The art room is a wide, window-lit space with walls made almost entirely of glass. The trees that border LakeShore provide a view that could almost make you forget you’re stuck here. Almost.
A circle of easels outlines the hardwood floor, supporting canvases in various stages of production. People move in slow motion around here—they trickle through the door, gradually find their places behind canvases, choose brushes, and leisurely mix paint.
One painting grabs my attention. It’s a person, I guess, but freakishly asymmetrical, its face and body parts composed of sharp, angular shapes and glaring colors. One eye is open, the other closed—the mouth a fractured line, almost like a zipper. But the most disturbing part is the arms. Composed of haphazard shapes, the arms are bent in several places at unnatural angles, giving the distinct impression of shattered bones.
“What do you think?”
I swing around. Libby’s got a fresh palette in one hand, the other hand on her hip. She wears a black tank top under a paint-smattered apron. Her white blonde hair is piled into a messy bun held in place by a paintbrush. Her milky arms are bare, and two thick rows of jingly bracelets cover the places where I know there are scars.
She chews on the skin around her thumbnail. “If you’re going to ogle my painting, the least you can do is give me your opinion.”
I’m a mute idiot, with words like mush in my mouth. Her painting is freaky as shit, but the last thing I want to do is insult her again. “It’s uh . . . nice,” I say. “I like your use of, um . . . color and . . . line?” The words come out as a question, since I’m not entirely sure I’m even speaking English.
Libby giggles, and I realize that she’s baited me, and like an idiot I fell for it. The laughter makes her cheeks flush pale pink, and she reaches a bangled wrist to sweep her hair from her eyes. Something about the gesture is so natural, so unprotected, that I feel myself relax.
“I don’t know anything about art,” I admit.
She flashes me a smile. “It’s okay. It’s supposed to be dark.” Libby gazes at her painting like it’s an actual person staring back at her. “She’s broken.”
“Who is she?” I blurt.
Libby’s face tightens. “Do you ever not put your foot in your mouth?”
Not around you. I give her a sheepish grin. “It’s a condition. Try not to judge.”
Libby laughs out loud, and the sound is infectious. “You should do that more,” I say. “Laugh, I mean.”
Libby’s gaze drops to her palette. She reaches for a plastic knife that she uses to mix the crimson and orange until it’s the color of a burning sunset. Her eyes dart toward the instructor, who’s hovering over someone else’s canvas. “You should go.”
It stings, this subtle rejection, but I nod and head off the instructor who greets me with a wide smile. “You must be Eli,” she says, in a voice like warm milk with honey. Her nose ring sparkles in the light from the windows, and she’s tatted up from elbows to wrists.
I nod, and she places a thin hand on my arm. “I’ve got a spot set up for you over here.” I let her guide me to an unoccupied easel with a dauntingly bare canvas. “Right now, we’re working on self-portraits.”
I give a low whistle. “I think I’m in the wrong place,” I whisper, leaning in so nobody else hears. “I can’t even draw a stick-figure.”
The instructor tips her head, flashing me the kind of smile that makes you think you can do anything. “That’s the beautiful thing about art,” she says. “There’s no one right way to do it. Your self-portrait doesn’t need to look anything like you. It’s simply an invitation to explore the way you view yourself.”
She shows me to the shelves at the back of the room where I can pick my paint and brushes and then hands me a plastic palette to fill. “Choose any colors you like, and then let your heart guide you.”
It takes every muscle in my face not to roll my eyes at her.
“I can’t wait to see what you come up with.”
“Yeah, that makes two of us,” I say, but I don’t think she hears me. She’s already moved on to someone else, leaving the subtle scent of patchouli behind her.
I stare at the empty palette and the sea of paint choices, wondering how the hell I’m going to pick colors that are supposed to describe me. I choose red, black and yellow—LionsHeart colors. The paint squishes from the tube like shiny toothpaste. I want to paint a guy who’s cool under pressure and fierce on the lax field. I want to paint the guy I’m supposed to be, the one Savannah deserves.
But that’s not the real me. I know I don’t deserve the things I have. If it wasn’t for Steven’s money, I’d never have set foot in LionsHeart. I’d never have been made captain of the lacrosse team. I’d never have met Savannah. Inside, I’m still the same stoner freshmen with a dead dad. The last three years might as well have been a dream.
With a plastic palette knife, I push the red and yellow into the black, add more for good measure, and swirl the colors until they look like tar, like doubt and secrets. As I walk back to my easel, I spot Libby at the front of the room, only partially visible behind her canvas. Light spills through the windows beside her and pools around her feet. Her face is fixed in concentration, and her painting arm moves across the canvas like she’s dancing. I think of the broken girl splayed across her painting, and I know that’s how she sees herself.
I wonder how she sees me.
Day 6
I’m stretched out on the crappy couch in Richard Fisher’s office while he flips through the rest of my Step One packet. Every now and then, he jots something down on the yellow legal pad on his desk. When he finishes reading, he peers at me over his glasses. “What about the writing assignment I asked you to do?” He glances at the purple notebook resting on my chest. “Anything you want me to read?”
