I’m stretched out on the crappy couch in Richard Fisher’s office while he flips through the rest of my Step One packet. Every now and then, he jots something down on the yellow legal pad on his desk. When he finishes reading, he peers at me over his glasses. “What about the writing assignment I asked you to do?” He glances at the purple notebook resting on my chest. “Anything you want me to read?”
I push myself upright and toss the notebook onto his desk. “Whatever. It’s crap anyway.”
Richard opens to the first entry. I count ceiling tiles while he reads.
I’d written about the day my dad moved out. That afternoon, he’d taken me to the park to play on the swings. I kept begging him for an under-duck, but when he finally gave me one, I was too excited to hold on the way I was supposed to.
I fell from the swing and landed face down in the dirt, hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I remember Dad rolling me onto my back, the sun so bright I couldn’t see his face. There was something on my forehead, warm and wet. Dad scooped me into his arms like I was made of paper.
Mom met us at the hospital. It was only six stitches, but they’d bound me to the bed to keep me still. I could feel the anger rolling off Mom like heat waves. “I’m sorry,” I’d cried, over and over again, straining against the binding. “I’m sorry!”
“It’s not your fault, Eli,” Dad had whispered, his breath hot against my wet cheek. “It’s not your fault, okay?”
My fingers find the stretched skin of my scar, half-hidden under my hair. That night, Mom had stuffed Dad’s clothes into oversized garbage bags, the big black ones used for raking leaves. I’d laid in bed, pressing pillows against my ears to drown out the words that ricocheted into my room like stray bullets.
Careless.
Irresponsible.
Dangerous.
It’s not like this was their first fight; most mornings I’d woken up to Dad on the couch. But this fight was different. This fight was my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I’d whispered into the darkness, where only my toys could hear me. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Richard Fisher takes off his reading glasses. “This is good stuff,” he says.
“The devastation of a four-year-old? What are you, a sadist?”
Richard chuckles. “I’m saying I’m proud of you, Eli. You’ve finished your packet, and you’re writing honestly about some of your painful experiences. You’re starting the real work of recovery.”
“Whatever.” There’s a rust-colored water stain in the far corner of Richard Fisher’s ceiling, and if I stare at it long enough, it looks like it’s moving. I remember doors slamming, footsteps pounding the stairs, the screech of Dad’s bike peeling out of the driveway.
“Tell me more about your father,” Richard says. “After he left, what was your relationship like?”
I shrug. “Normal, I guess. I saw him a couple times a week.” A memory tugs at the corners of my mouth. “This one time, he showed up at school in the middle of the day. It was right before math, which was awesome because my math teacher was a total bitch. I climbed onto the back of Dad’s bike, and kids were watching through the windows, pointing and gaping, like I was some kind of badass. We rode into the city and bought soft pretzels and cherry water ice. We spent the whole afternoon counting boats on the wharf.”
“If I lived at home,” Dad had said, dunking a pretzel into a squishy cup of yellow mustard, “we could do stuff like this all the time.” I’d spent the whole ride back with my cheek pressed against his leather riding jacket, daring to imagine what that would be like—my parents together again, happy and in love.
The memory turns bitter after that, the taste of the water ice souring on my tongue. “Mom was pissed when we got home,” I tell Richard. My happy family fantasy had dissolved the second I’d seen the look on her face. “She’d called the school when I didn’t get off the bus.”
“She must’ve been pretty worried,” Richard says, tapping his glasses against his palm.
“Dad just forgot to tell her he was going to pick me up,” I say, “but Mom had to go and make this huge deal out of it. I swear she was jealous that Dad and I actually had fun when we were together. That’s what she was always complaining about anyway—that Dad got to show up whenever he wanted with gifts or surprise trips, and she was the one stuck at home, paying bills and folding laundry.”
Richard nods thoughtfully and writes something on the yellow legal pad.
I pluck at the soft skin at the base of my thumb. “After that, Dad could only visit me at home with Mom around to ‘supervise’ or whatever. We mostly stuck to the backyard. That’s when he started teaching me lacrosse.”
