The Crossroads of Logan Michaels

by James Roberts

  Chapter 9

  THE WORLD STOLE MY SPIRIT

  My mother was at work, but she had left me a note that brought tears to my eyes:

  Logan,

  Happy Eighteenth Birthday! I know things have been hard on you these past couple years. I remember holding you in my arms like you were a baby just yesterday. I love you with all my heart and it breaks my heart to see you drunk and high all the time. You are a wonderful young man with so much potential. I remember you being a perfectionist and organizing your baseball cards and playing basketball in the yard for hours. You always excelled at anything you did and never let the world bring you down no matter what. I cry thinking of what you’re going through some nights, I cry knowing that you lost your father and knowing that so many bad things have happened over these years. Most sadly, I cry because you’re a handsome young man who deserves a beautiful woman in his life, but you drink just to feel at peace. Please, Logan, I hope one day you realize I will be here for you no matter what you become in this life, but I just want you to become happy. You have some much potential Logan Michaels, please use it. I love you so much and forever. Happy Birthday.

  Love,

  Mom

  I must have cried in my bed for an hour straight after reading that note. I finally realized that my mother understood what I was going through. Before my mother was a nurse, she used to work part-time at group homes for kids who had even worse situations than I did now. She could relate to any young person and make them feel at ease, and she could always put my heart at rest. She was the most understanding woman in the world. She had once told me that someday, if she didn’t become a nurse, then she wanted to become a psychiatrist.

  I saw Mom when she got home from work, and hugged her so tightly and apologized for everything. She knew how much I loved her; I just wish I could show it more. My father came by and wished me a happy birthday. It was good to see the family together again like old times; I missed that. My father and mother said that they were going to put their money together and help me buy a car, but only if I got a job, and I agreed. The only reason they did this was because I had no way to get anywhere, but I knew that I really didn’t deserve one.

  However, later that week, I got a call from the moving company I had applied to; they had an open position and said it was mine if I wanted it. I happily accepted it for ten dollars an hour, working full-time. About a week after my job acceptance, my mother and father found me a 1996 Honda Accord for five thousand dollars. It had 88,000 miles on it, but was in good shape; it was perfect. I promised myself that I would change things now. Plus, I had Germany coming up in a couple months, and things seemed to be falling in place after my mom’s birthday letter to me.

  •••

  It was difficult to see all of my high school friends so happy during their senior year. That could have been me, I thought as I drove by in my tan Honda Accord and hooded sweatshirt. The first day I got my car, I picked up Rory, and it was like déjà vu. We rolled a blunt and picked up Tyler, who had these blue pills he called Vicodin. They were oval-shaped and he told me they were painkillers: I swallowed two whole pills and put another one under my tongue. After the blunt sank in and the painkillers weighed down my eyes, my ambitions decreased; I smiled and lit up a cigarette. This lifestyle was contagious. I tried to picture my mom’s note, but the high was too peaceful.

  I figured that I would celebrate for one more day before I started my new moving job. Jared came home from school after his first day in high school. It was crazy to think that he and I could have been in the same school together if I hadn’t dropped out. In my heart, even though we didn’t talk much, I just wanted him to graduate like I hadn’t done. Jared would mention me that the teachers all wondered how I was doing, and didn’t understand what had happened to me. They had said, “Your brother was such a wonderful athlete.” I shrugged and walked away like I didn’t care, even though it secretly felt like a knife through my damaged heart.

  The next day I started my job and I woke up at six a.m. and put on my steel-toed work boots and drove to Wilmington, Massachusetts for work. I bought some Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and smoked a couple of cigarettes before I arrived. Walking in, I wasn’t sure what to expect until I saw a crowd of guys outside the trucks, all smoking cigarettes. There must have been twenty guys, all scruffy-looking with ripped jeans and hoodies. The supervisor came outside and read of a bunch of names.

  “Tim, Stan, Greg, Jared, Jason, Logan. You’re all going to Lynn to move out a middle school.”

