Tell Us Something True (8 page)

“Hi, River.”

“Here, let me help you.” I walked back up the driveway with her and grabbed a recycling bin. She grabbed the other and we dragged them down to the street together.

“Why are you here, River?” she asked.

“To see Penny.”

“I'm not so sure that's a good idea.”

“But I have tickets,” I said. “For the dance.”

“Yes,” she said. “Penelope has a new dress. It's purple.”

“Does she have a date?”

“River, I can't—”

“Never mind.”

I knew. Vanessa was telling the truth.

Maybe Penny and Evan Lockwood had been secretly planning to go to that dance together long before the tickets went on sale. Maybe Penny had been thinking about Evan Lockwood when she said, “Riv, I can't do this anymore.”

I stood looking up at Penny's huge house. Every light seemed to be on. This house had been my second home, and now here I stood, out with the garbage bins.

“Maybe don't tell her I came by. Is that okay, Juana?”

“Yes. It's okay, River. I won't say a word.”

I went and retrieved Natalie's bike from the hedges and I pedaled sitting down, knees splayed and aching, all the way home.

I needed more than my spotty memories of those junior high Say No to Drugs assemblies, so I turned to the Internet for material to use in my Saturday-night meeting.

I searched:
teenage + marijuana + addiction.

Mostly I uncovered facts I knew—that marijuana is bad for brain development, it's stronger than it used to be and it can act as a gateway drug. Some experts argue it's not possible to have an addiction to marijuana, while others document addiction in a small percentage of users.

I eventually stumbled upon the blog of an anonymous teenage boy living in an undisclosed Midwestern city who took to the Internet to chronicle his struggle with marijuana addiction in the hope of helping others in his situation, or in my case, others who might be trying to pretend to be in his situation.

Bam: interconnectedness in the digital age!

This kid started getting high the summer after eighth grade and what began as a weekend activity morphed into an everyday activity until he got busted. He said he'd stop but he didn't, until he got busted again and said he'd stop for real. But then his days felt so long and dull, and he couldn't find anything that quieted his constant agitation, so he kept smoking, and when he finally got busted the third time his parents sent him into rehab for a thirty-day detox and he came out and started a blog:
itainteasybeinoffgreen.

For Saturday's meeting I homed in on this entry from a few weeks back.

I went to a party last night and it was kind of okay because the music wasn't awful. Some music makes me want to get high so bad because it's music I used to listen to when I'd get baked and I have this physical need to hold a joint in my hand. I can almost taste it. And some music makes me want to get high because it makes me depressed, like that Emo crap. But last night at this party the music was okay because it was neither of those things and I was in a good mood because I was with my friends and we were hanging out and laughing and then some douche asks if anyone wants to get high. I said no. He said why not? You scared? And I said no, it's just that I'm addicted to marijuana. And he laughed in my face. It totally ruined my night. I had to leave. I can't even be anywhere near weed. I'm too weak.

Because…it ain't easy bein off green.

Peace out.

Okay. So maybe he wasn't Shakespeare but he did give me someone to inhabit. Someone to plagiarize.

Christopher skipped the meeting. It hadn't occurred to me to worry about someone with a love for euphoria-inducing drugs blowing off group therapy on a Saturday night, but Everett opened the circle by saying, “I want to assuage any concerns you might have about Christopher. He isn't here tonight because he had a family event to attend—his cousin's Bat Mitzvah. He'll rejoin us next week.”

I'd never seen Molly at a Bat Mitzvah, so Christopher would probably be just fine.

I was bummed he wasn't there because I'd hoped for a repeat of the week before. That was fun. And I'd been counting on not having to walk the five miles home.

After our call and response—Here, This, Now—Everett said, “Tonight I want you to tell us something good. Tell us something true.”

Daphne took a long time getting started. She seemed less animated than usual. Maybe she was missing Christopher. “So…” She stopped. “So…” More silence. “Something true…” She looked carefully at her fingernails. She'd repainted them from light pink to dark blue. “Something true is that I'm tired.” More silence. “I'm so tired.”

“Can you—”

“Yes, I can say more, Everett,” she snapped. “Obviously I know by now that just saying
I'm tired
isn't going to cut it in here. So yeah, I'm tired because I get up every morning at six to make breakfast for me and everybody and then I take the little one to the neighbor's house, and then I get the middle two to school. My sister Maria, she's big enough to take care of herself but she still expects me to make her breakfast and pack her lunch, because that's what I do. And sometimes, when I'm taking Roberto over to this lady's house? Where he stays all day with a couple other kids? Sometimes I feel like maybe I should just quit school and watch him, because what's the point? Is this why my parents work so hard? Why my dad works night shifts? Why my mom cleans another family's house and takes care of other people's kids? So that they can pay for someone else to watch their
own
kid? Sometimes…it all just seems pointless.” She leaned forward, arms on knees, and stared at the floor.

“And something good…” Daphne lifted her head and stared right at me. I felt my body go insta-hot, like all the air had just left the room. I looked away, because I didn't want her to see me react, but then when I snuck a look at her I realized she wasn't looking at me at all, she was focusing on a spot on the wall just above my head.

“Something good…” She brought her gaze back to the circle. “Something good is Roberto. The little one? He calls me
Mamá
sometimes. He's so beautiful, that boy. He's just got this big, perfect heart, you know? And this week, we were walking to the neighbor's house, and I was holding his little hand, and he says to me,
Te amo, Mamá,
and I tell him I love him too, and then he says
You're pretty,
and I say
You love me because I'm pretty?
And he says
No, I love you because you're brave and strong, like a ninja.
” Daphne smiled and put both hands to her chest. “He kills me.”

