And the cop must’ve been a father or something, because whatever my mom was saying totally touched a nerve, and next thing I know, we are on our way again, this time with a police escort. And you think this shit only happens in the movies.
So we get there, and Jackie’s parents are already waiting for us, telling my mom, with me and Lindsey overhearing, that there was a group of kids in their basement, they didn’t know how many kids, and apparently the kids were playing some kind of drinking game. And then Jamie apparently passed out and was lying in her own vomit and started shaking. So thankfully, their daughter knew enough to get them immediately, and Jamie was still passed out when they got to the basement, so an ambulance was called immediately. And please forgive them, they never allow drinking at their house and they didn’t know and Jackie was sooo grounded. . . .
And then some doctors showed up. They needed my mother to sign something, one doctor with a pen, the other with a clipboard, both with their hair in surgical caps, their feet in surgical booties.
So at least in my mind, things got scarier.
And then they took my mom to another part of the hospital, with her telling us to just stay put, “I will let you know . . .” as she flew down the hall after them.
Scarier still. I could even hear Lindsey saying, under her breath, “Hope my sister’s OK, hope my sister’s OK.”
And by the time I got to see my little sister, she was conscious, but groggy. Way too groggy to even know where she was or what had happened. Apparently, her blood alcohol content was like five times the legal limit, and given that she was so skinny, they were concerned that her effective levels were even higher.
I slept in the room on a chair next to her. I wasn’t about to leave her side until we were able to take her home. There are guys, like Evan, who will not leave the TV when the Yankees are playing for fear that if they don’t see every play, something bad will happen and the Yanks will lose. I’m not superstitious in that way, but when it comes to Jamie, I kind of had that same feeling.
It wasn’t until the next day that she was completely back to being Jamie.
I was sleeping on the recliner beside her bed when I overheard an announcer and the first thing I saw was some infomercial about toning your abs on the hospital TV across from Jamie’s bed.
She was up. I breathed a sigh of relief.
She was still groggy, but good enough to be channel surfing. Thank god that things were back to normal.
“Get me water, Steven. My throat is killing me.”
So good to hear her voice. I rushed into the hall, looking for a nurse. I found my mom and Lindsey asleep in the waiting room across the hall.
“She’s up,” I told them, then found a nurse and followed her back into the room.
Then we were all on top of Jamie, and for her it must have been like the ending of The Wizard of Oz, all these eyes peering down at you in a haze, looking overly concerned.
“Where’s Dad?” she asked.
“Your father’s in California,” my mom answered, and you could tell she was pissed.
“What about Felicia?”
OK, I’ll chalk that up to Jamie being out of it, but still she should’ve known better than to ask Caroline Prescott about our stepmom under any circumstances, especially if she was looking not to get our mom any angrier than she already was. I gave Jamie the wide-eye signal from behind Caroline, as in “shut the fuck up.” I couldn’t possibly open my eyes any wider, so I hoped she understood.
“With your father” was all Caroline Prescott would say before she got into all of her mom-questions that Jamie was required to answer, and there was no doubt that Jamie was going to be held fully accountable for her actions.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth . . .
And what we learned is that Jamie apparently has the same party gene that I have, which I kind of suspected.
According to Jamie, the party got boring, so she went shot for shot for shot with anyone willing to play, thinking how bad could it be? She had tried vodka more than a few times before and it just made her relaxed, nothing more, and everybody seemed like such babies with their one redcup each, and then they were all getting giggly. She hated giggly, it was, ugh, so fake. Then someone passed around a blunt, so she took a hit, and then she went back to drinking, going shot for shot with Scott Boscovich, the only person willing to keep up the challenge with her—not a fair contest at all, given that he was over six feet tall, already a starter on the varsity basketball team and also given that Bosco’s brother had previous experience drinking and smoking, as we sometimes treated him as our mascot and got him superhigh and superdrunk whenever we were at Bosco’s raiding his refrigerator or hanging by his pool whenever there was nothing else going on.
I made a mental note to kick Bosco’s ass for letting his brother fuck with my sister like that. (As a member of the Club Crew, he had an obligation to keep his siblings the fuck off mine. Yep, I was going to kick his ass big-time.)
Back to Jamie: She did like six shots in a row and took another hit from the blunt because she had something to prove, given that all these people at the party were good friends with each other and she felt like an outsider, and she was tired of feeling like an outsider, and suddenly, she was feeling like the homecoming queen because everyone was rooting for her.
Until she went down.
She remembered not feeling so good. It came on in a split second and that was all she remembered. Although she kind of remembered hearing voices and seeing faces in the distance. Jackie’s, Scott’s, and strangely, Angelica’s, as in Angelica from Rugrats, who, she almost seemed to remember, was at the party also, but then again, how could that be?
She stayed in the hospital for a few days while they hydrated her and pumped good chemicals back into her system.
I went home and came back, bringing my laptop with me. So as it turns out, the entire Roxanne chapter was written in the waiting room of a hospital, watching over my sister while she slept peacefully in the room across the hall.
