The Crossroads of Logan Michaels

by James Roberts

  Of course, the situation immediately got worse. Rory and I pulled out in the rain and, as I came around the corner in my van doing sixty miles per hour—I don’t know what set me off—I just hit the gas and we swerved into a huge dirt hill; my van jumped into the air. I tried to back out, but the van was stuck halfway in midair.

  “Fuck,” I said as I tried to back up for 30 minutes straight. Rory and I sat in the car, not knowing what to do, and then the worst thing I could imagine happened. I noticed a beige Chevy truck drive by slowly; I looked into the driver’s side window and saw my biggest nightmare.

  My father slammed on his brakes and hopped out of the car to ask what happened. Rory and I were still kind of buzzing from the night before. I told him that I had just lost control and he looked at me, knowing right away that I was bullshitting him. He then tied a rope to the van and towed us out; I guess it was better him than the cops.

  Surprisingly, he wasn’t that mad; he followed me home and told me that he needed to talk with me that night, that it was very important and he would pick me up around six. I couldn’t avoid it, since he had decided to help me out. I figured that it would be a huge lecture about how I was pretty much throwing my life away.

  Jared arrived home from school that day and told me that Dad wanted to speak with both of us. Now I was more concerned, and figured it could be about the girl who was stalking my mother. I hadn’t heard too much about her lately because I had tried to ignore that it was even happening.

  Six o’clock struck as Jared and I waited on the couch for my father. He arrived about fifteen minutes later. We went to his house for the usual dinner, which was either hot dogs and beans, or spaghetti. After the awkward dinner phase, we all sat on the couch and he told us the news that changed our lives forever.

  He said, “Of course, you know about the woman who I had been seeing.” We both shook our heads, trying to ignore him. “Well, I wanted to tell you sooner, but didn’t know how. I just told your mother and told her to wait until I told you guys.”

  My chest tightened as my knees shook nervously. What the hell could it be? My father looked more nervous than me and Jared.

  “You have a half sister.”

  The look in Jared’s eyes was indescribable; he looked as if he wanted to cry and scream at my dad at the same time, but he managed to say nothing. My stomach felt sick and I was speechless.

  “What’s her name?” I finally mumbled like a little kid.

  “Her name is Emma,” he replied. I didn’t know how to take this in; how was I supposed to feel? I mean, a sister by another woman?

  My brother showed no emotion that night when we both arrived home and saw our mom. I stayed in bed staring at the wall, thinking about how I had always wanted a sister. But why did it have to happen this way? I couldn’t imagine the pain my mother was feeling inside. It turned out, I had had a sister for close to a year now and I hadn’t even met her; I was not sure if I even wanted to see her, but I hoped that when she got older we could be friends. Not to mention that, because of this, my mother had put the house up for sale and now had to look for an apartment for us. We all put our problems aside that night.

  A month later, the house had been sold and my mother had found a three-bedroom in North Andover for the three of us. It was pretty expensive, but she had a career now and could make ends meet. It was right near the high school, which kind of made me sick because I could see all of the kids I used to play sports with as they drove past our place to go to school. I felt as though they were moving on while I was going backwards in time—that should have been me.

  The night we moved in, my mother and I had a long talk about my brother and me. Mom told me news about Jared that I didn’t want to hear, especially since I had been a shitty role model.

  “I found a marijuana pipe in Jared’s room the other day.”

  I closed my eyes slowly and took a deep breath, knowing he was on the wrong track now. The mature thing to do would be to talk to Jared about this, but instead I swept it under the rug like usual. My mom also talked about me getting back on my feet and working; she said that if I was not going to school then I need to work and support myself. The part of the conversation that surprised me was that she and Dad had talked, and together they had bought me a ticket to Germany. Germany?

  Probably about six months back, my buddy Greg had stayed with a transfer student in Bonn, and he had had a blast over there. He said that he was going back and that he wanted me to stay with him and the transfer student in Germany. My parents said that they would think about it. However, since I had dropped out, I wasn’t expecting that they would let me go. I think that my parents had thought it would be good for me if I got away for a while. The two-week trip would happen in three months. I felt so awful knowing that I had put my mom through hell, and she was sending me on my dream vacation anyway. I hoped that one day I could make it up to her and make her proud of her son.

