The Dead Inside

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The Dead Inside Page 11

by Cyndy Etler


  He keeps going. “Can y’all hear the hard crack when the ice hits the plastic? The swish of the Coke? Who’s thirsty? That’s it? Nobody else is thirsty? Well, shoot! We been treating y’all too good! Maybe I better hold back your water, huh? I said, who’s thirsty?”

  I raise my hand this time, because obviously, I have to.

  “Thought so,” he says. “Hey, how’s y’all’s veggie medley? Those sporks treatin’ you right?”

  Since my hunger beat my ego, I’m eating the veggie fart. So I’m all hunched over when he says that, trying to scoop the glop to my mouth without spilling. It’s hard work. Maybe that’s why I hear him say dorks. “Those dorks treatin’ you right?” Totally stupid, but that’s what I hear. I look up, my spoon halfway to my mouth, to see what’s up with the dorks. And of course, he’s right in front of me.

  “Here! A spork!” he shouts. He pulls my wrist into the air. The fart stuff flings off the spoon and onto my forehead. My wrist burns under his hand. His grip is a lot like Jacque’s.

  “What’s your name, newcomer?” he barks.

  It takes me a second to remember my own name, swear to God. My heart’s beating so fast, it’s disconnected from my brain.

  “Hey,” he says, shaking my arm to make sure I know he’s there. “I’m talking to you. What’s your name?”

  “Cyndy,” I get out.

  For some reason, that makes him really happy.

  “Cyndy!” he booms, like a TV preacher. Like, Jesus! “Cyndy, how’s your spork treating you?”

  The spork must be the spoon thing with three tiny teeth clenched in my fist.

  “Fine?” I ask my feet, so my eyes don’t get scorched again by his.

  “Fine!” he chirps back, cheerful as Santa Claus. “Cyndy’s spork is fine, group!”

  I hear some laughs behind me, but they’re not a happy sound.

  “What a relief! Cyndy’s. Spork. Is. Fine!”

  What did I do? He’s mad now, for some reason. And nobody’s laughing. Nobody’s making a sound.

  “Cyndy. Tell me, tell us, what is a spork?”

  It’s so quiet I hear chewing noises, the gummy snap of teeth on Wonder Bread.

  “Um—is it like a fork?”

  He’s in my face zipfast, right there, his dark eyes hitting me like punches. He’s still for a second, bruising me with his eyes, then he opens his mouth and yells.

  “Hey, group! Cyndy says a spork is a fork! Well thanks, Cyndy. C for effort.”

  He pulls his face away from mine and stands. I’m itching to wipe the food off my forehead, but I’m too scared to move. “A spork,” he says, as he strides over to the boys’ side, “is a cross between a fork and a spoon. But what’s the difference? Who’s got a spork for me?”

  Hundreds of arms lift their sporks into the air, like lighters during a metal band’s slow song. Matt studies his captive audience and walks right past me to take some girl’s spork. Then he spins and attacks.

  “The difference” he roars, “is that your sporks have pussy points at the tip!” He’s jabbing my nose with the pussy points. “Do you see these little pussy points, Cyndy?”

  Somehow I nod.

  “And how come Straightlings can only use sporks? Larry B.!” Matt calls out, before kids can even motivate.

  A boy stands up. “Straightlings can’t be trusted. We would hurt ourselves with forks.”

  Matt doesn’t ask the group why they’d want to hurt themselves. He doesn’t need to.

  17

  NO LYING DOWN WHILE WRITING M.I.S

  Scott never came to pull me out of group last night, to talk to me about what I’m doing at Straight. I haven’t seen him since that little nod in rules rap. When Sandy belt-looped me out of my front-and-center chair and wedged me heel to toe in that line of girls, I wanted quick death.

  I know how that sounds—poor Cyndy—but I don’t mean it that way. It’s just the truth. I couldn’t do another night in that house, with strangers I wasn’t allowed to look at, with the locked doors, the dirty comforters and the rescue mission mattresses. After carefully holding hope all day, I couldn’t go back to that cell. I needed to die, instead.

