Addicted

by Amelia Betts

  Ten minutes passed before I stood up, calling an end to my pity party, partly because I’d had enough for the moment and partly because it was 103 degrees and climbing outside. Bypassing the library, I walked to the Plex and headed straight for the message boards in the lobby. I needed a place to stay and a new job, ideally, and needed them yesterday, but the notices I found were mostly old, with the exception of one pet-sitting gig that started the following week. I tore one tab from the posting, then all of them.

  I was back outside, taking the path that cut directly from the Plex to the library, when my day took another bizarre turn: in the distance, running around the quad’s periphery in short runner’s shorts and a matching tank top, was Liam, or someone who looked just like him. I raised my hand to shelter my eyes and stared at the man pointedly as he jogged around the other end of the lawn. It was certainly his body—I could recognize that body anywhere—but the face was obscured at this distance and the outfit threw me off. The runner was decked out in a pretty serious-looking, neon-accented ensemble, which would have been an odd choice for Liam, someone I hadn’t known to be a runner. Whoever it was, they eventually noticed me and politely waved from a distance. Embarrassed that I’d been caught staring, I turned and hurried toward the library, not bothering to wave back.

  On my way to my favorite copy machine, sequestered in the corner of the library’s third floor, I thought about what a strange summer it had been. I was ready for the wave that had washed me out into the abyss with Liam and gotten me caught up in the undertow with Julien to deposit me back on dry land. In fact, I started praying for it that night.

  * * *

  Second Tuesday in August: Oceanside Rec Center Meeting

  Topic of discussion: “Sticking to Promises”

  Calories imbibed: 1,550

  I celebrated my first one-month chip as the designated speaker at the rec center meeting. Although I had begun sharing over a month ago, it was still daunting to plant myself onstage in front of everyone, stay there for a solid five minutes, and talk only about me. I had collaborated with the moderator, Sherrill, on the day’s topic and had come prepared with a page full of notes in case I blanked, but I was still shaking like a leaf when she introduced me.

  “Hi, everyone.” I took a seat on the chair positioned in the middle of the low stage and placed my notes gingerly in my lap. “I’m Mischa, and I’m an overeater.”

  “Hi, Mischa,” they all responded.

  From this vantage point, I could see everyone in the room, but the looks on their faces were patient and accepting and I felt instantly reassured. I launched in, speaking quickly to avoid any awkward silences. “So, ‘Sticking to Promises.’ That’s today’s topic and very relevant to me as I am just receiving my one-month chip and feeling very happy that I’ve been sober this long. Four and a half weeks to be exact… But I’m still on the fence about the Twelve Steps. I’m not really sure why. At least for now it’s important for me not to feel pressure either way. What’s important is that I stick to the promises I make to myself, and I’ve been doing a pretty good job of it. I needed to get out of a weird living situation and I did that—I got hired to pet sit for a professor who’s away until December. There’re three cats and I’m kind of allergic, but other than that it’s a pretty good deal. Also, I presented a product I developed to someone I used to work for, and she’s thinking about investing, which is beyond what I’d hoped for. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high but I’ve been thinking about it a lot and am feeling pretty excited about it. Something that helps me stay sober, too, is taking care of my friend Isabella. She, unlike me, has needed to gain a lot of weight lately, so I’ve been keeping a better eye on her, going by her house twice a week instead of just once, making sure the food I make her is really healthy but calorie-dense. Oh, and the big one, obviously: I promised myself I would stop binging and eating my trigger foods, which are basically everything that’s not healthy—I’m kind of a kitchen-sink addict. So, for the last month, I have been sticking to that. It’s been hard but it also feels really good…”

  Coming up for air, I scanned the room, suddenly blanking on what to say next. I glanced at Sherrill for the time, hoping she would tell me I had run out of it.

  “You have four more minutes,” she said with a knowing smile.

