by Cyndy Etler
I don’t need a head-chant when I’m in group, though. When I’m in rap sessions, listening to other Straightlings share about their past, I’m safe. Group is the only place the world feels right, which is why I only leave when they make me be runner. But staff has been doing that a lot lately. They say, “You need to get comfortable away from group. Here, put on the badge. You’re afternoon runner.”
Which is scary as hell, because the only time staff wants us comfortable outside group is if we’re about to be seven-stepped. But who ever heard of a sixteen-month program?! Nobody’s ready to seven-step after only sixteen months!
You haven’t felt the safety, the—God, just the perfection, the rightness of group. So you wouldn’t understand. But I do. Once I got honest with myself and realized I’m a total druggie and alcoholic, everything about Straight, Inc. made sense. Outsiders don’t have to get it, because we do. That’s all that matters.
An addict is an addict is an addict. Before I had done a single drug, I jumped into smoking cigarettes. The first time I smoked? I bought a whole pack. Know what that is? Proof. Proof that I’m an addict.
And cigarettes lead to pot, which leads to coke, which leads to shooting up. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t actually do coke. I would have, if you’d put it in front of me. It’s only by the grace of God, and my mother putting me in Straight, that I didn’t have to sink that far to hit bottom. And it wasn’t just me that I hurt! If Straight hadn’t been here for me, I would’ve destroyed my whole family. Now, thanks to the group, I understand that.
My sobriety is going to be so challenged when they make me leave here! Connecticut is a long way from the building, and I guarantee you, there are zero Straightlings in Monroe. Monroe may as well be on Jupiter. Plus, I’ll be in the exact same house where I lived when I started drinking and drugging. I’ll be sleeping in the same bed. If I don’t have group to go share with, what am I supposed to do with all of those memories?
I’ve been back to that house two times, for my fifth-phase weekend passes. And it was horrible. Horr-i-ble. Like on my first visit, I had to call the building to report myself for being in the house at the same time as alcohol. Can you believe it?! My father had alcohol in the house. Fucking alcohol! In the house! And then on my second visit, I had to call in again because they gave catnip to Kitty for Christmas. Totally an addictive substance, right? But—but staff laughed at me when I called! Like, it’s okay for me to enable my druggie cat?!
And then my mother made me sit in the car while she drove by fucking Masuk. I was like, “Hello, my druggie fucking high school?! I’m a fucking phaser! You can’t expose me to the biggest threat to my sobriety like that!”
She didn’t even care. She was just like, “This will be great practice for you, for when you come home and face reality.” Then, when we got back to the house, she made me clean the puke off her car’s floor mat. But what am I going to do when I have to go in my druggie high school? That day, it won’t be just puke. When I have to actually go in Masuk? My fucking head will explode. And where am I supposed to put the chunks of shattered brain?
No! I have to stop this! I can’t even think about that house, that school. I have to think about how to squeeze myself through the carpet room without touching any boy siblings. That’s where they keep all the families before open meet—hey, that’s not—no. No way! That kid can’t be my stepbrother! He’s never been to the building. But—it is him! He’s right next to my mother, with her gross smug “That’s my daughter” smile on. And they’re both all dressed up!
Do you know what this means? It means—fuck! They’re seven-stepping me in open meeting tonight! It means I have to go to bed in my old druggie bedroom tomorrow night, and the next night, and every other night from now on. It means no locks on the windows and no alarms on the doors. It means no group to report to in the morning. It means nothing—nothing—to keep me safe. It means I’m fucking fucked.
28
NO NEWCOMERS WEAR BELTS
Holy shit. My druggie high school is big. Big and fucking scary. Nobody gave me a bucket or sponge, so now every day when I get off the bus and come through Masuk’s front doors, I have to walk past my brain bits, splattered all over the brick entrance walls.
My first few days back were a nightmare. They were like review on fucking steroids. But now that it’s been a week, the actual time in class is almost kind of becoming okay, because I just have to sit and listen to the teacher and not look at anybody. As long as we don’t have to choose partners for a project, I can semi-deal. But in the halls between classes? Jesus. Gimme the choice, and I’ll choose hell.