  So part of our job was to move furniture for eight hours straight. We carpooled in Jason’s car, all of us packed in together, as Jason lit up a cigarette and blasted his rock music. These guys are bums, I thought; even though I was a dropout, too, I felt out of place. I guess I still thought that I was something more than this.

  In the car, Jared pulled out a joint and we all got stoned before getting to the job site. I stayed quiet, packed in Jason’s claustrophobic car. We finally arrived and I was so high that I could barely lift anything. We all started to make our way into the school and started to move desks, chairs, file cabinets, and whatever else. This is going to be my life now, I thought. This is the life of a high school dropout.

  The day was so boring and, by the end, my back felt like it was broken. The guys I was working with were all heavier and more muscular; I was a lean five-nine and one hundred sixty pounds.

  I finally got home and my mother was at work again. I could smell the pot burning in Jared’s room upstairs as I tossed my boots onto the floor and dropped on the couch. It was hard to imagine that my life would be moving furniture every day for forty hours a week. All I could think about all day was getting home, showering, and going over to Rory’s to kick back and drink a forty-ounce. When the first weekend came, I really needed to let loose.

  Tyler and I got some alcohol, of course, and we started to get a nice buzz by taking shots of Grey Goose vodka. Tyler used to sell weed on the side, but had spent all of his money on alcohol. I had gotten my first check and decided to call a couple different people for cocaine. There was nothing like getting a nice drip down your throat and smoking a cigarette after.

  “Fuck, who has yay?” Tyler said. We must have made a million different calls until, finally, Tyler’s buddy, Sal, picked up. I leaned over Tyler’s shoulders, looking like a puppy dog waiting for a treat.

  “Just a gram,” he said.

  My eyes lit up, “Does he have any?”

  “Yes,” Tyler said in excitement. We jumped in my Honda, wasted, and drove over to Sal’s house. His parents were home, so we walked in and went straight upstairs. Sal was known for selling pounds of weed, and he sometimes dabbled in cocaine. He pulled out a small white bag with a white rock in it. Most of it was solid, a little was broken up, with some powder. Tyler pulled out his debit card, poured a rock out, and started to chop it up as Sal rolled a blunt. I remember my knees shaking as Tyler chopped it up and I could smell the dollar bill against my knees.

  SNIFF! “My turn,” I said impatiently. SNIFF! Adrenaline took over my body as the drip numbed my throat and I felt immediate happiness. I was full of life, energized, and could talk about my deepest fears with the most intimacy. I could talk to a stranger about my life, as I ground my teeth and stared with wide, concerned eyes. We all had on our serious faces; we shared the look of being binged out of our minds. I love cocaine, I thought.

  We walked downstairs and went into the backyard after doing another line. “Put a little on your cigarette,” Tyler mumbled seriously. We smoked back-to-back cigarettes and then went back upstairs. Line after line, we finished the gram of coke at Sal’s along with the whole bottle of Grey Goose; we were fucked up.

  “Holy shit, it’s three!” Tyler and I jumped in my car, feeling the anxiety of sunlight coming soon. I remember getting to my house, opening the door, and running to the fridge to get a gallon of water. I turned on the TV and flipped through the channels, grinding my teeth nonstop. I couldn’t
find anything to watch, my heart was beating out of my chest, and I thought I was going to die.

  I just wanted to go to bed, but my heart was beating too fast. I thought that it could be my last night alive, and wished it would all just end.

  I’m never doing cocaine again, I said in the back of my confused mind. My stomach was empty, but I couldn’t eat a crumb. I tossed and turned for hours in bed, finally falling asleep as the sun rose for the day.

  I woke up at three the next afternoon; my body was sore and I felt depressed. I went outdoors in my sweatpants to light up my last crushed Marlboro Red. My throat was dry and my lips were chapped as I lit it up. My mother’s car pulled in the driveway followed by a grey Jeep.

  My mother opened her door and so did the person in the car parked behind her. She walked up to me with a man who said, “Hey, I’m Rodney.” He must have been around thirty-five, which was four years younger than my mother. I shook his hand hard although I was hung over, and introduced myself. After he left, she sat Jared and me down and told us.

