The First True Thing

by Claire Needell

  Eight

  MOM PICKS ME up at three, and we’re quiet for most of the ride to the Center. She doesn’t ask me about whether Hannah showed up at school today. I assume she has other things on her mind, and I don’t say anything about it either. At a red light on Weaver Street, I ask about her knee. She stretches her leg out. “Much improved. I’ll be back at spin class by tomorrow,” she says.

  When the light turns green, she accelerates in her slow, steady way, and without looking at me she says, “You know, Marcelle, I love you and want the best for you. I’m concerned, though. I’m concerned this place—the Center—isn’t giving you enough structure. You’re still in with this same group at school, and it makes me think that you aren’t totally committed to . . . getting better.” She sighs. “I just want you to be healthy. Healthy and happy.”

  I don’t say anything for a minute. My chest feels tight. I want to break down and cry, and confess that I’m worried, really worried, about Hannah. After first period, my day was a blur. I kept calling Hannah, and getting her stupid voicemail. I looked for her between classes in the crammed hallways. I searched for her in the cafeteria during my free period, and then back at the tree at lunch. The guys and I ate on the hill in near silence. I sipped at my Styrofoam-cup-tasting cafeteria tea, and broke off pieces of a bagel that was too chewy and too dry.

  At one point, Chuck kicked the ground and said, “Senna or Marcelle, maybe one of you should call Elise?” Senna shook his head. “Can’t,” he said. “Elise hates me. Thinks I’m a bad influence on Hannah.” As if it made no sense at all that Elise Scott would consider Senna anything but a model boyfriend. The truth is it goes both ways—Senna and Hannah feed off each other.

  “Maybe I’ll call when I get home,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I meant this. What, exactly, would I say to Elise? I had tried to cover for Hannah, like Hannah asked. It hadn’t done much good, but now I was stuck with having lied.

  “I’ll look for her after sixth period,” Senna said. Senna and Chuck are the only ones of us who drive to school. I wanted to ask him where he planned to look, but I kept my mouth shut. I had to assume it involved him going back to Alex’s place.

  “Let me know when you go,” Andy said. “I can skip soccer.” But Senna didn’t answer him, just chewed on a piece of grass, staring at nothing.

  I can’t tell Mom any of this—how all the guys are just as upset as I am.

  If Mom hears about Hannah skipping school, she’ll only get more freaked out. I don’t need the pressure.

  “They say that I have to take responsibility for my own choices,” I say. “That’s what they’re teaching me here. I can’t expect other people, even you and Dad, to solve my problems. But you’re both always around. It’s making me crazy the way you guys watch my every move.”

  We sit in the Center parking lot. Mom’s face reddens, and she shuts her eyes; she’s struggling to hold it together.

  “I guess I really don’t know what makes you happy, or what you think will give you a good life in the future. But I want to know. I want to be able to help you move forward without being overbearing. I just know you need to feel okay without needing alcohol,” she says.

  I sigh. There’s so much to say and also nothing to say. Drinking did make me feel okay, and even better than that—happy and free—at least while I was doing it. In the mornings I always felt the opposite—like I was living in a kind of hole, and like no one could understand me. But I can’t admit any of that to Mom. She’s different from me. She’s always got a plan, or a plan for a plan—like everything in life is one more problem that you can solve if you’re smart enough. Even things like birthdays or holidays are things she wants to “do right.” Let’s do Christmas right this year. Let’s do summer right. Then she starts planning—where we’ll go, what we’ll eat, like those are the only things that matter, and like she’s never been bored or lonely or in a bad mood for no real reason. Mom’s not the kind of person who can understand how trapped I feel in my own head.

  I stall, take a long drink out of my water bottle, trying to calm my nerves. “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t know what could make me happy, other than getting really drunk. I wish I did, though.” I half cry and half yell as I hop from the car and head across the parking lot with my head down, tears streaming across my face.

  Mom backs out of her parking space and slams on the breaks, so I either have to walk around the car or talk to her. I want to keep walking, but I can’t face her later if I do. I stop and turn, but glance toward the building, to let her know she’s making me late.