Lunch is even worse, because everybody’s there and they’re all sitting still, looking for somebody to talk about. It’s not like I can go hide in the bathroom, the way I did in middle school. Even if I wasn’t terrified of walking in on somebody snorting coke, everybody would know I was going in there to try to hide. Because they’re all, always, watching me. I’m Cyndy Etler, the girl who rocked hard for a sec, then vanished…and reappeared, a year and a half later, as a deaf mute. Nobody can take their eyes off me.
And did I ever tell you about the giant windows that separate the cafeteria from the smoking pit? Yeah. Giant. So every time I set foot in the caf, the whole fucking pit’s watching me, too. All my old druggie friends. And listen, you better not tell my seven-step group this, but…I miss them. I really miss them.
My first day back at Masuk though? That was the absolute worst. It’s just three friggin’ days after I seven-step, right? So all I want is to be back in group. There’s nobody in the hallways of Masuk yelling Love ya, Cyndy! Believe me. So my first day back I’m scurrying down the hall to Spanish class, but you’d think I’m wearing a strobe light, the way everyone’s staring. My chin is, like, bruising my chest bone, it’s pointed down so hard. And out of nowhere there’s this tap-tap-tap on my shoulder. Total flashback to my freshman year, on the gym bleachers, when I met Jo—I mean, when I met my best druggie friend. That day when I turned around and there she was, smiling that half-smile and saying, “Nice shirt. You like the Stones?”
Tap-tap-tap again. “Cynd!”
So I turn, and there she is. Joanna. The only person ever who was mine, all mine. She liked me best out of everyone, same as I liked her. Her hair is a rock-star mane around her big half-smile.
“I can’t believe it’s you!” she says. “God! Where the fuck’ve you been? It’s been, fucking, two years! Why the fuck didn’t you call me?”
It all comes back in a tidal wave, everything Jo gave me. I was trapped in a sewer before I met Jo, but she wrenched the cover off; she showed me the stars and the sky. She taught me cool is being cool, not trying to be, and free is being free, not wanting to be.
And she—she missed me. She’s mad I didn’t call her! So that whole time I was in group, she was out here thinking about me? She’s been in Bridgeport every weekend all this time, wondering where I am? She thinks I could’ve called her?! But I—I mean, she—she has no idea! If I’d known she wanted me there with her, I would have—fucking, druggie thoughts! What the fuck am I thinking? I can’t—
“Fuckin’ Etler, man!” she says, the most beautiful words in the world. Her arms are stretched out to hug me, and she smells like night and Marlboros. She’s still exactly who she was when I left. She’s still Joanna.
But me? I’m not “still” anything. I’m a Straightling.
“It’s not in my best interest to talk to you,” I tell her.
Her arms drop to her sides. She stares at me, but I can’t look back. If I do, the tidal wave—of Bridgeport, of nights out walking, of feeling like I have someone—could drown me. Jo’s quiet for a second, then she turns and walks away. I know it by the scuff of her work boots. It’s the saddest sound in the world.
Staff warned me this moment would happen. Thank God they told me exactly what to say when it did. What staff didn’t warn me about w
as my nosy guidance counselor. I’m already a circus freak in my plaid dress, a hand-me-down from my mother. This panting counselor—ripping into science class, interrupting the teacher, and rasping out my name—she doesn’t help my cause.
She pats my head the whole walk to her office, like I’m a giant injured bird. That’s before she introduces herself as the new “adolescent addictions specialist.” When she leans forward for our heart-to-heart, I see myself reflected in her glasses. I look like a trophy, not a teen.
“Cyndy,” she says, “you need to be strong. You’re our one clean and sober student.”
I’m like, lady! You think I don’t know this?
Then she traps me. “I was in the cafeteria line when I heard your name. Naturally, I stepped closer. It was a curly-haired girl in a denim jacket talking to a dark-haired girl who I believe might be one of the Beacon Falls students. Do you know these girls?”
