Recovery Road (3 page)

V
ern leaves. I find this out on the next movie night. I’m getting in the van, and I see that nobody’s inside.

“Where’s Vern?” I ask the driver, since Vern always goes to movie night, no matter what.

“He shipped out. Went back to Estacada.”

“He’s gone?”

“He’ll be back,” says the driver. “Vern always comes back.”

I get in, pull the side door closed, and sit down. I’m stunned. No Vern? No Trish? How am I supposed to survive here?

I stare out the window. It’s raining and cold and I’m wearing my own gross sweatpants tonight, which are dirty and not warm enough.

“Looks like nobody’s going to the movies tonight,” says the driver when we pull over at the next house.

I stare out the rain-blurred window. There’s nobody there.

We continue along Recovery Road. We come to the last house. There’s no one there either. But wait, there’s one person.
A guy, it looks like. He’s standing on the porch. He’s wearing a green army coat over a hoodie.

The driver pulls the van over and the guy isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do. He finally hops off the porch and comes toward us. He squints in the rain.

“Is this the movie thing?” he asks the driver.

“It sure is. Hop in.”

He opens the sliding door. That’s when he sees that there’s no one inside except me.

“Oh,” he says as he looks around the empty van.

He gets in and shuts the door. He sits at the end of my seat.

He’s tall and skinny and has dyed blond hair. He looks like a rock star. Maybe he was rich and famous and blew it all on drugs and hookers. They get those at Spring Meadow sometimes.

“Are there more people?” he asks.

“Not tonight,” says the driver.

I say nothing. I look out the window, away from him.

But then I remember I’m supposed to be nice to people — according to Cynthia — and make friends, and not judge. So I turn and try to smile at him. That’s when I see how young he is. He’s my age. He’s just a kid.

The van drives. He doesn’t say anything. He seems vaguely in shock. I know the feeling.

We drive for a while. Finally, he asks the driver what movie we’re going to see.

“Beats me. I just drive.”

He looks at me.

I shrug. “I just go.”

“Huh,” he says, staring forward in the dark.

It takes about fifteen minutes to get to Carlton. The driver is listening to sports talk radio. We all listen to it.

When we reach the theater, the two of us get out. Him first, then me. I shut the door. The driver waves to me and pulls away.

Then we’re alone together. On the sidewalk. I avoid looking at him.

“I’m Stewart,” he says.

“I’m Maddie,” I reply.

“So now what do we do?” he asks me.

“We should probably go in.”

We buy our tickets. We go in. The two of us stand nervously in the lobby. We look like we’re on a date, which makes it even weirder than it already is.

“The popcorn’s only a buck,” I tell him.

“Yeah?”

“We usually get some.”

“Then let’s get some.”

We go to the concession counter. A local boy, about fourteen, gets us our popcorn. He stares up at tall, imposing Stewart with a mixture of awe and fear.

Inside the actual theater there’s more awkwardness. Should we sit next to each other or one seat apart? I end up making this decision and sit one seat apart. But then some other people come and we are forced to sit together.

We don’t speak. In the dim light of the previews, I sneak looks at him. He has dark, watery eyes, pale white skin. His face is chiseled, with high, wide cheekbones. He’s totally cute, is the truth of it.

I, on the other hand, am wearing bag-lady sweatpants and a down coat with food stains on it. I’m also bloated and I smell and my hair is dirty.

But whatever.

I sneak more looks. He’s got a tattoo on the inside of his left wrist and a small silver ring on his right pinkie. It looks like a girl’s ring. I wonder whose it is.

During the movie he fidgets. He just got out of the main building, which means he’s still in partial squirmies mode. He bites his nails, strokes his hair, shifts around in his seat.

When the lights come on, we both have our feet draped over the seats in front of us. For some reason neither of us gets up right away. The other people file out. They stare at us as they leave, like:
Who are these lowlifes in the back
?

Stewart’s definitely got the bad-ass thing going on. He doesn’t look like someone you’d want to meet in a dark alley.

Finally, he stands up. I stand up. I follow him through the lobby and out of the theater.

We stand on the cold street. More painful silence.

“So what happens now?” Stewart asks.

“We usually go to the donut place. And then the van comes.”

“Okay,” he says.

At the donut place, we stand in line behind some local high school kids. They’re laughing, teasing each other, goofing around. They don’t notice us at first but then one of the girls turns and sees Stewart standing over her and she shuts right up.

We order coffees and donuts. Stewart pulls some crap out of his pocket and finds a couple wadded-up dollar bills to pay. He goes to a booth by the window and sits. I follow and sit across from him.