  Of course, the first thing I needed to do was to get another job. Where was a high school dropout to begin? I didn’t have too many options. Rory told me about a moving company a couple towns over that paid well and was easy; it basically just involved moving furniture all day. The problem here was that I no longer had a car, so I had to borrow my mother’s car to interview for the position and fill out an application.

  My mother let me drive her new black Camry. Surprisingly, there was no interview; it was just me filling out an application and a couple of personal questions. I figured that I had done my due diligence and would wait to hear back from them in a couple days, like they had said.

  After I had filled out my application, I figured that I could kill some time and go over to Rory’s house. Tyler and he were there like usual, watching TV and smoking pot. I took a couple of hits and talked about the day.

  “Hey, let’s take a cruise,” Tyler said.

  “Nah, I have my mom’s car,” I replied. But eventually, Tyler persuaded me to go with him by promising to roll a joint, since I really didn’t have much money left. We all jumped in my mom’s car and lit up the joint; I figured we could just air out the car later. After we got stoned, Tyler thought of a crazy idea. He claimed he had done it a bunch of times before and had never been caught.

  “Let’s got to Bob’s,” he said, talking about the nearby clothing store, “And steal some new shoes. I heard there are these new Nikes that are unreal.”

  I looked down at my old pair of Nikes that were beat-up, covered in grass stains and falling apart. “Let’s try it,” I said.

  Rory disagreed for once and sat in the car while Tyler and I went in. We both walked in, stoned, with our hands in our pockets. I followed Tyler to the shoe department as he sat down after finding the new Nikes that were spotless and pure white. After finding his size, he tried them on and slipped his old pair into the box.

  “That’s it? Are you sure this works?” I said.

  “Yeah, I’ve done it a bunch of times.” Eleven and a half; perfect, they had my size, one more pair. I slipped off my old, dirty shoes and put on the crisp and comfortable white Nikes. They felt amazing as I stood up. With each step we took toward the store’s exit, I could feel my heart pounding, but on the surface I looked calm. Finally we were close to the front door; only ten more feet to go. Oh my God, we did it!

  “Hold it right there, boys!” No fuckin’ way! Two men were at the entry of the building as we slowly walked by them. Busted! They took us into the back security room and played the video of Tyler and me putting our old shoes into the shoeboxes. Tyler panicked and begged the cop not to arrest him, as he was already on probation multiple times for possession of marijuana. I sat, slumped, as they handcuffed me, and closed my eyes in despair. What am I doing?

  I was embarrassed as the two officers arrived to walk Tyler and me out in handcuffs. I could hear the mutters from onlookers, no doubt judging us as losers. If only the cops and crowd knew that, only a year ago, I had been an all-star and that I used to earn great grades and had a great l
ife. People only judge a book by its cover, I reminded myself as I slumped my head down and got shoved in the cop car.

  •••

  Technically, I was arrested in New Hampshire, which was one state over from Massachusetts. It was only twenty minutes from my town, though. Apparently, in New Hampshire, they try you as an adult when you are seventeen, unlike in Massachusetts, where you’re considered an adult in the eyes of the law only when you reach eighteen. After they took fingerprints, took our pictures, and put Tyler and me in a cell, they called my mother.

  My mother arrived at the station in her nursing uniform; she had been ready to go to work, but had needed to call out, due to the fact that her son had been arrested. They told her that if she didn’t pay five hundred dollars in bail money for me, that I would be going to Essex County Jail. Essex County is a pretty tough jail for criminals who commit crimes ranging from burglary to murder and rape, and to think that I would be going there for stealing shoes blew my mind. I was scared that I would be in jail alongside guys much harder than myself. My father had told my mother to let them send me there, saying that I needed to learn a lesson.

