Red’s gone when I wake up. His bed is made up nice and tidy. I rub my face and squint at the round clock that hangs on the opposite wall. 11:00 A.M. I wonder where I can get some breakfast around here.
A cute brunette in clingy pink scrubs appears in the doorway. She’s got a stethoscope around her neck, and she’s wheeling a blood pressure monitor. “Glad to see you’re up,” she says, in the chipper tone of someone who wakes up much earlier than 11:00 A.M. She wheels the monitor to the side of my bed. “I need to check your vitals.”
My ribs ache as I push myself upright and offer her my arm, wondering if this is the hottie Red told me about. “Where’s Rita?”
The nurse’s eyes stay fixed on the monitor as the strap around my arm squeezes tighter and tighter. “Night shift,” she says. “She’ll be back around 7.”
Satisfied with the reading, she releases my arm, and I flex my fingers, pushing the blood back into them. She listens to my heartbeat, then takes my temperature. “Everything looks good,” she says, tucking the thermometer back into the front pocket of her scrub shirt. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” I tell her. “And hungry. Any idea where I can get some food?”
She gives me a couple more ibuprofen, then glances up at the clock. “Breakfast has been over for a while. I’ll see if I can get you some juice.”
She leaves the room, returning a moment later with a juice box of cranberry cocktail and a plastic wrapped two pack of graham crackers. “Best I could do,” she says, offering me the tiny snack.
I tear into the crackers and suck the juice box dry.
“Better?” the nurse asks.
“A little.”
She takes my crumpled juice box and gives me a half smile. “The kitchen opens in an hour for lunch. If you’re feeling up to it, you can get up and get dressed. You’ll probably be moving on pretty soon anyway.”
“Moving on?” I crumble the plastic cracker wrapper in my fist, trying to ignore the whispering hope that all those tests have proven I was right. There’s nothing wrong with me.
“Phase Two,” the nurse says. She moves to the window and whips the curtains apart. A lazy ray of sunshine stretches across my bed. “No sense lounging around in here when you’re well enough to start the program. Besides, we need the bed.”
“People must be pounding down the door to get in this place, huh?” I paper-ball the graham cracker trash to the waste basket near the window. It bounces off the rim and hits the floor, scattering tiny crumbs.
The nurse purses her lips. “Something like that.” She stoops to pick up the trash. I stretch my arms gently, easing my stiff neck from side to side. She gives me a discerning look. “Do you think you can manage in the shower?”
I freeze, my arms in mid-air. “What, like, alone?”
She rolls her eyes, but her voice is all business. “I can help if you need me to.”
Not that being bathed by a super-cute nurse wouldn’t be awesome, but given the circumstances, it’d be a new low. Even for me. “I’m fine,” I tell her.
“There’s an intercom in the bathroom. It calls the nurses’ station. If you feel light-headed or anything, just press the button, okay?”
I nod. The fleeting fantasy of water-spattered pink scrubs fades into a mental picture of myself all “I’ve-fallen-and-I-can’t-get-up!”
The nurse heads for the door, and I swing my legs over the side of the bed, pushing myself to standing before she can change her mind. The cart squeaks as she wheels it out of the room.
A quick mental survey of my body turns up wobbling knees and an aching chest and back. Dr. Henderson had told me I’d be sore for at least a few weeks and given me a long list of things I’m not supposed to do in the meantime. But other than that, I actually feel okay.
I’m still wearing my hospital bracelet. I don’t remember anyone putting it on me in the first place. Because I was unconscious, I realize. The paramedics rolled me in on a stretcher, and some nurse slapped the bracelet on my limp arm.
With morbid fascination, I try to picture it, like a scene in one of those medical dramas Mom loves to watch. The ambulance squeals into the parking lot, lights flashing. The EMS crew shoves my stretcher through the glass doors, shouting for the nearest ER doc.
