How to Grow an Addict

by J. A. Wright

  Two days later Aunt Flo called and asked if I wanted her to come and get me. “I hope you’re done helping your mom, because my Fourth of July party is going to be a lot of fun and I’d really like it if you’d come. I think Sissy needs the company. She’s bored.”

  I was about to tell her that I had other plans for the Fourth when Mom motioned to me, clicking her fingers in front of my face, to give her the phone. Aunt Flo got an earful about my zebra hairstyle and my makeup. “She’s not your kid, Flo. You don’t get to make decisions,” Mom said just before she slammed the phone down.

  I went to bed that night feeling relieved that I didn’t have to create any more excuses for not going to Aunt Flo’s.

  I started the ninth grade the same week I started my period. I didn’t tell my mom about it until she asked me, and she only asked because I’d used all of the pads in her bathroom drawer.

  “I was wondering if you were going to get your period,” she said. “You’ve been so moody these past few weeks, and it’s about time you got it.”

  I agreed with her about my period causing me to be moody because I didn’t want her to know I was mad about what I’d done with Tyler. I really wished I hadn’t had sex with him. I never thought I’d hear from him again but I did. Tyler and Sissy both sent me Christmas cards in the same envelope later that year. In Tyler’s card I found a piece of Arnold’s engraved letterhead and a check for two hundred dollars made out to me from Arnold. The note said, “Thanks for helping out with my song. Your lyrics were perfect. Tyler.”

  I first heard Tyler’s song on the radio just after New Year’s. The singer sang the words almost exactly how I’d written them. I really liked the song, and was excited about it, so I called Arnold’s house to talk to Sissy. I wanted to know who the singer was; I couldn’t imagine it was Tyler. The guy’s voice was too low. Aunt Flo answered the phone and said Sissy had gone to Ireland as an exchange student and that yes, it was Tyler singing on the record. “Isn’t he great?” she said.

  “He is, and I’m so happy he used the lyrics I wrote,” I replied.

  She didn’t respond for so long I thought the phone had gone dead. I was just about to hang up when I heard her say, “You must be mistaken. I was there when Tyler sat down at the piano and wrote that song.”

  “I wrote the lyrics, Aunt Flo. I gave them to him when he drove me to the bus station last summer,” I replied.

  “What kind of game are you up to, missy?” she asked in a very serious voice.

  I tried to explain how I’d heard Tyler play the song and then recorded it so I could write some words. I even told her about the check for two hundred dollars I got from Arnold and the thank-you note I got from Tyler at Christmas. But she said, “No, you didn’t. That’s a lie and you know it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I felt my face turn red and my stomach turn sour, so I hung up.

  CHAPTER 12

  I hated that Aunt Flo didn’t believe me and I thought about sending her my original copy of the lyrics, but after buying and listening to Tyler’s recording of “Your New Friend Regret” and noticing he’d changed a few words, I decided to not send her my copy or call her for a while.

  I was pretty busy with schoolwork anyway, which was good because I didn’t have time to think about Tyler and Aunt Flo too much. I’d been working on a two hundred–word short story for my English class since before Christmas, and only found the time and inspiration to write it after my awkward phone conversation with Aunt Flo and after I’d spent a week sorting through my poem and lyric notebooks. I had close to five hundred poems and lyrics to songs in folders and notebooks hidden in my closet and under my bed. I even had a shoebox full of poems I’d written on bar napkins I’d found in the glove boxes of Dad’s cars. And once I had to tell the school librarian that I lost the copy of Ramona and Her Mother I’d checked out because I wrote a poem about Ramona learning to air burp on pages 2 and 3 in pen and I didn’t want her to see it.

  I wasn’t sure why I wrote poems, or what they meant, but I was pretty sure everyone in my school would laugh at me if I ever read “Should’ve Been a Boy” or “Nice to Be Dead” to my English class. I rewrote my writing assignment at least fifteen times before I threw it in the garbage and decided to tell my English teacher I’d lost it. I couldn’t bring myself to hand in my short story, “When You Breathe I Sneeze, When You Grunt I Jump,” about a boy who knows a girl who loves him and doesn’t care.