  But prayers aren’t answered quick like that, so I lived. Sandy pushed me into line, then out to the van, then into her padlocked house. She gave me the dingy toothbrush, watched while I pooped, and crawled me around the floor.

  There was one thing different about last night, though. In the epic van ride from Virginia to Delaware, when the dome light came on and everyone started scribbling in their notebooks, Sandy tore some paper from her legal pad and handed it to me.

  “Mom, can I have a pencil?” she asked.

  “For what?”

  “For my newcomer to write her M.I., Mom.”

  “Oh, of course! Just checking. We can’t be too safe.”

  “You’re right, Mom. Thanks.”

  So then I had a pencil, and Sandy told me what to do with it.

  “You’re going to start writing your M.I.s tonight.”

  “My what?”

  “Your M.I.s. Your Moral Inventories. You’ll write an M.I. every night you’re on your phases.”

  “What is that?”

  “I just told you. It’s a Moral Inventory. You take an inventory of yourself every night, so you keep on track with your program. This is how we work the steps. Got it?”

  I still had no idea what she was talking about, but I don’t think Sandy noticed, ’cause she went on like I had said, “Oh, totally.”

  “It’s not hard. You name an issue you’re struggling with, apply a step to it, and tell how you’re going to fix it. Then you write three goals and three validations. Here, I’ll set up your paper for you.”

  This is what she wrote.

  Cyndy E.

  M.I. for Thursday 11/21/85

  Problem:

  How I Will Apply My Steps to This Problem:

  Solution:

  5 Goals:

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  3 Good Points:

  1.

  2.

  3.

  Then she handed the papers back to me and started writing her own, I guess. So I did what I could.

  Cyndy E.

  M.I. for Thursday 11/21/85

  Problem:

  I don’t belong here.

  How I Will Apply My Steps to This Problem:

  What?

  Solution:

  I’m gonna leave in two days.

  5 Goals:

  1. Leave

  2. See Joanna

  3. See Steve

  4.

  5.

  3 Good Points:

  1. Good Points?

  2.

  3.

  This wasn’t what Sandy wanted. I got a lecture on how I have to take my M.I.s seriously, and if I don’t know how to work my steps, I need to ask for help, and most important, I have to write about something that’s wrong with me. I stared at the back of her dad’s seat, feeling extra trapped in this big metal coffin on wheels.

  But here’s the crazy part. When she read Joanna’s and Steve’s names, she dropped my paper like she’d been electrocuted.

  “Druggie friends!” she gasped. Really. That’s what she did. She gasped. “Cyndy, are those the names of your druggie friends?”

  “What? You mean Steve and Jo—”

  “STOP!”

  Everyone in the whole van sucked in their breath, hard.

  “No! Names! Of! Druggie! Friends!” Her eyes were big as hubcaps.

  “Um…okay,” I said, really not sure where to look or what to do.

  So today I need to come up with a problem about myself, so tonight I can write a good M.I. But it’s ha
rd to think of anything bad because today’s Friday, which means tomorrow is Saturday—day three! If I can get through tonight then tomorrow, sometime tomorrow, I’ll be out of this place. No hand in my pants, no fist punching my spine, no claws on my wrists.

  Halfway through family rap, which is when you have to talk about what an asshole you were to your parents, a side door clunks open. That’s not the shocking part. Staff comes in and out of those doors all the time. And right before dinner rap, a gush of kids you haven’t seen all day comes through them, too, from God only knows where. But this time the girl who’s standing up, talking about beating the snot out of her brother, sits right down when the door opens. She stares at the back of the group, so everyone else looks too. We all turn to see another act in The Weirdest Shit on Earth.

  Shuffling across the linoleum is this…creature. This big, dirty human who looks like it should be in a cage. Two people, a boy and a girl, are gripping this kid’s waistband. They jerk the kid to a stop between the boys’ side and the girls’. The kid’s so dirty, you can’t tell which side he or she is gonna get pushed to.

