This Broken Road

by A. M. Henry

  At the Landmark restaurant in Warwick, we get a table in the dining room rather than in the tavern section with the cheap menu because Mom likes to think she’s upper class. I haven’t gone out anywhere other than the supermarket or CVS since before the Accident.

  Eight months. Almost eight whole months of staying shut up in my house, learning to walk again, having no friends. It isn’t fair. I know drugs are stupid, and I did a bad thing and have to pay for it, but for how long do I have to keep being punished? Sure, they’re lifting the restrictions now, but did they have to punish me and treat me like the worst kind of criminal for so many months? Didn’t they realize that I was a victim that night, too, as well as one of the villains? Don’t they know how much I lost? How much I suffered? I had my leg put back together with nails and staples, and an extreme minimum of painkillers because my parents didn’t want me on any drugs. They’d prefer I went through the pain of surgery and recovery and withdrawal without anything stronger than the occasional ibuprofen. Not to mention, I had to deal with the death of Jason, my best friend.

  Dinner turns out to be more silent and awkward than we can handle, so we eat in record time, skip dessert, and get home by eight o’clock. The Lillegards just can’t play Happy Family anymore—we’re each our own separate unit, each in our own little world, orbiting each other without getting too close.

  I’m pretty sure this is my fault.

  9.

  Rachel wakes me up at 6:45 a.m. with the aid of a cold, wet towel on my face.

  “Get up, loser,” she orders, sounding like Rachel Before the Accident. “We’re getting you out and about and out of this funk. Get in the shower and wash your hair. You look like you’ll have dreadlocks soon.”

  I shower and wash my hair and allow Rachel to put makeup on my face. She covers the cut above my eye and puts on mascara that she says will make my eyes look greener. She doesn’t get to blow dry and style my hair because it’s already totally dry by the time she finishes my makeup.

  “Let’s go,” she says, dragging me downstairs and digging Dad’s car keys out of the basket on the kitchen counter.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, still kind of sleep-fuzzy. I watched Cartoon Network until 3:30. “Does Dad know you’re taking his car?”

  “I told him I was taking you out,” she tells me as we get into the Cadillac. “We’re going to the diner for a giant breakfast.”

  She takes the longest, most backwards possible route to the Monroe Diner. I almost ask why until I realize the answer on my own—the Monroe Diner is right off of Route 17M.

  We get a booth in the back and she tries to order us both coffee. I change my order to tea. Coffee and my stomach don’t get along. A lot of things and my stomach don’t get along—a lasting side effect of opiate withdrawal. Families fill up the diner—parents, grandparents, and children; single dads taking their kids out. It’s noisy with the children and chatter and the clink of silverware and glasses.

  “What do you feel like having?” Rachel asks from behind her menu.

  I love diners because they have the biggest selection of food you could find in one place.

  “A Belgian waffle sundae, I think,” I say.

  “A real nutritious breakfast,” Rachel smirks. “And Dad said you had stopped eating.”

  “I live on occasional junk food. Cookies. Cereal. Ice cream. Chicken nuggets.”

  “You’re regressing.” Rachel laughs. “I remember when you were little and you wouldn’t eat anything.”

  “Only chicken nuggets,” I clarify. “And noodles. And potatoes.”

  “Mashed, no lumps, and no butter.” She shakes her head. “You were such a strange child.”

  “Me?! I’m not the one who grew mold in my closet for fun.”

  In sixth grade, Rachel went through a science phase. She stole a box of Petri dishes from school and used them to spawn all sorts of colorful, moldy things. Mom—mother of all things clean and sterile—went ballistic when she found them.

  We order our breakfast: an omelet for her, Belgian waffle for me, and then reminisce while we wait for our food. I tell her about my game of Pretty Pretty Princess with Dr. Allen. We try to remember all the things we stole from Casey—the Britney Spears Barbie, the sparkly red Tamagotchi, white Furby, her Polly Pocket play sets, and all the Disney princess toys she had loved so much.

