by Blake Nelson
In the van, I ask Stewart if he wants to try to meet later that night. Since we only have two days left. Like maybe one of us could sneak over to the other’s house.
He shakes his head no.
He’s right of course. I feel bad I even suggested it.
“Okay, then,” I whisper, close to his ear. “I’ll be like one of those prison girlfriends. Waiting for you on the outside. Dreaming about you every night.”
He shakes his head, grins, then kisses me on the temple.
24
The day before I leave, Stewart comes to the laundry room. He knocks on the back door. I let him in and I kind of lose it for a second, like I can’t quite breathe. I have been thinking about him every second of these last days.
But then he acts weird and standoffish. He stays by the door. He’s being shy. I want him to look at me, to hold me. This is the last time I’m going to see him for five weeks!
“You excited about leaving?” he finally says.
“Not really,” I say, a panic building in my chest.
“Why not?” he says.
“Why do you think!?” I say to him. “God!”
“Are you talking about me?”
“Of course I’m talking about you!” I cry. “I’m not going to see you for a month!” Tears spring to my eyes. “What am I supposed to do on Tuesday night? Who am I supposed to drink hot chocolate with?”
He looks embarrassed.
“What about you?” I ask him. “Are you glad I’m leaving?”
“No. Of course I’m not. But I’m glad for you.”
We both stand there, looking at the floor. One of the washing machines switches to spin cycle. It starts to shake.
“Are you going to stay sober?” he asks in a careful voice.
“Yes. I was planning on it. Are you?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you gonna call me?” I ask him.
“Sure.”
“You better! God!”
“I will,” he says. “Of course I will.”
I can’t stand it anymore. I grab him. A sob bursts out of my chest. Stewart takes me in his arms.
“It’s okay,” he tells me, rocking me.
“I’m afraid,” I whisper. “I’m afraid it won’t be the same after we leave here. Something will happen. Something will change.”
He strokes my hair. “Of course things will change. But it’ll work out.”
“I don’t know how to do this,” I say, clutching him. “I don’t know how to lose someone.”
“You’re not losing anyone,” he says, releasing me. “In fact, I want to give you something.”
He takes his grandmother’s ring off his little finger.
I wipe the tears from my eyes. “You can’t give me that,” I say.
“I’m just lending it to you. I want you to hold it for me.”
“I…I can’t —”
“See if it fits.”
I take the ring. I look at it. I try putting it on my ring finger. It fits perfectly.
“But what if I lose it?”
“Don’t lose it.”
“But I always lose stuff.”
He closes my hand around the ring. “When I get out of here, you can give it back,” he says. “And in the meantime it’ll protect you, like it’s protected me.”
“But I —”
There’s a noise in the next room. Rami’s back from lunch. “I better go,” Stewart says.
I throw my arms around him and squeeze him with all my strength. He hugs me back, for one second, then two. Then stupid Rami starts whistling in the other room. That means he’s about to come in. Stewart pulls away and slips out without a sound. I stand there, staring at the closed door.
Rami comes in. He continues to whistle as he checks the dryers.
I look down at the ring. I turn it on my finger.
part two
1
My mom waits her turn in the morning traffic jam in front of my high school. I sit in the passenger seat with my book bag in my lap, staring at the green grass, the stone steps, the front doors. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I am back at Evergreen High School.
“Do you have everything?” Mom asks.
“I think so,” I say.
I get out of the car. I sling my book bag over my shoulder. I’m dressed as boringly as humanly possible. Since it’s January, that means down coat, Levi’s, black Converse. My hair’s pulled back. No makeup. No lip gloss. Nothing.
I keep my eyes down as I trudge across the grass. I heave my backpack farther up my shoulder. I’m loaded up with textbooks. There will be a lot of catching up to do. My teachers better cut me some slack in that department. But of course they will. Everyone knows what the deal is. Everyone understands that Madeline Graham is officially getting her second chance.
I make it to the main building. I’m totally aware of the people on the stairs around me. Are they watching me? Talking about me? Do people stop what they’re doing when I pass?
No. Not really.
Homeroom is different, though. Every eye is on me, from the minute I walk in the door. I move through my staring classmates and take my usual place in the back of the room. Then I remember that I have been instructed to never sit in the back of classrooms, to never sit in the back of any room. (Too antisocial; I am supposed to participate.) So I go to the middle of the room, but that feels too claustrophobic. So I go to the side of the room, by the window, and take a seat there, next to a boy I don’t know. He’s one of those keep-your-head-down types, which is probably what I’ll turn into.
I sit. I dig out my new monthly organizer that my mother bought me. On the top there’s a note:
I draw a box around the note, I draw several boxes. More people come in. I don’t look up.
Then a loud voice bellows at me from behind. “Maddie Graham!? Is that you!?”
It’s Tara Peterson, the biggest dork in our school. She’s standing right over me.
“Yes, it’s me,” I say.
“Have you been sick?” asks Tara loudly. “Where have you been?”
I look up at her, I give her my best “please don’t do this” smile.
