Something Wicked (28 page)

Fifty-Eight

A
few days later, I wake up with the decision in my head that I will go back to school. Snap! Just like that. For some reason, on this particular morning, I suddenly feel like putting on some makeup.

I walk into class and it’s like nothing ever happened to me. Ms. Dally welcomes me back and gives me my work. No one looks at me strange, but I keep to myself because I don’t know if the other students know about what happened.

Later in the morning, the youth worker, Sheila, pulls me out of class to talk to me in the couch room. She tells me none of the other students know why I was away and that it’s up to me to tell them if I want to. She says she was sorry to hear about everything that happened, and that she and Ms. Dally want to help me get back on track. She tells me she’s always available to talk if I’m feeling upset. I tell her I’m all talked out and that I’ve been speaking to Eric and a shrink and my mother.

“Okay. But I do have to talk to you about the overdose. About how much you took that night, and the dangers associated with mixing all those things.”

“I don’t want to go over all of it. I just want to forget about it,” I object, starting to get annoyed.

“I’m not saying we have to go over everything that happened, Mel. I’m just saying we’ll make a plan for next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.”

“I sure hope not. But life is unpredictable. Let’s just think of a plan. It will take only a few minutes.”

She opens the binder that’s sitting on the table in front of her and begins. She’s being nice about it, and I don’t think I can do anything to get out of it, so I just go along with her plan. We start with how I felt before I went out that night with my friends. “Were you upset?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know you would be using?”

“Yeah.” I look away, biting my lower lip.“I already went over all this at the hospital.”

“I know. Just bear with me.”

So we make a plan for the next time I feel that upset and want to get totally wrecked out of my mind. We write down strategies I could use to avoid turning to drugs when I’m feeling so crazy. Things like making a phone call to a friend or a helpline or even the hospital. “Delay going out as long as possible. Even one hour. And if you do choose to go out and use, never ever mix, especially sedatives with alcohol.”

She makes me write a list of personal max amounts I won’t go over, no matter what. I have to do it for each drug: alcohol, K, E, coke. “You need to draw a line, right now. A line that you will never ever cross in terms of your use. You might not stick to it, but if you clearly think about it ahead of time, you’ll be more likely to reconsider in the moment.”

Just when I think we’re finished, she makes me go over all the dangers related to my high use. Like rape, drunk driving, accidents, poor judgment, blah blah blah.

Finally, she leaves me to set a substance abuse goal for the week. I plan no more than one gram a day and no alcohol. “I’m keeping weed,” I announce firmly when she walks back into the room. “I need something.”

“We have a harm reduction philosophy, Melissa. You don’t have to stop everything. And it’s your goal. It’s up to you,” she agrees.

I finish up with my strategies: not to hang out with friends who use, not to carry money on me, to keep seeing Eric, go straight home after school, and write in my journal when things are bothering me. When we’re done, Sheila takes my sheet, follows me back into the classroom, and makes sure I put it in my binder.

Fifty-Nine

My
goals are easy to keep. I stay home every night. I watch TV after school. It’s not like I’m
trying
to stay away from friends or drugs, it’s just that I don’t want to see them or use. I feel different inside. Not necessarily better—just different. Maybe it’s the depression medication, or maybe I just got scared. Whatever it is, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to being that old “Mel.” She’s gone. The fight is gone.

I almost forget about the OD until my mom sits me down at the kitchen table a few nights later. She has a folder in front of her, and she begins to lecture me about mixing drugs and E and alcohol. She draws diagrams and makes lists and gives me a ton of articles printed off the internet. And then she pushes a book on teenage drinking across the table toward me.

“My school already talked to me about this,” I say. It’s something new for her to do: act like a responsible parent. It’s something I suppose I had always wanted her to do, but I can’t take any more discussions about that night.

“I don’t want the next phone call from the hospital to say you’re dead.” She stares down at all the papers spread across the table. She looks tired.

I feel bad for putting her through all this. I should get up and hug her or something, but I just can’t bring myself to move. It’s not like she’s a terrible mom. Like it or not, we’re in this life, this apartment, together. I suppose we’re sort of stuck together. And really, she’s the only one who ever stands by me no matter what.

