Lola Carlyle's 12-Step Romance

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  The guard is busy handcuffing Ricky and Sam and ignores me. But Wade and Adam both hear and start toward the paparazzo, who takes one last shot of Wade and bolts into the trees and out of sight.

  “Fuck,” Adam says.

  “Should we chase him down?” Wade asks.

  “That’s only going to make things worse at this point,” Adam says. “Like things could get any worse.”

  “You have a point,” Wade says.

  Adam shakes his head and turns back toward Talia and me, then averts his eyes and swears again. I want so badly to talk to him, to explain, but it’s not the time and maybe there won’t ever be a time. This may just be too big of a disaster for us to get over, even as friends.

  Meanwhile, one of the guards is unlocking another set of cuffs and coming toward Talia.

  “Are you kidding me?” I say. “You’re cuffing her?”

  “She’s violated a number of park rules,” the guard says. “And clearly she’s been using drugs.”

  “But you don’t—”

  He ignores me, hauls her to her feet, and starts putting the cuffs on her.

  “At least let me find her clothing,” I say, and at that moment Adam barks out from behind us.

  “Here. Got ’em.”

  They let Talia get dressed as Wade and Adam stand by, looking embarrassed and horrified at the same time.

  Actually, Adam doesn’t look embarrassed and horrified, he looks furious and horrified.

  “Um, so where’s everyone else?” Wade asks Adam as the security guards talk on their walkie-talkies and Talia and I stand side-by-side, my arm around her waist.

  “Unlike you, they stayed together. Dr. Koch took them home to Sunrise.” And then Adam’s head snaps up and he looks at me. “Hang on, where’s Jade? I heard she was with Talia.”

  “Oh, sorry to scare you, she’s just down the path a bit,” I say, and my stomach clenches as I remember what she was saying to me right before all of this happened.

  “This path?” Adam says.

  “Uh, yeah. She’s not in the best shape, but she wasn’t going anywhere. Rather the opposite, actually.”

  “All right,” says the first security guard, interrupting us. “Security van’s picking us up in five. Time to go.”

  They haul Ricky and Sam to their feet and inform us that Talia, Wade, and I have to go to their holding cells, too.

  “You’re under park arrest and I’ve got one more set of cuffs,” he says, and puts them on Wade.

  “Great,” Adam mutters. “Fucking great.”

  We take the path back toward Jade. One look at her dilated pupils and they’re going to arrest her, too, just to make sure our “sober outing” is a complete and utter disaster. And let’s not forget there’s a paparazzo sneaking around somewhere looking for a big payday. Wade Miller in handcuffs at Disneyland should do it.

  But right then, we’ve got a bigger concern.

  Because when we find Jade, she’s lying face-first in a pile of blood and vomit.

  And she’s not breathing.

  Chapter Thirty

  The setting sun blazes orange and red in the sky. Cameras flash from beyond the barrier the Disney security team has put up. They tried at first to stop the picture taking, but there are too many people, too many cameras. Wade, Talia, and I stand side-by-side in handcuffs, each of us sick, pale, and terrified as the unconscious Jade is wheeled into the back of the ambulance. Adam is beside her and looks out at us with haunted eyes. The doors close with a double thump and I gasp.

  Life is fragile.

  The flashing lights and the wail of the siren fill the air as the Disney security guys take us inside to holding cells until someone from Sunrise can come to collect us.

  Back at the center, we are each tested for drugs and then sent to solitary and given a plate of soggy food for dinner. My dress is filthy, I’m sunburned, I’ve got scratches on my arms and legs, and the inside of my mouth feels like glue.

  None of it matters.

  I lie awake thinking about how my day went from fun and freedom to vomit and sirens.

  And how every bit of it is my fault.

  You are in the deepest of shit.

  You might have killed your roommate.

  You’ve lost the trust of the best person you know.

  You will never sleep again.

  Those are my personal affirmations on Sunday morning.

  But there is no actual affirmation.

  Instead, an uncharacteristically silent Talia and I are escorted back to our room by a tech who refuses to tell us anything, given fifteen minutes to shower and dress, and finally taken to Dr. Koch’s office.