  “Really? Wow.” The look of surprise on my face prompted sympathetic laughter around the room. But instead of bolting offstage like I wanted to, I hunkered down and felt something relax inside me. I started to talk about the hard stuff—about my expectations of other people and how I’d sometimes held others to higher standards than I’d held myself. I admitted to various obsessions over the years, starting with Bradley and leading up to Liam and (briefly) Julien that summer, and talked about the significance of my dad leaving. I said I knew it was cliché and people shook their heads kindly, reminding me that what I had to say was valid, even if it was their story too—maybe even more so because it was their story. I talked about my future and how grad school was still up in the air and how I felt I’d always ignored my own needs out of fear, choosing to focus on other people instead. By the end of it, I felt like a 500-pound weight had been lifted off my shoulders, and my heart swelled with pride when Sherrill turned the discussion open to the group and everyone who spoke thanked me for my honesty. I even stayed afterward for a few minutes, although part of me wanted to hide away and recover from all the exposure. And precisely because I stuck around, a pretty girl who looked around my age approached with an expectant smile on her face.

  “Hi, I’m Monica.” She offered her hand and I shook it.

  “Hi! Mischa,” I said, pointing to myself.

  “Your share was great.”

  “Thanks! I really hate public speaking if you couldn’t tell,” I said.

  “Yeah, me too. Hey, listen”—she glanced behind her, as if she had some big secret to tell me—“I know we’re not supposed to do this since it’s anonymous and all. I was actually here… well, this is my first time. I actually came for research for school. I told Sherrill, so it’s all on the up and up.”

  “Sure, of course.” I sounded uncertain as I wondered what Monica was getting at.

  “Anyway, like I said, I know it’s anonymous and all, but is there any way you can tell me if your last name is Jones?”

  “Uh… who wants to know?” I answered, worried she might be Liam’s longtime girlfriend or something equally terror-inducing.

  Monica lowered her voice. “It’s just that I’ve been working at the school, assisting in the Nutrition department, and you’ve been the first name on our waiting list for the grad program for a while now. And today we had someone drop out.”

  “Wait… what?” I shook my head like a cartoon character that had just been hit with an anvil. “I’m Mischa Jones. That’s me! I’m her!” I cried it out too loudly, too un-anonymously, in a state of heart-pounding excitement. Everyone turned to look at me, but I didn’t care.

  “So, yeah, I got an e-mail tonight to call you first thing tomorrow… You’re in. That is, if you’re still interested.”

  “Are you kidding me? Yes! Beyond still interested. Oh my God.” I threw my arms around her—after my curious stairwell incident with Donna Dixon, I had become much less averse to hugging complete strangers in public—and bounced up and down. “Sorry,” I apologized as I drew back. “This is just the best news I’ve heard all summer. Do I need to sign something? Of course I do, right?”

  Monica laughed. “Yeah. Just stop by the office. I’ll let the dean know first thing.”

  “Wait… is there a TA-ship?” I had almost forgotten to ask, but it was imperative. I wouldn’t be able to swing graduate school otherwise.

  “Yes. It’s guaranteed for the first-years,” she happily reported.

  “Aah!” This time I actually jumped. “I have to go call my mom! Monica, you are an angel sent from heaven. Don’t let anybody tell you different,” I said.

  In turn, she smiled big and shrugge
d modestly as I hurried out, waving and blowing her a melodramatic kiss.

  * * *

  I caught my mom sleeping—a rarity, since she was such a night owl. “Mom!” I cried into the phone after her groggy, drawn-out “hello.”

  “Honey! What a nice surprise,” she cooed, sounding drugged.

  “I woke you up, I know it. But it’s worth it—listen, I got into Reid! I just found out! I go in tomorrow to sign!”

  “Honey!” My mom gasped, rousing from her sleep state to join in my euphoria. “This is amazing! See? I told you it would work out.”

  “Thank you so much, Mom.”

  “Why are you thanking me? You’re the one you should be thanking.”

