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The Dead Inside

Page 16

by Cyndy Etler


  She said, “I don’t know, Cyndy.”

  So I snuck a look under her arm and saw this:

  Progress Report For: Cyndy Etler

  Asking for: Talk

  Deserving: Nothing

  I should’ve known I’d get nothing, rather than being stupid hopeful. Now I’m smack in the middle of review, front row. All the chairs are in a giant C around the barstool. We’re waiting for the talkers to get back, and some fifth-phaser’s relating about her day at school. But really, everyone’s thinking about the concerns in Lucy’s hand. Everyone except me.

  I’m thinking about how my mother’s only a wall away. Every Monday and Friday for the first three months, parents and siblings have to come for family raps. It’s one of the rules. So if I had earned talk, I’d be sitting with my mother right now. And I know if she looked in my eyes, she’d change her mind about leaving me here. She’d see how crumpled I’ve become in five days, and she’d feel horrible. She’d take me away. She’d take me home. Wouldn’t she?

  I don’t care how bad that house was. I didn’t know bad until I met this place. I’ve learned so much since I got here, like what drugs do to you and what a troublemaker I was becoming. I’ll be a totally different kid when she brings me home. I’ll never fight with Jacque, and I’ll do good in school. I’ll tell Jo and Steve no thanks when the bowl comes around, and I’ll drink Yoo-hoo when they drink Bud.

  My mother is right here in the building. She’s got to feel the vibe I’m sending her. She just wanted to scare me, and it totally worked. She’s probably in that Mrs. Harper’s office right now, signing me out! Ten o’clock tonight, I’ll be sitting on Shirley’s front steps, smoking a cigarette and watching car lights as they stripe past the house and down the street. I can feel the night air on my face.

  But until my mother comes to get me, while I’m stuck here in review, at least I know I’m safe. I won’t get stood up, because I’ve been doing everything they want. So everything’s fine. I’m fine. Right?

  • • •

  “You need to stop looking at the girl sitting next to you and start looking at your own F.O.S. list! Being full of shit is gonna keep you in a world of hurt. And this group always knows when you’re F.O.S.!”

  It’s Barrette Chick. The original ugly, from my intake. She won the prize. She gets to scream at me first tonight because she motivated so hard, she was practically turning cartwheels on the side of group. Now she’s zigzagging through the chairs. She’s done with me, and everyone else is churning for their chance. But I still smell her trashcan-breath rising from the wet she left on my face, from her spit therapy.

  Scratchy Lip is next. She’s the new group hero, ’cause she “revealed herself.” Now she’s revealing her tonsils to me. Her bag boobs are jamming into my front. Even with slapped back bangs, this girl’s tough.

  “We know what you’re thinking. We all had the same stupid fantasy. Somebody’s coming to save you, right, Cyndy? You think your druggie boyfriend’s going to break our doors down to get some more of your nasty blow jobs. And until your scummy savior gets here, you can get us off your back by ‘playing good,’ by saying a rule in rules rap. Sound about right?”

  She’s getting louder as she goes. “Well guess what? Nobody rescued me, and they ain’t coming for you, either! If someone was coming for your ass, where the fuck are they? This group is your savior, little girl! You’re trapped here. Now get used to it!”

  She sits down so hard her chair shrieks, but Scratchy’s grinning. Grinning and spinning her arms up over her head. Her “Love ya!” from the girls’ side is extra, extra huge.

  I’m picturing my mother, a hundred feet away from me in that carpeted room. It’s gonna feel so good to hug her when she comes to withdraw me! If she’d just come through that door and see what they’re doing to me, she’d—she’d—she’d stand there, like she did in the bathroom when Jacque was all over me. She’d stand there and watch.

  A fist punches my head and shakes the truth loose. Scratchy is right. My mother’s not gonna come save me. And if my own mother doesn’t care, why the fuck would my “druggie friends” care? They didn’t try to see me when I was right there in Bridgeport, at Janus House. Like they’re gonna come bust down some warehouse walls in Virginia? Quit dreamin’, stupid! Joanna’s not thinking about me, and neither is Steve. They don’t give a fuck. Nobody does.

  This place is my cage.

  I’m not leaving tonight. Or next week. Or any time soon. It’s just me here. Me and God and the group. If I’m gonna survive, I better start praying a lot harder to one of them.

