by Blake Nelson
But whatever. I’ve got a cute boy to meet. I hop down the porch steps and set out through the rainy night.
The Rite Aid is bright and clean inside. I shake the water from my umbrella. I walk around in my wet Converse. I cruise around once really fast, but I’m early, and I see that Stewart’s not here yet. I try to relax then. I read some greeting cards.
Eight o’clock comes. I walk through the aisles again, looking at the candy and the holiday stuff. A Christmas song is playing: Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…
Where is he? I wonder. But I’m not mad. Not like I used to get.
Now I’m just numb.
He doesn’t come. It gets to be 8:20. 8:30. 8:40. I am sitting on the floor by the magazines when the manager finds me and tells me they close at 9:00. He is remarkably nice, considering I’ve been sitting on his floor for an hour, ruining his magazines.
At 8:50, I pick out some gum to buy. I don’t know where Stewart is. I tell myself it’s okay. He probably freaked out. Who wouldn’t, having some sixteen-year-old throwing herself at you? He probably thinks I’m out of my mind.
I finally walk up to the counter, and there, to my surprise, is Stewart, red-faced and wet.
“Hey,” he says, out of breath. “Sorry I’m late.”
“It’s okay,” I say.
I buy my gum. Stewart waits for me. He’s wearing the same skinny jeans, the hoodie, the military coat.
“I couldn’t get away,” he says. “That guy from the movie cornered me.”
“Did he not want you to come?”
“I didn’t tell him.”
I give him a piece of gum. “People here are kind of crazy,” I say. “Have you noticed that?”
“Yeah,” he says.
Outside, we chew our gum. We stand by the door of the Rite Aid and stare into the dripping darkness. We look at each other and kind of just…look at each other.
18
We decide to walk to an Exxon station on Highway 19. It’s pretty far away. It takes about thirty minutes to walk there.
We’re definitely not supposed to be that far from Spring Meadow, but neither of us mentions that.
We have my one umbrella and I wouldn’t mind squeezing together under it but it’s not raining hard so Stewart pulls his hoodie over his head.
There’s no streetlights out here in the country so it’s really dark, but our eyes get used to it enough to see the road. It’s kind of cool actually: walking through the misty darkness, surrounded by the towering evergreen trees.
Thirty minutes later the Exxon station appears like an oasis in the gloom. It has a little Handy Mart, which we are in need of. I follow Stewart inside, where we find a hot-chocolate machine. We dig through our pockets for change. Then Stewart turns and walks right into a beer refrigerator. It’s like an entire wall of beer. There’s everything: six-packs, tall boys, forties, short cases, mini-kegs. You can smell that sour beer smell. You can feel the carbonation in your bones.
For a moment, both of us freeze in place. The guy working there is in a little booth, reading his newspaper. We could totally steal anything we want.
I see Stewart’s whole body tighten up. Then he turns to me. Our eyes meet. We’re both like, Holy shit.
Stewart hurriedly turns back to the hot-chocolate machine. I go to the counter and quickly pay for two hot chocolates.
A second later we’re out of there.
Outside, there’s no place to go, no place to sit. So we sit on the ground, huddled together, our backs against the side of the Handy Mart.
I can tell Stewart’s a little shaken up.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“You looked like you saw a ghost in there.”
“I kinda did.”
We sip our hot chocolates. He lets his head rest back against the wall.
“Where are you from?” I ask him, changing the subject.
“Centralia.”
“What’s that like?”
“It’s okay. Small town. How about you?”
“West Linn,” I say. “I live with my parents.”
“What’s that like?”
“It’s the suburbs. Nice houses. Nice cars. Kids on Ritalin.”
“Sounds like fun.”
I drink my hot chocolate. I look at the small silver ring on his pinkie.
“Nice ring,” I say.
He looks at it, touches it. “It’s my grandmother’s.”
“Huh,” I say, secretly relieved.
“She died.” He holds it closer to his face. “She used to look out for me. A lot more than my own parents.”
He holds his hand toward me, so I can see the ring better. I take his cold fingers in mine. He has thick knuckles, dirty fingernails.
“She was the last thing holding me down,” he says, taking his hand back. “After that I sorta lost it.”
“It’s a nice ring,” I say. I drink my hot chocolate. We sit quietly for a while.
“So is this your first time in one of these places?” he asks, gesturing back toward Spring Meadow.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think of it?”
“I dunno. I mostly complain.”
“Do you believe all that stuff they say?” he asks. “You gotta change your whole life? Get new friends? Do everything different?”
“I guess,” I say. I pick at my paper cup. “I didn’t have that many friends to start with.”
“Yeah. Me neither.”
A slow winter wind sways the treetops beyond the Exxon station. A low swooshing sound fills the air. I snuggle a little closer to Stewart.