  “No, I couldn’t have done it without you. I love you so much. I’m gonna come home for Thanksgiving, okay?”

  “I know, I know, I miss you too.”

  “And we’re going to celebrate the fact that I’m gonna graduate and make something of myself before you’re too old to care.”

  This made her laugh. “I’ll never be too old for that, Fluffy.”

  There was that nickname again—back by unpopular demand. Instead of just letting it go this time, however, I decided to address it. “Hey, Mom? Why do you always call me that?”

  “Call you what, hon?”

  “Fluffy,” I said, a hint of disdain in my voice.

  “Oh, gosh. When did that start? Let’s see… I guess it was back in Kenya,” she said through a whimpery yawn. “Back when your dad was working at the consulate there. You were three or four maybe, and there was a bunny on the property. You called it ‘Fluffy’ and one day, you told me if you could be anything in the world, you would want to be that rabbit. I just thought that was so funny, I started calling you Fluffy.”

  “Wait, really? You were talking about a rabbit?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  I shook my head, utterly shocked. I had never once considered that the nickname could have anything to do with something other than my weight. Really, the way I had interpreted it spoke so much more about how I saw myself than what my mother ever thought. I had just assumed, because she was so skinny, that I had been a disappointment, which she needed to remind me of on a regular basis with a funny, nitpicking little nickname. But I had never asked about it, not until that very moment. So instead I had assumed the worst about my own mother. The realization made me sad and happy at the same time.

  “Why?” she asked again.

  “Oh, no reason,” I said, making sure to pepper in a few more “I love yous” before letting her go back to sleep.

  The next person I called, naturally, was Gracie, who indulged me in a marathon phone fest that kept us both up way later than we needed. But she was happy to celebrate with me, especially because she’d just been promoted to office manager, and with that came a paycheck slightly less laughable than her last.

  “Look at us killin’ it,” she said.

  “I know. If I wasn’t covered in cat hair, I might not believe this was my life.” I wiped my nose, which prompted another sneeze.

  “You can always move back in with you-know-who.”

  “Ha! No, that chapter is closed.”

  “Hey, have you seen that other guy? What’s-his-name?”

  “Liam? No, not really. Although it’s weird, I keep thinking I see him around town. The other day I thought he was two lanes over from me in traffic. And then I thought I saw him at the grocery store, but he was checking out with his back turned. A couple of weeks ago, I saw him on campus, running, and he waved. But I couldn’t be sure it was him.”

  “Yeah, it’s funny, I see Richard everywhere, but I’m usually wrong. I think that’s just our brains working out the obsession.”

  “Cheers to that!” I laughed, holding up my glass of water as Gracie, inevitably, held up her nightcap on the other end. “Here’s to our brains working out the obsessions.”

  “Amen, sister. Clink,” she said.

  “Clink,” I repeated.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Summer in Oceanside literally goes out with a bang. On the last Friday in August, the mayor sets off a cannon outside the courthouse, which marks the beginning of “Gator Gras,” Oceanside’s weeklong version of Mardi Gras featuring the world’s biggest alligator cook-off among other things. This year I was sad to find myself sans Gracie, who had always dragged me out on opening night, and decided to venture out on my own in her honor. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a drink or seen live music, and once classes began I could probably kiss a social life goodbye, at least for a while.

  I wandered into town with no expectations. I just figured I’d catch the tail end of the parade, grab a beer, see whoever was playing at the pub, and call it a night. But when I wandered into the darkened bar that was hosting opening night festivities, I heard a familiar voice coming from the stage in back and nearly dropped when I realized it was Liam.