  The only person there is Adam, and my heart lurches at the sight of him. He’s sitting on a high-backed wooden chair with his head in his hands, wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday. He has to have heard us enter, but he doesn’t look up.

  Talia’s hand closes around my arm like a frozen claw, and the fear I’ve been fighting since we found Jade yesterday coalesces into a ball of chewed-up nails in my gut.

  She’s dead. Oh God, she must be dead.

  Talia and I sit gingerly at the edge of the couch.

  The door opens and Dr. Koch enters, followed by a pale and hollow-eyed Wade.

  He gives me a wan smile and I try to return it, all the while remembering the moment yesterday when we thought we could sneak away for two minutes and get away with it, no big deal.

  It’s a pretty big deal if Jade is dead.

  Even if she isn’t.

  After all, by now there are pictures of him splashed all over the internet—Drift Star Arrested at Disneyland, Drift Star in Fistfight Over Naked Girl, Drift Star Implicated in Disneyland Drug Scandal—and he’s lucky if his show hasn’t cut him loose. No one will have bothered to find out the truth before posting the pictures. They don’t have to.

  Dr. Koch and Wade both sit so the five of us are now in a rough circle.

  “Please,” I say finally, unable to contain myself, “how is… What’s happened to…with…Jade?”

  Adam finally looks up. His eyes are bloodshot and his skin has a grayish tinge.

  I want to throw myself across the circle and hold him, be held by him. I want to be facing this—whatever it is we’re about to face—together. But the gap that was between us is now more like an abyss.

  Dr. Koch gestures to him, giving him the okay to speak.

  He clears his throat. “I spent the night in the hospital and just left an hour ago.”

  Oh God. Oh, please God, I’ll give up everything, anything. I’ll be honest and responsible and stop pining after stupid things. I’ll take my life as it is and just be grateful. I will become a proper fake alcoholic. Or a non-fake alcoholic. Or whatever it is I’m supposed to be.

  I will become something better.

  Better than I am.

  “It was a very difficult night,” Adam continues. “But as of an hour ago, Jade is…”

  Pleasepleaseplease…

  “…in stable condition and expected to recover.”

  I close my eyes and exhale, and the ball of nails in my gut shrinks. Beside me, Talia sobs. Across from me, Wade drops his head into his hands and breathes deeply, in and out. I don’t even try to hide the gush of tears that comes along with my relief.

  Dr. Koch simply sits very still in his chair, face and body revealing nothing.

  Adam puts up a hand.

  “Before we get too excited, know she’s still in serious condition. And we need to get to the bottom of what happened yesterday, starting with why we got separated. Although…” He gives me a hard, disappointed look that speaks volumes. “I already have a good idea how that happened.”

  Yep, this is why the ball of nails is still lodged in my stomach. I look at my hands and try to swallow the shame, but it’s not going anywhere because I fucked up. I was selfish and stupid and I fucked up and the results were practically catastrophic.

  All of that after I promised him no trouble.
Doubtful he’s struggling with any further feelings for me now.

  “Anyway. Once we have your drug tests back and get to the bottom of it all, there are going to be consequences. Uh”—he clears his throat again—“probably for me as well. But we need to talk about what happened—ideally with the rest of the group that was there yesterday, so we can all process it. Most of them don’t even know yet what happened.”

  “Nor will they,” Dr. Koch says, coming into the conversation like a hammer—a velvet-covered hammer, but a hammer nonetheless.

  “Wha— P-pardon me?” Adam stammers.

  “You heard me. I know what I need to know and so do all of you. Beyond the people in this room, no one is to discuss any of the details of yesterday. That is my decision.”

  “But—”

  “Today is not about processing. It’s about damage control. I have a public relations nightmare on my hands: photographs of my patients circulating on the internet, another patient in the hospital, Mr. Miller’s management team hounding me, and a veritable horde of upset parents on their way here at this very moment, all of them threatening to take their children out of the program and some threatening legal action.”