The image sucks the wind out of me, and I sink back down onto the bed. To be somewhere one moment, and then wake up somewhere entirely different, with people who weren’t there before asking you questions you don’t know the answers to—it’s like disappearing.
Or like dying.
I yank at the bracelet; it stretches, but doesn’t break.
My duffel bag waits at the foot of my bed. I give up on the bracelet and rifle through the rumpled pile of clothes in my bag for the towel Mom said she put at the bottom. My fingers graze a hard edge. I feel around for whatever it is and pull it from the bag.
It’s a framed picture of Mom and me, the one she keeps on her bedside table. I’m probably about ten or eleven—a total tool with ears that are too big for my head and huge gaps in my teeth. The scar that severs my eyebrow is a puckered strip of pale pink skin. We’re on a lacrosse field—Dad had started teaching me to play as soon as I was big enough to hold a stick. “Any idiot can play football,” he used to say. “It takes an athlete to play lacrosse. Are you an athlete, Eli?”
“I’m an athlete!” I’d holler, even though back then I could barely hoist the stick over my head.
Mom had signed me up for a club team as soon as I was old enough. We had just moved in with Steven—my green jersey reads Grandhaven Giants. Mom’s squatting beside me, her face shiny and proud, her eyes tired.
I put the picture back in the bag.
I grab a pair of clean boxers and socks and toss them on the bed, and that’s when it dawns on me that Mom went through my drawers.
Panic surges through me. My sock drawer was clean, I know that for sure. I mentally scan the other drawers until I’m fairly confident there was nothing else to find. Not that it would matter. I’m in detox, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like a hidden stash would come as a surprise.
I pull my towel from my duffel, and I head for the shower. And then I think about the lone pill left in my car, and I wonder if it’ll still be there when I get home.
Fresh from the shower, I head to the cafeteria in search of food. My wet hair soaks the collar of my long-sleeve t-shirt as I weave through the grey fold-out tables in the dining hall. A few people cast curious glances in my direction, and suddenly, it’s my first day at LionsHeart all over again. Only here, there’s no hiding who you are.
I tug my shirt sleeve down over my hospital bracelet and briefly consider heading back to my room for a graham cracker/juice box lunch with Red. But then I spy golden-brown grilled cheese sandwiches and creamy tomato bisque on people’s trays. My stomach whines, too empty and too nervous to muster a proper growl. I wonder if they have any chicken noodle soup.
On the far side of the cafeteria, two industrial-sized coffee makers bookmark a ginormous platter of cheese Danishes, muffins, and doughnuts. Residents hover around the table, picking at the platter of desserts and refilling Styrofoam coffee cups like it’s desert water.
I snag a bowl of bisque and two grilled cheese sandwiches, topping off my tray with a shiny apple from the overflowing fruit bowl. Then I look around for a place to sit. My inner navigation system, forged by three and a half years of high school, clicks into high alert, and I grapple for a glimpse of the caste order in this place. But none of the pieces fit the way they should.
At one table, I spot a super-hot blonde, who looks like she walked right out of a Hollister’s ad, chatting it up with a dude with more facial piercings than I have fingers. By the coffee table, a bird-sized guy in thick black glasses beams up at Oprah’s doppelganger. This place is crawling with nobodies.
I head to the nearest table with an empty seat. A featherweight emo chick is talking with wildly expressive hands to a two-ton Hawaiian linebacker across from her. He glances up at me with mild interest as I drop my tray and pull out a chair. “Okay if I sit here?” I ask.
Linebacker shrugs. I plunk down next to him and dunk a cheesy sandwich triangle into my bowl of bisque. It’s delicious, and my belly opens up to the food like it’s starving. I forget about the people around me and shovel it in. It’s not until I’ve started on my second sandwich that I realize they’re both staring at me.
“You new?” Linebacker asks. A half-smile curls up one side of his mouth.
I nod, embarrassed. “How can you tell?”
