The Cake is a Lie (28 page)

I told the Psychiatrist I didn’t want
to do drugs. That drugs caused this.

“
Marco, anti-depressants for
anxiety and depression is like insulin for diabetics. There’s
absolutely no evidence that anti-depressants are bad for you. In
fact, all the evidence shows that untreated depression will shrink
your Frontal Cortex and Hypothalamus, affecting your mood and
memory even more. See the problem is your Accumbens are underactive
right now.” He even had a diagram. I started the medication and it
helped, although I wasn’t sure why, I couldn’t really feel it like
the other drugs. The thought of the doctor and his diagram was very
comforting. I started eating again, having less panic
attacks.

Miraculously, my mom got out of the
hospital for the start of the school year. She’d been very sick in
the hospital all summer.

Her doctor told her the big news,
“Based on your last round of tests you should go home, Barbara,
it’d be good for you.” My mom and Allan jubilantly picked me up
from my dad’s on their way home.

For the last month of her life my mom
and I made quite the pair. Her on the couch, in-between life and
death, watching public television and old musicals. Me on an
inflatable camping mattress by her side, terrorized by my thoughts,
breathing, working on a letter to Oprah to help us.

She wasn’t herself. She wasn’t
coherent. She’d drift in and out of consciousness, waking up
frantically to scream that she was dying. When the seizures started
I worked to keep her head still. The ambulance came and took her
away for the last time.

I’d prayed for her to die, days before
even. But when it happened, I was shocked. She’d beaten death so
many times I’d stopped believing it could actually happen, everyone
had. Losing a parent you love isn’t hardest on the first day. The
hardest part is later, when you have dreams about her decomposing
body coming home from the grave like nothing had happened. When you
never get to introduce a new girlfriend to your famously picky mom.
Not being able to get her advice when you tell her you want to
invest a year and a half of your life writing a book about a girl
you used to know. On the positive side, an angel’s always got your
back.

When I was younger my mom and I would
always go to a pumpkin patch every year for Halloween. It was our
thing. I’d pet the animals and play in the hay barns, my mom would
watch with delight and take pictures. I always wanted Carlo to come
but he was older and too cool.

When my mom met Allan he starting
coming too. I wasn’t happy about it, but it was still fun. Time
passed, my mom got sicker and I got less interested. We had to stop
going in my teens, because of her weak immune system and all the
germ carrying children.

Then, one fortunate October, our local
department store decided it would be a brilliant idea to offer
tractor hay rides around their big parking lot for Halloween. We
just had to go. For old time’s sake. Unfortunately, my mom’s grand
plan fell on the same weekend that she and Allan had forbid me from
going on a camping trip with a group of popular kids. The group was
going to the natural hot springs and I knew for certain, if I went,
Mia was going to secretly seduce me for kicks in the steamy, rocky
water.

It was going to be a cold day in hell
they got me on that hayride that weekend. But what’s a hayride
without a son? I kicked and screamed but they threatened and
coerced me into going.

Once my initial tantrum was over, the
silent treatment began on the car ride there.

My mom wasn’t even phased by me, she
was looking out the car window enjoying the little things that only
someone who’s suffered can enjoy.

The hayride was pitiful, we were
driving around a big empty parking lot, the only decorations were
four tacky hay stacks sporadically placed around the pavement. I
knew this was going to suck, I thought.

“
Isn’t this fun, Marcolino?”
I wasn’t speaking but my mom kept talking to me anyway.

“
Remember when I used to
take you every year, Marcolino? Which pumpkin patch was your
favorite one?”

The driver began heading for one of the
tree islands in the parking lot. “WABLAM.” The tractor ran over the
side of the island sending me bouncing a few inches up out of my
seat.

Whoa, that was unexpectedly
exciting.

My mom was alarmed, “I almost fell,
Allan, he’s not going to do that again is he?”

I hope he does, that was the most
exciting part by a mile.

The tractor turned around for what
looked like another pass. “Oh no he’s gonna do it again Allan, tell
him to stop Allan. Tell him to stop! STOP!”

“
WABLAM.”

I can’t actually remember her screaming
and writhing in pain, the mind blacks out certain things for a
reason.