  “We aren’t yellers,” Mom says firmly, through her open window. “We talk. We always have. It’s no different now, Marcelle. There isn’t anything you can’t tell us. I promise you that.”

  “I know,” I say quietly. “I’m sorry.” There isn’t anything to fight about. What she says just isn’t true. I can’t tell Mom about Hannah, or Alex, or even about me and Andy, and how things were with us over the summer. I don’t want her to know my secrets. I can feel her eyes on me, and all I want in the world is for her to leave.

  If I could somehow vanish before reaching the entryway to the drab brick building in front of me, I would. But I arrive at the heavy metal door, pull it open, and walk down the gray carpeted stairs into the lower level of the building, as I have every weekday for the last two weeks. I sign in, pass the therapists’ offices, wave hello to my therapist, Kevin, even though he’s looking the other way, and put my stuff in the unmarked cubby Cyndi assigned me my first day here. I feel both conspicuous and invisible as I take my seat at the Group table. I am the last person to arrive, but no one acknowledges me.

  Nine

  EVERYONE IS FOCUSED on James. “Let’s get started,” James says. “We’ll start with Cyndi’s book, then we’ll see what kind of time we have left to do the regular rotation.” James leans against the table in his white oxford button-down, hands folded in front of him, hair messily flopped over one eye and buzz cut on both sides, in a mod, skater-boy fashion. James is a senior from Mount Kisco, a woodsy town about forty minutes north. None of the kids from my Peer Support Group for New Living go to school here in Waverly, which is a blessing, especially now. If I had to go to Group with someone who knew Hannah, I don’t know what I’d do. Group is supposed to be confidential, but as I look around the table, I’m still not sure who I trust.

  As James reaches for his meeting notes, the cuff of his shirt rides up just high enough to reveal the faded, purplish track marks that dot his delicate wrist. It’s difficult to believe that only eight months ago James was a full-on junkie; hard to imagine him as anything other than a Group leader, a sober golden boy, with intense blue eyes that I can’t help feeling see right through me.

  I absentmindedly finger the rough spot on my chin. One day, it’ll fade completely and everyone will forget about my Death Wish crash and I’ll be a normal girl. Maybe the same will be true of Hannah. She could turn up in a half hour, or an hour, or at midnight tonight. She could get sober, or at least quit blow, quit Alex, quit all her shit, and reschedule her audition. Senior year, Hannah might be the star of the school musical, or in a legit band. Who knows?

  Cyndi, our other Group leader, is sober for six months today, so this is her six-month meeting. At the Center, being sober at in-patient rehab, like where Cyndi spent eight weeks of her life, doesn’t even count. We count only voluntary sobriety, meaning only the months we stay sober while living our real lives—at home with our families, going to school, being around people who drink and do whatever they want. Only James has a longer run of sobriety. I try to focus on Cyndi. I want to feel happy for her and to think that someday that could be me, but today this possibility feels remote. If Hannah doesn’t show up tonight, what will I do tomorrow? My lie was a small one. All I said was that Hannah had gone to Senna’s when she hadn’t. But if Hannah is actually missing, like really missing, any lie might seem like a big deal.

  Cyndi stands in the front of the room in her
black leggings, a black tank, and Doc Martens. There’s a dress code at the Center, so she wears a red-and-black flannel on top, but only pulled on halfway, leaving her bony shoulders exposed. Cyndi has chosen to make a scrapbook that includes pictures of her from her user days, and then some pictures and diary entries from when she got sober. I’ve seen a few other sixth-month books on a shelf in Kevin’s office, and all of them have at least one picture from around intake. We’re supposed to look at our addict selves with love and self-forgiveness, not shame. But it seems, at least to me, like Cyndi has gone overboard in including dozens of pictures from when she was using. I feel uncomfortable staring as Cyndi places her bound scrapbook on its edge, so we can take in the eight-by-eleven-inch print of Cyndi at eighty-five pounds, the week she lived on the streets in Brooklyn with her boyfriend, a guy almost ten years older than her, who she met one afternoon when her father hired him to clean out the underbrush near the brook in the back of their Pocantico mansion. Cyndi lives in one of the oldest corners of lower Westchester, where the houses don’t have yards behind them, they have meadows and pools, greenhouses, and enormous three- and four-car garages. There’s one picture Cyndi shows with an orchard in the background with peaches on the trees. She says “This was an acid day” as she flips the page.