  “Rodney and I have been dating for a couple months now.” I looked over to see Jared’s eyes; they looked hurt. I ignored the news like it didn’t faze me; the fact of the matter was that our parents had officially moved on and it felt like Jared and I had to choose sides.

  Like always, Jared invited Vanessa over to take his mind off things; they had smoked weed in his room and had sex. My fourteen-year-old brother was having more sex than me.

  Over the next couple of weeks, I continued to work, do cocaine on the weekends, and drink. Christmas was approaching and I hated it so much. I hated seeing my family, hated making small talk, and hated explaining how shitty my life was.

  On my eighteenth Christmas, my aunt invited me to have our traditional celebration. I couldn’t stand the thought of having to make up lies about how much I love my life. My mother begged me to visit, but I took off on Christmas Eve. I knew that it was so wrong to do, but I didn’t want to face my family. Tyler was the same way; his mother had remarried, his father was an alcoholic, and his stepdad loved his own daughter and never made time for Tyler.

  It was the night before Christmas, and Tyler and I got super fucking high. Not your typical Christmas story with bells and mistletoe; well, the mistletoe was the weed that we rolled into a massive blunt. While families were happily celebrating the one night a year when they could enjoy each other’s company, eat sweets, and drink, Tyler and I sat alone in a piece-of-junk car in Sal’s driveway. His family was away that night and Tyler and I had sneaked into a broken-down buggy in his driveway. It was freezing out as Tyler rolled up the biggest blunt I had ever smoked. The snow was falling, the neighborhood was decorated with lights, and you could see the neighbor’s Christmas tree glistening in the window next door.

  Tyler and I finished the blunt and noticed ourselves both dozing off while the snow fell so slowly on the ground. We looked in the window across the street, seeing the neighbors putting presents under the tree; the parents were dancing happily while the children were waiting for Santa. We came back to reality as we both turned to each other and laughed hysterically about how high we were. I think that secretly, though, Tyler and I both felt pain, and despised the feeling of being all alone. The holiday always made me sad.

  On Christmas morning, Jared and I no longer ran to the Christmas tree in excitement, and instead we barely wanted to wake up. My mother would work on the holidays and Jared and I would only see my dad later on Christmas Day when he would stop by—things just weren’t the same.

  My New Year’s resolution was to get up the courage to visit my sister. It was going to take a lot out of me, but she was still my blood. I was in denial about what was happening in my life. The football games at Hayers Stadium, where our high school football team would play, put my life into perspective. The year had started and, during the month of January, I must have experienced more drugs than I had ever had, and was plummeting down a rabbit hole; I was hooked. Tyler and I started to break apart from society and experiment with different drugs. We would talk with Rory and still hang out with him, but Tyler, a couple of Tyler’s friends, and I had formed a drug group. This group consisted of kids who had also dropped out and who wanted to take their high to the next level. Here’s how the plethora of drugs I took made me feel:

  Marijuana: Paranoia, filled with uncontrollable laughter, and the munchies. Sometimes I’d feel like I had figured out the whole world with one single thought, and then POOF; it disappeared. Mood swings when I wasn’t high by either bong rips, joints, blunts, or bowls.

  Mushrooms: Tasted awful. They look like actual mushrooms except that they were skinny and smelled like shit. Made you feel out of touch with reality, otherwise known as “tripping”! I found myself hearing things that weren’t really there and seeing blurred visions on the walls. Also, I was paranoid when coming down, followed by uncontrollable laughter. Sometimes, I felt out of sync with society, like a robot. Usually, I would consume these in handfuls.