Richard puts down his pen. “Do you ever talk to your mom about your dad?”
A broken spring in the couch pokes me in the back, and I shift uneasily. “I figured out pretty quick that she had no interest in talking about my dad.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“She just didn’t, okay?” My palm throbs, and I realize I’ve been pinching my skin so hard I’ve left a red half-moon welt that glares up at me. “She gave up on him a long time ago. She chose a new family, and I was just along for the ride.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Again with this crap?”
Richard Fisher fiddles with the earpiece on his glasses. “You’re going to have to elaborate.”
“Don’t you ever wonder if sometimes things just are what they are?” I ask. “Shit happens, you move on. End of story. You should know that better than anyone, with what happened to your son and all.”
Richard’s chair creaks as he leans back, pushing out his buddha belly. “I still have feelings about what happened to me. Don’t you?”
“Sure, I have feelings,” I groan. “I’m just saying not everybody has some deep dark sob story waiting to pour out of them. My parents broke up, and sure, it sucked for a long time. But I’m over it now. Lots of people get divorced. It is what it is.”
“Is that how you feel about using drugs?” Richard asks.
“Pretty much. Sometimes I want to use, sometimes I don’t. It makes me feel good, it helps me relax, but it doesn’t have anything to do with what happened to me as a kid.”
Richard nods. He thumps his fingers on his desk one time, then another. The minutes tick by on the clock above his head. A little while longer, and then I can be done with Richard Fisher for the day. “I just wonder if . . .” he begins.
“What?” I snap. I’ve seen enough therapists to know when one of them has an agenda.
He runs his hand over his head, fluffing his nutty professor ‘do.’ “I’m willing to bet that four-year-old boy had some pretty strong feelings about his dad leaving that night. I wonder if you’ve been using drugs to cope for so long that you don’t remember how to feel anything at all.”
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. The room feels chilly, and I zip up my green hoodie, hike up the hood around my ears.
Richard stares at me for a minute. Then his expression relaxes. “But what do I know? Something to think about, right?”
“Whatever.”
Richard hands me my first step folder and my purple notebook. “I’ll be looking forward to hearing how your first step share goes tomorrow.”
That gets me sitting up a little straighter. “Come again?”
“I know you’re not big on group,” says Richard, “but sharing helps build community. Every one of those guys in your group has walked the same roads you have. Believe it or not, your group will see you through some dark days ahead.”
I wave the folder at Richard. “You never said I was going to have to read this shit to anybody,” I say. “I don’t share. Ask anybody. Ask my mom. Ask all four therapists she’s taken me to. Sharing is not my thing.”
Richard’s mouth twitches. “Looks like you’re going to have to develop a new thing.”
“No way.” The room is closing in on me, and I feel like I can’t breathe. “This is a deal breaker, man. I want to call my mom. I want to call her NOW.”
I lurch to my feet, ignoring the stabbing pain in my chest, and slam the folder face down on Richard’s desk, knocking over a blue picture frame. A yellowing Polaroid stares up me, a young man with curly black hair, a baby in a backpack, a red bandana tied around his head.
Richard reaches to right the toppled frame. His voice is low and steady. “Why do you want to call your mom, Eli?”
“It doesn’t matter! Just let me call her, okay?” I pace the floor, wearing tread lines into the already faded brown carpet. My head is a pressure cooker, and my brain is about to explode. I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care about Savannah; I don’t care about her dad. I just want out.
I want out. I want out. I want out.
Richard Fisher’s voice finds me under all the noise inside my head. “Believe me, Eli, I know how you feel,” he says. “You’re miserable and terrified and downright pissed off. And you’re convinced that not talking about it, not doing this work, will make all of that go away. But I promise it won’t. The only way to the other side of this is straight through it.”
I sink onto the couch, drop my head into my hands, and groan into my sweaty palms.
“I wish I could tell you this is as bad as it gets. But I can’t.”