And when she wasn’t sleeping, we sat in bed together, channel surfing and playing board games, or talking, with me trying to teach her that she had to know her limits, because as long as you know your limits, no one can take advantage of you, and no one knew like me, as I was an expert on getting people to go beyond their limits.
And on the second day, I had to ask Jamie the burning question, and it took me a while to bring it up, because I didn’t want to freak her out, but I had to know. And so, while we were in bed and SpongeBob and Squidward were making their plans for the day in the Krusty Krab, I casually asked:
“You weren’t trying to kill yourself or anything. Were you?”
And she said, in her Jamie voice, which was so perfect, you had to relax about it, because you had to believe her. What she said was:
“What are you, fucking nuts, Steven? I was drinking is all.”
“Ever?” I explored, looking at her, studying her. “Have you ever thought about it? What about the time when Burn stayed over and you talked about it?”
And she gave me this scornful look. “Don’t you even know me at all? I was just trying to make him feel better. After all, he was all by himself with nobody to talk to, and his sister was in the hospital after trying to kill herself. Didn’t you see how absolutely lonely he was?”
OK, this blew me away. Because I realized that I didn’t know her at all.
“What he needed was a hug and I wasn’t going to do it, but I’m glad you finally did.” She smiled, giving me back what I was giving her, always shocking the hell out of me.
And so we were back watching SpongeBob again, no problem, man.
The next morning, Jamie was scheduled to leave. She was napping, I was working on my laptop, when Jacob walked in, looking like he had aged several years since I had last seen him. Maybe it was a new haircut, or new glasses or something, but this was summer, he was usually sporting a superdark tan, always overly fit for his age in his tight polo s
hirts. Now, instead, he looked pale, almost green, and a little heavy.
All in a few weeks.
I wondered if his rapid aging was a result of my television appearance outing him as a weed smoker.
He leaned over and kissed Jamie on the forehead, “How’s my little girl?”
Jamie was looking past him; I could tell that she was searching for Felicia.
So was I.
We were not disappointed, because seconds later, clicking in on the highest heels that I have seen on her, was my stepmom in all her poised glory. All Dolce & Gabbana, Hermès bag, who knows what the shoes were. Beyond her, on the other side of the door, several male patients walked by, then crossed back and walked by again, checking out the hot chick. Blood pressures were, no doubt, going up. Even an intern stepped in to see what was going on. This was the same intern who Lindsey thought was mad cute, but she couldn’t get his attention for anything.
Felicia, however, had no problems in that department.
I sat up, not exactly sure what to do, given that the last time we talked, it didn’t go well at all. The sight of her now made me immediately nervous, and I could feel a rush of anxiety bubbles in my chest.
“Allo, baby” is what she said to Jamie, all hugs and kisses. “I broot you a present.” She reached into her bag and extracted a very well wrapped gift, which Jamie instantly tore open. A pair of Prada sunglasses, which Jamie modeled for everyone, checking herself out in the hospital room mirror.
“Leesin to me, you naughty girl. We cannot stop you from drinkink, but ve can only hope that you haf learnt vot moterashin is.”
Of course, I had no idea what moterashin was. But Jamie seemed happy enough in her new glasses.
“What do you think, Steven,” Jamie asked.
“Those,” I answered, “will be perfect for your next hangover. No one will be able to see your eyes.”
OK, maybe I was crossing the line with a line like that, and clearly no one seemed to appreciate it because no one was laughing. Well, no one except Jamie, because, it was a dead-on perfect Jamie line and she knew it. I probably wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t absolutely need to say something, which probably should have been “I’m sorry,” especially since I recently learned how to say it.
“I haf a present for you too, Cresh,” she told me. “But you will haf to give me a hug first if you vont it.” She gestured toward me with open arms. “Unless you don’t luv me anymore.” She said this with a smile, and of course, I was going to have to hug her, because of course, I still loved her.
OK, so I hugged her, and as I did, it made me think about the way I had hugged Cassandra at Roxanne’s gravesite (after all, I had just finished writing that scene), so I was careful to keep my formal distance from Felicia as we embraced. I wouldn’t want to be sent to hell twice.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I am better than that.” Thinking that she wouldn’t even understand the reference after all these weeks.
She pulled back and looked at me the way she does. “I know you are,” she said. “Ant here is your rewart,” handing me an equally perfect wrapped box, which contained a perfect pair of Prada sunglasses for men.
“So you look sharp for all of de collidge girls,” she said, as she adjusted the glasses on my face. “Or, as you sed, perfikt for those hankover morninks.” She laughed. “I guess it’s already too late to teach you moterashin.”
I looked into the mirror. The guy staring back at me was beyond cool. He was a total motherfucking chick magnet.
I couldn’t wait to see how cool they looked in the rearview mirror of my BMW.
So that’s how we got to be friends again, at least me and Felicia, because nothing else was said about the interview, and Jacob being Jacob went on about his business, admonishing Jamie for being reckless and irresponsible and making her promise not to drink ever again, which even his own wife knew was pointless.