I’m having a sugar craving so I put six sugar packets in my coffee. Stewart watches me do this but says nothing.

I drink some of it, sipping it carefully because it’s hot. It’s
too hot. I put it down and take a big bite of my glazed twister donut.

Stewart takes a bite of his jelly donut.

“I get on these sugar things sometimes,” I say as I put two more sugars into my coffee.

“That’s a lot of sugar,” he says.

“I can’t sleep anyway. So what’s the difference?”

“Yeah, sleeping’s tough.”

He looks out the window. The high school kids walk across the parking lot. They’re happy American teenagers. They unlock their car from ten feet away. They laugh. One jumps on the back of another.

I glance up at Stewart’s face. He’s so handsome it’s kinda hard to deal with. So I look at his hands. They’re knobby and beat up. One of the knuckles has a big scar across it.

“How old are you?” I ask him.

“Nineteen,” he says. “You?”

“Seventeen,” I say. But then I decide not to lie. “I mean, almost. I’ll be seventeen in a couple weeks.”

He drinks his coffee.

“Yeah,” I say. “I had this friend Trish. She was eighteen. We were the only younger people in our house, but then this other girl Jenna came. She’s weird, though.”

He looks across the table at my coffee cup. “Sixteen. That’s pretty young.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I got into stuff pretty early.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“It just sorta…rolled over me.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

The van ride back is quick. Too quick. I want to talk more. Not because Stewart is cute. I kind of wish he wasn’t so cute. It’s
just that he’s easy to talk to. Or not even. He’s easy to sit with. I just like him, I guess.

But he’s lost in his own thoughts as we drive back. And I can’t think of anything to say. When we get back to his house, he gets out and I find myself saying, “See ya,” and waving my hand in this stupid way. He looks at me funny and slams the door shut.

The van continues up the street.

And then something really weird happens: Tears come into my eyes. For no apparent reason I actually cry for a second.

“How was the flick?” asks the driver.

I wipe the tears away. “It was okay,” I say in the dark.

“What was it about?” he asks.

“I have no idea.”

T
he next day, my dad comes to see me. He shows up in his new BMW and we drive into Carlton. We go to the one nice restaurant in town. We sit at the table with our napkins in our laps. My dad is tanned, handsome, wearing a nice suit. The local people gawk at him. He doesn’t mind. He likes being a star. Of course he wants to hear about me, but he can’t resist telling me about a new project he’s doing and how he’s getting the money from these Japanese guys who invented robotic pets.

Then he does the fatherly thing and puts on a concerned expression and asks me how my life is going.

The thing about my dad is, he was a big partier himself. He still is. And so, in his mind, what’s happened to me is that I can’t “handle” stuff. He thinks my problem is a lack of control. Which is true. In a way.

We eat our lunch. He makes a big deal about how good his chicken is. He flirts with the waitress and leaves her a big tip.

Back at the halfway house, we park in the street. He wants to come in and see it, but I tell him he doesn’t really want to, it’s depressing, so he doesn’t.

“Your mom and I talked to your principal at Evergreen,” he tells me. “It sounds like you can re-enroll after Christmas. There are some summer school options too. This is all de pen dent on how things go, of course. And what Dr. Bernstein says.”

I don’t answer. I don’t want to go back to my old high school. “Maybe I could get a GED,” I say.

“Why would you do that?” my father says. “There’s no reason to miss out on the rest of high school.”

“What do I need high school for?”

“Because,” he says. “It’s part of life. You still have your whole senior year to go.”

“But what am I going to do there? Who am I going to hang out with?”

“You’ll make new friends. High school isn’t just about hanging out.”

“What’s it about, then?”

“It’s about studying. And preparing for college.”

That’s going to be another sore spot with my parents. They’re still going to want me to go to college.

“I don’t think a GED is what you want,” he says. “If you really think about it.”

“I know I don’t want to go back to Evergreen,” I say, unfastening my seat belt. “Do you have any idea how many people there hate my guts?”

“Probably fewer than you think,” says my dad. “Will you just think about it? We don’t have to decide anything right now.”

Predictably, the call from my mother comes the same night. I have to take it on the house phone, in front of everyone. We have one of our classic conversations:

“Your father said you had a nice lunch.”

“That’s right,” I say, waiting for the argument to start.

“He said it was a very constructive conversation.”

“Yes, it was,” I say, waiting for the argument to start.

“The one thing that sounded strange to me, he said you wanted to get a GED.”

“That’s right, that’s what I said.”

“But, Madeline, why would you do that?”

“Because, Mom. That’s what people do in these situations.”

“But you used to like school.”