The thing about getting older is that you sometimes realize maybe you’re an idiot after all. Even more frightening is the sudden awareness of your “self ” in all of the mess. Before, you were always pointing a finger outward. Everything was outward. But then you turn sixteen and all of a sudden it occurs to you that perhaps
you
are part of the problem. Perhaps these fucked-up people around you are fucked up partly
because
of you.

Apparently, when you’re a little baby there’s some point when you suddenly realize that your body is separate from the rest of the world. That “you” actually end at your skin, and the rest of the world begins. I think you get a similar, second realization like this when you’re a teenager. Only it’s not about seeing you’re separate; it’s understanding that stuff you do actually influences other people’s lives. And then, on top of life sucking, you have to deal with the guilty burden of all that.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything. I’m not going to do it again.” It feels so good to finally have said it to her.

She smiles. I know my words meant a big deal to her. “You have to stop hanging out with those people,” she adds.

“I will. I don’t even want to see them again. I only want to see Ally or Jess. No one else.” I’m sure everyone knows I overdosed, and I feel like an idiot now. I want different friends. And if I can’t get different friends, I’d rather stay alone.

“I want you to take lessons or something. Maybe dance, or piano? You used to be good with music.”

“Mom. We don’t have a piano.”

She laughs. For the first time, I notice wrinkles around her eyes. “Well, something. The flute? That’s light. Anyway, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” I agree. I feel like something just happened between us. Like I’ve barrelled through some kind of blockade. Like I’ve reached out to her extended hand and let her pull me over to the other side. Her side.

Sixty

Freestyle
says that to become someone new, the old person in you must first die. You have to fully let that person go. He tells me I need new friends, a new school, and a whole new way to have fun. “Believe me, kid, I’ve tried many, many times to start a new life. But it don’t last if you don’t kill that old you first. It’s just too tempting to fall back.”

I don’t think it will be that hard for me to do. I already have a new school. It’s not like any of my friends are that special to me, except for Ally and Jess. And it’s not like I do anything interesting in my life, other than party at random apartments with strangers. So it’s no great loss. But I know for sure there is one person I have to get out of my life forever before I can move on.

Michael,

It’s crazy to be in love with someone so much that you lose yourself. The more lost you feel, the more desperately you love. There’s no stopping it. Except this … there comes a moment when ou begin to hate yourself for being so pathetic. And then, it’s not
like the love is gone, it’s just that you can’t reach it in your heart anymore. And that once-unstoppable love stops right away. Just like that. Gone. And all you’re left with is embarrassment and shame for the pitiful person you have become.

I let you go, Michael. You are free.

And so am I.

M.

I take the letter to Michael’s apartment building and go up on the roof where we used to hang out at night, smoking cigarettes and sometimes listening to music. So many summer nights, us up there, away from everything, like we were the only people in the whole city. Now it’s so friggin’ cold I can even see the air coming out of my nose when I breathe, like I’m some kind of dragon. I light a joint and sit on the roof ledge by the stairwell door, taking shelter from the freezing wind.

It’s dark. Late. About eleven o’clock. The city is resting quietly below, under a light, new snowfall.

His building is close to the airport, so all the roofs have red lights flashing and pulsing up long antennas. Michael used to say they were urban shooting stars and that meant you could make a hundred wishes a night if you wanted to. I look at them now without interest. I’m so tired of wishes.

A plane jets by overheard, shaking the air. I can smell the gas vapours.

With frozen fingers, I take the letter out of my pocket. I can’t decide if I should burn it or tear it into little pieces or just crumple it into a ball and let it fly away in the wind. I sit there a while longer and smoke another joint. I make myself go over, for the last time, all our experiences together. I think of Michael’s face and his hands and his voice and the way he looked at me and his kindness … and I so don’t want to let it
all go. My tears are so heavy and slow I wonder if it’s possible they can freeze on my cheeks.

After some time, my bum turns numb from sitting so long on the cold concrete ledge. Then Ally calls.