I remember the only thing I said to her
as she lied on the tractor floor. “I told you this was a bad
fucking idea. You deserve this.”

And then the ambulance came for the
bazillionth time and she was gone again. A few broken ribs, a
fractured back. She’d only been out of the hospital a month or
two.

I waited for my dad for three hours at
the department store. Playing the same level on repeat at the video
game demo stand. Ever vigilant to make sure no one I knew saw me
there alone. When my dad got there I was furious with him for
taking so long. He was so so sorry, he offered to take me anywhere
I wanted to eat, take me to any movie, buy me anything. I just
wanted to go to my friends and get high. I wasn’t even that upset,
I was glad she was in the hospital again, I was already planning my
next open house.

Of course I tried to get high and drunk
again. It wasn’t the same, even after I could recognize and dismiss
some of the panic and anxiety the drugs induced. I’d have a few
beers and feel the inebriation, but there was no euphoria, just
fear. Uppers, downers, nothing.

I should have died driving under the
influence, driving through red lights at 2 in the morning while
laughing about it. Overdosed, I had an out of body experience once,
watching myself hovering over me. My destiny was to be a drug
addict, but god intervened. He let me live, even keep some of my
dignity. But he left a big invisible scar, he took my fearlessness
away that summer. My innate understanding that everything was going
to be okay. My ultra-confidence to make the best of every
situation.

Breath in, 1, 2, 3. Breath out, 1, 2,
3. I desperately scanned the ten faces packed in my kitchen for
bulging pupils, fidgety movements, the kids that looked the most
high. The one’s on e, coke, robotussin. I couldn’t be near them,
get touched by them, breathe the same air as them.

A strong bare arm wrapped around my
neck, it was Tysen. I squeezed out of the headlock so quick I
pinched my nose. I searched his eyes, they were drunkenly glazed
over. Was he on anything? No probably not Tysen… I’m okay. A rush
of relief hit me but I still pulled my coat sleeves a little
further over my hands.

“
Marco, this party’s
crack-a-lackin buddy.”

“
Always good to see you,
Tysen.” I couldn’t say it enthusiastically enough.

“
This is my friend, Jonny,”
Tysen’s friend stuck his hand out to me, I briefly tapped it with
my coat sleeve. The gesture caused him to look at me kind of funny.
I gave him a cold, dark-eyed stare back with “I’m the host of this
big f-ing party” intenseness. Who are you?

“
Did you hear I asked Oakley
to prom?” Tysen asked me. I’d heard, he’d single handedly saved my
whole world. For months the frontrunner to take Oakley to prom had
been Avi Miller. Out of everyone it looked like Avi was the only
one with the guts to do it. I’d heard he wanted to ask her so he
could tell his kids he went to prom with “the cool
girl.”

The best I could manage to stop Avi’s
hair brain scheme was to send him a nasty text message. “Why don’t
you ask someone you actually have a one in ten thousand chance of
sleeping with, Avi?”

“
I heard you asked her the
day before Avi was going to?”

“
Ya man, so he was setting
up this whole scavenger hunt for her, and everyone’s saying, ‘You
should ask her, Tysen.’ That’s all I’m hearing, ‘You should ask
Oakley, Tysen.’ So I went home that night and told my mom what was
going on and she said, ‘Tysen, make that girl a cake right now.’ So
she helped me make a cake with frosting that said, ‘Will you go to
prom with me?’ And I gave it to her the next day.” Tysen giggled
wildly at the whole affair.

“
Best laid plans…That’s so
cold man,” I joked.

“
Ya, it sucks. Well shit,
it’s Oakley. I figured if she was gonna say yes to Avi, she’d say
yes to me.”

“
Well, anyone but Avi…” I
said with an honest and heavy frown.

“
Are you going to
prom?”

“
Maybe.” It didn’t matter
anyways, Oakley wasn’t sleeping with Tysen[15] or Avi.[16] I left
Tysen to move rooms. I loved him, but I was for the
party.

