“I’m so happy to see you in the gym, bro.” Mo’s hands hover under the bar, and his thick body is pressed so close to my head that I have no choice but to stare at his armpits as I press the bar upward, gritting my teeth against the pain that instantly grips my chest like a metal vice.
“Recovery is such a mind/body thing,” Mo drones. “You know there’s research that suggests regular workouts can actually help you resist the temptation of drugs? It’s like a chemical reaction or something.”
“How . . . many . . . more?” I wheeze into Mo’s hairy pits, pushing my screaming arms straight.
“You got another five in you, easy,” Prison Tat says, the tear drop tattoo at the corner of his eye winking at me.
“Doing it for the dopamine, dude,” Mo says, lowering the bar once more over my chest.
With monumental effort, I lift it again, and then one more time, in case Libby’s watching.
“Just don’t die,” Will says encouragingly.
The laugh that rises in my throat nearly chokes me; my elbows buckle, and Mo catches the bar before I’m permanently pinned to the bench.
“That was only 150, bro!” Will sneers. “Aren’t you supposed to be some badass athlete or something?”
Mo offers his burly mitt; I clasp it, and he hauls me to my feet, pounding my back with his other hand. I have to bite my lip to keep from crying out.
“Keep it up, brother,” Mo says. “We get stronger every day.”
“Thanks.” I shoot him a wry grin, then punch Will in the shoulder. “Let’s see you do any better.”
“That’s gonna have to wait a minute,” Mo says. He’s loading weights on the ends of the bar like they’re marshmallows on a stick. He nods to Prison Tat. “Spot me?”
While Will hangs by the bench press, I make my way to the free weight rack. Libby’s doing tricep kickbacks with a weight so light her arm’s swinging like a pendulum. “You might want to go a little heavier,” I say.
Libby drops her arm and glares at me. “Who asked you?”
“Nobody,” I fumble. “I just thought . . . you’re kind of swinging it? It’s not going to . . .” What is it about this girl that turns me into some kind of speech-impaired idiot? “Never mind.” I reach for a weight from the rack.
Libby watches me in the mirror for a second. “If you know so much, show me.”
I falter, nearly dropping the weight on my foot. “Really?”
“Yeah, if you’re not too busy showing off for your ‘bros’ over there.”
I wince. “Sure, I’ll show you.” I put back my own weight and choose one for Libby. Bending over the bench, I show her the proper form. “Now you try.”
Libby weighs the metal in her hand.
“You’ve got this,” I tell her. “Trust me.”
It takes some effort, but Libby pounds out ten reps. “See?” I tell her, as she stands up and swipes the fly-aways off her forehead. “You’re stronger than you think you are.”
Across the room, a heavy weight crashes to the ground with a primal groan, pulling my eyes away from Libby. Mo sits at the end of the bench, his cheeks red and his breathing heavy.
“Hey, Player,” Will calls. “If you’re done with the personal training session, I’m ready to school you in the art of the bench press.”
Libby rolls her eyes. “Meat-heads await.”
“Will’s not like that, he’s just being . . .”
“Anybody want to bet on it?” Will asks. “I’ve got ten bucks that says I can do 200 pounds.”
Libby snorts. “Sure, he’s not.” She drops into kickback position, this time with her other leg on the bench.
Deflated, I head back to the bench press, where Mo’s spotting Will as he powers through eight reps.
“Easy,” I say when he’s done.
Will gives me a lopsided grin. “Oh, yeah? Ten bucks says you can’t do it.”
I instantly regret teasing him. Coach says I’m an underdog with a Napoleon complex, always getting myself into situations I have to fight my way out of. It works out well on the field—you don’t make captain by being a wimp. But sometimes I wish I could keep my freaking mouth shut.
In the mirrored wall, I catch a glimpse of Libby. She’s got a free weight over her head, but I can tell she’s listening. Three things go through my mind at once:
1. I don’t want Libby to think I’m some dumb meat-head.
2. I don’t want Libby to think I’m a wimp.
3. Why the hell do I care what this crazy chick thinks anyway?
“I’ll see your ten and raise you five on Eli,” somebody says. I look up to see Red winding his way through the cardio machines.