I nod. She’s lucky I even say that much.
“I had to pull you out of class, so you would know what’s going on. We’re going to keep you safe. But promise me you’ll be strong in your sobriety.”
Now what the fuck is this? What’s that part of the Bible where God keeps raining hell on some poor guy, to test his faith? That guy’s name is Cyndy.
But she doesn’t understand how much Straight taught me. There is no chance I’m going back to drinking and drugging; I would kill myself first. And Jesus! Is it her sobriety or mine? Some seconds tick past, enough to count as a promise. Then, right before I freak out on her, she starts up again.
“She was very upset, the girl in the denim jacket. The one who used your name. That must be why she said what she did. So I want you to—”
Holy shit, I can’t take any more. “What did Joanna say?” I say. I mean, I snap. Like, at a grown-up. If I was in group right now, I’d get pulverized.
My counselor’s eyes go all wide and her mouth crimps tight in a pucker, but I don’t look away, which gives her no choice but to answer me.
“She said, ‘I’m gonna kick Cyndy Etler’s ass.’”
Suddenly I realize I need tons of after school tutoring from my teachers, to get caught up and all. Because I am not being the new Kara Anderson, getting her head slammed in front of the whole bus line. I don’t care if I have to walk the five miles back to my mother’s house.
So here’s an important lesson. When you’re a Straightling back at your druggie high school, if you want to not die of shame and weirdness, you need at least one friend to eat lunch with. I got smart and dug out my elementary school flute, and now, instead of hanging with Joanna, I’m trying to be friends with the band kids. The ones who are in youth group at church. They’re friends with God too, so you’d think they’d be okay. But even they don’t get me. They don’t get the rules.
Like the other day. It’s one of those horrible, like, “social free times” when the band teacher says we can “just hang out ’til the bell rings.” So I’m sitting with them and trying to be normal when Denise says she’s gonna tell her parents she’s staying at Robin’s so she can go to a keg party at John’s.
Of course, I’m like, “But…you can’t go to an alcohol party—you’re only fifteen! And you can’t lie to your parents, can you?” I tell her that if she does, I’ll have to report her.
And she goes, “You have to what?”
They all totally laugh at me. The mean way. Oh my God, if I could get Denise stood up in review, my group would fucking kill her.
I picture the group’s faces, their motivating arms, as I stand up and walk out of band. I feel their slapping skin and kzsh-ing spit as it hits me, all the way to the girls’ room. I hear their love ya, Cyndy as I race past the staring lip gloss mirror girls and slam-lock the door to the handicap stall. I keep my group with me—seeing them, feeling them, hearing them—as I hide in that stall for the next five hours. And I don’t care who friggin’ knows it.
I might have to start hiding in the bathroom at home too. From Jacque. My mother’s divorcing him. She’s totally grateful to Straight because all the parent meetings on how to deal with your druggie kid taught her that there was a whole other alcoholic making her life shitty: her husband. She got the balls to kick him out, so now I don’t have to say I love him anymore.
But I can’t feel too safe, because it’s not like he forgot where he used to live. He could show up at the house any time. Like Saturday. I’m in Kim’s room, doing her Jane Fonda exercise tape. It makes me really sweaty, so I’m exercising next to the open window. And since I’m home alone, I’m wearing just a bra and short shorts. The shorts are in the trash can now with like, a shit stain up the back.
After the leg lifts, at the end of Michael Jackson’s mamasay-mamasah-mama-kusah song, the tape goes quiet, and I hear this TINK right above my head. I stand up to look out the open lower window and there he is, right underneath it. Staring up at me with little flames in his eyes. My gut drops straight to China.
He raises his fist, and even his fist is mad and red. “Openah door, Cinny!” he shouts, and I’m jerked back to two years ago, crunched in the corner of my room. I’m staring at my bedroom door, praying it stays locked, and hating myself for crying. It’s like no time has passed. Nothing has changed. I’m trapped.