When the circle came around to me I started with something good. I thought about my crappy week. About Penny's new purple dress and my incomplete precalc homework, about how I'd Googled my father even though I'd sworn to myself I wouldn't, and how he'd trimmed his beard back to the look of someone too busy to shave and switched his glasses from round wire to square wire frames.

“My good is my sister Natalie.” I looked at Daphne. “She doesn't think I'm a ninja or anything, in fact I'm pretty sure she's totally aware of my shortcomings, but still, she worships me. All she wants is for us to share a last name. To be even closer than we already are. And I…I want to be the person she believes me to be.”

I felt that frog throat thing happening so I took a few long swallows. I'd used Natalie as my good, but she was also my true. What I'd said about her was as true as anything I know.

“And something true…,” I said. Daphne's eyes were dark and shining and not focused on any spot above my head, but right on me. No hand motions needed. There was an understanding—something about me she connected to something inside herself. “Something true…”

This would have been the perfect moment to admit I wasn't addicted to pot. That I came here each week because I was trying to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be.

I cleared my throat. “Something true is that I went to a party last night and it was kind of okay because the music wasn't awful…”

Mason's mother stood waiting outside on the sidewalk. How someone like him could have come from someone like her was a mystery of science. Everything about her was tiny, her face, her ears, her feet. She couldn't have stood more than five feet tall.

He embraced her and she disappeared. Then he took her tiny hand and led her over to Daphne and me.

“These are my friends. Beautiful, amazing Daphne, and River, who is sweet but full of shit.” He shot me a semiapologetic look. “Sorry. Bad Mason.” He slapped his own wrist. “And this…is my mommy.” He stood back, displaying her proudly. “You guys don't mind sacrificing your anonymity to meet the greatest woman God ever created, do you?”

Daphne and I shook our heads.

“Well then, thank you for being a friend to my son,” she said. “For listening and being here each week. For doing what you do to help him become his best self. Now let's go, honey.” She turned to Mason. “We don't want to be late.”

He linked his arm through hers. “Got a movie to catch,” he called over his shoulder as they walked down the street toward her car. “Later, people.”

When Natalie was a baby, Mom and I had a standing Saturday-night movie date. We'd alternate the kinds of movies I liked—action or science fiction—with the kinds she liked—mostly stories of women on a journey of rediscovery after being disappointed by men. We'd share popcorn and a Milk Duds. We hadn't been to a movie together in years.

“I didn't see that coming,” I said to Daphne after they disappeared. Without Christopher and his cigarettes, we had no excuse for loitering.

“Whaddya mean?” she asked.

“You know.” I made motions with my hands that indicated Mason's large size and then his mother's diminutiveness.

“Oh.” She laughed. “She's his foster mom. She didn't, like, birth him or anything.”

“That explains it.”

“Yeah, I guess you've missed a lot. See, Mason spent most of his childhood moving around, home to home, bad to worse, until he wound up in Culver City with this mom. She's the first person to love him, you know, like, no matter what. He's been with her since he was thirteen. And she's given him everything. Support. Stability. She even sends him to a fancy school. And yet…sometimes he still barfs into jars and hides them under his bed. Go figure.”

I didn't know much about bulimia, but I'd always assumed only girls had it. Blond, skinny, insecure girls, not big brutes like Mason. It was easy to forgive him being hard on me because he'd been through so much, and also because he was right. I was full of shit.

“Do you wanna do something?” Daphne asked.

“Like what?”

“I don't know. I just don't feel like going home yet.”

“And you want to do something with
me
?”

“Jeez, River. I just wanted to know if you wanna, like, do something or eat something or just kill some time. I'm not trying to date you or anything.”

“I didn't mean it like that.” Why was I always embarrassing myself in front of Daphne? “I meant, without Christopher around I just wasn't sure you'd want to hang out.”

“Christopher? I don't like Christopher. Not like that anyway.”

“You sure?”

“Why do you care so much?”

“I don't.”

“Christopher isn't for me. He's a rich kid with a club drug habit. Not my type.”

“Duly noted.”

“So let's go somewhere. You got your car?”

“Uh…I don't have one.”

“You don't have a car? What kind of Westside boy are you, anyway?”

“The kind without a car. Or a license.”

“You don't have a license?”

“Nope. I don't drive.”

It occurred to me that the only reason Daphne had asked me to do something was probably because she wanted a ride home. I braced myself for a blowoff.

She shrugged. “So I guess we're gonna have to walk somewhere.”

“
That
I know how to do.”

We walked south toward Venice Boulevard, where I'd remembered seeing a taco stand that drew a crowd. The picnic benches outside were filled, and when she spied two free seats she went to secure them. I got on line and brushed off her attempt to give me money.

She put her hand on her hip and arched her eyebrows at me. “I told you this isn't a date.”

“I know. Chill out. I'm just buying you a taco.”

“No, you're buying me two tacos.”

We sat for a while after we were done eating, sipping our Jarritos sodas—strawberry for her, mango for me. I could feel the cavities blooming.

“So how do you get around, River? You already said you don't take the bus because”—and here she put on a funny accent I knew was supposed to sound like a white person, but came off like an über-nerd—
“Nobody takes the bus in LA.”