  “I still have that pink Vermont Teddy Bear,” Rachel confesses. “The one Grandpa gave her for her sixth birthday. It’s in my dorm room.”

  I wonder if she remembers our last game, when Mom raided our room for Casey’s belongings. I don’t remind her. Our food arrives and we eat while chatting about Princeton, the dorms, her classes. Mindless chit-chat to fill the space. I get halfway through my Belgian waffle sundae when I remember that the last time I came to this diner, I was with Jason.

  It was a snowy day in January, around two o’clock in the morning. One of those nights when the snow falls in huge fluffy flakes, everything still and quiet except for that whispering sound the wind makes in the pine trees. We were the only people in the diner, so they had let us smoke inside. We talked and laughed about everything and nothing—how much we hated home and school, the horrible holidays we had just suffered through, what bands would have concerts in the next few months. And we shared a Belgian waffle sundae, covered in maple syrup and whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, and no chocolate sauce. Jason hated chocolate.

  We always sat next to each other in the diner, never across from each other, leaning into one another and taking comfort in our shared warmth.

  It feels like someone dropped a cannon ball into my stomach. I put my knife and fork down and push the plate away.

  “What’s the matter?” Rachel looks at me with her brown eyes wide and worried.

  I shake my head. “Nothing.” I try to shake it off. “Not that hungry. I told you my stomach still gets bad.”

  She gives me the one-eyebrow-raised look that says she knows I’m full of it.

  “Don’t do that,” she says, and I hear genuine sadness in her voice.

  “Don’t do what?” I ask, irritated.

  “I can see what Dad means, about you just switching off.” She frowns, gathering her thoughts. “You thought about something, just now. I saw it. And then it was like you flipped a switch, or something, and you just went blank. Like you’re not even there.”

  She’s too open and honest. She’s too right. I don’t know how to respond without getting mad. What does she want me to do? Stop pushing things down and away, let them float to the surface so I can get a good, long look at all the memories? And then what? How do I stare all the bad, ugly memories in the face and then move on?

  “Whatever. Forget it,” Rachel says.

  She’s annoyed, but she’s holding back, too—afraid of me, of how I’ll react.

  “I’m sorry, Rachel,” I say, trying to sound neutral. Unemotional. Zombie.

  She looks right at me, right into my eyes, and her expression softens. “You have to learn to deal with it. With everything. You can’t just keep pushing it away. The more you hide from it, the worse it’s going to be when you don’t have the strength to keep covering it up. You’re moving on, I guess; but you’re not dealing with anything.”

  “I can’t,” I say, struggling to hold it together. “It’s too much. It’s too bad.” My jaw is clenched to the point where my teeth hurt, my hands curled into tight fists, knuckles white. Every muscle tensed. If I let go, I’ll explode. Dissolve into a million pieces, scattered to the four winds. Don’t give in to the pain. Don’t be weak.

  “Let’s go for a drive, huh?” Rachel suggests.

  We pay and leave, and then drive aimlessly out of Monroe. Rachel turns down side streets just to see where they go, just like Jason and I used to do every weekend. Rachel drives for a long time, down country roads and through the small towns. Eventually, we reach Greenwood Lake and she slows down.

  “Stop at the CVS,” I say.

  “What for?”
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br />   “I’ll give you ten bucks if you get me cigarettes.”

  She gives me a disapproving glare that makes her look like Mom. “Do you even have ten bucks?”

  “No, but my credit’s still good with you, right?”

  “Do you even have money for the cigarettes?”

  I produce five very crinkled singles from the pocket of my sweatshirt, pilfered from Dad’s coat pocket. Some habits never die. Rachel sighs and tries to act irritated, but she pulls into the CVS parking lot anyway.

  “What kind do you want?” she asks, taking the singles and getting out of the car.

  “Camel Number Nines. If they don’t have them, then get Camel Lights.”

  She returns five minutes later and drops and packet of Oreos in my lap.

  “I changed my mind,” she says. “You don’t need cigarettes.”