“When you’re an old-timer like me, newbies are easy to spot,” he says. “Still a little green around the gills. Either they peck their food like starving birds or . . .” He glances at my ravaged plate. “They eat like you.”
“I haven’t eaten much the last couple of days,” I admit. “Unless you count hospital JELL-O and something the nurses called oatmeal. I’m still not convinced.”
The girl stifles a giggle. I give her the once-over. Cute, if it weren’t for the black liner around her eyes and white blonde hair that Savannah would say was straight out of a bottle. A section of nearly black roots stripes her scalp, and she stares down at her uneaten food without acknowledging me.
“That’s Libby,” the guy says. He reaches out a meaty fist. “I’m Mo.”
I put down my sandwich to shake his hand. “Eli.”
“Pleasure to meet you.” Mo twists in his seat, craning his neck for a view of the dessert table, which isn’t as crowded anymore. “Now that the junkies have cleared out, I think I’ll get myself some dessert.”
He laughs at the look of confusion on my face. “Sugar junkies,” he says, pushing back his chair and standing up. “Bad joke, I guess. You want something?”
Two sandwiches in, and I’ve still never been this kind of hungry. My stomach is a black hole; I could go face-first into a platter of sugar-glazed donuts and still not reach the bottom. “Donuts,” I say. “Two? No, three.”
Mo grins. “You got it.” He side-steps between tables until he reaches the center aisle. Every few feet, he stops to talk to somebody, shaking hands and doling out bear hugs. His deep belly laugh carries across the cafeteria, bouncing from table to table like a freshly dunked beer pong ball.
“Nice guy,” I say, more to myself than to the girl sitting next to me.
A small, rasp-stained voice pipes up. “The nicest.”
Libby peers up at me from under a thick fringe of blonde bangs. Her ice blue eyes pierce mine.
“I think it’ll be a while before I get my dessert, though,” I joke. Across the dining hall, Mo’s been offered a seat at another table, and he’s deep in conversation with some dude with gaping holes in his ear lobes where spacers used to be.
Libby’s lips part, and a row of slightly crooked teeth peek out from a hesitant smile. “Yeah, I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.”
I tip my head toward her tray. “I noticed he didn’t offer to get you anything.”
Her eyes drop. “I’m not that hungry.” Her fingers draw into a fist. Her nails, more chip than purple paint, dig into sugar white skin. And that’s when I see the scars.
Ribbons of puckered pink flesh crisscross the skin on her arms. There’s no pattern to the scars—no obvious purpose in their making. It’s like instead of tattoos, she decorated herself with pain.
She stiffens beside me, her arm darting under the table like a startled garden snake. I realize I’ve been staring, and that she knows I was staring. I’m suddenly super embarrassed, like I just got caught peeping an exposed thong. I have to say something—anything to fill this awkward silence. What comes out of my mouth is so socially retarded that I immediately want to punch myself in the face:
“I should see the other guy, right?”
Libby’s eyes flash white-blue, like the crack of snow before an avalanche. She hisses at me through clenched white lips. “Fuck you.”
“Hey,” I try, reaching out almost automatically.
Libby slaps my hand away and jumps to her feet, shooting me one last electrified look before snatching her tray off the table and stalking away.
Near the exit, an orderly grabs her arm. She twists in his grip and lets out a scream like a slaughtered animal.
The dining hall freezes. It’s completely silent, and everybody’s staring. The orderly releases his grip. Libby slams her tray onto the floor. It lands with a deafening clatter that ricochets off the ceiling as Libby storms through the exit.
Silence hovers over the room. The orderly swipes tomato bisque off white scrubs with his bare hands. Spoons click against bowls. People return to their conversations. The orderly disappears into the kitchen. There’s no alarm, no lockdown. Nobody runs after Libby. Everything goes back to normal. And that’s the weirdest part of all.
I’m still shaken when Mo returns a minute later with a cup of black coffee and three donuts wrapped in a paper napkin. He slides the sugary package across the table with two fingers, then turns his seat backward and plops down. “What happened?”