  My classmates already called me “weirdo,” and though I hated it, deep down I knew it was true. It seemed to me other kids my age knew the right things to say and the right way to act. They never looked like they felt out of place the way I did, and I would bet my life most of the girls in my class wouldn’t have agreed to have sex in the front seat of a guy’s car like I had.

  I was tired of being the girl everyone avoided. I wanted to be one of the girls who everyone admired and wanted to be like. So I decided to quit spending my spare time at school writing poetry and instead work on trying to be popular. I even convinced my mom to let me buy the type of clothes the cool girls wore, and I spent the last few months of the ninth grade shopping for new clothes at the mall on weekends so I’d have something new on every Monday, just like the popular girls did. But dressing and talking like the cool girls didn’t help me with things like sitting still in class or knowing what to do with my hands. I’d always found it hard to keep my hands quiet and harder still to not wiggle around in my chair. “If you could just sit still like the other kids, you’d be fine,” my mom said after attending a parent-teacher meeting at my school.

  My math teacher told her how I played with my hands, chewed pencils, made church steeples with my fingers, and constantly doodled on my desk and in my schoolbooks during class. She even showed her my math Pee-Chee—the one I’d written “It’s not the bite, it’s the chew that I like” all over in red pen.

  “Your teacher told me you don’t pay attention in class, that you spend your time wiggling around and writing strange things,” Mom said.

  My moving around too much not only bothered my homeroom teacher, it bothered my other teachers, too— everyone except for my PE teacher. I thought she hated me, but I was wrong. One day, after our school’s softball tryouts in March, I found her standing by my locker when I went to get my coat. She smiled at me and said, “Where’d you learn to pitch like that?”

  “My brother taught me,” I replied.

  “This school hasn’t had a good girls’ softball team for years, so I’m glad you’ve tried out. Would you be interested in playing on a summer league team as well? I know of a team that’s looking for a few new players.”

  “Sure,” I replied, while trying to keep still so she couldn’t tell how excited I was about her asking me.

  She drove me to the summer league tryout a few weeks later and talked to the coach while I pitched for their practice game. Afterward, the summer league coach said he’d be happy to have me on his team.

  I was thrilled and thanked her a couple of times on the drive back to school.

  “You don’t have to thank me, it’s my job to help. And besides, the team needs you as much as you need them,” she said.

  Everyone on my new summer softball team could play pretty well, and I joined as a relief pitcher because they already had a pitcher who’d been with them for years. She came up to me after my tryout and said, “Get used to riding the bench, ’cause I ain’t giving up the mound.”

  I didn’t care too much that she didn’t like me because the rest of the team seemed to, and even though I knew I wouldn’t get to pitch too often I was happy to be on a team and to have something to do that summer other than help Dad with his cars.

  When I told Dad I’d joined a summer league team that already had a steady pitcher, he hit the roof. “Who told you to do that? You’ll waste the entire summer sitting on the bench and never get to pitch. And why didn’t you ask me about getting on a team? I could have found one for you.”

  “I wasn
’t even thinking about playing softball this summer until my PE teacher brought it up,” I replied.

  “Your PE teacher? Who the hell is your PE teacher?” he yelled.

  “She’s nice. I like her. She drove me to the league tryouts last week and told my new coach she thought I had talent.”

  “Talent? Jesus Christ, now that’s something I haven’t heard before,” Dad said as he stomped through the kitchen on his way out the back door. “And haven’t you learned your lesson about getting in cars with strangers?”

  I could feel my insides turn to mush and felt like crying, but I didn’t. Instead I snuck a beer from the fridge and went to my bedroom.

  After listening to Mom and Dad fight about me playing softball later that night, I thought Dad was going to call my PE teacher and yell at her, but he didn’t. He didn’t come to any of my games that summer, either, which I was pretty happy about because I don’t know what I would’ve done if Dad yelled at my coach the way he used to yell at Robbie’s.