A pickup truck pulls into the gas station. A man in a yellow rain slicker gets out and starts pumping his gas. Stewart watches the man. I watch Stewart. He has the most interesting face. It is beautiful, young, almost childlike, and yet with a power and authority in his features. In another time, he would have been a young warrior, or a Lost Prince exiled from his kingdom. But he’s from this time, this place, so he’s just some “at-risk” kid who can’t find a place for himself in the straight world.
We get up. We stand, stretch our legs, brush off our butts. We throw our empty cups in the trash, bumping into each other, our shoulders touching for a moment. We stay like that, touching.
Two of my fingers find their way into his coat pocket. His hand touches my shoulder. We pretend that it’s the cold, we just need to get warm for a second. We move close and hug in an odd, “friends” way. But then we don’t let go.
And then it changes to something else. A kind of exploration. Could we…? Would we…? We linger inside the question, holding each other, shifting our grips, trying it out. There is no rush, no hurry. There is no sense of time at all.
And then it changes again. To something more powerful. Something unstoppable. Like a wave in the ocean, pushing us, taking us somewhere. His face searches for me. His lips glance off my forehead, off my cheek. My whole body begins to tingle. He eases down farther, finds my mouth, kisses it.
He tastes like hot chocolate. His mouth is warm and silvery and milky and soft. It’s just a kiss at first, but then slowly I let myself go, I lose myself in his face, his breath, the contours of his mouth.
When we finally separate, we are both overwhelmed and embarrassed. We retreat back under the shelter of the awning. But now I stay close to him, burrowing into that army coat, pressing against him for warmth.
We kiss again, this time with more force. We mash up against the glass window of the Handy Mart. His hands slip inside my coat and find the curves of my waist.
We kiss until we are out of breath, and then he breaks it off and laughs and without completely releasing me, steers us both into the rain.
We run, arm in arm, across the cement, through the gas pumps, and onto the empty road. We sprint, racing for a moment down the wet asphalt. Then we laugh and slow down, finally stopping to hold each other and make out some more under the gray, misting sky.
In this way, we return home. It
takes forever but we are not cold anymore. We don’t mind the rain. We laugh, skip, chase each other, nearly knock each other down. It’s like we’ve entered a separate reality. Like now it’s just the two of us, nothing else matters, no one else exists.
19
When I finally get home, the lights are off. I creep quietly up the steps, unlock the door, go inside. A single lamp is on in the front room. The bedrooms are all dark, everyone is in their bunks, asleep.
I go into the bathroom and strip out of my wet clothes. I towel off and then sneak quietly into my room, where I slip on some dry underwear and a T-shirt. Margarita stirs in the next bunk. I crawl into my own bed and burrow into my comforter.
This is where I want to be now, alone with myself. Because I know that something has happened to me tonight, something that I’m not going to understand at first, something I need to just absorb and think about and get used to.
This is going to be hard for me. I can’t control this. I can’t stop what it will do to me.
But I want it. I want to be inside it, to feel it, forever.
I turn to the wall. I hear the other people breathing around me, the creaking of the beds, the sound of the rain, falling harder now, outside on the window.
And then I feel something else. Something that’s totally new. I feel the tiniest sensation of hope.
Maybe my life isn’t over. Maybe my life has just begun.
20
So I hear you had a little midnight frolic last night,” says Cynthia the next day, glaring at me across her desk.
“What?” I say. “Who told you that?”
“There’s a reason we have these rules, Madeline,” she says forcefully. “And it’s not just to protect you. It’s to protect the other people as well.”
“How did you —?” I stammer. “Who —?”
“You’ve been in the transition residency a month and a half!” she says, cutting me off. “This poor boy just got here. He’s barely finished his twenty-eight days. Do you realize how vulnerable he is?”
I rise to the fight. “You’re not allowed to spy on us. It’s illegal!”
“Never mind that you’re endangering your own sobriety. You are also endangering the sobriety of someone with less time and less experience than you have!”
“I can’t believe you’re lecturing me about this!” I shoot back. “First you tell me I have to have friends. Then you tell me who they’re supposed to be. Now you tell me I can’t go for a walk with a boy who I actually like? Who I actually care about?”
“So you care about him? Are you sure? Do you even know what that means?”
“Do you?” I snap. “Sitting there judging me? You’re supposed to trust us. I thought that was the point of the halfway house, to let us make our own decisions. I got sent here to stop drinking. Not to get lectured on which people I can talk to…”
Cynthia sits back and watches me sputter and protest. When I’m done, she closes her notebook.
“The rules are the rules,” she says. “If this happens again, you’ll both be kicked out.”
“It’s ridiculous,” I say. “And it’s not fair!”
“No, Maddie. It’s more than fair. If you’re not going to take this seriously then you should get out and make room for someone who will. People die because they can’t get in here.”
“People don’t die.”
“Oh, they don’t? Says you? Who knows so much? You don’t know how lucky you are, Madeline. And all I can hope is that you survive long enough to figure that out!”
21
I go to movie night on Tuesday. Stewart is there. He sits next to me in the backseat. He doesn’t talk. Neither do I.