“Openah door!”
There’s only a screen and six feet of air between us, and he’s pissed that he can’t get in. He’s here to pick up my baby half-sister. It’s his visitation weekend, but my mother took my sister out, and must have forgotten to warn me he was coming. Thank God I always double-lock the front door, now that there’s no host-parent to alarm and lock me in.
He throws another rock at the top half of the window. A big one. It doesn’t TINK, it CRACKs. A spider of glass crawls out from the spot where it hit.
“They’re not here!” I yell down from where I’m standing, wrapped in the curtain like a robe. I can’t move, or the curtain will fall and he’ll see my boobs again. “They’re gone!” I yell, like, hint-hint: you should be gone, too! But he doesn’t move, so I try louder. “They went out! They’ll be back later!”
That makes him even madder. He stands there and flames, then throws another handful of pebbles at me. Finally, he gets in his car and leaves. But that doesn’t mean he won’t be back. And what if one time I forget to lock the door?
Sometimes—okay, a lot of times—I wish I wasn’t around anymore. I just—I don’t work, out here. The only place for me is back in Straight, but that’s not going to happen. They don’t let you back in unless you slip, and I am not sacrificing Straight’s gift, my sobriety. Besides, my mother already told me she’s done spending money on me.
But see, there’s no place besides Straight where I’m not terrified. Nobody’s totally honest, and follows the rules, and knows how drugs and alcohol fuck you up, the way my group does. So other than Straight, the only safe place for me is heaven.
But I’m still thinking about…you know. Doing something like that. If I did it, I’d just turn on my mother’s car and close the garage door and close my eyes. Because pills don’t actually make you die; they make you puke. Me and all the other phasers learned that in our druggie pasts. And I could never cut myself. But doing it the car way, it would just be like falling asleep. I’d dream I was back in Straight, and I’d feel safe. And soon enough, I’d be safe.
There are two things that have made me not do it yet: God and my meetings. It’s not that I believe you go to hell if you kill yourself. To me, it seems like God would extra love people who were sad enough to kill themselves. But I don’t think that’s His first choice for me. This is weird, but…I feel like He has some stuff for me to do before I’m gone. I don’t know what it is yet, but I get this feeling, sometimes, like it’s a math equation.
Things are really hard + Figuring out how to be okay = Helping others be okay too.
So I’m trying to finish the equation, you know? To wor
k out the how-to-be-okay part, so I can do the helping-others-be-okay-too part.
Plus, I don’t want to miss any of my Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. They’re the closest I come to being back in group. You don’t stand up when you share at AA meetings, you talk from your seat. And after you share they say, “Thanks, Cyndy,” not “Love ya.” So it’s not exactly the same. But everyone listens; that’s the important part. Even the people who don’t turn and look at you while you talk—sometimes they’ll nod at what you’re saying.
I liked these meetings when I first got to come to them, on my fifth phase weekend passes. They were the only good thing about those trips. But I didn’t realize that they’re like a half-inch from heaven until the meeting I went to on the night of my first day back at Masuk.
So I’m sitting in one of those folding chairs that only AA meetings have. They’re not the clanky, always-cold metal ones. These are plastic chairs that feel all tilty when you move, like they’ll tip over if you’re not careful. Even though I want to turn sideways to look at my AA group, I have to keep my knees forward as I share about my first day as Masuk’s one and only sober student.
“Guidance counseling must be a boring job. She was so psyched to tell me what Jo said, I had to offer her an inhaler.”
Laughter floats up around me like helium balloons. Like they get me.
“And when my guidance counselor got to say ‘ass’ to me—a student—she looked like a dog tasting a pickle. She couldn’t believe what was in her mouth.”
A few people twist in their chairs to smile at me, risking a cheap-chair topple.
You know what it’s like at my AA meetings? It’s like being in a room full of good foster parents. They’re way older than me, and they have nice smiles and nice eyes and boring sweaters. And I get to have all of them, for the whole hour of the meeting.