But people like Tara don’t understand things like hints.
“Did you have mono?” she asks me.
“No.”
“Where were you, then?”
“I was…” I see that other people are watching us. They’re listening to what I’m going to say. Even the head-down boy next to me has turned to hear my answer.
“I had a family situation,” I say.
“Oh my gawd!” she says at maximum volume. “Did somebody die?”
“No, nobody died.”
“It must have been bad, though. You’ve been gone for months!”
“All right, class! Everyone in your seats,” says Mrs. Wagner, our teacher. Thank God.
2
Lunch is going to be a problem, but I have a plan. I eat a little bit at every period break. I do this secretly, hiding the snacks in my locker. I eat baby carrots, half a sandwich, some celery with peanut butter. Then during the actual lunch period, I go to the library. I find the crossword puzzle in the day’s newspaper and take it to the back table, laying it out beside my history book and pretending it’s my homework.
It’s a pleasant way to spend forty minutes.
Things get more difficult after lunch, though, when Emily Brantley spots me in the breezeway.
“Hey, Rehab Girl!” she yells out.
I act like I don’t know who she’s talking to. I walk faster.
But she runs after me. “Don’t try to ignore me,” she says loudly.
I keep walking. Emily’s one of the cool girls in our school. We were never really friends, though we hung out with some of the same people. We were more like rivals.
She runs after me. “Hey,” she says, catching up. “So how was it?”
“How was what?”
“You know,” she says. “Rehab.”
&n
bsp; “What do you care?”
“I’m just curious,” she says. “You don’t have to get snippy.”
“And you didn’t have to call me Rehab Girl in front of the whole breezeway.”
“Nobody cares. And it’s not like it’s a big secret.”
I keep walking. She walks with me. “So are you really going to do it?” she asks.
“Do what?”
“Stay on the straight and narrow.”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.”
“Well, good luck,” she says. “It won’t be easy. Not around here.”
I look at her. She appears to be sincere, which is a surprise.
“And if you decide to step off the wagon, you know where the good stuff is,” she says, slapping her coat pocket.
“Thanks a lot,” I say.
She laughs. “Dude. I’m kidding! Seriously, I wish you luck. I mean it. I’ll probably end up in there myself someday!”
Despite all this, Emily’s not my biggest social problem.
That would be my three best friends: Jake, Raj, and Alex. They’re the ones who will test my resolve.
Jake appears at my locker before sixth period. I take a deep breath when I see him waiting for me.
“Hey, you’re back,” he says in his totally cute, totally casual voice.
“Yeah.”
“So how was it?”
“It sucked,” I say.
“Yeah, I guess it would.”
I suddenly get really nervous. Like my hands start to shake and my throat kind of tightens up in some way.
Jake doesn’t notice. He’s totally chill, as always. He leans against the locker next to mine.
“So what happens in there?” he asks.
“Nothing. They just order you around a lot.”
“Huh,” he says, staring blankly down the hall. “So are you, like, finished now? Free and clear?”
“I don’t have to go back, if that’s what you mean.”
“Huh. So that means you can come get high with us after school?”
“Well. No.”
“So you’re actually going to do it? You’re actually gonna quit?”
“Yeah,” I say, sighing. “I think I am. For now.”
Jake nods. “That’s too bad,” he says. “Raj just got some killer Colombian. He was psyched to smoke you out. You know, like, to welcome you back.” As he says this, he sort of leans toward me, doing his sexy Jake thing.
“I don’t think I better. Sorry.”
Jake shrugs. “So what are you gonna do? I mean, if you can’t hang out?”
“I don’t know. Crawl in a hole, I guess.”
“That sucks.”
“I know.”
“Huh,” he says. At that moment, Marisa Petrovich walks by. She’s wearing a very short skirt. “Hey, Marisa,” he calls out.
“Hey, Jake,” she purrs.
“All right, then,” he says to me. “I’ll see you around, I guess.”
“Tell Raj thanks,” I say. “You know, for thinking of me.”
“No worries.” Jake’s now staring at a slutty sophomore I don’t know. Her top is cut so low she’s basically showing the world her tits. Jake practically falls over trying to look at them.
Oh yeah, high school, I think to myself. This is a great idea.
3
My whole first week is like that. People coming up to me. Asking me polite questions. Then avoiding me like the plague. It’s excruciating.
Stewart calls from Spring Meadow, but he can only talk for ten minutes. Somehow we can’t seem to keep the conversation going. It’s still nice. But also weirdly frustrating.
On Friday night my mother drives me to a Teens at Risk support group Dr. Bernstein runs. There’s, like, eight of us. We go around the room and talk about our “issues.” These are mostly rich girls from my neighborhood. It’s not that their problems aren’t real. It’s just so tedious the way they talk about them. It’s all therapy-speak and my wants and my needs and me, me, me.
At least the people at rehab were funny. At least Vern always had good dirty jokes.