  I agree that I did need to learn a lesson, and maybe this would have changed my perspective on things. However, I knew kids who had gone into jail and came out worse; jail only surrounds you with more criminals. But my mother paid the bail and took me home that day with a warning. I sat in her car with my head down during the whole ride; I had nothing to say; an apology was useless. I could tell that my mother wanted to break down in tears. At times, I wondered which was more difficult: me struggling and losing everything or her having to watch it happen gradually over these rough years. My heart was dead. I was in denial, and so low that it hurt every night to think of my reality. Getting high, as always, took the pain away.

  I sat upstairs in my room for the next couple of days. I watched the cars pass as they drove to the high school. Winter was coming, and I had no car, no job, and not a penny to my name. My brother stayed in his bedroom with Vanessa; my mother and I could hear them having sex some nights, and could sometimes smell marijuana. He continued to go to school and amazingly got good grades—he was always a smart kid. I think it was good that at least he had Vanessa, because if he didn’t have her shoulder to lean on, he probably would have been like me.

  I was single; every girl that I hooked up with or entered a relationship with eventually left me because I was always drunk or high. I cared more about getting trashed than about being in a relationship. Of course, I had hookups here and there, mainly because I partied a lot, but I hadn’t experienced true love, and I wouldn’t admit that I wanted it.

  I was back on the scene before long, and on my first night back I went hard. Tyler called me on a Friday night; my mother was working and my brother was home with Vanessa. He asked me if I wanted to get drunk and said that he had a surprise for me. He showed up about an hour later with a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and a twelve-pack of Bud Light.

  We took a couple shots in my room to loosen up. Tyler had a gram of white powder that smelled like gasoline when you got close to it. So far, I had only seen cocaine in movies, but never would have thought to put it up my nose. But then Tyler poured some of it into a pile on a table, took out his debit card, and started crushing it up. He divided two lines equally.

  “No, man, let me just try a small one first,” I said. He laughed as he snorted a line and his eyes watered up. He smiled, but he had a serious look.

  “Woo,” he said as he snorted. “What a drip.”

  I rolled up a dollar bill tightly after watching Tyler do it. I nervously stuck the bill into my nose and proceeded to the line.

  “Here goes . . .” SNIFF! Adrenaline rushed to my heart as my blood pumped with excitement; holy shit!

  “I can taste it in the back of my throat,” I said to Tyler.

  “Good, right? That’s the drip. Here, put some on your teeth; it will numb your mouth.”

  “My throat is numb, is that normal?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that means it’s good,” Tyler replied. We smoked a couple cigarettes back to back; it was incredible. Our eyes swelled up to double their size and we were officially, as they would say, “yayed out.”

  Tyler and I shared heartfelt stories like we were the only two guys on earth; I learned coke does that to you. We continued to get fucked up as we smoked a blunt and took shots of Grey Goose. About an hour later, I found myself hurting for another line and so did Tyler. We blew another one, except it was a little bigger this time. The rush was amazing and woke me right back up as I drank. I feel like I could drink forever on this stuff.

  Tyler and I did our last line of the gram as three-thirty in the morning arrived, and we were binged out. I tried to fall asleep that night, but all I could feel was my heart pounding and racing, which was keeping my eyes open. I didn’t get much sleep, but it had been an amazing experience.

  Rory wasn’t about cocaine; for some reason, he never wanted to put anything up his nose, so he stuck mostly to weed. Tyler and I did it a couple weekends back and forth, but after that it became a little too expensive, so we cut back. The last night we did it, however, was right before my eighteenth birthday. Tyler came over to my house while my mom was working. We started drinking and smoking and then decided we needed some cocaine. He called some local guy who had dropped out a while back; he must have been twenty-two and now sold cocaine.

  Tyler told me he could get us a gram, but that we needed to be there in fifteen minutes. My mother had just come home from work and had gone to bed. The drop was about a mile away, and if we walked, we probably wouldn’t make it. “Fuck, what we are going to do?”

  “I need to do a line, Tyler.” Then I saw an idea pop into my head. My mother’s keys were in her pocketbook, just sitting there. The only problem here was that my mother’s bedroom window was right next to the driveway, and she might hear her car starting.