[15]
I got Tysen
drunk for the first time. We talked him into taking four shots of
151 and he spent the rest of the party totally naked in the
bathroom throwing up. These days, I see kids talking about partying
with the same excitement I used to have when I’d talk Tysen into
trying new drugs. It’s not the same anymore, after everyone knows
what blunts are. After everyone learns how to party. Once more and
more kids start to figure out advanced social skills. Once
everyone’s good at sex. When that crazy time you and Tysen took
mushrooms together isn’t fun to reminisce over 15 times later. When
you watch Tysen get into drugs and more hard partying in college,
when you tell him

[16] Avi got a scholarship to Dartmouth. He
wrote for their newspaper–he’s a good writer. Better than me. He
just got into the most prestigious graduate program for writers in
the U.S. That absolute dork kinda beat me in life, can you believe
that? Avi got head for the first time from a crockadillapig, he
couldn’t stop laughing the whole time, she thought he was really
weird.

People noticed me as I move through the
crowd. I spotted Mia, Isa, Janae and Kate all giving me a
respectful stare from a corner in my dining room. Mia was back from
college for winter break. Janae was back from traveling. For every
face I recognized there was one I didn’t.

I spotted the familiar back of Jonsen
ahead of me, talking with Tim and London Keyes, a girl from
Shorecrest who used to date Duncan. I came up behind Jonsen and
stood on my tippy toes to poke my head over his
shoulder.

“
Oh hey there buddy.” He was
unstartled by my attempt to be awkwardly funny. Jonsen looked good.
He’d been clean off of meth for a year. He just started a
construction job he got through the JobCorps program.

“
Just seeing what’s going on
over here.” I said.

“
London’s gonna start
stripping at Juicy’s when she turns 18.” Jonsen doesn’t sound
judgmental but his gaze carries some weight.

“
Ohhh really?” I exclaimed
in my best Jim Carrey-esque fashion. “I thought you were gonna go
to beauty school, London? That’s all you used to talk
about.”

“
My parents kicked me out of
the house.” London was asian but she sounded like a white valley
girl, a fascinating phenomenon of being adopted. “I’m gonna start
stackin’ that paper. I need to make those fat stacks.” Her updated
vocabulary caught my full attention. I scanned her pupils, they
were big enough to set off my alarm system. I immediately stopped
breathing.

“
Isn’t it a rip off? How
much does the club take from you guys?” Tim asked.

“
You pay the club 100 a
night and 7 dollars for every lap dance. But the real money’s in
the private parties, once you’re doing VIP parties you’re set.” I
inconspicuously ducked my nose into my shirt real quick and took a
big breathe through the fabric.

“
There’s a one foot rule at
Juicy’s,” Jonsen chimed in. “Plus, they don’t serve booze. So you
shouldn’t get too many guys trying to slip you a
finger.”

“
Heho,” She let out a rapid
burst of high pitch, quick London laughter. “Hey Marco, remember
when you almost got arrested?”

“
Swear to god I still have
the bowling shoes I stole from that night in my trunk,” I said
excitedly. I turned my head over my shoulder for a breath, it was
more risky, but I couldn’t be caught taking another shirt breathe.
The farther away from her I could breathe the better.

“
We went bowling and Marco
was doing a bunch of coke and kept offering it to me even though I
kept refusing.” Her eyes lit up at me when she said coke. Is that
what’s she on? Is that what’s funny?

“
I was trying to impress
you, London.” I shouted in my defense.

“
We got too messed up to
drive and I had to get home for my curfew. So I asked my friend
Allegra to drive Marco’s car back to my house. But she didn’t have
a license, she’d actually just got her driver’s permit. Hohe, and
the poor thing forgot to put the lights on. So we got pulled over,
and Allegra started crying. And when the cop asked Marco for his
ID, Marco started screaming, ‘She’s a DD. We’re using a DD. We’re
doing the right thing.’ And the cop started screaming at Marco
back, ‘She has a permit. You’re a loser you know that? You are a
low life piece of crap for putting this girl in this position.’ And
Allegra was still crying. And then the cop finally said he’d let us
go if Marco apologized to Allegra, and Marco said, ‘I’m sorry you
forgot to turn on the lights, Allegra. I’m sorry this cop’s such a
dick, Allegra.”