  24

  F.O.S. LISTS GO THROUGH A FIFTH-PHASER, UP THE CHAIN OF COMMAND, TO EXECUTIVE STAFF

  It’s Tuesday morning, and Scott’s smiling. And when staff’s in a good mood, group’s in a good mood. “Y’all!” Scott yells. “How much do you trust your group?”

  That’s a good question. You can do a lot with that. You can prove that you forgive the group, even after review last night. You can make them like you, so they don’t ever stand you up in review again. Yeah. This one’s mine. I’m gonna get this. My snapping hands are up before anyone else’s.

  “Cyndy Etler!” Scott says, and I pop to my feet. “You’re on fire today! I like it. What can you tell us, to prove your trust?”

  Waves of electricity roll through me. This thing I’m about to say? The only other person who knows about this is Jacque. But fuck it. “I have a beauty mark, right on the middle of my left boob!” I say. Actually, I kind of yell.

  And oh my God, they cheer. They laugh and they cheer. They laugh and they cheer and they motivate to be next up. It worked. The group likes me. I’m safe. Here we go.

  Next is a boy, Mike K. “In my druggie past, when I was six, my seventeen-year-old druggie friend made me put his dick in my mouth. He told me to pretend it was a lollipop.” We laugh at that one too. Some guy claps and yells, “Love ya, Lolli!” Damn. Today’s fun.

  Scott’s looking at the kid in the bull’s-eye seat on the guys’ side. That kid’s been in the bull’s-eye since I got here. I noticed him my first day, and even though now I know not to look at the boys’ side, I know he’s still sat there every day. First seat, front row.

  “Ty Smith!” Scott says to him. The kid doesn’t stand, but Scott keeps smiling. “Ty, you ready to get honest? You ready to trust this group?”

  Ty doesn’t move. He doesn’t look like he can move. He’s sitting up so he doesn’t get his spine punched, but otherwise, he looks dead. Eyes down, lids halfway closed, mouth open.

  “Stand up!” Scott yells in his ear. Ty doesn’t even flinch. “Stand his ass up,” Scott says, and two fifth-phasers are BOOM right behind Ty, with their hands wedged tight in his armpits. When they lift him, Ty doesn’t move a muscle to help. You can tell.

  Scott’s still smiling as he stands in front of dead-eye Ty. The fifth-phasers are struggling to hold him up. “Ty! Amigo! What drugs have you done?” Scott asks.

  “Pot and alcohol,” Ty says.

  “What drugs have you done?” Scott repeats.

  “Pot and alcohol.”

  “Bullshit. What drugs have you done?”

  “Pot and alcohol.”

  “Who believes him?” Scott smiles at us, and nobody raises a hand. “Who claimed they’d only done pot and alcohol, when they were still F.O.S.?” Everybody raises a hand. Both hands. Both fists. “Who thinks Ty needs some help getting honest?” Scott says to the room full of flapping arms. “Who knows what a marathon is?” The fists spin into weapons. “Get him out of here. Take him to a marathon room,” Scott tells the fifth-phasers, and they drag the kid away, toward the room where they killed Amanda’s eyes.

  “Guys’ side!” Scott yells, his smile bigger than ever. “Who’s up for a marathon?” Holy fuck. It’s gonna be a bloodbath. “Pete B.! Joe C.! Go ahead!” Two guys race to the Amanda room. In the seco
nd between when they open the door and slam it behind them, boy voices come through like whip cracks.

  They keep Ty in there for all of trust rap, all of phaser rap, and all of rules rap. They keep him in there for lunch rap, girls’ and guys’ rap, and exercise rap. When they’re lining us up for dinner, one of the fifth-phasers sprints from the little room back to the staff office, then sprints back with John and a backpack. This time when the door opens, I hear Ty crying. He’s saying, “Mommommom.” I swear.

  At the end of dinner rap, the door opens again. Scott yells at us, “Eyes up here! Song!” and the group turns forward and motivates. But I know some phasers turn to look back, like they did when I was first brought in. I know because I’m one of them.

  The fifth-phasers and John are walking Ty to the back of group. Then they stop, halfway between the girls’ side and the guys’, and instead of picking a song, Scott yells, “Incoming!” The rest of the group turns around and looks at Ty. We stare at Ty’s right hand because it’s all wrapped in bandages, big as a balloon.

