Bottled Up

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Published by Dial Books

A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2003 by Jaye Murray

All rights reserved

Text set in Meridien

S.A. on acid-free paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Murray, Jaye.

Bottled up / Jaye Murray.

p. cm.

Summary: A high school boy comes to terms with his drug addiction, life with an alcoholic father, and a younger brother who looks up to him.

eISBN : 978-1-101-04272-4

[1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Family problems—Fiction.

3. Alcoholism—Fiction. 4. Drug abuse—Fiction.

5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction.]

I. Title.

PZ7.M9615 Bo 2003

[Fic]—dc21

2002013744

 

This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to
Richard Peck
for holding open the door
and giving me every reason
to believe I could go through it.

—quotes from
Father Figure
by Richard Peck

“Mr. Downs, I've had it with you.”

That's what my teacher Ms. Fleming told me in front of my whole class, and that's how all this started. At least that's my story anyway. You see, I was just going along the same as I always do—then Fleming changed the rules.

I cut fifth period English a lot. But when I don't, I go right to my desk three rows back, get my arm across the top, set my head inside my elbow, and take a nap. I don't snore. I don't bother anybody. Fleming does her thing. I do mine. Nobody gets hassled.

This was working for me. I figured it was working for her too. Then, out of nowhere, she goes batty with the
I've had it with you
garbage.

I was asleep. I was so deep into some dream, I could have been drooling on my sleeve. Then I felt something pecking at my head. Fleming was slamming her nail into my skull like I was friggin' roadkill and she was a crow going at my brains for lunch.

“Hey, I was sleeping.”

“I've really had it with you, Mr. Downs.”

With the back of my hand, I wiped off the spit she'd sprayed on my face.

“Go to the principal's office,” she said as if she couldn't look at my mug another second without blowing chunks on my desk.

“I wasn't doing anything.”

“Exactly. Having you in class is like having a corpse in the third row.”

“So let the dead sleep.”

“Get out. Go to Mr. Giraldi's office. Maybe he can give you a pillow and send for room service.”

“Now we're talkin',” I said, and stood up.

“You don't have any idea what we're talking about in this class. You don't even know who Charles Dickens is.”

I didn't really care.

Fleming had her arms crossed. She was trying to get all in my face. She was so close, I could have bitten her fat banana nose off.

I grabbed my never-been-used-before seven-month-old notebook, good for carrying into any class, and started walking.

In the front row Jenna was looking at me. She's one of the good girls—the high-honor-roll, never-get-into-trouble untouchables. She's really not my kind of girl—most of them have tattoos or nose rings—but there's something about her smile. She smiles like she's in love with whoever she's looking at.

She smiled at me a few months ago. I've been trying to get her to do it again ever since.

I stopped at the door. I was going to let loose and tell Fleming where she could stick her Dickens.

“Go to the principal,” she said before I could open my mouth. “You're wasting too much of my time, sir.”

People love to call a guy
sir
when they really mean
asshole.

She rushed up to the front of the room to speed me out the door.

“I'm going,” I said.

“Not fast enough,” she shot back, and shut the door pretty hard in my face.

I thought about my choices. I had two.

I could go to Giraldi's office and listen to him give me hell.

Or—smoke a bone behind the deli across the street.

Some choices are easy.

Fleming could make rules. But I didn't have to follow them.

When Fleming shut that door in my face, she gave me a free period. Free period means that I'm the teacher. I run my own classes:

I never even thought about going to Giraldi's office. Why should I? Most of the time when a teacher sends me to the principal and I don't show, the teacher doesn't check up on it later. And if I do get busted for not showing, all I get is a detention. Sometimes I show for that, but sometimes I don't. It's all part of the rules—how things have always been.

So I walked right past Giraldi's office, went outside, and lit a Marlboro by the front door. I had it half smoked when I got across the street to the Dumpster behind the deli.

I sat on a milk crate that smelled like cottage cheese, took a tightly rolled joint out of my sock, and struck a match. I watched the tip glow then flake into ash when I inhaled.

Held it.

Exhaled.

I always feel like I'm walking around holding my breath. But when I light up and smoke some weed, it's like I'm breathing for the first time.

Pot smells like nothing else my nose knows. My nostrils hug the smoke, and it goes into my throat that's open like a hungry bird waiting for a worm. I suck in on the joint and hold it. My chest gets so tight, I feel like Superman all puffed out and ready to fly.

Then I let the smoke out real slow. It covers my clothes like it's trying to hide me.

Breathe in.

Hold it.

Hold it.

“Chimney Boy, how the hell are you?”

It was Tony. I blew out the smoke and turned my head his way. Tony works in the deli making sandwiches for the kids at school and slicing meat for old ladies. Good ol' Tony. He never puts enough roast beef on your wedge. It's always lettuce and tomato with a little bit of meat drowning in chunky mayonnaise.

The first time he caught me blowing smoke next to the Dumpster, he just put out his hand for my weed, took a hit, and went back inside. He didn't give me any crap for being there. Now every time he sees me getting high between classes, he has to grub off of me and get his spit all over my blunt.

“How you doing, Tony?”

“Just wasting another damn day, kid. Another day of feeding everybody else while I go hungry.” He took my joint and helped himself to two long hits.

“They don't give you anything to eat in there?” I asked him.

“I can eat anything I want. I'm just hungry.”

Tony doesn't make a lot of sense, but he never stays long. He comes out, makes a couple of wisecracks about me being a chimney, steals a hit or two, and goes back to work. Fair deal, I guess. Sometimes when I go in for a sandwich, I even get a few extra slabs of meat on my wedge.

I finished off the joint, lit a Marlboro, and wiped off the ashes that had fallen on my tie-dyed T-shirt. That day I was wearing the one that's got three different greens with a swirl of blue in the middle. I have a load of tie-dyed shirts—long-sleeved, short-sleeved, sleeveless, and even a pair of psychedelic purple tie-dyed boxers.

I don't have a favorite color. That's why tie-dye works for me. All the colors mixed up and crazy.

No two tie-dyed anythings are the same.

I showed up ten minutes late for gym class—right on time for me.

Everybody was out of the locker room and in their shorts or sweats. The guys were doing sit-ups and counting out loud like it was damn boot camp.

I used to be into sports when I was a kid. I know all the rules. The one who hits the farthest, gets the most baskets, scores the most goals is king of the who-gives-a-shit hill.

Boys playing with their balls is all that's about.

I got better things to do with mine, like scratch them. At least there's a point to doing that.

The metal bar on the gym door clicked shut behind me.

“Downs,” Coach Fredericks yelled over to me. He thinks he's a tough guy, that coach. Big man around the teenage boys. He walks from one side of the gym to the other with a whistle around his neck and one hand going up and down his arm like he's feeling around for a muscle. He calls everybody by their last name. Calls you
Miss
if you screw up a foul shot. Throws volleyballs at your head if you're not listening to him.

“Downs, the principal is waiting for you in his office. What did you do this time?”

“I think it's something about his mother,” I said, not looking over at him. “She wants to go out with me again—I don't know.”