“Red!” I jog over to him, clasp his outstretched hand, and clap him hard on the back. “It’s good to see you!”
After everybody’s introduced themselves, Will gets back down to business. “So are we doing this or not?” His eyes glint with excitement. “We’ve got some serious money on the table.”
“C’mon, guys,” I try, fumbling around for an excuse. “It’s almost dinner and . . .”
“How about a push-up contest instead?” Libby’s voice cuts through the chatter in the gym. She’s a feather-weight in this circle of jocks and body builders.
Mo chuckles, props his elbow lightly on Libby’s shoulder. “You got money in this game, little sister?”
I can’t read the look on her face. “Five bucks on Will,” she says.
And then I’m pissed. I’m in, and I’m going to win.
We sort it out quickly—it’s a 30 second countdown. The most push-ups by the time Mo calls it, wins. I throw in five bucks, Prison Tat bets a candy bar—Mo’s the only one who doesn’t bet. Odds are on Will with only Red in my corner. I don’t mind. Will did bench more than me. What these guys don’t know is that mad is how I play. It’s not about strength; it’s about who has something to prove. Screw my pain—mad is how I win.
Red claps his hands together like the crackling microphone of a sports commentator. “Alright, boys, assume the position.”
Will and I are head to head, his arms stretched opposite mine. He winks at me, and then Mo says, “Go!”
Will and I are pumping them out at the same speed. I focus on how they all bet against me, even Libby. My triceps burn, and my lungs are screaming, but I pull ahead. Will is breathing hard. There’s only ten seconds left, and I know I’m going to win.
Something heavy lands between my shoulder blades. Pain shoots up my back and into my skull—a bolt of lightning that blinds me. I cry out, and my arms buckle. I hit the rubber flooring, choking on chalk dust.
Mo lifts the weight off my back. I roll onto my side, whimpering like a beaten dog. Everybody’s staring at Libby.
Her eyes are flat and hard, her mouth pinched. “Next time I want help, I’ll ask for it,” she spits. Then she turns and storms out of the gym.
Red calls after her. “Hey, you know you owe me fifteen bucks, right?”
Libby flips him the bird over her shoulder before the double doors slam heavy behind her.
Mo chuckles, reaches down, and carefully helps me to my feet. “You know what happens when you play with fire, don’t you, bro?” He lifts my arm across his shoulder, supporting my weight. “You get burned.”
It’s almost lights out, and I’m stretched out on my bed, an ice pack spread across my sore ribs, thumbing through the pages of my Step One packet and trying not to think about the fact that I’m supposed to share it with my group tomorrow. Richard Fisher said I only have to read part of it, and then I’ll get to use the phone. But how am I supposed to pick which part? The whole freaking thing is practically a burn book I wrote about myself. Page after page of admission—what I’ve used, how often, how using has affected my life. Each section has a culminating question at the end: Have drugs affected your school work? Have drugs affected your relationship with your family? Do you use drugs to cope with difficult emotions?
Yes . . . Yes . . . Maybe . . . I don’t know. These are just words, scratched pencil marks on paper. But this is my life we’re talking about. My real life. And the idea of reading it out loud to a room full of strangers makes me feel like I’m going to puke.
Hi, my name’s Eli, and a week ago, I almost died.
Saying it out loud would make it real. It would mean that Savannah and Mom and Richard Fisher are right. It would mean there’s something wrong with me.
I drop the folder on my stomach and peer sideways at Mo, who’s lying on the bed opposite me, reading a recovery book like the ones in detox. Knowing Mo, it’s probably his personal copy. He wears glasses at night—thick black frames that make him look more computer dweeb than linebacker, and it cracks me up.
“Mo?”
He lowers his book and glances over at me, his glasses cockeyed on the bridge of his nose.