  “Group, this is Ty,” John tells us. “Ty is from Dedham, Massachusetts. He went to Dedham High School. The drugs he’s done are—Ty, what drugs have you done?”

  It’s like a rewind to ten hours ago, when Scott first stood him up in group. Ty’s eyes are half-shut, and his voice is like a robot with low batteries. But his words are all new. “Pot, alcohol, mushrooms, LSD, cocaine, uppers, and downers.”

  “Very nice!” Scott says with a sneer. I can’t believe I ever thought his John Stamos face looked friendly. “Next thing you know, you’ll be doing a whole full o’ shit list, Ty! Bet you’re gonna write a killer M.I. tonight about getting honest… You left-handed, I hope?”

  Ty doesn’t answer, but Scott lets it go. When the fifth-phasers bring him back to first seat, front row, Ty raises his balloon-hand to choose a song. It’s the first time, I think, he’s ever motivated. What happened in that room? What happens in that room?

  On the ride back to her house, Sandy explains F.O.S. to me. It stands for Full of Shit. She tells me people make F.O.S. lists all the time, as part of their fourth step, “Admit to God, myself, and another human being the exact nature of my wrongs, immediately.” Everything they haven’t been telling the group, all of the horrible, grody, evil things they’ve ever done? It all gets written down and sent up to executive staff, to be kept in their file.

  You don’t get off first phase before you do a F.O.S. list, Sandy says. Usually the first one’s not honest enough, and you have to do another, where you tell the really bad stuff. She wouldn’t tell me what was on hers until we were alarmed in the phaser room, but that made sense. I wouldn’t want my mother to hear that I’d had sex with my brother, either. But man. No way.

  “Did you really do that?” I ask.

  “I just told you I put it on my F.O.S. list, didn’t I?” she says back.

  It’s an answer, but not to the question I asked.

  Now, instead of sleeping, I’m lying on my mattress, counting. If I’m ever gonna get out of Straight, I have to make second phase. Get the hand out of my pants so I can run. And to make second phase, I’ve have to do a F.O.S. list of all the drugs I’ve done. Right now, I’ve only got two: pot and alcohol. Not enough. They don’t believe me. I wouldn’t, either. How can you be in drug rehab if you’ve only been drunk once and smoked pot twice? But that’s not what matters. A Full of Shit list has to be beefy.

  If you think about it, though, this whole fucking Straight thing is crazy. Two months ago I had never done drugs. But I had to pretend to smoke pot, so I could fit in in Bridgeport, so I could escape my house. Now I have to pretend I’ve done more than smoke pot, so I can fit in at this warehouse of kids, to get back to my house. And fuck am I bad at lying. Plus, I don’t even know what drugs are out there, really.

  But if I don’t know, how could anyone else at Straight know, either? We’re all just teenagers. How many drugs can you actually fit into fifteen years on earth? And if these kids’ lives are like mine… God! Has anyone in here actually done drugs?

  Man, I have to watch myself. These are the kinds of questions that get you slaughtered. I need to be wicked careful, even of what I think. Because the group can read your mind, obviously. So I can’t think about what drugs I haven’t done. I need to think about what drugs I could have done.

  When other kids stand up and say the drugs they’ve used, it’s like they’re reading from a chart. “I’ve done pot, alcohol, hash, hash oil, Thai weed, Thai stick…” Those, everybody says. Can I? Well, hash, I’ve heard the Zarzozas talk about. Maybe there was some in a joint I took a hit off? So, I can say that I’ve smoked hash. And Thai weed? Well, weed is pot, and I’ve smoked pot. What’s the difference between Thai weed and pot weed? None. Okay, so I’ve smoked Thai weed. Now I’ve done pot, alcohol, hash, and Thai weed. I’m up to four…what else do kids say they’ve done? Heroin, LSD—I don’t even know what those are, so I can’t say I’ve done them. Cocaine? No, that song says it’s “white lines.” I’d know if I’d done something that came in lines.