I shrug, because it all happened so fast, I’m not even sure I know. But I’m pretty sure it’s my fault. “We were talking.” The image of Libby’s scars flashes behind my eyes. “I guess I said the wrong thing. All of a sudden, she just . . . flipped.”
Mo nods thoughtfully and sips his coffee.
I wait for him to press me for information, but when he doesn’t, I ask the question that’s screaming in the back of my mind. “Is she, like, crazy or something?”
Mo snorts, nearly choking on his coffee. “You mean, like, any more than the rest of us?”
I meet his even gaze. “Not me.”
Mo laughs, but it stings. He shakes his head like I’m the world’s biggest idiot. “Newbies,” he mumbles.
I bristle, suddenly not so hungry. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Mo tips his chin toward my wrist. “How’d you get that bracelet, huh? Broken leg?”
I yank my t-shirt down to cover it and make a mental note to find a pair of scissors, stat.
Mo’s white teeth flash in a no-bullshit smile. “You newbies are all the same. Blame, denial, blame, denial. Like somebody forced the fucking needle in your arm.”
My muscles tense, and I shove back from the table.
“Relax, dude,” Mo says. “I’m not looking for the details. We’ve all been there before. It’s the cop’s fault ‘cause he pulled you over. It’s the shit’s fault ‘cause it wasn’t pure. We do the same crap over and over again, and then we wonder why we end up here.”
I grit my teeth against the flood of memories that crash through my skull tsunami-style.
Savannah after Winter Formal, slung over my arm. The vile stench of stomach acid I was still scrubbing out of my car a week later.
Savannah on the deck at Alex’s, begging me to stay with her.
We’ve got enough trouble already.
Savannah’s tear-stained face through my car window, fists pounding the glass.
I snatch my tray off the table and stand up. “I don’t need this right now, okay?”
“What, you got something more important going on?” Mo asks. And then he laughs. I want to punch him, but he lets out this belly laugh like the whole thing’s a fucking riot. “See what I mean, dude? Every single one of us. We’re all fucking insane.”
The lights are out when I get back to my room. The curtains are pulled shut, and a heavy shade blocks out the afternoon sun. Red is a snoring lump under the covers of his bed.
I stealth-walk past him, hands out in front of me to keep from slamming into anything. When my fingers brush my coarse cotton blanket, I lie down and bury my face in my pillows. I wish Savannah was here. Even better, I wish I was with her, wherever she is. Hopefully, her dad hasn’t convinced her that I’m a horrible influence. Hopefully, she doesn’t hate me.
I’ve just started to doze when the mumbling starts.
“Lisa . . . Lisa . . .” Red’s thrashing around in his bed, kicking off his covers like they’re knitted with thorns. His flailing arms nearly decapitate our bedside lamp, and then the mumbling turns to a guttural groan that starts low in his belly and rises to a primal keen.
I’ve had enough crazy for one day. I yank a pillow out from under my head and chuck it at Red, though the motion jars my ribs. He jolts—the scream cut off in his throat. He scrambles up, knocking the pillow away like he’s afraid it might bite him.
“Red!”
He looks right at me, but his eyes are dead, and I know he’s not awake. He’s still with Lisa, and apparently, that chick really did a number on him. His body’s twitching like he just took the scenic route through hell. I toss my other pillow at him. “Red, wake up! It’s a dream.”
He blinks a couple times, confused, and then his body relaxes. He slides back down in his bed and yanks up his blanket.
“Wait,” I say, stretching over the space between our beds to punch his shoulder. “I need my pillows back.”
There’s a shuffling sound from Red’s bed, and then a pillow soars through the air in a wide arc that ends on my face. “Thanks a lot,” I mumble into the fluffy cotton. “There was a second one, you know.”
I dodge this one in time, catch it before it hits me, and tuck them both back under my head. “You’re welcome,” I mutter.
“Thanks,” comes the muffled response.