  “Incoming!” the staff girl yells from her barstool.

  The chick holding onto the newcomer goes, “This is Amanda T. She’s from New York City. She dropped out of school.”

  You could hear an atom split in that room. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this person, this—girl?

  She has a fistful of bangs sprouting over her forehead, but otherwise, she’s stone bald. Her body’s a bulldozer: big, square, and filthy. And her clothes are just as mind-blowing. Her dirty jeans are way too big—where does she find jeans that big?—and they’re rolled up to her ankles in big, flat cuffs. On top, she’s wearing a black T-shirt under a massive leather jacket. And most amazing of all are her shoes. They’re Ronald McDonald boots, but instead of red, they’re black. They have big bulb toes, laces that wrap around her ankles, and treads like a wedge of old tire.

  The staff girl slices through the stunned silence. “Does anyone know Amanda?”

  I look around me. Everyone is staring at her with dead eyes. Trapped in this building all day and night, this is like, the first un-tapioca person they’ve seen in months. But they’re all just staring. God. I will never become so dead-eyed, I swear. I just have to make it ’til tomorrow. Saturday.

  Nobody is saying anything. I guess nobody knows Amanda.

  “Put ’er on front row!” the staff girl yells.

  “Love ya, Amanda!” the group trombones.

  The freak train starts moving, and Amanda’s pushed along my row. I hear the tumble-flesh of motivating, but I’m not doing it. I’m too caught up in staring at this girl, at her round, pink cheeks. They stop her in front of my seat.

  The girl looks right at me and speaks. “What’re you lookin’ at?”

  I jump, coming up out of my seat a little, but nobody notices. They’re too busy Shhh!ing this Amanda girl. Then I’m gripped by my waistband and hoisted out of my seat, and Amanda’s plopped into it. She’s the new bull’s-eye. I’m thunked down next to her, into the icky warmth of the girl they just belt-looped up and out. It’s a game of musical chairs, minus the music. Everybody gets a fun new seat. And now, me and Amanda are glued together by interlocking chairs.

  Did I already say that the chairs are all linked together? Here, put out your right hand, like it’s a cup. Now curl your left hand the same, and flip it over. Lock the fingers on each hand together, and try to pull your arms apart. If you did it right, you can’t. That’s how they keep the group a group. The chairs have metal brackets on the sides that lock them, one to the next. So you’re always latched: by the ass to some oldcomer, or by the side to some newcomer.

  A boy stands up and starts “sharing” about what a scumbag he is. I’m facing him, but I’m secretly sneaking looks at Amanda. Her eyes undo everything else about her. They’re huge and soft and baby-powder blue, with lashes as long as your arm. Cheeks like bubble gum, eyes like innocence—up close, this girl is anything but tough. She could be one of Dawn’s baby dolls. What happened to her in New York, on her days not in school? What made her take off her dolly dress and put on grungy armor? Wait, I take it back. I don’t want to know.

  18

  EVERYONE MUST WEAR SHOES AND SOCKS

  Something weird is going on. Something even weirder than the regular daily freak show. I can feel it. I can hear it. I just can’t see it yet.

  Other than Amanda showing up, it’s been a normal day—people singing stupid songs; kids sharing about their druggie pasts; the teen staff strutting to the barstools like they’re on the red carpet. But then the side doors open, and all these kids I’ve never seen before come flooding in. They stand around the edges of group, wedged tight at the shoulder in a human fortress. It’s creepy and just…wrong.

  A half hour later, on some invisible cue, they swarm around us, claw us up from our seats, and carry us across the group room. The door goons are gone, so they march us right through the back doors and into this empty room. The walls are bare brick and the carpet is new-jeans blue. We’re tugged into rows, because with no talking allowed and no chairs, how do we know where we’re supposed to sit? We should know, though. I can tell by the way my carrier is yanking me around. She practically tears my belt loop off.

  Once we’re all positioned and sitting cross-legged—with the boys’ side so close, if I whistled, I’d ruffle their bangs—the bad guys show up: Matt King and the mean blond smiler.