  “Well, that’s why we need to—”

  “Quiet,” Dr. Koch snaps, and then stands, walks to the desk, picks up a small pile of papers, and turns back to us. “Here are the results of the drug tests.”

  He looks each of us, minus Adam, in the eye.

  “No one has seen them but me.” He lifts something that looks like a garbage bin onto the desk, flips a switch, and proceeds to shred the documents while we sit there with our mouths hanging open.

  He’s destroyed evidence of Talia’s guilt, sure, but also of Wade’s and my innocence—at least in the category of drugs. This means if it ever got out that there were documents and they were destroyed, we would look guilty. Even to Adam we might look guilty.

  “And now,” he continues in a soft, steely voice, “I will tell you how this is going to go. This afternoon we will be having a community meeting that will include all patients and staff, plus any parents or visitors who have braved the paparazzi outside the gates. In this meeting I will strive to allay everyone’s fears and reassure them that our patients—you—remain absolutely safe in our care. At that time I will explain to them how Miss Montgomery—your friend Jade—collapsed from a combination of heatstroke and dehydration.”

  “Dehydration?” I say.

  “That is correct. Dehydration.” Dr. Koch stares me down. “Combined with heatstroke. And I believe that is consistent with what you saw, Miss Carlyle. Is it not?”

  “Um…”

  “It is. And that is what Miss Montgomery’s hospital files say as well.”

  “But what about those two guys? Ricky and Sam? And that paparazzo—he took pictures of Talia and me, and of Wade fighting. And the entire universe saw us all standing around in handcuffs.”

  “The photographs from the paparazzo who followed you into the woods…have been found and destroyed. Suffice it to say I have my ways. My own resources. And those two miscreants are going to be too busy trying to save their own skins to make accusations. Disney security has handed them over to the authorities. They were found with substantial amounts of drugs on them, they may or may not be legally in the country, and they know they’re lucky we’re not pressing charges for attempted rape of a minor. The remaining difficulty is the photographs of you three, unmistakably in handcuffs. But Mr. Miller’s people have come up with a solution, even for this. Mr. Miller, would you like to tell them?”

  “Publicity stunt,” Wade says with an apologetic shrug. “We’re just going to say it was a publicity stunt for an upcoming action film I’m starring in.”

  “You’re starring in an upcoming action film?” I ask.

  “My manager says I can be,” Wade answers with a chuckle. “We had some scripts we were looking at already. He’s working on it. And in the end if it doesn’t pan out, it’s easy to say the project got scuttled.”

  Adam looks like he just ate goose turds, but he keeps his mouth shut.

  It’s ridiculous, of course. And potentially no one will believe it. But that’s the thing—on the one hand, you can’t hide anything from anyone in Hollywood these days, but on the other hand, you can have your people say almost anything to cover your ass and even if no one believes it, as long as there’s no proof, it can still get you off the hook. So it may be ridiculous, but it’ll probably work.

  “Okay,” I say. “But what do we say when someone asks how we got separated? Because it’s more than just the people in this room who know about that.”

  A moment of awkward silence ensues.

  “I mean, I know I did it,” I say, careful not to look at Wade. “I instigated it. We were just…joking around but then it kind of snowballed.”

  Wade stares at the floor, Adam looks at me with sorrowful eyes, and Dr. Koch considers.

  “I don’t believe we’ll be needing any confessions from you, Miss Carlyle. Why don’t you leave that part to me and trust that I will not hang you out to dry.”

  “But—”

  “Trust me.”

  “All right,” I say.

  But of course, I don’t.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Wade stays behind to talk to Dr. Koch.

  Talia goes to breakfast.

  I find myself in the lobby with Adam.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  He looks at me for a long time and I just stand there, dying.

  “Can we talk somewhere?” I say.

  “Is it going to change the outcome of yesterday?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. It comes out in a whisper. “Not in terms of Jade or Talia or any of that…horrible mess. But maybe in terms of what you think I… Well, I don’t know what you think happened.”

  He turns and stalks off.