I roll onto my side. “Who is she?” I ask. “This Lisa chick.”
Red turns onto his back, his profile sharp, his eyes dark hollows in the shadows of his face. “She’s my girlfriend. Was my girlfriend, I mean.”
“Must’ve been one hell of a breakup, huh?”
“We didn’t break up,” Red says. “We should’ve, maybe. I don’t know. Anyway . . . she’s dead. Flipped her car over a guardrail coming back from my house in the middle of the night.”
“Dude.” The word is an exhale, but I don’t know what else to say.
Red rubs his hand across his face. “You want to know the crazy part? We didn’t even party. I mean, we usually did. A lot. Backstage to catch the vibe before a gig, afterwards to celebrate. I mean, look at me.” Red chokes on a bitter laugh. “I’ve got more scar tissue than blood in my veins. But not that night. That night we ordered a pizza and watched a movie.”
Red’s story unravels in dark whispers, shadows that cling to the corners of our room like spider webs. “We fell asleep on the couch. When we woke up the next morning, Lisa was late for work. She freaked out ‘cause her manager was a real asshole, and then she took off.”
Red gives me a weak smile. “It was probably the lamest date we’d ever had. I hadn’t played a show in a while; all I had in the house was Safeway mac n’ cheese. We pooled our change for one of those five-dollar pizzas and watched a movie on Netflix. But if I could go back, I’d do it all over again. I’d order pizza and a movie every night. I’d curl up on my couch with Lisa, and I’d stay there forever.”
The heavy sound of our breathing thickens the air in the room. Wheels squeak outside our door, and footsteps crisscross the hallway. There are vitals to be checked and meals to be brought to kids who can’t get out of bed. Life goes on even when it feels like it shouldn’t, when everything should come to a screaming halt. Red and I lie here in the darkness, and we hold back the ticking seconds on the clock.
Lisa is dead.
Red is broken.
Five nights ago, I almost died.
Red’s bed squeaks as he rolls onto his side. He shuffles his pillows into a ball and tucks his elbow under his arm. “What about you?” he asks.
“Me?” My girlfriend’s alive. If I still have a girlfriend.
“Yeah,” Red presses. “Prep school kid, for sure. Bet you spend Saturdays sailing, or play . . . what’s the game like football, but more badass?”
“Rugby?”
“Yeah, that one. What are you in for, anyway? Oxy? Percs? Bet it’s some real pricey shit, huh?”
I turn onto my back and stare hard at the ceiling. This is the last conversation I want to be having right now. But some part of me needs to say it out loud. “H,” I tell him.
Red whistles through his teeth. “No kidding?”
“Honest to God.”
“Shit. Needles?”
My spine goes rigid, and I glare at him in the dark. I’m not some itching, twitching junkie. I’m nothing like those “newbies” Mo mentioned. Nothing like Red. “No way, dude.”
“Not yet, you mean.” Red lets out a cackle that dissolves into a cough. “Still trying to keep it classy, huh? Up the nose or some shit like that. And you think ‘cause you’re not fiending yet, that means you’re not like me?”
“I’m not like you,” I tell him. “I mean, no offense or anything.”
“None taken.” Red’s quiet, but I feel his eyes on me, and I can almost hear his mental wheels turning. “I don’t envy you, dude,” he says after a minute. “The itching was easy. It’s feeling that sucks the hardest.”
Red rolls onto his back and pulls the blanket up under his chin. His white ankles and toes stick out at the bottom, pale ghosts in the darkness. “Thanks again, by the way. For waking me up.”
“No problem.” I fold my arms behind my head, squeeze my eyes shut, and stare into the blackness of my lids until stars form. “I don’t have anything better to do,” I say. “If you want to try to go back to sleep, I can listen out for you. You know, wake you up if you need me to.”
Silence.
I lean over the space between our beds until I can see the soft rise and fall of Red’s chest beneath his blanket. Already sound asleep.