I slide my hands down my face, peer at him over the tips of my fingers. “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“The work of recovery is some scary shit,” Richard Fisher says. “You’re going to feel vulnerable and terrified, and you’re going to want out. But I promise you, if you do the work, if you feel those feelings, even the ones that threaten to rip you apart, I promise things will get better.”
I tip my chin at the frame on Richard’s desk. “That’s your son?”
He nods.
“How can you look at that picture all the time? Doesn’t it tear you apart inside?”
“Sure, it does, sometimes. But the sadness is only one part of the story, and I don’t want to forget the rest. I want to remember.”
I bite down on the inside of my cheek until the burning in my throat goes away. I will not cry.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Richard Fisher says. “You share some of your first step writing tomorrow, even just a little bit of it, and then I’ll let you call your mom.” He winks at me. “You can tell her all about it.”
“Can’t wait,” I groan, already nauseated at the thought of reading aloud in group.
Richard Fisher lets out a hearty laugh. “That’s the spirit.”
There’s already a handful of people in the gym when I get there—a couple of chicks on treadmills and one dude on the elliptical. Mo’s in the free-weight section, spotting a guy with barbed wire neck tattoos who’s straining to keep 350-pounds from dropping onto his swollen chest.
Will’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, waiting to bench next. He’s cut the arms out of his t-shirt, showing several amateur tattoos, smudged blue-black ink, like he tatted himself in the back of history class. “‘Sup, Eli?” He tips his chin toward the bench press. “Want to work in?”
I’m pretty sure that weightlifting with bruised ribs is a no-no—definitely on the list of contraindicated activities, right next to running, sports, and basically doing anything other than walking. I’d planned on spending the next hour in a nice 3.0 pace on the treadmill, but before I can explain that to Will, the locker room door opens, and there’s Libby.
Her hair’s in a high ponytail, and she’s wearing a pair of men’s red basketball shorts that hang below her knees, a baggy t-shirt, and Converse sneakers with no socks. She makes a wide circle around the bench press machine and carefully lifts two light weights off the rack.
“Yeah,” I tell Will, knowing I’ll regret it later. “I’ll work in.”
“Good choice, my man,” Mo says.
Prison Tat grunts out one last rep; the veins in his neck are thick cords that bulge under his skin. Will rolls his eyes.
Mo claps a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You’re up, Roomie.”
I steal a glance at Libby. She’s doing like 400 reps of these teeny weenie Barbie weights. Our eyes meet, and she quickly looks away.
Mo’s loading up the bar, and I almost tell him to take it easy on me, but the last thing I want is to look like a wuss in front of these guys. They’re the closest thing to friends I’ve got in this place. I plunk down on the bench.
“I’m so happy to see you in the gym, bro.” Mo’s hands hover under the bar, and his thick body is pressed so close to my head that I have no choice but to stare at his armpits as I press the bar upward, gritting my teeth against the pain that instantly grips my chest like a metal vice.
“Recovery is such a mind/body thing,” Mo drones. “You know there’s research that suggests regular workouts can actually help you resist the temptation of drugs? It’s like a chemical reaction or something.”
“How . . . many . . . more?” I wheeze into Mo’s hairy pits, pushing my screaming arms straight.
“You got another five in you, easy,” Prison Tat says, the tear drop tattoo at the corner of his eye winking at me.
“Doing it for the dopamine, dude,” Mo says, lowering the bar once more over my chest.
With monumental effort, I lift it again, and then one more time, in case Libby’s watching.
“Just don’t die,” Will says encouragingly.
The laugh that rises in my throat nearly chokes me; my elbows buckle, and Mo catches the bar before I’m permanently pinned to the bench.
“That was only 150, bro!” Will sneers. “Aren’t you supposed to be some badass athlete or something?”
Mo offers his burly mitt; I clasp it, and he hauls me to my feet, pounding my back with his other hand. I have to bite my lip to keep from crying out.
“Keep it up, brother,” Mo says. “We get stronger every day.”
“Thanks.” I shoot him a wry grin, then punch Will in the shoulder. “Let’s see you do any better.”