I push myself upright and toss the notebook onto his desk. “Whatever. It’s crap anyway.”
Richard opens to the first entry. I count ceiling tiles while he reads.
I’d written about the day my dad moved out. That afternoon, he’d taken me to the park to play on the swings. I kept begging him for an under-duck, but when he finally gave me one, I was too excited to hold on the way I was supposed to.
I fell from the swing and landed face down in the dirt, hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I remember Dad rolling me onto my back, the sun so bright I couldn’t see his face. There was something on my forehead, warm and wet. Dad scooped me into his arms like I was made of paper.
Mom met us at the hospital. It was only six stitches, but they’d bound me to the bed to keep me still. I could feel the anger rolling off Mom like heat waves. “I’m sorry,” I’d cried, over and over again, straining against the binding. “I’m sorry!”
“It’s not your fault, Eli,” Dad had whispered, his breath hot against my wet cheek. “It’s not your fault, okay?”
My fingers find the stretched skin of my scar, half-hidden under my hair. That night, Mom had stuffed Dad’s clothes into oversized garbage bags, the big black ones used for raking leaves. I’d laid in bed, pressing pillows against my ears to drown out the words that ricocheted into my room like stray bullets.
Careless.
Irresponsible.
Dangerous.
It’s not like this was their first fight; most mornings I’d woken up to Dad on the couch. But this fight was different. This fight was my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I’d whispered into the darkness, where only my toys could hear me. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Richard Fisher takes off his reading glasses. “This is good stuff,” he says.
“The devastation of a four-year-old? What are you, a sadist?”
Richard chuckles. “I’m saying I’m proud of you, Eli. You’ve finished your packet, and you’re writing honestly about some of your painful experiences. You’re starting the real work of recovery.”
“Whatever.” There’s a rust-colored water stai
n in the far corner of Richard Fisher’s ceiling, and if I stare at it long enough, it looks like it’s moving. I remember doors slamming, footsteps pounding the stairs, the screech of Dad’s bike peeling out of the driveway.
“Tell me more about your father,” Richard says. “After he left, what was your relationship like?”
I shrug. “Normal, I guess. I saw him a couple times a week.” A memory tugs at the corners of my mouth. “This one time, he showed up at school in the middle of the day. It was right before math, which was awesome because my math teacher was a total bitch. I climbed onto the back of Dad’s bike, and kids were watching through the windows, pointing and gaping, like I was some kind of badass. We rode into the city and bought soft pretzels and cherry water ice. We spent the whole afternoon counting boats on the wharf.”
“If I lived at home,” Dad had said, dunking a pretzel into a squishy cup of yellow mustard, “we could do stuff like this all the time.” I’d spent the whole ride back with my cheek pressed against his leather riding jacket, daring to imagine what that would be like—my parents together again, happy and in love.
The memory turns bitter after that, the taste of the water ice souring on my tongue. “Mom was pissed when we got home,” I tell Richard. My happy family fantasy had dissolved the second I’d seen the look on her face. “She’d called the school when I didn’t get off the bus.”
“She must’ve been pretty worried,” Richard says, tapping his glasses against his palm.
“Dad just forgot to tell her he was going to pick me up,” I say, “but Mom had to go and make this huge deal out of it. I swear she was jealous that Dad and I actually had fun when we were together. That’s what she was always complaining about anyway—that Dad got to show up whenever he wanted with gifts or surprise trips, and she was the one stuck at home, paying bills and folding laundry.”
Richard nods thoughtfully and writes something on the yellow legal pad.
I pluck at the soft skin at the base of my thumb. “After that, Dad could only visit me at home with Mom around to ‘supervise’ or whatever. We mostly stuck to the backyard. That’s when he started teaching me lacrosse.”
Richard puts down his pen. “Do you ever talk to your mom about your dad?”
A broken spring in the couch pokes me in the back, and I shift uneasily. “I figured out pretty quick that she had no interest in talking about my dad.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“She just didn’t, okay?” My palm throbs, and I realize I’ve been pinching my skin so hard I’ve left a red half-moon welt that glares up at me. “She gave up on him a long time ago. She chose a new family, and I was just along for the ride.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Again with this crap?”
Richard Fisher fiddles with the earpiece on his glasses. “You’re going to have to elaborate.”
“Don’t you ever wonder if sometimes things just are what they are?” I ask. “Shit happens, you move on. End of story. You should know that better than anyone, with what happened to your son and all.”
Richard’s chair creaks as he leans back, pushing out his buddha belly. “I still have feelings about what happened to me. Don’t you?”
“Sure, I have feelings,” I groan. “I’m just saying not everybody has some deep dark sob story waiting to pour out of them. My parents broke up, and sure, it sucked for a long time. But I’m over it now. Lots of people get divorced. It is what it is.”
“Is that how you feel about using drugs?” Richard asks.
“Pretty much. Sometimes I want to use, sometimes I don’t. It makes me feel good, it helps me relax, but it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to me as a kid.”
Richard nods. He thumps his fingers on his desk one time, then another. The minutes tick by on the clock above his head. A little while longer, and then I can be done with Richard Fisher for the day. “I just wonder if . . .” he begins.