Still, my guess was it would be a while before she downed another shot of vodka. Plus it was pretty much a guarantee that Caroline Prescott would be all over her, given that in a few weeks she was going to be the only one home. Yep, Jamie was pretty much screwed.
And then Jacob pulled me aside and told me that he appreciated how responsible I was in taking care of my sister, and that he wanted us to move forward, not backward; we all make mistakes, and god knows, he’s even made a few.
Then he extended his hand to me, and I shook it with equal (and totally artificial) affection.
So with less than two weeks to go before college started, I had apparently, at least for the moment, ironed out my relationship with my father and his wife. He was giving me a second chance, and I was going to try not to hate him so constantly. Let’s face it, we both knew it wasn’t going to last, but for the moment, standing next to the hospital bed, him staring down at his daughter, me staring at his wife and across to my sister, we made peace, at least temporarily, which had me wondering whether there was even a remote shot at ever getting another nugg of his perfect weed again.
We took Jamie home, and Jamie went on being the Jamie I know, no worse for the experience. I was still calling Christina, not getting anywhere with her. And yes, I was still calling Claudia, and yes, I did finally convince her to answer the phone. She was cold and distant, but she was willing to listen without hanging up. So we started talking, but she was not willing to see me, not just yet. Even after I gave her my going-away-to-college line and “summer is running out” line, she still said no, not for now. And I asked when, and she said that she would know when, and when she did, she would call me. Before she hung up, she added that it would be OK if I called her whenever I wanted.
My opinion: just a matter of time before she comes around.
And I talked to Sally, because before getting to the main event, there were some things about senior year that I thought that I should be writing about.
For example, there was the time when the Club Crew got lost in the woods playing paintball and the time that Kenny’s mom got arrested for DWI and the cops found cartons of open liquor bottles in her trunk (which was totally our fault, because we used her car for pregaming the night before and forgot to take the bottles out).
Also, the time that we ended up driving to West Point to catch an Army game and got too drunk as a group to drive home, no way were any of us getting into a car shitfaced with all of those soldiers staring at us.
And the time we ruined Evan’s little sister’s birthday by trashing the party room that his parents rented for the occasion at one of the hotels in White Plains, all because we got there early and didn’t have anything to do, so we started smoking and drinking and, next thing I know, we started inviting some other kids over to join us. Well, by the time Evan’s sister’s friends showed up, the party was in full gear, only it wasn’t a kids’ party anymore.
And then Halloween. I could get into it some more, except according to Sally, it was time to get to the main event.
Except she did have two questions that she wanted me to address.
One: What did I do after Roxanne’s funeral?
Two: What happened to Burn after his sister died? In the fall of senior year, what was he like, where was he, was he coming to school often, what was he doing?
As you probably know by now, I didn’t take Roxanne’s suicide well. For weeks after, I drove a lot, leaving school and drifting, just like Burn did. Mostly because I didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to see my friends, didn’t want to hear anyone joking about Roxanne.
And also, I wasn’t ready to deal with another round of classes where I would have to pretend to listen, only to fall behind when everyone else who was actually listening did way better than me on the tests. The stress was incredible, because I had to do better than I did junior year in order to bring my GPA to more acceptable levels, and so I decided to dedicate myself to schoolwork in her honor, because she tried so hard to make me the student that we both knew I could not be.
Then there were applications to colleges t
hat didn’t want any part of me and Caroline constantly yelling at me to write my college essay, with me trying over and over again but never getting beyond the opening paragraph (OK, here’s another secret—Newman actually wrote my college essay. BFD. I think I may have already mentioned this anyways).
Then there were the college tour trips, up to Boston and Connecticut and Vermont, down to Delaware, Virginia, over to Ohio. None of the schools I visited seemed right for me at all. And with every school visit, I had to sit there in a huge auditorium listening to some boring lecture, ending with my mom raising her hand to ask the administrator, in front of a room full of genius kids:
“What services do you supply to special kids, you know, the ones with learning disabilities?”
That always seemed to get a response from the crowd, as kids turned to check out the retarded boy next to the woman who inquired about special ed in college. By the third college, I actually considered purposely drooling to better look the part.
I could’ve used my Prada glasses then.
And, of course, the inevitable threat whenever I didn’t co-operate with her during a tour: “Maybe next time, you’ll go with your father.”
Like that was even a remote possibility. No way either of us would survive the first tour.
And with every college visit, I had to take off from school for a few days to travel to other cities. You would think this wouldn’t be a problem, except I kept missing classes, between the trips and the impromptu parties in Pinky’s parking lot where we’d sometimes go for lunch and end up having to stay, after passing around a pipe and bottle of Switched-On Pinky’s Shakes (add a little vodka, you get the point).
Then there was the video.
After Roxanne’s funeral, when I wasn’t driving by myself, I was online, searching for it, without success. I started with the suicide twins, the two redheaded sisters, found them on Facebook, friended them, searched through their friend lists, found Cassandra and friended her, but didn’t exactly know how to ask how to get to the Roxanne video.
Crash and Burn Page 43