“That’s gonna have to wait a minute,” Mo says. He’s loading weights on the ends of the bar like they’re marshmallows on a stick. He nods to Prison Tat. “Spot me?”
While Will hangs by the bench press, I make my way to the free weight rack. Libby’s doing tricep kickbacks with a weight so light her arm’s swinging like a pendulum. “You might want to go a little heavier,” I say.
Libby drops her arm and glares at me. “Who asked you?”
“Nobody,” I fumble. “I just thought . . . you’re kind of swinging it? It’s not going to . . .” What is it about this girl that turns me into some kind of speech-impaired idiot? “Never mind.” I reach for a weight from the rack.
Libby watches me in the mirror for a second. “If you know so much, show me.”
I falter, nearly dropping the weight on my foot. “Really?”
“Yeah, if you’re not too busy showing off for your ‘bros’ over there.”
I wince. “Sure, I’ll show you.” I put back my own weight and choose one for Libby. Bending over the bench, I show her the proper form. “Now you try.”
Libby weighs the metal in her hand.
“You’ve got this,” I tell her. “Trust me.”
It takes some effort, but Libby pounds out ten reps. “See?” I tell her, as she stands up and swipes the fly-aways off her forehead. “You’re stronger than you think you are.”
Across the room, a heavy weight crashes to the ground with a primal groan, pulling my eyes away from Libby. Mo sits at the end of the bench, his cheeks red and his breathing heavy.
“Hey, Player,” Will calls. “If you’re done with the personal training session, I’m ready to school you in the art of the bench press.”
Libby rolls her eyes. “Meat-heads await.”
“Will’s not like that, he’s just being . . .”
“Anybody want to bet on it?” Will asks. “I’ve got ten bucks that says I can do 200 pounds.”
Libby snorts. “Sure, he’s not.” She drops into kickback position, this time with her other leg on the bench.
Deflated, I head back to the bench press, where Mo’s spotting Will as he powers through eight reps.
“Easy,” I say when he’s done.
Will gives me a lopsided grin. “Oh, yeah? Ten bucks says you can’t do it.”
I instantly regret teasing him. Coach says I’m an underdog with a Napoleon complex, always getting myself into situations I have to fight my way out of. It works out well on the field—you don’t make captain by being a wimp. But sometimes I wish I could keep my freaking mouth shut.
In the mirrored wall, I catch a glimpse of Libby. She’s got a free weight over her head, but I can tell she’s listening. Three things go through my mind at once:
1. I don’t want Libby to think I’m some dumb meat-head.
2. I don’t want Libby to think I’m a wimp.
3. Why the hell do I care what this crazy chick thinks anyway?
“I’ll see your ten and raise you five on Eli,” somebody says. I look up to see Red winding his way through the cardio machines.
“Red!” I jog over to him, clasp his outstretched hand, and clap him hard on the back. “It’s good to see you!”
After everybody’s introduced themselves, Will gets back down to business. “So are we doing this or not?” His eyes glint with excitement. “We’ve got some serious money on the table.”
“C’mon, guys,” I try, fumbling around for an excuse. “It’s almost dinner and . . .”
“How about a push-up contest instead?” Libby’s voice cuts through the chatter in the gym. She’s a feather-weight in this circle of jocks and body builders.
Mo chuckles, props his elbow lightly on Libby’s shoulder. “You got money in this game, little sister?”
I can’t read the look on her face. “Five bucks on Will,” she says.
And then I’m pissed. I’m in, and I’m going to win.
We sort it out quickly—it’s a 30 second countdown. The most push-ups by the time Mo calls it, wins. I throw in five bucks, Prison Tat bets a candy bar—Mo’s the only one who doesn’t bet. Odds are on Will with only Red in my corner. I don’t mind. Will did bench more than me. What these guys don’t know is that mad is how I play. It’s not about strength; it’s about who has something to prove. Screw my pain—mad is how I win.
Red claps his hands together like the crackling microphone of a sports commentator. “Alright, boys, assume the position.”