  “Because refined sugar is really so much better.” I scowl, tearing open the Oreos as she pulls out of the parking lot. “I’m gonna get crumbs all over the car, and I’m telling Dad it’s your fault.”

  “At least you won’t be smoking.”

  “You forgot the Cool Whip,” I try to complain through a mouth full of cookie.

  “You are so gross.”

  We drive through Greenwood Lake and Upper Greenwood Lake, and then into West Milford until we arrive at the old drive-thru safari—the abandoned Jungle Habitat. The Habitat closed in the 1970’s, and there’s nothing left except for parking lots and a lot of winding roads through the woods. The woods still contain the wreckage of a few empty cages. Rumor has it the lions and ostriches still wander West Milford.

  Rachel parks and we go in through the chain link fence, taking the long walk up the main drive—extra long, because of my knee, and it’s hard to eat and walk at the same time. Once we get high up enough, we go through the woods and end up on a ridge overlooking the Greenwood Lake Airport. We find some rocks to sit on, share the Oreos, and watch the runway.

  It’s a small airport for small planes, and it doesn’t have much air traffic. Everything around us is quiet except for buzzing of crickets and the cries of blue jays, reminding us that autumn has come.

  “I used to come here with Kevin on weekends,” Rachel tells me. “Saturday mornings we would walk all the way up to that huge parking lot.”

  Kevin, Rachel’s high school boyfriend, was nerdy and sensible, just like her.

  “I came up here a few times,” I say, though I leave out the fact that I hung out here in the dead of night to take pills and drink.

  “You know,” Rachel says, frowning like she’s uncomfortable, “I was so jealous when you started hanging out with Jason all the time.”

  This is news to me. “Really? Why?”

  “Remember when we were in grade school? When Jason and Brady were on our bus?”

  “Yeah.” Of course I remember that. Between the bullies, the crazy bus drivers, and the weird kids, you couldn’t really forget.

  “Jason and Brady were always so nice to us,” Rachel continues. “Not like all the other brats. I remember that time they declared themselves Kings of the Bus, and said me and you were the only ones cool enough to sit in the very back with them.”

  I laugh at the memory, think of twelve-year-old Jason and his older brother, Brady. They would each take one of the very last seats and wait for the bus to hit a bump, to see how high they could bounce. If you hit the ceiling, you won for the day.

  “I had such a crush on him,” Rachel says, not looking at me. “On Jason. Even when we got to high school, and I didn’t see him as much. Even after he got left back, and no one in our grade would talk to him anymore. That first day he picked you up, when you guys were like official, I locked myself in my room and cried.” She gives me a sad smile and shrugs, as though she wishes none of it mattered now. “It seems like that was a hundred years ago.”

  The Oreo in my mouth has turned to cement. I can’t look at her, so I look down at the runway. I want to get in one of those planes, fly it straight up, to ten thousand feet, and then swan-dive back down to the ground at three hundred miles an hour.

  “It’ll get better.” Rachel takes my hand and squeezes it. “In time. It won’t hurt so much.”

  I want to punch her in the mouth, knock a few teeth out, and tell her it won’t hurt so much if she gives it some time. It would be pointless, though; so I don’t.

  Part II

  It seems like there’s nothing

  along these broken roads

  but blinking lights on creaking metal poles.

  - The Handsome Family

  10.

  You really can’t understand the full potential of sinus pain until you’ve been putting drugs up your nose over an extended period of time. Eight months clean, and I can still feel where the oxy and heroin have burned through my head. My immune system must be shot—I have caught my fifth cold since March. And of course, my parents won’t let me have cold medicine. Proper cold medicine, like the stuff where they make you go to the pharmacy counter, hand over your driver’s license, and solemnly swear that you’re not running a meth lab. And I can’t have more than four Motrin a day. A fire burns under my nose and eyes, and school is torture.

  Ms. Russell the art teacher called out sick today, and I can’t find the sub. That means I’ll have to find something else to do during gym and lunch.

