Unfiltered & Unraveled

by Payge Galvin

  “Stop saying puke,” I moaned, slumping back against the wall.

  Allie yanked her hand back as the bathroom door rattled in the frame. Thump. My jaw dropped and the door thumped again. And then a giggle. Allie was scandalized. Thump.

  “Are you humping against the door?” she yelled. “Are you kidding me? Vomit definitely trumps sex!”

  There was no response from the moaners.

  Stomach churning, I raised my foot and gave the metal handle a kick with high-heeled boots. “There are people-” Another kick. “Out here.” Kick. “Who need the bathroom!” One last kick had the latch flying off the door and skidding across the tile floor.

  Yep, drunk or not, I was a badass.

  A guy in his twenties tumbled out of the bathroom, landing on his bare ass with a dull smack. A girl with long dishwater-colored dreadlocks fell on top of him, giggling, one hand wrapped around his blue-and-red striped tie as she smashed her face against his light blue Oxford shirt. The girl’s long, crazy-quilted broom skirt was rucked around her hips, revealing a tattoo of Grateful Dead bears dancing across her ass.

  Ew.

  “Oh my God,” the guy moaned, rubbing his scalp where his head whacked against the tile. “Shit.”

  “What the fuck?” I yelled. My face was sweaty and flushed and I could feel little strands of blond hair clinging to my cheeks. “What is wrong with you fucking people?”

  “You’re saying ‘fuck’ a lot more than you usually do,” Allie noted.

  I whirled around and just about smacked Allie in the boob with my arm. “Yeah, because I’m pissed off, Allie. I’m saying ‘fuck’ because I am pissed at you. I’m pissed because I am stuck in this shitty coffee shop on my birthday – my big 21 – chugging coffee and trying to sober up so I can get your drunk ass home, as usual, because despite the fact that you promised me that I was going to have a killer birthday, the kind of birthday that ends in a walk of shame and regrettable selfies, you couldn’t stick with diet soda for one fucking night and let me get drunk. You can’t take care of me. I have to take care of you. As usual.”

  “Okay, but on the bright side, vomit no longer seems imminent,” Allie offered. “So that’s one for the ‘pro’ column, right?”

  I let out a loud hissing breath from between my teeth, but before she said anything, we both flinched at the loud bang that came from the front of the shop.

  I opened my eyes and pasted on my best smile, despite Mr. Wentworth’s alarmed expression. Apparently, he was not used to patients taking extended mental vacations in his office. “Are you all right, Violet?”

  This was a dangerous man. I wanted to crawl into his lap and call him ‘Professor.’ I wanted him to strip me down to nothing, to the skin, and spread me out on his desk. I wanted to tell him everything I’d ever done wrong, so he could punish me with carefully measured spankings.

  These were not clear and rational thoughts. I had to get it together or I’d be the first person to get kicked out of New Beginnings for extreme impure thoughts about the staff.

  I cleared my throat and shook my head. “No. No trauma. I just made one bad decision. And now I’m paying for it.”

  Chapter 3

  I didn’t exactly pout my first few days at New Beginnings. But I didn’t earn any “model camper” badges, either.

  I was assigned to one of what the New Beginners referred to as the probie floors in the main building, where the staff sequestered patients they couldn’t quite trust yet. The staff offices were a level lower, which I supposed was to keep us from rappelling down the side of the building to obtain crack.

  The rooms were nicer than I expected from a rehab, much like the fancy hotel experience Allie had promised: Two queen-sized beds per room, with pretty turquoise and cream bedspreads. The furnishings were sleek and modern, like something from a super-fancy Ikea. And the walls were covered in these strange woven copper treatments that were supposed to redirect our negative energy. I was a lot more worried about bumping into a corner and cutting myself. The only amenity we lacked was our own bathroom. Each floor shared an enormous room that was more “Turkish bathhouse” than the barren, grungy stalls that passed for communal bathrooms at my dorm.

  Because nothing says rehab like, “we don’t trust you to use the bathroom by yourself.”