“What’s the deal with Libby?” I ask. I’ve been thinking about her ever since the gym and it’s driving me crazy. She walked right past me at dinner and didn’t say a word. I’m 99.9% sure she hates me, and I don’t understand why. “I mean, one second we’re having a nice moment, and then bam, she goes full schizoid. I can’t figure that chick out.”
Mo grins. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
His question is a punch in the lungs. Of course I do. I have Savannah. I love Savannah. Libby shouldn’t matter. Libby doesn’t matter. But still . . .
Mo doesn’t wait for my answer. “Libby’s like a little sister to me. But she’s had a hard road, man. The only people who’ve ever been nice to her, ended up playing her hard. I don’t think she trusts anybody all the way, maybe not even me.” He stares at me for a second. “You know she’s not your problem, though, right?”
I fumble for my words. “Yeah, sure. I mean, of course . . .”
Mo grins. “You have to work on yourself, bro. Relationship drama only makes this shit harder.” He turns back toward his book. “Trust me—stay far away from it.”
I think of Richard Fisher’s office, the blue frame on his desk, the baby in the red bandana. “Speaking of drama,” I ask Mo, “do you know anything about Richard Fisher?”
“Fish?”
The nickname surprises me. “What’s up with him? He’s got this whole bad boy biker thing going on, and then today he told me about his dead kid.” I think of the zit analogy, pimples oozing feelings like yellow pus. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Mo chuckles. “You know he spent time in jail, right?”
“For real?”
“Straight up. For a while there was a rumor going around that he used to be the leader of this motorcycle drug ring.” Mo laughs. “I heard him speak one time last year; he gave a speech the day he got thirty years sober.”
“Thirty years?”
“Hell, yea, bro. Fish is the real deal.” He dog-ears a page in his book and puts it on our shared nightstand. Then he rolls onto his side to face me. “Apparently, he used to be some big-shot psychiatrist in New York or somewhere, I forget. When his kid died, he went lolo, crazy, you know? Started writing his own scripts, heavy shit, too—you remember that shit that killed Michael Jackson? Anyway, after a while, his lady had enough, so she bagged him, moved out. He wasn’t seeing enough clients to pay the bills, so he started a side business.”
Mo gives me a knowing look.
“Dealing?”
“Yup. Made a bundle writing scripts for high-end clientele—Manhattan housewives popping xannibars with their morning mimosas, porn stars pre-gaming on oxy—you get the idea. He was doing alright for himself until some rich bitch OD’d, and her husband went looking for her hookup. Fish got busted—judge hammered him hard. Lost his license, went to jail. Fish likes to say he found AA behind barbed wire. But he told me one time that the first time he saw The Big Book, that’s the one that’s like the bible for AA, was when he chased away some homeless guy that was rooting through the trash in front of his brownstone. The book fell out of the guy’s grocery cart. Fish picked it up and tossed it in the bin. Next time he saw that book was when he checked it out of the prison library. Crazy, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Crazy.”
“Whatever Fish’s done in the past, he’s a damn good counselor,” Mo says. “You’re lucky to have him.”
“Maybe,” I mutter doubtfully. I tap my forehead with the folder, like maybe I can take it in osmosis-style. “He’s making me read this at group tomorrow.”
“No one’s making you read it, bro. Howard, Fish—they just want you to try.”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”
Mo smiles knowingly. “Nervous?”
“Oh, you know,” I say, “not really. Only mildly concerned that I might crap myself.”
Mo’s belly shakes with laughter. “I nearly puked the first time I had to do it.”
The first time? “You mean we have to do this more than once?”
Mo’s eyes twinkle. “This isn’t my first time here.”
“How many?” I ask.
Mo rolls onto his back, stares up at the popcorn stucco ceiling tiles. “Here? This is my third time. But I tried two other places first.”
Mo has always seemed like the poster child for recovery, full of 12-step-isms and chipper advice. But then I think about how comfortable he is here, how he seems to know everybody, and it all makes perfect sense. He’s been through it all before.
