druggie word!” her brother shouts.
I whip my head around, like, What?
And he goes, “Tell her not to look at me! Tell her no druggie words!”
Then Sandy takes over.
“You are not to look at boy phasers, Cyndy. Or other newcomer girls, either, except when they’re talking in group. But we’ll get to that later. And don’t use druggie words from your past!”
“Man, what are you talk—”
“Don’t use that word, I said!”
There are two boys right behind me, totally listening to me get told. Fuck, if we were in the pit right now, I’d be telling this chick what she could do with her fucking words. But here, in a Caravan, twelve hours from anywhere and sitting next to her mom? I do what I did with Jacque, before I grew balls: I press into a corner, shut up, and try to hide. But Sandy’s not fooled.
“I asked you why you’re at Straight, Cyndy.”
It would be too weird to say nothing, when there are six people listening. Plus, it seems like her next step’ll be to give me a spanking.
“I—I don’t know. My mother brought me.”
“Why did your mother bring you?”
“I don’t know! I don’t do drugs! I tried to tell them that, but they—”
“Straight is a drug rehab, Cyndy. Kids aren’t brought here for having tea parties and going to church. What did you do to make your mother bring you to Straight?”
“I mean, I took off. To—to get away from her husband.” Fuck their three-day evaluation. I’m looking out the fucking window.
“Oh, I get it. You were a church-going tea-party runaway. And Saturday nights you read the Bible at an old folks’ home, right?”
“No, I didn’t say—”
Sandy is laughing, and so is her brother. And the two kids behind me. Even her mom’s cough is covering up a laugh.
“If you were brought to Straight, you’re a fuckup. Sorry for the language, Mom and Dad, but it’s true. You’re a runaway, and runaways do disgusting things in disgusting places. So let me ask you again, Cyndy. Why. Are. You. At. Straight?”
Nobody’s laughing anymore. They all got quiet at fuckup. It’d be easier if they were still laughing, so it wasn’t up to me to fill the silence.
“We’re waiting.”
“I—I really don’t know what I’m doing here!”
I had no idea I’d started crying. But I suddenly am.
“My mother just brought me here. I’m not a druggie, and I only drank once. I didn’t even like it—it made me sick! I was just trying to get away…”
“So you’re admitting you overdosed on alcohol,” Sandy says.
“Man—I mean, I’m not! I’m not anything! You’ll see in a couple days! They told me three days. They’re gonna see I’m not a druggie, and I’ll be outta here!”
I’m full-on, snot-river crying now. I don’t even care what those backseat boys think. But they’re laughing at me. They all are. The parents and everybody.
“I’m not! I’m not a drug addict! Are you listening to me?” I snatch a look at Sandy, to see if she even hears me. “I just had to get away from him! I just left!”
It’s like we’re on separate TV screens. There’s me and there’s all of them. We’re on two different shows, and they don’t make sense next to each other. I’m begging them to understand; they’re smiling and rosy. I must be going crazy.
“Okay, Cyndy,” Sandy goes. “Welcome to Straight.”
15
HOST HOME DOORS AND WINDOWS MUST BE LOCKED AND ALARMED
When the van finally pulls into a driveway, the dashboard clock says 11:48. But we can’t just get out of the car. Sandy and her brother have to work out their Chinese puzzle of place-switching and door-guarding and pants-grabbing. By the time I’m pulled backward out of the van, the clock reads 11:54.
I’m carried, not forced from behind, up the stairs to the G. family’s front door. That’s what they call it—being “carried by the belt loop.” I learned some more new words on the car ride too. The beast is not the beast; it’s group. And when those kids were standing up and telling everyone their horrible secrets? That wasn’t confession or torture; that was sharing. Oh, and that arm-shaking, head-bashing shit? When those hundreds of kids’ arms were punching the air? That’s “motivating.” Motivating! You “motivate” to prove you want to get called on, to stand up and “share” with the “group.” One time Mrs. Skinner, English teacher extraordinaire, told our class about this thing called “spin.” It’s in newspapers and politics and shit, when they take something bad and describe it in a way that sounds good. Like if the devil said, “Sure is cold up there for those Connecticut winters! Why don’t ya come check out hell, where it’s warm and toasty all the time!” He’s not lying, exactly, is he?