“Yo. Mel. You wanna come over?”

“Where?”

“Just chillin’ at Devon’s with Jess. Watching a flick. Nothing big. But we have juice.”

I actually think about it for a second. It’s a while that I’ve been out of the hospital now. I’d love a few drinks. And it
is
Friday night. I shouldn’t go. What about all that time and effort I’ve put into changing my life? Part of me feels like the new me is delusional. Some kind of out-of-body experience. Like I was abducted from my life for a while only to be plopped back down in the centre of it, now, here on the roof, with Ally on the phone. It’s like, “Fuck it, who was I kidding?” People can’t change everything about them just like that. Sometimes you just have to accept that you’re not going to be the perfect person everyone else seems to be.

“Nah.” The word comes out of my mouth before I even realize I’m turning her down. I can’t believe it! It’s like I’m possessed, ’cause I didn’t think it’s what I wanted to say.

“Okay. Thought I’d ask,” she says, letting me off the hook too easy. “Later.”

And then she hangs up.

I’m stunned for a second. I can’t believe I just said no. I can’t believe she just let me. And the thing is, I feel like I’m not really missing much anyway. I’m not that disappointed. I’m just as happy, for now, to go home and watch boring TV.

I jump down off the ledge, raise the letter to my mouth, and kiss it. “Goodbye, Michael,” I say. Then I tear the paper up into little pieces, open my fist to the wind, and watch them spastically flutter downward like amputated dove wings.

Sixty-One

My
mom and I go to the mall on Saturday afternoon to buy her a new pair of jeans and something for me for Christmas. Even though she’s over three months, she barely shows. She refuses to go to the maternity store and get those elastic trousers, and so we search Old Navy for jeans that will fit her belly but are two sizes too big for her legs. We share a change room and we contemplate each other’s choices while posing in the mirror. It makes me feel good to see my mom fatter now. It makes me feel less clunky.

“Eric told me I had to tell you something,” I say while I’m slipping one leg into a pair of cargo pants. I’m about to tell her about our conversation about Bradley. At first I didn’t think I’d ever be saying anything, but lately I’ve been thinking more and more about it, and I think that maybe there
is
something eating away at the inside of me. I figure if I’ve gone this far with the truth, I might as well cross the finish line. No more Echo. Now it’s only “Melissa” with my mom.

“What’s that, Hon?” She reaches out to straighten the collar of the blouse I’m trying on. “Wait, there’s something wrong with this button. There, that’s better.”

My heart races. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. It’s just words.

Up, up, up.

“It’s kind of dumb. But he’s making me say it,” I say, which is a total lie because Eric said only if I felt up to it.

“Okay.”

“He wants me to tell you that I have some bad feelings about Bradley dying.”

She puts her hands down and steps away a bit. I realize I’m totally hitting her out of the blue with this. I regret having brought it up now, especially when we’re squeezed inside this tiny closet of a room. There is nowhere to hide.

“Oh … I can understand that. What kind of feelings?”

“Well. It’s like … I’m sad he died. For sure. And I love him. But since I was a kid, and I had kid feelings at the time, I guess I felt sort of angry.”

“At me?”

“Yeah. At you,” I agree too quickly. I was trying to tell her about Bradley, but it’s so much easier talking about being mad at her. “’Cause we had to go in a shelter. Even though I know, now, that it wasn’t your fault. It’s like the kid in me already made the memory.”

“I’m sorry, Melissa. I really tried my best. That’s why we went to the shelter—to stay together. They advised me to go to the hospital, but I insisted on outpatient care. I couldn’t leave you.”

“Yeah. Well …” I pause. I can’t say the words. My mouth is dry. I try to swallow. I don’t look at her face, but instead concentrate on the back of her head reflected in one of the angled mirrors. “… I was also mad at Bradley.”

“You were?” she asks, surprised.

“Yeah. For dying.”

“Oh …”

“Well. I didn’t think so before … I mean, it wasn’t on my mind,” I interrupt her before she can respond, “but now that I think about it, maybe I was. I told you it was dumb.”