For a second, I feel like I’ve found a loop hole, a reason for my mom to pull me out and take me back to my life. “So you’re saying this shit doesn’t work?”
Mo’s thick shoulders reach for his pierced ears. “I always leave feeling like this time it stuck. Like I’m never coming back. But that’s when the real work starts, you know? I go to a party, and there’s beer, and I can probably handle one, right?” Mo closes his eyes, breathes in real deep, like he’s imagining himself at a party, red Solo cup in hand, breathing in the smoky chaos of beer pong and popularity. I’m reminded of another party a few months ago. The one after Winter Formal.
Mo opens his eyes. “I think it does work,” he says. “I think you get a little better each time around. Some of us just have farther to go than others.”
I drop the folder over my face and groan into pencil-marked pages that smell like school. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Sure you can,” Mo says. “It’s like in the weight room. We push through the impossible. We get stronger every single day.”
He takes off his glasses and sets them neatly on the bedside table. “Turn out the light when you’re done, okay?”
“Sure.”
Mo rolls over, and soon the only sound in the room is the steady rhythm of his snoring. But I’m restless. It’s like talking about this stuff has shaken something loose; I can’t stop the flow of memories. The night of Winter Formal plays out on repeat like a bad cable TV movie. I glance sideways at my purple notebook where it waits on the bedside table.
Maybe if I write it down, I can stop thinking about it for a little while. Maybe then I can get some sleep.
I grab the notebook, flip it open to a fresh page. And I begin to write.
Day 7
“The first time I used heroin was three months, two weeks, and five days ago.” I did the math last night, the memory crystallizing as I scrawled it in ink across a blank page. My hands shake, fluttering the pages, and sweat beads on my upper lip. I stare at the floor, the concrete wall behind Howard’s head, the grease-smudged corners of my notebook—anywhere to avoid making eye contact with the other guys in the group as I dump my life history out on the floor in front of them.
I’m not the first one to share my story with the group. After a week at LakeShore, I’ve heard a handful of guys read from their own packets, starting from the beginning, the inner cities or suburban paradises they were born in, the pot they smoked, the coke they snorted, the meth they cooked in kitchens like rabid scientists with crumbling t
eeth. I hadn’t planned on reading much, but once the first few sentences scratched the surface, everything else came pouring out. I told them about my parents splitting up and about my dad’s death. About moving to Grandhaven, about Steven and Benny. I told them about the pills in Chase’s basement, how the oxy I came to depend on eventually became a habit I could barely afford.
The guys in my group slurp coffee from their Styrofoam cups and bob their heads every now and then, like ‘been there, done that.’ Nothing I say surprises anyone.
“It was the night of Winter Formal. My girlfriend, Savannah, and I had been dating for almost nine months. She looked bangin’ that night. I wore a new suit, and Savannah kept telling me how hot I looked, kept running her hands in my pockets. That suit was gonna get me laid for sure.”
A couple guys laugh, but Howard shushes them with a condescending glare.
“We cruised by the dance around 9 p.m. My friend Alex’s parents had rented us a limo. There were eight of us altogether. We stayed at the dance for about 45 minutes, then left the gym to the losers who wanted to sip pink punch and slow dance with the mandatory six inches between them.” I hold my arms out straight, miming the awkwardness of slow dancing at school, and earn a chuckle from Howard.
“As usual, Alex’s parents were out that night. It was only supposed to be the eight of us, but Chase has a big mouth. He told everybody where the after-party was. People showed up with trunks full of beer and a quarter keg. I swear, half the school was there. The music was pumping, and people were dancing, grinding on each other like they can’t do at school. Savannah pulled me into the living room, but I didn’t want to dance. I wanted to take her upstairs.”
What happened next is like stained glass in my memory, each detail frozen in time. Savannah’s shoulders are bare, her hair down loose. I pull her close, and the heat between us is a magnet. She moves her hips, and I sway, too. I push back her hair, run my fingers down her back. She gives me this warm, sleepy smile, and I know she wants me, too. My lips brush her ear.
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