  Whenever I got a chance to pitch, most of my team encouraged me to do it as hard and fast as I could. The only girl who didn’t cheer me on was the team’s steady pitcher. She was kind of snotty, and I’m sure it was because the coach (to my surprise) let me pitch at least two, sometimes three, innings every game.

  A few weeks into the summer season, my coach told me about a softball camp in July. “It’s a good camp, a week of practice games and team building. I think everyone on the team is going this year. You should too,” he said.

  I took the information sheet home to show my parents. Mom thought it was a great idea, but Dad wasn’t so sure I’d learn anything at camp that I couldn’t learn from him. “Sixty bucks is a lot of money for a week of goofing around. I wonder how much practicing there really is.”

  After he called my coach to ask about the training plan and the parental supervision at the camp and discovered the coach happened to be his boss’s son, he got off the phone and said to Mom, “Make sure she’s got a pair of decent shoes and a proper softball mitt. Don’t let her take that old thing of Robbie’s with her.”

  The first few days of softball camp were a lot of fun. The weather was perfect, and I liked training and playing all day. I also liked a couple of my teammates, especially the catcher and the second baseman. I shared a cabin with them and they showed me around and introduced me to everyone they knew. It was on the fourth night of camp that the snotty team pitcher showed up at our cabin after dinner with a bottle of vodka and poured some into our cans of soda. She didn’t drink a thing, just kept refreshing our drinks until there wasn’t any soda or vodka left. The three of us got “totally wasted,” according to the rest of the team. We ended up in the same bed together. I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing it was me who peed the bed because my jeans were wet; I don’t know whose vomit it was on the floor.

  What I do recall about that night was how they all talked to me about sex and what they called my “strangenesses.”

  “If you really want to get a decent boyfriend you’re gonna have to stop talking and moving around so much, biting your nails, cracking your knuckles, and smelling everything before you eat it,” the catcher said.

  I knew she was right, especially about talking so much. Sometimes I’d catch myself talking a mile a minute, for no reason at all.

  The four of us got kicked out of camp and suspended for the rest of the season. I was glad the pitcher got kicked out too.

  The other three girls’ parents came and picked them up by noon, but I had to wait outside on the road until 5 p.m. for Dad to arrive because Mom was home in bed with a bad headache and couldn’t drive. Not only did he have to leave work early, he missed an important work function where he was supposed to get an award for selling more stuff that year than anyone else.

  He was fuming mad. “Get in the fucking car and don’t say a fucking word.”

  I got in the backseat and sat as low as I could. I prayed we’d get home before he finished his six-pack of beer.

  Things got worse between Dad and me after the camp incident. I got kicked off the team and Dad apologized to my coach, on my behalf. “Good-for-nothing brat” was his new title for me. I tried my hardest to keep busy and out of his way the rest of the summer. I even paid him back the sixty-dollar camp fee with money I made from sweeping up hair on Friday and Saturday afternoons at Ken’s beauty salon. The rest of the time I was home alone, and it didn’t take long for me to discover that two beers made cleaning, ironing, and washing windows kind of fun.

  Just before I started the tenth grade my parents got into a huge fight about school clothes for me. Dad said I didn’t deserve anything new. “She’s old enough to get drunk and make a fool out of me, so she’s old enough to get a job and buy her own goddamn clothes!” he yelled.

  Mom took me clothes shopping anyway. “You’ve grown so much these past few months, and I’m not going to make you start your sophomore year wearing old clothes and shoes that are too small, no matter what your dad says.”

  I hugged mom so hard I thought I’d cracked one of her ribs, but she smiled at me anyway.

  Things calmed down at home after I started school. Dad wasn’t home much, and Mom had to work extra hours because her department was merging with another one, so I was home alone after school. I usually goofed around and watched TV for a while before I started my homework, and sometimes I helped myself to a wine cooler, but only one. I did my school work every night, and I even went to the library, checked out Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird, and read them all the way through.