  What about over-the-counter drugs? When I first moved to Monroe, I took a bunch of aspirin one day, then drank this brown stuff I found in the medicine cabinet, kind of hoping it would kill me… Those are over-the-counter drugs, right? And, hey! If I was taking stuff out of the medicine cabinet, probably some of it was prescription drugs, right? I’ll add both of those to my list, too, which brings me up to six. So now, I’ve done six drugs. Awesome. They’re gonna love me. Second phase, here I come!

  25

  NO ASKING PARENTS FOR WANTS AND NEEDS DURING TALK

  The group likes us both now, me and Amanda. They’re liking me because Sandy stood up in group Wednesday and said, “My newcomer has something to share!”

  Then I got up and said, “The drugs I’ve actually done are pot, alcohol, hash, Thai weed, over the counter drugs, and prescription drugs.”

  Matt King said to Sandy, “Get it in writing and send it up the chain of command.” He said it in a voice like she was stupid or something, but to me, he was really nice. He said, “Nice job, Cyndy. Way to get honest. Love ya.”

  Love ya! He told me “love ya!” Okay, maybe Matt King is as cute as Scott Deutermeyer. Yeah, he is.

  They’re liking Amanda because she’s a totally different person. She motivated and stood up yesterday, and she was finally wearing something other than druggie clothes. It kind of hurt to look at her, though, because Amanda does not belong in pleated khakis and pink button downs. Even her skull looked soft. Less than a week in here, and her killer shaved head’s become a fuzzy Easter chick.

  It was her very first time sharing about her past, and Amanda blew everyone away. I mean, honesty like a twisting knife.

  “Boys didn’t want to fool around with me,” she said. She did the Vanna White, sweeping her hand from her boobs to her knees, like, See why? “So I became a boy.”

  Now that’s some complicated shit. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Amanda became a boy? Really? I mean, so, she dressed like a boy, and got big like a boy. She shaved her head like a boy. But she didn’t become a boy—she’s still got her z-z, right? She has to! I can see Amanda naked in my head, with arms that look like thighs, and thighs that look like hams. Layers of belly curl down over her hips. But you know something? I bet when you’ve got that much flesh smooshed around your z-z, it feels really safe. Like you might as well not even have one.

  I don’t know if this is going to make sense to you. I don’t even know if it makes sense to me. But twelve hours in group every day has given me a lot of time to think, and I’ve started kinda figuring stuff out. Like when I was younger, Jacque would hit me all the time. And he would do stuff to me with Vaseline. And that was okay with my mother, and I was too young to do anything about it.

  But then we moved to Monroe, and I turned old enough to fight. That’s when I hid my z-z, and that’s
when Jacque started chasing me, beating on doors to get to me. And that, for some reason, was not okay with my mother.

  Does any of that make sense? Like, maybe I made the house too loud. Or my mother didn’t want me to make her lose her husband. Maybe she couldn’t stand me getting the attention, not her. Whatever it was, she had to fix the problem. So she locked me up in this place. Not for me, but for her.

  Hey, that’s what I can share with the group! They’ll finally understand! I don’t have a drug problem, I have a mother problem. Everyone will feel bad for me, and they’ll make my mother sign me out. I just have to tell them the truth.

  I get myself called on with this motivating trick I learned. You go hard while doing this sideways-snapping with your fingers. I’d try to explain how to do it, but it wouldn’t work. You’ve never been in group yourself, watching how the oldcomers motivate, and that’s the only way to learn it. So, sorry.

  Scott’s leading a family rap, which is perfect, because he’s actually met Jacque. Kim must have told Scott how evil Jacque is, at least a little bit. I mean, Kim hasn’t, like, been on the bathroom floor with Jacque, but she’s definitely seen him hit me. So Scott will totally be able to picture what I’m talking about. He’ll totally get it.

  My special snap makes Scott pick me first. I’m standing here smiling at him and the group because this is my moment. I’m going to tell. Finally, somebody who will listen to what really happened! They’re going to care. They’ll apologize for spitting on me, and they’ll wish me luck as I walk out the door.

  “This was a month and a half ago,” I tell them. “It was a Thursday night, exactly two weeks before my fourteenth birthday. I was getting my clothes out of the dryer, to pack to go to Bridge—to my druggie friend’s for the weekend.”

  The group is looking at me, every single kid. Nobody’s motivating; nobody’s trying to spit in my face. They’re just…listening. It feels like a warm bubble bath.

 

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