“What?” I snap. I’ve seen enough therapists to know when one of them has an agenda.
He runs his hand over his head, fluffing his nutty professor ‘do.’ “I’m willing to bet that four-year-old boy had some pretty strong feelings about his dad leaving that night. I wonder if you’ve been using drugs to cope for so long that you don’t remember how to feel anything at all.”
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. The room feels chilly, and I zip up my green hoodie, hike up the hood around my ears.
Richard stares at me for a minute. Then his expression relaxes. “But what do I know? Something to think about, right?”
“Whatever.”
Richard hands me my first step folder and my purple notebook. “I’ll be looking forward to hearing how your first step share goes tomorrow.”
That gets me sitting up a little straighter. “Come again?”
“I know you’re not big on group,” says Richard, “but sharing helps build community. Every one of those guys in your group has walked the same roads you have. Believe it or not, your group will see you through some dark days ahead.”
I wave the folder at Richard. “You never said I was going to have to read this shit to anybody,” I say. “I don’t share. Ask anybody. Ask my mom. Ask all four therapists she’s taken me to. Sharing is not my thing.”
Richard’s mouth twitches. “Looks like you’re going to have to develop a new thing.”
“No way.” The room is closing in on me, and I feel like I can’t breathe. “This is a deal breaker, man. I want to call my mom. I want to call her NOW.”
I lurch to my feet, ignoring the stabbing pain in my chest, and slam the folder face down on Richard’s desk, knocking over a blue picture frame. A yellowing Polaroid stares up me, a young man with curly black hair, a baby in a backpack, a red bandana tied around his head.
Richard reaches to right the toppled frame. His voice is low and steady. “Why do you want to call your mom, Eli?”
“It doesn’t matter! Just let me call her, okay?” I pace the floor, wearing tread lines into the already faded brown carpet. My head is a pressure cooker, and my brain is about to explode. I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care about Savannah; I don’t care about her dad. I just want out.
I want out. I want out. I want out.
Richard Fisher’s voice finds me under all the noise inside my head. “Believe me, Eli, I know how you feel,” he says. “You’re miserable and terrified and downright pissed off. And you’re convinced that not talking about it, not doing this work, will make all of that go away. But I promise it won’t. The only way to the other side of this is straight through it.”
I sink onto the couch, drop my head into my hands, and groan into my sweaty palms.
“I wish I could tell you this is as bad as it gets. But I can’t.”
I slide my hands down my face, peer at him over the tips of my fingers. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“The work of recovery is some scary shit,” Richard Fisher says. “You’re going to feel vulnerable and terrified, and you’re going to want out. But I promise you, if you do the work, if you feel those feelings, even the ones that threaten to rip you apart, I promise things will get better.”
I tip my chin at the frame on Richard’s desk. “That’s your son?”
He nods.
“How can you look at that picture all the time? Doesn’t it tear you apart inside?”
“Sure, it does, sometimes. But the sadness is only one part of the story, and I don’t want to forget the rest. I want to remember.”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek until the burning in my throat goes away. I will not cry.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Richard Fisher says. “You share some of your first step writing tomorrow, even just a little bit of it, and then I’ll let you call your mom.” He winks at me. “You can tell her all about it.”
“Can’t wait,” I groan, already nauseated at the though
t of reading aloud in group.
Richard Fisher lets out a hearty laugh. “That’s the spirit.”
There’s already a handful of people in the gym when I get there—a couple of chicks on treadmills and one dude on the elliptical. Mo’s in the free-weight section, spotting a guy with barbed wire neck tattoos who’s straining to keep 350-pounds from dropping onto his swollen chest.
Will’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, waiting to bench next. He’s cut the arms out of his t-shirt, showing several amateur tattoos, smudged blue-black ink, like he tatted himself in the back of history class. “‘Sup, Eli?” He tips his chin toward the bench press. “Want to work in?”
I’m pretty sure that weightlifting with bruised ribs is a no-no—definitely on the list of contraindicated activities, right next to running, sports, and basically doing anything other than walking. I’d planned on spending the next hour in a nice 3.0 pace on the treadmill, but before I can explain that to Will, the locker room door opens, and there’s Libby.
Her hair’s in a high ponytail, and she’s wearing a pair of men’s red basketball shorts that hang below her knees, a baggy t-shirt, and Converse sneakers with no socks. She makes a wide circle around the bench press machine and carefully lifts two light weights off the rack.
“Yeah,” I tell Will, knowing I’ll regret it later. “I’ll work in.”
“Good choice, my man,” Mo says.
Prison Tat grunts out one last rep; the veins in his neck are thick cords that bulge under his skin. Will rolls his eyes.
Mo claps a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You’re up, Roomie.”
I steal a glance at Libby. She’s doing like 400 reps of these teeny weenie Barbie weights. Our eyes meet, and she quickly looks away.
Mo’s loading up the bar, and I almost tell him to take it easy on me, but the last thing I want is to look like a wuss in front of these guys. They’re the closest thing to friends I’ve got in this place. I plunk down on the bench.
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