  When I brought home my report card, four A’s and two B’s, both Mom and Dad seemed kind of proud. They even invited me along to see Dead Poets Society the next weekend because Dad had won free movie passes at his office raffle.

  A few days after the movie, Mom took me out to dinner and asked my advice about her plan for Dad’s sixtieth birthday present. She’d arranged for him to drive one of his cars in the opening parade of the national classic car convention in Las Vegas and wanted to know if he had a car ready or not. “He’s got two cars ready and both are really nice,” I told her.

  She kept her plan a secret until the morning of his birthday, November 17. That morning she put the car show tickets under his coffee cup, and when he picked them up and saw what they were he put his paper down and grinned from ear to ear. “You’ve got about thirty minutes to get ready. If we don’t leave here by eight thirty we won’t make it in time for the parade,” Mom said.

  “I can be ready to go in ten minutes,” I said.

  “No fucking way! She’s not coming!” Dad yelled out as he walked down the hall and into the bathroom.

  I looked at Mom and tried to hold back my tears but I couldn’t.

  “Hey honey, it’s his birthday and you’re fifteen, old enough to stay home alone. Be good and I’ll take you shopping for those boots you want next week,” Mom said.

  Dad had been talking about driving in a classic car parade for years, but he never did because he said it was too expensive. I think he never went because he didn’t think he had a car that was good enough. But things were different that year. He’d finally finished restoring the two cars he’d been working on for years. Both were in pristine condition and worthy of turning a few heads.

  It took Dad less than fifteen minutes to shower and dress, but much longer to decide which car to drive. After calling a few of his club buddies, he finally decided on his yellow-green 1965 Ford Falcon because he’d recently given it a complete overhaul, including new tires and wheels, tinted windows, and lime-green vinyl upholstery on both the front and back seats. It looked great. “It’s not as smooth-driving as my Mustang, but it’s the one I want people to see,” he said.

  I thought he should have taken the 1965 Mustang because it was cherry red, with two orange flames on each fender and a white leather interior. It was my favorite car, and on rare occasions when he took it out for a drive, he’d let me go too. But only if I washed my hands first an
d promised not to bite my nails, chew gum, pick my nose, or stick my hands out the window.

  While I was helping Mom put her suitcase in the trunk and fill up Dad’s beer cooler for the drive, she said, “We’ll be back Monday. Stay home and do your homework. I know you have some because I saw it on your bed.”

  I let out a big huff and said, “What if someone breaks in and kills me?”

  “Oh honey, no one’s gonna break in and kill you. It’s only for two nights, and I told Mrs. Benson you might stop over if you got scared or lonely,” Mom replied.

  I took a deep breath and said, “Sure, I’ll do my homework, I promise.” But I didn’t mean it. I didn’t plan on doing anything that weekend.

  After they drove off I went back to bed and slept most of the day.

  When I woke up I was hungry for ice cream. I knew I wasn’t supposed to leave the house, but we didn’t have any ice cream in the freezer, so I walked down to the corner store the next block over.

  I was picking out my ice cream when my neighbors, the twins, walked up behind me. The taller one said, “Yo, get the Neapolitan, then all three of us can eat it.” Then they both started laughing. They laughed so hard the potato chips they were eating flew from their mouths and onto the front of the freezer door.

  I hadn’t talked to either of them since school started that year, ever since they’d gotten cars and started driving to school. They lived five houses down the block from us. For a few years when I was little I thought they were deaf.

  “They’re not deaf. They’re just shy, and maybe you talk so much they can’t get a word in—huh?” Mom said.

  I used to walk home from school with them or behind them and I never got to know them very well, but I did know that they were a year older me and they both played on the high school tennis team and smoked pot.

  I put a half-gallon of Neapolitan in my cart and told them they could come over and have some, and that my parents were away for the weekend. “I wouldn’t mind having a close look at your dad’s Mustang,” said the cuter one.