  Due to the short notice, Allie wasn’t able to book me a private room. I was lucky to skirt in as a last-minute application. My roommate, Cynda, was rail-thin and leggy with mink-colored hair. Cynda was an even bigger mess than Allie. A few years before, she’d been a contestant on one of those reality model search shows and found some success walking runways around Europe. And then she decided to try cocaine as an alternative to dieting, which somehow bridged into “dabbling” with heroin. I wasn’t sure if injecting illegal drugs between your elegantly shod toes would be considered “dabbling,” but I wasn’t exactly an expert on the subject.

  Three months sober and fully committed to sobriety – because that’s what the production team launching her “redemption” reality series required – Cynda was a group therapy fiend. She went to her assigned group meeting every morning and afternoon, plus the optional Narcotics Anonymous meetings held at the rec center on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Of course, she didn’t do this because she was that committed to her recovery. She did it to earn C-points, or cooperation points that earned her treatments at the on-site spa, facials, peels, and body wraps performed by some of the top dermatological technicians in the country. Now that she’d stopped her spiral, Cynda was absolutely fanatical about undoing the damage she’d done to her looks while she was using. There were a lot of skin products on her nightstand.

  Cynda bounded out of bed on my first morning and whipped my carefully prescribed schedule from the message board on our door. Scampering across the room like a whirlwind, she flopped over my legs, pinning me to the bed. I sat up, hair falling into my grumpy, pillow-creased face. “Cynda, we need to talk about boundaries. We also need to talk about you wearing some pajamas.”

  “I can’t sleep in clothes. They’re too binding,” she sighed, flipping through my schedule, completely unperturbed by her bare ass nearly hanging off of my bed. “Oh, you lucky bitch, you’re in the Genesis group! That’s where all the hot guys are. All of the Origins guys are dinosaurs.”

  Fitting with the recovery center’s theme, each of the groups was named with some synonym for “beginning”: Genesis, Creation, Origin, that sort of thing. Genesis was the group closest to my demographic-- college kids, several of whom had dropped out of school because they couldn’t manage their binge drinking. Cynda was assigned to Origins group, who according to Cynda, were the “stinky kids” at rehab, the cases so challenging they had to be assigned to the facility’s specialized psychotherapist, Dr. Mueller.

  “If I was in the Genesis group, I would be out of here already,” Cynda sighed. She stood and started sorting through my clothes, tossing those she deemed “unwearable” into the wastebasket. “I would be the best one in the group, and Cam would vote me right out of here.”

  “I don’t think you can be the best at therapy,” I said, retrieving several of my t-shirts from the trash can. “Also, who’s Cam?”

  “Cameron Wentworth? The super-hot guy whose super-hotter ass should be plastered on the brochures for this place so people would actually sign up to go to rehab.”

  I would explain to her later that ‘super-hotter’ wasn’t a word. Really, I would.

  “You call the addiction counselor, ‘Cam?’”

  “The first name basis is supposed to break down the needless walls of the counselor-patient relationship while maintaining appropriate boundaries,” she said, her tone airy. “But I think it’s because not all of the counselors have their PhDs and it makes them feel less insecure about not being called ‘doctor.’ He tells everybody to call him ‘Cam.’”

  “He didn’t tell me to call him ‘Cam.’”

  Cynda winced, then immediately realized she was making a potentially wrinkl
ing facial expression and smoothed her brow out with her fingertips.

  “Is that bad?”

  “Oh, honey,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s not good.”

  I glanced down at Cynda’s glorious custom-made boobs. “Could we at least talk about a tank top or undies or something?”

  ‡

  Sitting in my cushy leather arm-chair, one of nine arranged in a circle in the soothing blue “Genesis” meeting room, I could not spot these hot guys Cynda was so excited about. There were only three guys in the Genesis group. Ruddy, dark-haired Jason, who insisted we call him ‘Gator’ was nineteen years old and had a beer belly so big it was practically its own keg. He was the son of an NFL player, and a pretty good linebacker in his own right, but he managed to injure himself while jumping from boat to boat at a spring break party on Lake Havasu. Rob was way more fit, as in ‘Jersey Shore’ fit, complete with the orange tan and gel-sculpted hair. And he just recently understood how getting three-times-the-legal-limit drunk and beating the bartender who refused to serve him to a pulp was a problem.