Halfway through, I can’t stand it anymore and I bail. I go outside and sit on the cement steps in the cold. The social worker woman comes out and tries to talk to me, and I’m like: “I’m fine, really I am. I just can’t deal with this right now.”
So she goes back inside and I put my head down on my knees and I ask God to just kill me, I can’t take this. I can’t live like this. School is impossible. I have a semester’s worth of homework to make up. I have no friends. I have nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to talk to.
No wonder Vern gets drunk every year.
4
Another week passes, and then one night at dinner my dad hands me a gift-wrapped box. It’s a present. I open it and it’s a new phone. This is a little risky since I’m famous for losing cell phones. Or dropping them in toilets. Or throwing them at cops.
They make a big deal of giving it to me, congratulating me on a job well done. My dad tells me I’m doing great, everyone is so proud of me. He says he feels like he’s got his old Maddie back.
I have no idea what that means, since all I do is walk around in a suicidal haze. But whatever. I thank them politely and escape upstairs to my room as soon as I can. I don’t know who to call exactly. I’m not allowed to call Stewart after six at the halfway house. I can’t really call Jake or Raj. There’s no one else I can think of.
But then I remember someone.
I dig through my desk and find a certain scrap of paper. Trish’s number. I haven’t called her since she left Spring Meadow. I guess I haven’t been desperate enough. I’m desperate enough now.
I put her number in and dial it.
It rings. I wait. I get nervous in my stomach.
“Hello?” says a sleepy voice.
“Hello?” I say. “Is this Trish?”
“Who’s this?”
“Maddie.”
“Maddie?” The voice seems to wake up slightly. “Maddie from Spring Meadow?”
“Yes! Trish! It’s me!”
“Oh my God. It’s you?” she says. “Where are you!?”
“I’m home!”
“Oh my God! When did you get out?” she asks excitedly. “What are you doing?”
“I’m living with my parents. I’m back in high school!”
“You’re back in high school!? How weird! What’s it like? Does it suck?”
“Are you kidding me? It totally sucks!”
“Oh my God! You’re in high school! That’s hilarious!”
“I know. It’s a total joke!”
“I’m so glad you called!” she says.
“Me too!”
“It’s so nice to hear your voice!”
“What have you been doing?”
“I’ve been applying for jobs. My mom is making me. I applied for a bookkeeper at a plumbing company. Can you imagine me? Working at a plumbing company!?”
“That is so funny!!!”
“It’s ridiculous!”
“We have to hang out.”
“We totally have to.”
“Oh my God, I can’t wait to see you!”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“I’m coming to see you!!!”
The next day I ride the MAX train downtown, to the Metro Café. That’s the cool place downtown where people hang out.
I walk in and see Trish sitting by herself in a corner. We wave and I hurry through the tables to her. I sit down and we gush and hold hands and act stupid for a while. Then we get lattes and settle in with each other.
She looks different. That’s the first thing I notice. She’s gained weight and is wearing different makeup. She has a new expensive haircut that looks weird, like it’s really intended for a fifty-year-old woman who works in a bank. Also, she looks kind of asleep. Or puffy. She’s on meds, obviously. Pretty massive doses, from the looks of her.
But none of this makes any difference. Once we’r
e talking, it’s just like back at rehab. It’s just like old times. She has crushes on a million different guys. A guy she liked in high school called her last week. She went to an AA meeting where there were some cute skater boys. She flirts with one of the cashiers at the grocery store by her mom’s.
I tell her about school. How I hide in the library and eat carrots all day and do crossword puzzles at lunch.
“Oh my God, could we be bigger losers!!??” She laughs.
After coffee we walk around downtown. This is the best hour I’ve spent in weeks. We laugh at stuff for no reason. We joke about jobs and school. We walk arm in arm and say random things to boys.
There’s just one thing: I don’t tell her about Stewart. I don’t know why. I start to a couple times. But then I don’t.
For some reason I need to keep him to myself.
5
Having Trish back in my life makes everything more tolerable. School gets easier. My parents don’t seem so weird. Even talking to Stewart gets easier, as it gives me something to talk about for our whole ten minutes.
It goes so well, in fact, that he calls me again the next day. I’m in the kitchen with my mom when I answer. She gets sort of weird and suspicious afterward, which is odd, considering all the stray boys who have called me over the years. She wants to know who he is, and I tell her he’s one of my friends from rehab. I remind her we’re supposed to maintain friendships with our fellow recoverers. She doesn’t totally understand the “recovery” philosophy but she takes my word for it. Sort of.
Then he calls again a couple days later on a borrowed cell phone. It’s a Saturday, early afternoon, and I’m alone at home and I wander around the house half naked in a big sweater, talking to him for two hours. We have a real talk this time. We make plans. He’s going to stay with his mother in Centralia, which is about fifty miles from Portland. I can come visit him there. And he can come into the city.
He gives me the news from Spring Meadow: who’s been going to movie night, what’s going on in his house, how he played cards with Rami the other day and how he’s sorta nice, he even knew we were together in the laundry room those times but didn’t tell anyone.
