Toxic (Better Than You) (23 page)

             
Even if he did lie to me.

             
As he’s pulling into Jenson’s driveway, he glances at me and says, “I’m sorry about your mom.”

             
“You shouldn’t be.”

             
He shifts the gear into park and turns to me. “Well, I am. She was still your mom, no matter what happened between you two.” I keep my eyes forward, locked on the green bushes flanking the ginormous front door. “This is a nice place,” Nathan says.

             
“It is.”

             
“Is he…” He clears his throat. “Is he good to you?”

             
“He is.” I know I should get out of the car, I know that Nathan is expecting me to say more,
do more
, but he has to learn that I don’t meet expectations. Never have.

             
The front door opens and Jenson steps out, his face a mask of calm as usual. Seeing him jars me back to reality. “Thank you for the ride, Officer.”

             
A warm hand settles on my arm, stops me in my tracks, one foot in the car, one foot on the ground. “Don’t go, Lo. You don’t have to go.”

             
I meet his eyes, see the sincerity in them that was always so easy to find. It’s important that he understands. “I’ll always go, Nathan. I will never stay, I will never be who you want me to be.”

             
His thumb rubs small circles on the inside of my wrist, igniting feelings that are better off kept below the surface. “I just want you the way you are,” he whispers, and it isn’t until his lips are on mine that I realize how close we were. It’s a brief kiss, a simple flutter of his lips against mine, but it’s so much more than I expected. So much more than I needed. He pulls back and his eyes met mine again. “You’re better than this, Lo. Bad things happen all the time, but it’s the way you use them that define you.”

             
He’s right, of course. Bad things happen to good people like him, yet he turned out okay. Obviously he was stronger than me.
Is
stronger than me. Just another reason why I rip my hand from his and walk away. The pull to turn my head and look back at him is strong but I keep my eyes on Jenson’s confused face and keep walking forward.

             
“What was that?” Jenson asks when I pass him.

             
“Absolutely nothing,” I reply quickly. It’s a lie; it was everything that matters.

             
The door closes behind me. Jenson’s arms wrap around me. “Where have you been?”

             
Do I tell him the truth? He’s never asked about my mom. Doesn’t even know her name. Would he care that I found her rotting body, that she died alone and in the worst way possible? “I have an idea,” I say suddenly. “Let’s have a party tonight. On the beach. Just something small.”

             
Jenson narrows his eyes at me, not missing the fact that I’ve avoided his question. I’m holding my breath, wondering if he’ll ask again,
hoping
that he will, but all he says is, “Okay. I’ll make some calls,” and walks away.

             
And I deflate like a balloon because
I’m just like Mom.
There’s not a person in the world who would care if I’m gone.

November 5, 2009

             
I’m falling, spinning out of control, breaking.

Time doesn’t exist. Pain doesn’t exist. I want to die, I want to live, I want to be free.

It’s dark. I’m alone. Was there ever anybody? Was it always just me?

             
“…call 911.”

             
“Don’t…fucking stupid.”

             
“..she’ll die…”

A touch, a caress. A whisper. “I’m so sorry, Lo.”

Was it real? Can I feel? I call out, but hear nothing. I reach out, but nothing moves.

It’s been minutes, hours, day
s, years. I am part of the world, just grains of sand sifting in and out.

The water will come and take me away
. I’ll be forgotten. I’ll serve no purpose. That’s okay with me. I’m not worth remembering.

             
I’m slipping, giving up, what else can I do?

But then there’s voices, and touching, and feeling, and pain. I yell for them to let me die. Push at their hands. I fight their medicines and machines.

             
You’re wasting your time!
I want to yell. But I’m weak, always have been. They win and it’s dark again. I’m alone, so alone.

It was always just me.

November 10, 2009
- Day 5 in rehab

             
I can’t do this.

             
“You can do this, Logan. You’re strong.”

             
I’m not strong. You don’t know me.

             
“Just breathe. You’re going to make yourself throw up again if you keep breathing like that.”

             
It won’t come out. I’m going to explode.

             
“Relax. Take a deep breath. Can you practice what we talked about?”

             
One, two, three, four, five, six…

             
“There you go. That’s it. In through your nose, out through your mouth. You’ve got it.”

             
Seven, eight, nine, ten…

             
“Now, what do you want to do? What
should
you do?”

             
I want a line. I want to feel the burn. I want to taste-

             
“You’ll have to talk to us eventually, Logan. It’ll help to talk.”

             
I don’t know if I can talk. I have nothing to say.

             
“If you keep it all bottled up, you’ll never get better.”

             
I’ll never get better.

~~

November 17, 2009- Day 12 in rehab

             
“…prolonged use of opioids has caused infertility. You’ll also most likely have to…”

             
I can’t have kids. Did I want kids? No, I don’t think so, but the choice has been taken from me. Just like everything else.

             
“We think your system is finally balancing out, but it seems you have yet to speak a single word…”

             
What do they want me to say? Nothing I say will make it better. Make it go away. It’ll never go away.