  “Here’s Chris and me together,” she says, showing an image of herself, looking very thin in a white tank with no bra, leaning on a tall guy in a grassy field. Cyndi faces the camera, her mouth wide open in a moment of hilarity. Chris looks sidelong at the lens and his eyes have a shiftiness I recognize. He’s one of those guys, like Senna, who you can’t read. You look in their eyes and you just notice what isn’t there.

  “This is at our place. Chris was doing yard work for us. That’s how we met. Dad owed Chris’s uncle a fave. They’re buddies from Yale. But then Chris is Chris and he repaid him by hitting on me. I was hanging out by the pool with my friend Jess, drinking gin and tonics. One thing led to another.” She sighs and flips the page

  Cyndi has been back in school for two months, but she’s still trying to fit in. She’s a pretty girl with high cheekbones and full lips, or she would be if she hadn’t left pretty behind for all-out edgy, with her thick black eyeliner, nose ring, and her two visible tattoos—the large butterfly behind her ear, and the snake that wraps hissingly around her middle finger. I wonder if Cyndi went to Waverly, if she’d be friends with my friends, or at least Senna, Chuck, and Hannah.

  Cyndi finishes her talk, and moves from the hard-core past to the sober present. “Sad thing is,” she says, “I was really happy with Chris in the beginning. Looking at these pictures is hard. I realize now, I never saw where I was headed. I was stoked all the time. So was Chris. It didn’t feel like fucking up. It felt like a really powerful love. I know that’s a user thing—confusing getting high with getting the love you want . . .” She trails off, wipes her eyes, smudging her eyeliner. “I know now Chris didn’t love me. He used me. I know I used him, too. That’s all we could do, because that’s what users do.”

  There’s a momentary silence as Cyndi pulls herself together. Then Martin says, “I hear you, girl. I hear that loud and clear. Be a user and get yourself used. That’s what I say.” Martin half closes his eyes and nods at Cyndi, willing her to go on. Cyndi stands up straighter.

  She breathes deeply. “I really despise school,” she says. “Everyone I was friends with is a user. Everyone else thinks I’m a freak. So it sucks. Every day these girls come up to me and ask me if I’m new in town, even though I went to five years of school with these bitches. It’s a game to them to act like they don’t remember me.” She pauses and takes a breath. It’s like the pause of a cigarette smoker without the drag. “But heads up!” she suddenly shouts. “This bitch is sober six months! Doing it for myself and no one else! I’ve got my Sixer!” She suddenly steps up on her chair with her six-month book over her head and takes a bow. Martin jumps to his feet and claps and whistles through his teeth.

  I wish my phone were not back in my cubby, but there are no cell phones allowed in the Group room. I want to check my messages before Group ends. If I got just one text from Hannah, or from somebody who has seen Hannah, I won’t have to say anything to anyone.

  Martin walks slowly around the table and helps Cyndi down from her chair. To my surprise, she buries her face in his chest and he strokes her back. This show of affection unnerves me. In my mind, James and Cyndi are the “couple” of the Group, even though sexual contact between any of us is strictly forbidden. Martin, unlike Cyndi, still seems unsure of himself, like every day sober takes all of his effort. I thought Martin could be the one person in Group who might have some sympathy for my continuing to fuck up. Everyone knows about the Death Wish night, but I haven’t said much more in Group, aside from fessing up to all the beer and vodka I stole from Mom and Dad. It’s hard to see a way forward for me, unless I tell them all about Hannah. If Elise Scott has called the police, and I don’t confess to covering for Hannah, my parents will never understand. I can’t tell them the whole web of lies—about Alex, the coke, or the webcam business. But I can at least come clean about last night.

  I assume now that Cyndi is done, the Group will move on. As the silence in the room persists, I feel almost ready to bring the Group’s attention to myself. Beads of sweat break out on my forehead. My heart beats hard in my chest as I clear my throat to speak. But just as I’m about to raise my hand, Ali speaks up.