  “Here’s the plan, Tyler,” I began. “I am going to put the keys in and put the car in neutral. Then I want you to push it back into the road, and we can start it there.”

  The idea worked brilliantly; as I started the car in the street, I was hammered and high.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I need that drip.”

  Tyler and I drove to the building where his dealer was; he told us to come in and get it. I still get haunted by the apartment building he lived in—I had felt like a junkie. We parked the car in the lot next to an abandoned dumpster. We walked up stairs that were old and had splinters coming out of them; the hallway had paint chips falling off of its walls and the building smelled like lost dreams.

  There he was, the cocaine dealer. He had dirty-blond hair and his apartment was disgusting, with pizza boxes and plates everywhere. It stank of stale food and marijuana.

  “You just made it,” he said, “But I only have half a gram, I did the other.” His eyes looked like two golf balls, bloodshot, and he had a creepy look to him. We were both too scared to argue with him because he could probably kill us. He crunched up the last of his cocaine, which amounted to three massive lines. He said that we could do it there if we wanted. Fuck it, where else was I going to do it?

  Tyler blew the first one and his eyes opened up wide; he looked like he just sprung out of bed. Wow! He lit up a cigarette immediately after, and took a shot of Jägermeister that the dealer provided us. SNIFF! “Chase it with Jägermeister,” he said. My eyes opened just as wide as Tyler’s while my heart raced with adrenaline. It’s all worth it, I thought.

  After we chilled for about a half hour we needed to leave. We hopped in my mom’s car and both went for our packs of cigarettes. Fuck! We both had none.

  “I need one, Tyler,” I said.

  “Me too, but there’s a convenience store open 24/7 ten minutes away.” Being that it was two in the morning it was our only option, and we were both so yayed up that we needed a cigarette. I knew that if I got pulled over, my life would be over and my mother would kill me, but
cocaine is a strong drug and I didn’t think that far ahead. We made it to the store, and I lit up a wonderful Marlboro Red. The rain started to come down pretty hard and I just wanted to get home and return my mom’s car before she found out.

  I decided to take the highway because my street was right off the exit so it would be a lot quicker. We jumped onto I-95 North and I hit the gas as we approached the ramp. We got closer to the ramp as I hit the gas harder and harder—it must have been the cocaine. I reached about sixty while merging onto the highway as the turn got thinner and the rain hit the tires. We hit the ramp, spinning us into the middle of the highway, which dipped us down into the grass about five feet from the road. We both held our breath as the car stopped; my heart felt like it was going to explode. I saw my life flash by in an instant: my brother and me playing Frisbee down on the Cape, all of the good times, and then my mother crying. . . .

  Tyler and I were silent during the ride home. We were lucky there had been no oncoming traffic, otherwise we would have been dead. The car was a little bit scratched up when I returned it to the driveway, and one wheel was shaking pretty badly.

  Tyler walked home, and I went in the house and went to bed, hoping that I would wake up to find that none of this had really happened. The morning came and my mother went out to her car, and immediately came back inside. I walked outside to look at the damage I had done, and saw the scrapes on the side of the door, the smashed fender, the damaged wheel, and the huge cigarette burn hole in the back seat. I couldn’t even look my mother in the eye; I wanted to die. She was speechless and almost broke into tears. She then told me she was thankful that I didn’t kill myself. I promised that I would pay for it, but she knew that I wouldn’t be able to; she walked back inside the house.

  I went over to Rory’s and Tyler’s house to get high and to forget what just happened. I got drunk later that night to the point where I barely could walk home. I stumbled through the baseball field and fell down a couple of times and could swear I blacked out. I sat on the bleachers by myself, with my head down and my hooded sweatshirt on, looking at the baseball field. I was at rock bottom, and didn’t know what to do anymore; I couldn’t imagine my life continuing like this—I would be dead. Eventually, I made it home somehow and woke up the next day, on my eighteenth birthday, to a letter on the toilet and a happy birthday card.