“I kinda burned that bridge, Mom. So now I have to do the logical thing, which is get a GED.”

“But why?”

I turn to the wall. “So I don’t have to go back there in total humiliation!”

“Nobody is going to humiliate you. People forgive people.”

“Forgiveness is not the issue, Mom.”

“What would you do otherwise? Even if you got a GED where would you go? You’re sixteen. You can’t get a fulltime job.”

“Mom, I’ll be seventeen in three weeks. A lot of people get jobs when they’re seventeen. I’ll go to community college.”

“It just makes no sense to me. Your father is very hopeful about the situation. He is doing everything he can.”

“Everything he can? Are you serious? Do you know where I am right now, Mom? Do you know where I sleep?”

“I understand that, dear —”

“I sleep in bunk beds, Mom. With people who shot people!”

“Honey, I understand that. But you need to understand this has been a burden on us as well. Your father has been worried sick. Do you know how much Dr. Bernstein charges? And it’s not all covered by insurance, you know.”

“All right, Mom. Okay. I’m the evil daughter and you guys are the victims.”

“I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is why can’t you at least consider his advice? A lot of people consider your father a very intelligent man.”

“Okay, Mom, I gotta go.”

“We’ve spent a lot of time on this. I’ve had conversations with Dr. Bernstein almost every day.”

“All right, all right, I’ll think about it,” I say. I am now in a hurry because Margarita just turned on
America’s Next Top Model
, which is my new favorite show.

“That’s all we ask.”

“Okay, gotta go.” I hang up and go straight to the TV.

T
wo days later, I’m reading
Us Weekly
at my laundry room job and I happen to glance outside and see the maintenance crew doing something to the lawn. One of them is Stewart. He’s wearing coveralls. His dyed blond hair sticks out from beneath a baseball cap.

I go to the window and watch the group of them. They talk, they poke at the ground with shovels. Not a lot of work gets done. Stewart stands apart, the baby of the group.

I sit on the windowsill. I watch Stewart. I watch him lean against the truck. I watch him drink coffee. I watch him take a shovel out of the truck, lean on it, and then put it back.

Eventually, the crew gets back in its truck and drives away. I go back to my chair and pick up my magazine. I try to read but I can’t concentrate. Not now. I go back to the window and stare out at the empty lawn.

I think through my night with Stewart at The Carlton theater. What he said. What I said. The way he looked standing on the sidewalk. The squareness of his shoulders, the silence in his face…

Then I tear myself away and go back to my chair. I don’t know what I’m daydreaming about. I’ve been with tons of guys. It never works out.

I snatch up my
Us Weekly
. It’s ridiculous to even think about.

M
ovie night comes around again. It’s all I’ve been thinking about. I sneak down to Rite Aid the day before, where I wander the aisles looking for something to make me halfway attractive to a boy.

It won’t be easy. I’m pale, blotchy. I’ve gained eight pounds of “recovery fat.” I’ve got deep bags under my eyes. I try different shades of lip gloss. I experiment with eye shadow. I sneak a pinch of Preparation H and rub it under my eyes.

Back at the house, I go through my stuff. I have one cute skirt at the bottom of my suitcase. I put it on. I find my favorite blue socks and put those on. I put on my one clean shirt and brush out my hair.

Margarita watches all this from her bunk. “Big night for you, no?” she asks.

“It’s movie night.”

“You dress up? Just for movie?”

There’s no point lying about it. “There was a boy there last time,” I say.

“Ahhhh. Movie night!”

I check my hair in the mirror. “You wanna go?”

“No, no. No boys for me. I shoot my husband.”

“It might be good practice. You know, for not shooting people.”

“No. You go. Have good time.”

I wait on the porch. When the van comes, I run to it. There are people already inside: two older women and a skinny guy with taped-together glasses.

We go to the next stop, two more people get in. It’s going to be crowded tonight. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. At the final stop I crane my neck to see if Stewart is on the porch.…

He is.

I instantly sit back in my seat, sink down into it, curl my hands in my coat pockets. What on earth am I doing? What do I think is going to happen?

He gets in. An older guy gets in with him. They’re talking.

I am in the farthest-back seat with one of the women. Stewart and his friend squeeze onto the first bench seat. They’re deep in conversation. I sit forward slightly and try to listen. They’re talking about drugs.

I did drugs too
, I want to shout.
I did tons of drugs. I did painkillers and smoked hash and snorted coke. I got arrested. I stole a car. I slept with a drug dealer and got thrown out of my own house. I…I…I…

I sit back and close my eyes. I bow my head. I pray to God to please not let me make a complete ass of myself tonight.