  I don’t register the girly giggles right away. Instead it sort of fades in out of the general static of the crowded hallway. I turn towards the sound and see Lauren Hart and her minions watching me from near the water fountain. They giggle and whisper dramatically behind their hands to make sure everyone else within earshot knows that I’m one of the world’s suckiest people.

  Part of me truly does not give a shit. The other part notices the stares of all the other kids and their malicious sniggering and I can feel a red hot anger boiling in my stomach and flushing my cheeks. I try to shut all of them out and head for the library.

  Mrs. Adams, the vulture who lords her authority over the school’s sad excuse of a library, glares at me as soon as I walk in the door. I ignore her and go straight to the table farthest from her desk, in the back of the history and science aisle, right up against the window. Outside, I can see one end of the senior parking lot, and the wooded street where I picked a fight with Ryan Reagan.

  I haven’t made much headway with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, and so I take it out and turn to a page near the middle, where I left off. Mr. Sweeney doesn’t seem to mind that I don’t understand it at all. He doesn’t seem surprised either, so I’m determined to understand it, even if it kills me.

  Wittgenstein had too much time on his hands. It’s like he tried to put completely abstract ideas into logical, almost mathematical language. I have to read each sentence over and over again and rather than understand it, it just gets to the point where none of the words makes sense anymore. The whole concept of ideas, thoughts, and language seem ridiculous, the more I think about it. The idea of words—names, actions, phrases—all nonsense.

  In US History II, Mr. Harmon announces that we will pair off for a group project, due in February. The class grumbles when he says he already chose the pairs at random.

  I hate group projects. When you get to choose your own group and work with your friends, one person always ends up doing more work than the others, and then the friendship is never quite the same once the project gets handed in. When you get stuck working with someone the teacher chooses, it’s always the last person you would have picked and every single second spent working on that assignment will prove to be the most awkward moments of your life. And Harmon always pairs you with someone you don’t like. It’s like his way of forcing you to get past your differences and learn how to be friends. I presume I’ll end up forced to work with Lauren.

  Mr. Harmon goes down his list and passes around the handout for the assignment. “Lauren Hart and Jen Ramos. Brad Jacoby and Kate Pritchett. Angela Lillegard and Ryan Reagan.”

  It takes me a secon
d to process that, although I probably should have seen it coming. All the teachers know about the after school fight, even if they never said anything.

  When Harmon finishes calling out names, the other kids in the class all start rearranging their seats to sit with their partners. Ryan and I stay seated until Harmon gives Ryan the Evil Eye, and Ryan comes to claim the empty desk next to mine.

  Over a week after the fight and he still has a big purple and yellow bruise on his chin. I feel slightly better.

  Ryan reads the sheet explaining everything we need to do for this project. “We each take half. Work separately.”

  “Fine by me,” I say.

  Ryan throws the handout at me. “Pick one.”

  The project—”The American Dream in the last century”—involves a two page paper and an “art project” of our choice, one that “captures the idea of the American Dream and the themes of your chosen topic.”

  Mr. Harmon has never played by the rules as far as teaching.

  I scan the list of topics. “The Great Depression,” I say, and hand the list back to Ryan.

  “Whatever.”

  *

  Dad asks me to clean out some of the junk that has piled up in the basement. He even looks me in the eye when he talks to me.

  Not like I have anything better to do.

  We have a really creepy basement, though I guess you could technically call it a finished basement. Some basements are just creepy, no matter how white you paint the walls, or how much nice furniture you put in them.

  In the main part of the basement, we have the beige sofa that used to live upstairs before Mom got a white one, plus the pale pink loveseat from the old house, and the big TV we used to have in the living room until we upgraded to the flatscreen. But then off to the side of the basement are the boiler room and the “wine cellar”—both unfinished with exposed pipes and wires and yellow insulation and bad lighting from bare light bulbs.

  “Time out,” when I was younger, meant ten minutes in the dark in the boiler room or the wine cellar if Mom was home and handing out punishments.