  “I have feedback for Cyndi on her six-monther,” he says. Everyone turns to Ali. I feel my heart drop like a weight. “I think, Cyndi, when you look for a group of people to hang with at school now, you’re thinking like a junkie. You want to be one of them, to lose yourself. You give those girls at school too much power over you. You could be okay being alone. Solitude is the ultimate sober.” He blushes a little when he says this and nervously fingers the thick gold chain he wears over his tight gray T-shirt.

  Cyndi smiles a little manically. She seems hyped from all the attention.

  “Wow, Ali. I totally hear that,” she says. Everyone nods, even little Maria.

  “Great feedback, Ali. Direct, concrete, observant,” James says in his crisp, in-charge-of-the-universe voice.

  I feel the need to contribute, suddenly, not because I have anything specific to say to Cyndi, but because I need to hear my own voice. “Can I add on?” I ask. The words come out high-pitched, uncertain. Everyone turns to stare. I’m making a fatal mistake. I can already tell.

  “Maybe,” I start, “the girls at school act that way because you have them in a kind of box. It’s like you’re not seeing them for who they really are, so they can’t see you for who you are. I think you may come off defensive and angry toward them.”

  As soon as the words leave my lips I know it’s all wrong. James nods, but his eyes dim. Cyndi turns away. Ali shakes his head. Martin stares, looking hostile.

  Ali speaks first. In a low, serious tone he says, “Marcelle, you’re really shitting on Cyndi.” James cocks his head thoughtfully and strokes his chin. Cyndi turns her cold, chiseled face to me. Maria sits bolt upright, almost bouncing in her seat. I’m afraid I’ve made enemies of both Martin and Cyndi for good.

  I’m reminded of my first day at the Center. “Do you know what a human being is?” Kevin asked me at intake. I figured I should know the answer to such a basic question, but I was so exhausted I just shook my head. “No, Marcelle?” he asked, his white teeth flashing from someplace deep within his beard. “That’s the first true thing you’ve said since you walked in this door, kid. No. You don’t know. You know why?” I shook my head again. “Because you’re a user and users can’t know. You want to be a god. Like all users. I was Kevin the God. But you know what I am now? A man. Someone who knows what it is to mess up and admit it. Someone who has humility, and who can accept both pleasure and pain. You, Marcelle, do not have humility. You want your life to be a free ride, filled with nothing but praise and love. That’s for gods, kid, not human beings.”r />
  I was confused, and a part of me wanted to give in to nervous laughter, but something in Kevin’s look kept me from making a sound. The entire interview was terrifying. It was like Kevin could read my mind, but then twisted everything he found there.

  I stare at the ceiling, take a deep breath, and choke back my tears. I can’t apologize to Cyndi. The only way forward is through the pile of shit I just dumped on myself. “I don’t know,” I mutter. “I guess if you’re like me you’re pissed all the time that you’re the one who has to be sober and think about how fucked up your life is, while everyone else gets to go around doing whatever they want.”

  I’m having a breakdown, and I can’t tell how much is real, how much is exhaustion, and how much is me trying to get out of taking abuse for what I said to Cyndi.

  I choke on my own snot and Cyndi herself hands me a tissue. “My friends are about a hundred times more fucked up than me. I can’t even tell you how bad. But I’m the one here. I’m the one who can’t do anything or go anywhere because of one fucking horrible night,” I say. I’m crying hard, shoulders shaking. “Everyone around me—my parents, people at school, they’re all oblivious to what’s really going on.” The Group stares. I don’t say anything else. I just sit there, crying, finally letting out the sobs I’ve held in all day long.

  “Oblivious?” I hear James ask encouragingly. “Why is everyone you know oblivious?”

  Cyndi frowns. Ali drums nervously on the table. Martin rolls his football-player shoulders. Maria stares at her ratty little fingernails. I know peer group is confidential. No one can repeat what they’ve heard, not even to Kevin. I know they’re waiting for more. I get the sense that they are all-in, feeling my fear. For the first time, I feel like a part of the Group. My voice shakes as I try to explain what I know.