Will and I are head to head, his arms stretched opposite mine. He winks at me, and then Mo says, “Go!”
Will and I are pumping them out at the same speed. I focus on how they all bet against me, even Libby. My triceps burn, and my lungs are screaming, but I pull ahead. Will is breathing hard. There’s only ten seconds left, and I know I’m going to win.
Something heavy lands between my shoulder blades. Pain shoots up my back and into my skull—a bolt of lightning that blinds me. I cry out, and my arms buckle. I hit the rubber flooring, choking on chalk dust.
Mo lifts the weight off my back. I roll onto my side, whimpering like a beaten dog. Everybody’s staring at Libby.
Her eyes are flat and hard, her mouth pinched. “Next time I want help, I’ll ask for it,” she spits. Then she turns and storms out of the gym.
Red calls after her. “Hey, you know you owe me fifteen bucks, right?”
Libby flips him the bird over her shoulder before the double doors slam heavy behind her.
Mo chuckles, reaches down, and carefully helps me to my feet. “You know what happens when you play with fire, don’t you, bro?” He lifts my arm across his shoulder, supporting my weight. “You get burned.”
It’s almost lights out, and I’m stretched out on my bed, an ice pack spread across my sore ribs, thumbing through the pages of my Step One packet and trying not to think about the fact that I’m supposed to share it with my group tomorrow. Richard Fisher said I only have to read part of it, and then I’ll get to use the phone. But how am I supposed to pick which part? The whole freaking thing is practically a burn book I wrote about myself. Page after page of admission—what I’ve used, how often, how using has affected my life. Each section has a culminating question at the end: Have drugs affected your school work? Have drugs affected your relationship with your family? Do you use drugs to cope with difficult emotions?
Yes . . . Yes . . . Maybe . . . I don’t know. These are just words, scratched pencil marks on paper. But this is my life we’re talking about. My real life. And the idea of reading it out loud to a room full of strangers makes me feel like I’m going to puke.
Hi, my name’s Eli, and a week ago, I almost died.
Saying it out loud would make it real. It would mean that Savannah and Mom and Richard Fisher are right. It would mean there’s something wrong with me.
I drop the folder on my stomach and peer sideways at Mo, who’s lying on the bed opposite me, reading a recovery book like the ones in detox. Knowing Mo, it’s probably his personal copy. He wears glasses at night—thick black frames that make him look more computer dweeb than linebacker, and it cracks me up.
“Mo?”
He lowers his book and glances over at me, his glasses cockeyed on the bridge of his nose.
“What’s the deal with Libby?” I ask. I’ve been thinking about her ever since the gym and it’s driving me crazy. She walked right past me at dinner and didn’t say a word. I’m 99.9% sure she hates me, and I don’t understand why. “I mean, one second we’re having a nice moment, and then bam, she goes full schizoid. I can’t figure that chick out.”
Mo grins. “Don’t you have a girlfriend?”
His question is a punch in the lungs. Of course I do. I have Savannah. I love Savannah. Libby shouldn’t matter. Libby doesn’t matter. But still . . .
Mo doesn’t wait for my answer. “Libby’s like a little sister to me. But she’s had a hard road, man. The only people who’ve ever been nice to her, ended up playing her hard. I don’t think she trusts anybody all the way, maybe not even me.” He stares at me for a second. “You know she’s not your problem, though, right?”
I fumble for my words. “Yeah, sure. I mean, of course . . .”
Mo grins. “You have to work on yourself, bro. Relationship drama only makes this shit harder.” He turns back toward his book. “Trust me—stay far away from it.”
I think of Richard Fisher’s office, the blue frame on his desk, the baby in the red bandana. “Speaking of drama,” I ask Mo, “do you know anything about Richard Fisher?”
“Fish?”
The nickname surprises me. “What’s up with him? He’s got this whole bad boy biker thing going on, and then today he told me about his dead kid.” I think of the zit analogy, pimples oozing feelings like yellow pus. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Mo chuckles. “You know he spent time in jail, right?”
“For real?”