  I follow, not sure if this is an invitation or if he’s trying to get away, but unable to let him go. He ends up at a door to the outside, slides his card in, and goes out. The door almost hits me as I go through after him.

  He follows the path out to the long, grassy area before the beach and stops in the middle of it. We’re far enough away that no one would be able to hear us, but in plain sight of anyone who might look out a back window of the main building.

  “Look, Lola,” he says, still standing, legs wide, sending the clear message that this is not a cozy meeting and not a friendly one, either. “I’m angry and I’m…other things, too. But whatever you have to say, whatever excuses you’re going to make, the take-home point for me in all this is that I am at fault for my own lack of judgment. About leaving the group alone, about you, about my ability to be objective about you. Because probably you shouldn’t have been there yesterday. But I vouched for you because I knew you wanted to go. And because I wanted you to be there. Obviously it was a mistake.”

  “Adam—”

  “The worst and most obvious cost of that is one of our patients is in the hospital with an overdose,” he says, running right over me and almost shouting. “But on a personal level…” He stops, takes a deep, shaking breath. “To have had to spend the day watching you and that fucking guy together, and then to find out you’d actually taken off with him—”

  “But—”

  “Don’t lie to me, I know you did. My point is that every single part of what happened yesterday is a lesson in poor judgment—my own poor judgment—that I’m not likely to forget.”

  I do my best to take it, stand there and let him get it out, even though it hurts. Regardless that he’s got some of it wrong, I deserve this. Good intentions, I finally realize, do not excuse shitty results.

  “Is there more you want to say?” I ask quietly when he stops talking.

  “Not at the moment.”

  “All right. May I speak now?”

  “My saying yes or no never stopped you before,” he says, but not in the funny, rueful way he used to. “I’ll tell you right now, I’m not i
nterested in excuses and justifications or even really in apologies. But go ahead.”

  I want to ask him to sit down with me or maybe take a walk, but it’s clear he’s not going to do any of that. It’s also clear he’s not in the frame of mind to even hear anything I say. Still, I look at him, emotionally bruised, and ragged and raw from lack of sleep, and it seems like I can feel all of it—all the pain and anger and fear from the past twenty-four hours. I want to reach out and pull him close, run my hands over all the invisible wounds and make them better. I want him to do the same for me. But I can’t. I can’t lighten the effects or fix any of it, but I also can’t turn away from him, can’t help wanting to at least try.

  “I’m not going to make excuses,” I say, forcing myself to keep my distance, forcing myself not to beg or wheedle or try to be cute. “I was stupid and irresponsible and weak.”

  He nods.

  “I’ve learned lessons I’m never going to forget, either, about poor judgment. I would say this qualifies as learning the hard way, and for the record, I don’t think the learning is worth the price of what could have happened, or even what did happen.”

  He nods, but in agreement, not to let me off the hook.

  “I did take off with Wade and it did cause a chain reaction, and I’m responsible for that. There’s nothing I can do to make that untrue, Adam. Jade, Talia, the massive scandal we’re dealing with—that’s on me.”

  “And him,” Adam points out.

  “Sure, him. Both of us.”

  He crosses his arms over his chest and waits, watching me, and I have to steel myself because all of a sudden I want to cry.

  “There are just a couple of things,” I say, gutting it out, “that…maybe aren’t going to matter to you, but…” I swallow. “Number one: we only left the group for a couple of minutes. It wasn’t my intention to take off—we just went up over the hill.”

  Adam starts to talk but I hold up my hand.

  “I know that doesn’t excuse it. I just want to tell you that I came back and everyone was gone.”

  “You came back? What about him?”

  “Well…” I squirm inside, uncomfortable with the idea of trying to pin anything on Wade, but also needing to tell the truth. “He was upset. So…I came back by myself, and then I made him come back, and we waited there for half an hour, hoping someone would return and find us. And then we were on our way to an information booth and we ran into Talia and Jade, and they were high and with those guys, and Talia took off and it all just…went to hell from there, basically, and we were trying to catch her the entire time from then on, until you found us. Again, it’s not an excuse, but you need to know we weren’t, like, partying or running around the park having fun.”