  My first thought was that I should run, or risk getting drawn back into his vortex. But my body, seemingly disconnected from my mind, stayed planted at the back of the crowd. He was strumming an acoustic guitar, seated alone onstage and singing a ballad. Desperate for a better view, I stood on my tiptoes and peered between the heads of the couple in front of me. The spotlight emphasized Liam’s late-summer golden perfection. He looked tan and healthy, but still just the right amount of brooding and complex to twist my heart into perplexed little knots. The sound of his voice was mesmerizing. I had never been a groupie, but at this moment I saw the appeal, watching his fingers expertly move from chord to chord and his face contort with emotion. I closed my eyes and listened to the chorus:

  There goes that girl again

  I’m in a whirl again

  It takes an angel to wake the devil inside me

  And now she’s gone again

  I’ve done her wrong again

  It took an angel to slay the devil inside me—

  I opened my eyes and watched him repeat the chorus once more, half hoping that he was singing about me, but half terrified as well. The song was beautiful and tragic, the guitar lines plaintive, his gravelly voice bittersweet. Liam’s guitar eventually faded out and everyone around me started to applaud while I stood there in a trance. All the emotions I had felt when leaving his house that night I had put him to bed came rushing back. If only, if only, if only, I thought, imagining the perfect world in which we could be together. But then my reasoning kicked in, telling me that Liam looked this good and healthy after weeks of not seeing me. I was just as improved without him. It seemed obvious we were better off without each other, even if watching him bare his soul onstage made me ache with desire.

  Liam looked out into the crowd, scanning the room, and I panicked. A girl carrying two full beers knocked into me as she made her way toward the stage, and I felt a wet spot spreading on the back of my shirt. It’s a sign, I thought. Go now before he sees you. Liam’s gazed drifted to my section of the crowd, and I turned, bolting past the bar and through the open door to the sidewalk littered with confetti from the parade.

  * * *

  “Where are you taking me, Fluffy?” Isabella looked worried as she peered out the passenger window of my car at a row of dilapidated ranch houses.

  “To my drug dealer’s house,” I joked.

  She pushed up the large, Audrey Hepburn–style black sunglasses that had slid down her nose. “Oh, please, I’m officially too old for drugs and bad neighborhoods.”

  Isabella was looking far better on her eighty-sixth birthday than she had a month ago, and I was happy to know I’d had a hand in it. Ever since that champagne-drenched afternoon when I’d made her a peanut butter smoothie and left it on her nightstand, she had been requesting them regularly and had even learned how to make them herself. It had given me the idea for a counter-program to my cleanse that I was working on formulating—a smoothie-only regimen for older women like her who could stand to add a few pounds. Of course, my juices had just started selling at Sasha’s spa, and exp
anding the brand wouldn’t be an option until I saw how they were doing, but I needed something other than Liam to occupy my thoughts before fall semester began. I couldn’t get that song out of my head, or the image of him onstage. I knew better than to act on it by now, but the crush had come creeping back all the same…

  “Ooh… here we are,” I said, spotting the address I’d been searching for on a hot pink mailbox and turning into the driveway.

  Many things about my dear old friend still remained a mystery to me—her political beliefs, what kind of music she liked, how exactly she had ended up in Oceanside—but something she had been very clear about from day one were her many superstitions. Like any good girly-girl, Isabella loved astrology and psychics and crack theories about lunar cycles and their effects on the female brain. So when I found myself searching for the perfect gift for her eighty-sixth, I decided to book a session with Sasha’s favorite psychic. The woman’s name (doubtfully by birth) was Mimi Lamar, and she had easily the nicest house on her not-yet-gentrified block. The lawn stood out as freshly cut and very green against the dry, yellowed grasses that bordered it. The home was a single-story ranch, like the ones surrounding it, but the bricks were painted bright white and the shutters were a brilliant magenta. Hibiscus bushes with delicate white and pink flowers bordered the front walk.

  “Well, hello there!” Mimi greeted us from the front door as I helped Isabella out of the car.

  “Who is she?” Isabella whispered in my ear.

  “She’s a psychic!” I whispered back.

  “What is she going to predict? The next five minutes before I keel over?”