“Straight up. For a while there was a rumor going around that he used to be the leader of this motorcycle drug ring.” Mo laughs. “I heard him speak one time last year; he gave a speech the day he got thirty years sober.”
“Thirty years?”
“Hell, yea, bro. Fish is the real deal.” He dog-ears a page in his book and puts it on our shared nightstand. Then he rolls onto his side to face me. “Apparently, he used to be some big-shot psychiatrist in New York or somewhere, I forget. When his kid died, he went lolo, crazy, you know? Started writing his own scripts, heavy shit, too—you remember that shit that killed Michael Jackson? Anyway, after a while, his lady had enough, so she bagged him, moved out. He wasn’t seeing enough clients to pay the bills, so he started a side business.”
Mo gives me a knowing look.
“Dealing?”
“Yup. Made a bundle writing scripts for high-end clientele—Manhattan housewives popping xannibars with their morning mimosas, porn stars pre-gaming on oxy—you get the idea. He was doing alright for himself until some rich bitch OD’d, and her husband went looking for her hookup. Fish got busted—judge hammered him hard. Lost his license, went to jail. Fish likes to say he found AA behind barbed wire. But he told me one time that the first time he saw The Big Book, that’s the one that’s like the bible for AA, was when he chased away some homeless guy that was rooting through the trash in front of his brownstone. The book fell out of the guy’s grocery cart. Fish picked it up and tossed it in the bin. Next time he saw that book was when he checked it out of the prison library. Crazy, right?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Crazy.”
“Whatever Fish’s done in the past, he’s a damn good counselor,” Mo says. “You’re lucky to have him.”
“Maybe,” I mutter doubtfully. I tap my forehead with the folder, like maybe I can take it in osmosis-style. “He’s making me read this at group tomorrow.”
“No one’s making you read it, bro. Howard, Fish—they just want you to try.”
I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”
Mo smiles knowingly. “Nervous?”
“Oh, you know,” I say, “not really. Only mildly concerned that I might crap myself.”
Mo’s belly shakes with laughter. “I nearly puked the first time I had to do it.”
The first time? “You mean we have to do this more than once?”
Mo’s eyes twinkle. “This isn’t my first time here.”
“How many?” I ask.
Mo rolls onto his back, stares up at the popcorn stucco ceiling tiles. “Here? This is my third time. But I tried two other places first.”
Mo has always seemed like the poster child for recovery, full of 12-step-isms and chipper advice. But then I think about how comfortable he is here, how he seems to know everybody, and it all makes perfect sense. He’s been through it all before.
For a second, I feel like I’ve found a loop hole, a reason for my mom to pull me out and take me back to my life. “So you’re saying this shit doesn’t work?”
Mo’s thick shoulders reach for his pierced ears. “I always leave feeling like this time it stuck. Like I’m never coming back. But that’s when the real work starts, you know? I go to a party, and there’s beer, and I can probably handle one, right?” Mo closes his eyes, breathes in real deep, like he’s imagining himself at a party, red Solo cup in hand, breathing in the smoky chaos of beer pong and popularity. I’m reminded of another party a few months ago. The one after Winter Formal.
Mo opens his eyes. “I think it does work,” he says. “I think you get a little better each time around. Some of us just have farther to go than others.”
I drop the folder over my face and groan into pencil-marked pages that smell like school. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Sure you can,” Mo says. “It’s like in the weight room. We push through the impossible. We get stronger every single day.”
He takes off his glasses and sets them neatly on the bedside table. “Turn out the light when you’re done, okay?”
“Sure.”
Mo rolls over, and soon the only sound in the room is the steady rhythm of his snoring. But I’m restless. It’s like talking about this stuff has shaken something loose; I can’t stop the flow of memories. The night of Winter Formal plays out on repeat like a bad cable TV movie. I glance sideways at my purple notebook where it waits on the bedside table.
Maybe if I write it down, I can stop thinking about it for a little while. Maybe then I can get some sleep.
I grab the notebook, flip it open to a fresh page. And I begin to write.