  Jimmy came the closest to being hot. He had long, sinewy arms covered in long strings of Chinese characters that probably meant “stupid mistranslated tattoo.” He kept them crossed over his chest and his dark head bent low as he very mechanically revealed his addiction to pain pills that developed after an injury. Unlike Gator, who seemed to take pride in the number of YouTube hits “Spring Break Idiot Smashed Between Boats on Havasu” got each week, Jimmy didn’t disclose what sort of injury he’d suffered or how he’d been hurt. But that only made him mildly interesting, not jumpable.

  For the record – and this was kind of mean – I couldn’t remember the other girls’ names. They were all equally blond and orange and chirpy, and their names all ended in “I.” Also, they did not seem to like me very much, which was unusual, because most people liked me. I was a likable girl.

  Except for Cam, who still hadn’t corrected me out of calling him, “Mr. Wentworth,” I didn’t see anyone I’d want to ogle. But surely, ogling the counselor wasn’t the right way to start group therapy. Of course, telling the group that you didn’t have a substance abuse problem was also a lousy way to start group therapy.

  “Really?” Blond Number One scoffed. “You don’t have a drinking problem? So why are you here?”

  “My parents insisted.”

  “Parents don’t just decide to send their daughter to rehab,” Rob noted. “You must have done something to make them think you have a problem.”

  “I had a little drunk driving arrest,” I said, knowing exactly how lame it sounded as it was leaving my mouth.

  “So you don’t think drunk driving is a problem?” Blonde Number Two asked.

  “I’d never done it before,” I said, shrugging. “And I don’t plan on doing it again.”

  “So, you at least admit that you made a mistake,” Blonde Two said.

  “I did. I made one mistake, one night. That doesn’t mean I have a problem.”

  “She’s rationalizing, Cam!” Gator exclaimed.

  Cam hadn’t said anything so far, just watched the conversation volley around the circle. “Gator, we’ve talked about the tattling.”

  “It’s not tattling!” Gator cried, his cheeks flushing ever redder.

  “Trust me, I know a massive rationalization when I hear it, Gator.” Cam leveled his eyes at me. “I don’t need you to alert me to the situation.”

  My eyes narrowed. Oh, no, he did not just call me out in front of the group. I thought he was supposed to be the grown-up here. So far, I was willing to award that title to Jimmy, who was the only member of the group who hadn’t picked on me.

  “It’s not a rationalization. I know I did something stupid, that I won’t do again. But I don’t drink regularly. It was my birthday—”

  “‘It was my birthday. It was my sorority’s mixer. It was my grandma’s funeral.’ Any excuse to have a good time, right?” Rob asked in a mincing little voice that sounded nothing like mine. “And then you stop making excuses and you’re sneaking vodka into your energy drinks just so you can get through your classes.”

  “That is actually the opposite of my experience,” I said. “I am completely sober for classes. I usually serve as my friend’s designated driver. And when I do drink, I have a two-shot maximum.”

  “You don’t get pulled over for drunk driving for two shots!” Blond Number Three snorted.

  I crossed my arms and looked to Cam, who was calmly jotting all of this down in his notebook. “I’m going to stop talking now.”

  “You can’t do that!” Blond One told me. “You can’t just decide that you’re not going to participate anymore. You’ll get into trouble.”

  “And yet, I am going to do just that.”

  So, despite the questions and demands the rest of the group lobbed at me for the rest of the morning, I just sat there in my chair with my arms wrapped around my knees. Emulating Jimmy, I stared intently across the circle at Cam, practically daring him to make me talk again. He stared right back at me, expression completely still, even while his big green eyes looked mildly amused. And it kind of felt like he was daring me right back – to do what, I had no idea. But I wanted to find out.