  Ecstasy: How could I forget ecstasy? It’s exactly how it sounds. The first time I took it, I was so worried that I was going to die. Pills come in single, double, or triple stacks. They usually had symbols like dolphins, Mercedes, et cetera on them. You could swallow, snort, or chew them. I liked snorting them after the first couple of times because that way their effect usually kicked in quicker. You’re filled with confidence, and life seems perfect; there is hugging and kissing, friends are the best, love is in the air. I’d never felt happier in my life. Walking felt like I was floating on clouds; sometimes I would rub my legs and the feeling was amazing. Side effects included severe depression the next morning, of course, because life is like a dream on ecstasy; I could talk to any girl with the highest confidence in myself.

  OxyContin: Very expensive! It came in pills, twenty, forty, or eighty milligrams, eighty being the strongest. Usually used for back surgery or losing a limb: severe pain. My eyes would feel heavy, like a weight was sitting on them, along with the feeling of being so relaxed that your heart is barely beating. Eighty milligrams would make me doze off into unconsciousness as I smoked a cigarette burn into my shirt without knowing it.

  Percocet’s: Painkillers used for severe pain, similar to Oxy’s. Very addicting; I usually couldn’t move from the relaxation. I would be sitting on the couch, paralyzed by relaxation. Side effects can be tough, as this is a hard feeling to shake off.

  Vicodin: Not as potent as Percocet. Usually came in the form of a pill, and could be crushed, swallowed, or snorted. I preferred snorting Percocet, but I wouldn’t recommend snorting Vicodin as the pills can burn pretty badly. They were most often given as pain killers for wisdom tooth removal or minor surgery.

  Klonopin: I loved those bad boys. They usually made me drift closer to the wall, as my body felt super relaxed. Lost control of my legs a couple times. I wouldn’t recommend driving too often on them, even though Tyler and I did so all the time that year. These can be used for severe anxiety.

  Submoxin: This was the strongest pill I’d ever taken. Usually used for ex-heroin addicts, along with methadone. That orange pill made me sleep for three days straight, and I woke up having no clue what had happened. I bumped into walls and had never felt so uncontrollable in my life. Not my favorite kind of scary, but maybe this was because I had mixed it with mushrooms and alcohol at the same time.

  Heroin: The first time that I snorted heroin I was super-nervous. You hear all the stories of kids getting addicted. It’s usually in a brown-like powder to snort. I would never put it in my arm. I snorted it in my car with Tyler. I didn’t feel too much of its effect until I realized I had passed out behind my wheel multiple times. Not the best idea to drive downtown while snorting heroin. Fortunately, I only did it once.

  Cocaine: Good old cocaine. My drug of choice when I was drinking. Sobered you right up. You can drink all night on cocaine. Laughter disappears, and is replaced with seriousness. Stories become deep and dark, teeth grind, there’s drip in the back of
your throat, sleepless nights, and, of course, it’s never enough. I will get into this later, but cocaine is probably the most addictive drug that I had to stop.

  Adderall/Ritalin: These were used for kids with a lack of attention span. Mainly, they were good for college students who couldn’t focus. Not the best idea to sniff them. Similar to cocaine, but not as good. The drip is there; it’s very addictive and never enough. Lack of sleep and fast heartbeats.

  Free-Basing Cocaine: How could I forget sitting in my car with some aluminum foil and cocaine? Poured it into the aluminum foil and lit a flame under it until it melted and burned. Then, I’d slowly take a straw and inhale the smoke through my lungs. I guess you could say it’s like smoking crack. Very addictive, but it didn’t really do it for me.

  I’m sure that I did a bunch of other pills, too, but honestly, I can’t remember. Tyler and I would sniff anything, really, as long as it got us high. My drugs of choice, however, were cocaine, ecstasy, and alcohol. Scratch that, I didn’t give a fuck what I did; anything was better than my reality.

  The best part about doing all of these drugs was that the football games, basketball games, and any other event would become so much better. Before Tyler and I would leave for these events, we would get completely fucked up. Everyone who knew me gave me strange looks when they realized I was a burnout. I wore a hoodie over my head almost everywhere I went and smoked cigarettes left and right, lighting one with the other. Tyler and I, and a couple of others, would rob the team’s locker rooms when everyone was watching the games. We did it for the high of avoiding getting caught.