“Did you get yelled at?” I finally ask.
“A little bit,” he says.
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s not your fault.”
We kind of smile at each other then. I creep my hand across the seat and hold his hand while the van drives.
At The Carlton, I buy us two popcorns and we sit with the other rehab people. We don’t do anything. We watch the movie. It’s enough to be close. We touch forearms and hold hands a little.
On the van ride back, though, I want to hold him so badly. It gets sort of impossible. It’s worse than craving alcohol. I want him like I’ve never wanted a boy before.
I close my eyes and wait for it to pass. Which sorta works. But sorta doesn’t.
Two days later, Stewart comes to the laundry room. He comes during lunch and knocks quietly on the back door. When I see who it is, I can barely contain myself. I yank the door open and pull him inside.
He’s wearing his maintenance crew coveralls and a baseball hat. He’s acting shy and looking at the ground.
“I don’t think I’m supposed to come in here,” he says.
“You can come in here,” I say defiantly. “You can come in here any time you want.”
I grab him and hug him, despite the fact that it’s broad daylight and Rami, the laundry room boss, is right in the next room.
His face turns red when I do this. He steps back from me and looks around the laundry room. “So this is where you work?”
I nod.
“Those are big washing machines.”
“There’s a lot of stuff to wash.”
He takes off his baseball cap and looks down at the floor. “I just wanted to apologize again for getting you into trouble.”
“You didn’t get me in trouble,” I say, watching his face. “I got you in trouble. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I take his hand and kiss it.
“It was my fault,” he says, taking his hand back. “I’m older. I’m the guy. I should know better.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I whisper. “The rule is ridiculous. What do they want from us anyway?”
“I know,” he says. “But they must have their reasons.”
“I don’t care about their reasons. If we want to be together, they can’t stop us!”
He says nothing. He doesn’t look up.
“Don’t you want to be together?” I say.
“Well, yeah, but not if it gets us kicked out.”
I’m about to explode. I want to rant against stupid Spring Meadow and all their idiotic rules. But that might freak Stewart out. So I don’t. I do the opposite. I try to calm myself down.
“Okay,” I say, taking a breath. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m…being selfish. Of course we want to hang out. We just can’t right now.”
“It’s not forever,” he says. “I mean, how long until you’re out of here?”
“Two more weeks.”
“And I got another month after that. So we just gotta wait a little. We just gotta be patient.”
I nod my agreement, even though I am so pissed.
“And there’s still movie night,” he says.
There’s a noise from the other room. Rami is about to come in. Stewart jerks his hat back on and I walk him quickly to the back door. I want to kiss him but there’s no time. He slips away at the last possible second.
22
At movie night the next week, Stewart and I are both thinking the same thing. We buy our tickets, stand around in the lobby, get our popcorn, then linger near the theater doors while the other people sit.
Then we bail.
Outside, I want to grab him, kiss him. Somehow I restrain myself.
We walk all the way to the other end of Carlton, to the Denny’s. We go inside and sit at the counter and get hot chocolates. This will be “our” drink, we decide. I actually decide this, but he goes along.
Afterward, in the parking lot, we find a dark place to make out. We really get into it. When we head back to the theater I am light-headed and dizzy. I cling to Stewart in case my weak knees give out.
In the van, we sit in the backseat. We sit close. The lust is gone and now I just hold his arm and — when nobody’s looking — lean against him and rest my head against his shoulder.
That night in my bunk, I can still smell him
on my sweater. I take it off and carefully spread it over my pillow and breathe each section of it, trying to find him, trying to keep him near, holding him in my mind until the last possible moment.
23
On my last Tuesday at Spring Meadow, Stewart and I go to movie night and do our bailing trick, skipping out the back of the theater. We return to the same Denny’s, but this time we’re not all giddy and excited. This is it. This is our last night together, at least here in Carlton. We order hot chocolates.
We talk on and off. Nothing profound. He tells me about his adventures trying to take a class in motorcycle mechanics at community college. His grandmother kept giving him money and somehow, with the best of intentions, he always ended up buying drugs.
We laugh at the predictability of it. I tell him about a group of us crashing a junior prom so high on OxyContin we could barely stand up and how the chaperones stopped us and thought we were drunk. So we told them that our friend had one leg that was shorter than the other, and that’s why she couldn’t walk straight. And they believed us!
Stewart chuckles at this. We drink our hot chocolate.
“You’ll probably go to a real college,” he says.
“Me?” I say. “No way. I probably won’t even graduate from high school.”
“Yeah, you will,” he says.
“What about you?” I say. “You could go to college. Now that you’re sober.”
“I kinda doubt it.”
“Why not?” I say. “You’re smart. You can go to community college for a year and then transfer.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
This is a difficult conversation and I’m glad when we change the subject. Later, when he goes to the restroom, I look out the window. Stewart could totally go to college, I tell myself. He’ll just need help.