  I practically launched myself out of that chair when group time was over, much to Cam’s displeasure. I didn’t even stick around for the Serenity Prayer. And I skipped the group’s scheduled recreation, swimming, in favor of going back to my room. I flopped onto my deliciously soft bed, made by someone other than myself, and smacked my head against the patient guidebook that housekeeping very helpfully left open on my bedspread. It looked like one of those guest service binders you’d find in a hotel room. It listed the room service menu, instructions on ordering special dietary plans, spa services, concierge services, and all of the amenities provided at New Beginnings.

  Obviously, my distress over being here wasn’t about the conditions. My room at the rehab was nicer than my room at home – to a ridiculous degree. It was the idea that I was there, that I didn’t have the option of leaving without risking my parents’ wrath or my college funding. I had no idea whether Allie was out there, fulfilling her half of our bargain. I was going to guess “no.” Allie was good at finding her way around rules and agreements. If she wasn’t chasing parties all of the damn time, she would have made an awesome lawyer. She was probably using what was left of her cut of the coffee shop money to fund research for alcohol that made you drunk faster, so that technically she would be drinking less.

  Or she’d given all of her money to a televangelist and joined a cult. Really, either one was possible.

  I wondered how the others were doing. I only knew them in passing, but somehow, I missed them. Because no one else in the world knew how this felt. No one else would be able to sympathize or understand.

  Also, Blake, one of the guys at the coffee shop that night, was really cute, and I wouldn’t have minded getting his number.

  Sighing, I flipped through the menu and was pleasantly surprised at the way my stomach growled. I hadn’t had much of an appetite since that night at The Coffee Cave. My mother had noticed that much. Or, at least, she noticed that my clothes were getting baggy and fussed at me for looking “like a sloppy homeless person.” But now, the nerves that had kept my stomach churning for the last few weeks were silent. Hell, the dessert section alone was enough to make me drool.

  I tamped down the urge to reach for the in-house phone and order a big slice of organic mocha-brownie chunk cheesecake. My parents never let me order room service at hotels, because of the expense. The prices here were probably insane. And then I remembered. First, New Beginnings was an all-inclusive facility. All activities and meals were rolled into our daily costs. And second, I wasn’t paying the bill for my stay here. Allie was footing the bill.

  A big, scary Grinch-ish grin spread across my face.

  As long as Allie was paying, I was going to make the most of my time at New Beginnings.
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br />   Chapter 4

  I spent a lot of time napping and a lot of time snacking over the next three days. I skipped everything but group therapy, in which I barely participated. I answered direct questions, but after my Blond Interrogation, I didn’t offer up anything else for them to analyze. Instead, I retreated to my room and took those indecently high thread count sheets for a few laps.

  I didn’t bother making my bed with hospital corners. I didn’t worry about what clothes I would wear. I didn’t wake up in the middle of the night to scribble errands I’d just remembered into my already crowded schedule. I just slept.

  For weeks, rolling nausea had kept me from eating or sleeping, but somehow, the complete change of scenery helped me forget the constant nagging pull of anxiety. The nightmares I’d suffered were still there, lurking at the surface of my sleep like a serpent slithering under water, but I didn’t remember much of them when I woke. I started to feel vaguely human again.

  With my appetite back, I indulged in the benefits of the center’s twenty four-hour kitchen: grilled cheese sandwiches, salads with fancy goat cheese and candied pecans, omelets stuffed with more bacon and avocado than was probably wise. And toast, I ate a lot of butter-soaked toast for no reason. Because pointless toast was the most delicious toast of all.

  It was weird, how guilty I felt eating like this. I could my mother’s voice in my ear, reminding me of the fat content in just one grilled cheese sandwich, not to mention the sugar in the candied pecans. And the same voice reminded me that avocado wasn’t healthy for me just because it was a fruit. Fortunately, those candied pecans were really crunchy, so the noise drowned that nagging voice right out.

  I would have booked a bunch of spa appointments, but I hadn’t earned any cooperation points yet, so I didn’t qualify for so much as a brow wax. But earning C-points meant actively participating in group therapy, which was becoming a sticking point for me.