             
“We’ve all agreed that it’s time you join the group therapy sessions with the rest of the patients…”

             
Is it wrong that I don’t want to hear what they have to say? I know people have it worse than me. I know that I’m weak. I don’t need to be reminded.

             
“Logan? Are you listening?”

November 26, 2009- Day 21 in rehab

             
“Will you have family visiting today?”

             
I don’t have any family. It’s just me. It’ll always be just me.

             
“Well, there will be a thanksgiving meal in the cafeteria at about five, if you’d like to join. I promise the food is better than usual. I made most of it myself.”

             
If I don’t eat, they’ll start feeding me through a tube. The doctor told me so just yesterday. Said I’m mal-nourished. Maybe today I’ll eat.

             
“You know, I bet you have a lovely voice to match your lovely face. It would be wonderful to hear it one day.”

             
I am not lovely.

             
“I’ve got to go make some rounds, hun, but I’ll be back. Maybe you can draw something while you’re waiting for dinner?”

             
Draw. I can do that. It’s been a long time since I’ve drawn. Since right after Melissa moved. I wonder where she is right now. She’s probably in college, happy. I wonder how her brothers are. They were little devils.

             
The nurse leaves the room and I sit on the edge of my bed, not moving, for a long time. My brain and my body don’t feel like they’re working together anymore. Even they’ve turned against me.

~~

December 8, 2009- Day 33 in rehab

             
“Logan? Do you think you’re ready to speak today?”             

             
All eyes turn to me. They’re waiting, having heard the rumors that I haven’t spoken a single word since I’ve been admitted and wondering if today will be the day that it’ll all spill out. First I meet eyes with Shannon, a woman in her thirties who lost her entire family in a car accident; her two year old little girl, five year old boy, and husband of nine years. She was driving.

             
Then I meet eyes with Ryan; a man in his late twenties who was raped as a little boy. By his best friend’s father. He lived with the secret up until three years ago when he tried to take his own life. This is his third time in rehab.

             
Not all of their stories are tragic; some are selfish, outrageously insane, incredibly normal. They’re young, old, female, male. But we’re all broken. We’re together in the sense that we’re all alone.

             
But today is not the day I’m going to speak. My story is my own, the only other person having shared it long gone. I’m not ready to put it out there for others to hear. Not yet.

December 17, 2009- Day 42 in rehab

             
“It’s not fair that she never has to say anything, but she gets to hear everything we have to say.”

             
The group nods their heads in agreement. Some say a quiet, “Yeah,” but none of them meet my eyes.

             
“That’s not what this is about,” says a girl across the circle from me. I think she’s my age, but I could be wrong. Drugs change people. “She’ll talk when she’s ready. Just because you like the sound of your own voice and everyone’s attention on you doesn’t mean
she
does.”

             
“Alright, alright, settle down,” the group leader, Beth, demands as she pats the air. “Lucy’s right. When Logan is comfortable speaking, she will. No one here is forced to say anything. Now, where were we…?”

             
Lucy smiles at me. For a moment, I don’t know what to do. Don’t know that I
can
do what I want to do. It surprises me at all that I want to, but I smile back at her, hoping it looks genuine and not deranged like it feels. She understands what it means, though, because she nods her head once and then turns her attention back to the group. It’s the most involvement I’ve had in a conversation in over a month.

~~

December 22, 2009- Day 47 in rehab

             
I think I’m ready to talk. I’m ready to let go of this huge boulder strapped to my back.

             
“Logan, anything to say today?”

             
Maybe not
.

Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes. Images from my dream last night play across my eyelids.
They were so real. It’s something I want; to be better, to be happy, to be free.

“There isn’t one specific thing in my life that turned me to drugs. It could have been the fact that my mom was abusive, that she left me alone for days or weeks at a time. I was only five years old. I can remember always being hungry, feeling scared, feeling helpless. I remember wishing that I couldn’t feel anything at all. That I was numb. But I wanted to be better than her. I
knew
I was better than her. Until I realized that being better was hard and I couldn’t afford hard. It took effort and I was weak. Physically, emotionally. Still am.”

I pause to sort my thoughts. They’re all starting to jumble together in my head. The room has never been so quiet and when I look up, every single pair of eyes is glued to me. Shannon has tears in hers. Lucy smiles at me. It gives me the strength to keep going. “So I gave in. At first it was just drinking, going to parties. I was fifteen years old. I was too young to be drinking and too young to be dressing the way I was, but I didn’t care. There was no one in my life to tell me that bad things could happen. Things with my mom got easier, like all of the sudden we had something in common. She stopped hitting me, stopped trying to sell me to her boyfriends for drugs. I remember thinking,
all of this time and all I had to do was give in?
It was better. The one night it wasn’t. This…boy…he,” I clear my throat, try to keep the tears out of my eyes and voice. “he raped me. I had known him since elementary school and he was always saying fucked up things to me. But then one night at a party I got separated from my friend, and by some stroke of fucked luck, he was there. The thing is, I didn’t fight him. I mean, at first I did, but then I remembered how much easier things are when you just give in, so I did. Maybe I can’t even call it rape, then. I don’t know. All I know is that after that night, I was his.