  “Family rap!” Matt yells.

  The people around me start motivating and I do it too, because I don’t want a fucking demon at my back. Without anyone telling me, I put my arms up and shake them around. And that’s what gets Matt’s attention. He’s scanning the tightly packed room, and his eyes sear into me. They look even darker than yesterday.

  “Cyyyyndy,” he goes.

  The blond staff snaps her head my way. Her smile blinks to life.

  “Oh! Y-yeah?” I say back.

  My fists are still up by my ears. This isn’t what I was motivating for. I didn’t actually want to be called on.

  “Stand up!” he says, fake friendly.

  Everyone’s palms do the upward air shove.

  My rubbery legs make it hard to stand. It’s silent except for the rustle of my clothes.

  “So…?” Matt says from his barstool.

  “What?” I say back. But I say it confused, not snotty.

  “What? What. What is that this is family rap. You need to tell us about an incident from your past, an incident involving your family.”

  Four hundred eyes and chins are leveled at me. They make it hard to think.

  “Um…”

  “Were you a good girl in your past, Cyndy? Were you nice and sweet to your family?”

  “Well, they—”

  “I’m not asking about them. Were you nice and sweet to your family?”

  “Um, no?”

  “That’s right, Cyndy! You’re doing great. Now tell us about an incident with your family where you acted like your druggie self.”

  I just stand there. I don’t have a family. I have a mother and a sister and a stepthing who’s the devil, plus his kids. And “an incident”? I have no idea what I’m supposed to say.

  “CYNDY ETLER!”

  My whole name. He says my whole name. Like he has some…ownership of me.

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re waiting!”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  I might be starting to cry a little.

  He’s still staring at me, his eyebrows pointed into sharp little horns.

  “I thought I’d give you another chance, Cyndy. But you’ve wasted enough of this group’s time. Have a seat.”

  I can’t sit down fast enough, so I fall instead. My hand catches a girl’s shoulder, but she jerks it off like she hates me. I feel it, like a heat. />
  The group starts to yell a “Love ya—” at me, but Matt cuts them off. “No!”

  Next the girl who hates me stands up, to share how she made her father beat her. “I remember, this one time?” she starts out.

  That’s Straight code for, Here’s why my parents hate me enough to leave me here.

  “I remember saying to my dad, ‘Maybe if you didn’t drink so much, Mom wouldn’t need therapy.’ I said that to my dad. I ended up in the hospital with a broken arm after that sweet nothing. And I deserved it, one hundred percent. He fed me and clothed me and kept a roof over my head, and that’s the thanks I give him? I can’t believe he’ll even still look at me.”

  Matt doesn’t just let the group tell her Love ya, he leads it. Before she even sits, he’s all, “Love ya, Sammie!” so loud it rattles the doorknobs.

  At the end of family rap, Lucy tells us what song she wants to hear—one of those ones from Sunday school. It goes, “They will know we are Straightlings by our love, by our love. They will knoooow we are Straightlings by our love.”

  The next slap of weird comes when they push us back into the never-ending beige of the group room. The linked chairs are still in rows, but they’ve been turned around to face an ocean of gray folding chairs. There’s enough seats for all of Communist China. It’s like a chair warehouse, which, ding! That’s what this place is! It’s a warehouse, literally. It’s a giant storage locker where, for a fee, parents can disappear their fuckups and rejects.

  That’s another reason I’ll be outta here tomorrow. No way does my mother have the money for this place, when she can barely put five dollars of gas in her car. Twenty-four hours, and I’ll be on my way back to Jo’s; forty-eight and I’m in Steve’s room. How could their parents not let me stay with them, when they hear what I’ve been through?

  I can feel my Levi’s on my thighs, my denim on my back. Just thinking about Levi’s feels so good, I barely notice that I’m picking up a dinner tray and getting pushed back to the chairs. In my mind I’m like, one hundred percent in Levi’s…until the hand in my pants lets go while I’m still standing.

  “Uh?” I kind of grunt, turning my head to the demon behind me.

 

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