That’s what all these Straight words are. They’re spin. But the thing with spin is, the spinner is trying to sell you something. If you’re in Straight, they don’t have to sell you anything, because you’re already there, with a hand in your pants and big monsters at the doors. So why do they care if you’re convinced or not? “Pushed by the ass” or “carried by the belt loop”—it’s gonna be done to you. Why bother putting a bow on it?
Anyway, I’m “carried” into the G.’s kitchen. We’re inside, and I’m thinking it’s time for Sandy to take her hand out of my pants. But instead, she yells in my ear.
“We need to be locked in!”
Dad G. appears. There’s a key pinched between his fingers; he slides it into the lock on the door. The bolt ka-klunks as it turns, loud and clear as a pair of steel handcuffs. Dad G. pockets his key and yells back in our faces, “All locked in!”
Sandy’s eyes aren’t even wide as she goes to me, “Every door and window is locked with a key. And they’re alarmed too. There’s no way for you to get out.”
It’s like, she had to convince herself that I can’t get away before she could slide her hand out of my pants. But I wasn’t even thinking about escape. I was thinking about fire hazards.
To prove Sandy’s point, Dad G. starts pressing buttons on the wall by the door. Teet! He turns around and sees me watching him. Then he turns back and cups his hand so I can’t see which buttons he’s pushing. TEE-TEET! TEET! TEET!
“Alarm on,” he goes. At least this time he didn’t yell.
After a snack of saltines and water, our next stop is a bathroom. Together. Standing between me and the door, Sandy roots around in a drawer and pulls out a bright yellow toothbrush. It’s totally not a handout from the school hygienist; the top part is angled and it’s got two racing stripes down the handle. It’s a real Reach.
“Here ya go.”
She pushes a fat new tube of Crest across the counter toward me, but I don’t pick it up because I’m studying the toothbrush. The bristles are tan, and spiked out in twenty directions. It looks like it’s been used to scrub floors. Or maybe toilets.
“C’mon, I want to go to bed,” Sandy says, jabbing her thumb at the toothpaste.
“Umm, I’m—gonna use my finger.”
“Whatever, but that’s the newcomer toothbrush. Don’t think you’re getting another one.”
Gross! Would my middle finger work to brush my teeth?
After the Crest is put away, it’s time for me to go. Man, I’ve been holding this for fifteen hours.
“I gotta use the toilet,” I say.
“Go ahead.”
“No. I mean, I gotta go.”
“Okay, there it is. Toilet bowl, toilet paper.”
I look her in the eyes, which feels like getting electrocuted, and crunch
my eyebrows down. She gets what I’m saying.
“I stay in the room with you,” she says. “At all times.”
Okay. I’m in this stranger’s house, in her bathroom with her. In Delaware, two hundred miles from anyone I know. I’m a prisoner in this house, so I’m trying to make myself sound polite. I really am. But I get a tone in my voice.
“Listen. I need to go number two. Can I have some privacy, please?”
But Sandy way out-tones me.
“I am your oldcomer. I’ll be in the room with you every minute that we’re out of the building. You are a newcomer. You cannot be trusted. There’s the toilet. I’ll be watching.”
The cold of the toilet seat is a slap on my thighs. I don’t want to give Sandy any extra thrills, so after I wipe I just drop the paper in the bowl and hope I got it all.
When we step out of the bathroom, Sandy makes another bullhorn announcement.
“Entering phaser room! Dad!”
We’re facing a door that’s painted white, but the paint is thin, like a veil. You can totally see the words they painted over.
It’s those bubble-stick letters that only cute girls can do, the kind with the gumballs at the ends. From those letters, you can tell what her room’s gonna look like. Canopy bed, ruffled dressing table. There’s gonna be a bookcase with more of that writing down the sides, Sandy’s Books. But it’ll be stuffed animals, not books, on the shelves. And leaning on her pile of lacy pillows? A Cabbage Patch Kid. Maybe two. Betcha a million dollars.
As Dad G. comes smiling up the stairs, Sandy digs a thumb in my shoulder. So I move forward. Into her room.
The world stops spinning as the space looms open in front of me.
It’s a big room, but—
bare windows
bare walls
bare mattresses.
Four of them, right on the floor.
That’s it.
No curtains, no posters, no bookshelves. No closet doors, hangers or clothes. Just four bare mattresses and a green plastic Coleman lamp, throwing stripes of light around. The Delaware sky through the big, blank windows is black and blue. The sky is the one thing that makes sense.