“So she broke up with you.” Richard Fisher’s feet are propped up on his desk, his hands folded behind his head, like in one of those old timey movies. All he needs is a cigar in his mouth, smoke snaking up to the ceiling. “Did she tell you why?”
“I just told you,” I snap. “Because she cheated on me. Because apparently, she’d rather be with my ex-friend, Mr. Fucking Perfect. Alex.”
“Ah, the one who throws the parties? With the drunk mom?”
I glance up, surprised Fisher remembers Alex’s name. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Tell me again: what is it that makes this kid so perfect?”
I hadn’t told Fisher everything about that night. I didn’t tell him about Alex’s mom in the front yard, teetering on one broken stiletto, shrieking at me as I buckled Savannah into the passenger seat of my car. I didn’t tell him that the last thing I remember before arriving at Savannah’s is seeing Alex through the windshield, half-carrying, half-dragging his mom inside.
The image of Alex’s perfect family smears a little, like the lipstick across his mom’s cheek. But still. . .
“He’s everything Savannah wants, you know? He’s good on the team, makes good grades. Popular.”
Fisher nods. “So far it sounds like you’re describing yourself. At least until you started using dope. Alex isn’t in rehab. So I guess he’s got that going for him.”
His words are pushpins under my fingernails, but I’m not giving in. “Are you actually trying to say this is my fault?”
“No, not your fault,” Richard muses. He chews thoughtfully on the earpiece of his glasses. “But an inevitable consequence of your behavior? Maybe.”
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I launch off the couch, immediately gripping my ribs where the movement stabs me. “This didn’t have anything to do with me. I was gone all of ten seconds before Alex snagged my place on the team and moved in on my girlfriend. That fucker stole my life!”
Fisher slides his glasses back onto his nose. “Drugs stole your life, Eli. Alex moved in on all the pieces you left behind.”
“Are you actually defending him?”
“No, I’m not defending him. The kid sounds like an opportunistic son of a bitch. I’m saying that this is a chance for you to accept responsibility for your own part in the events of your life. I mean, c’mon, man—don’t tell me this breakup came out of nowhere.”
I sink back down onto the beat-up old couch. “We fought,” I admit. “We fought a lot, actually. Especially lately.”
Richard nods. “What kinds of things did you fight about?”
My mind traces over the last few months like grooves in a well-worn map. Winter Formal was ground zero, the beginning of the end. After that, there were constant fights about me not showing up, not spending enough time with her. “She said I didn’t care about her,” I say. “That if I did, I wouldn’t use.”
“Did you care about her?” Richard asks.
“Of course I did. I do. But it started getting hard to be around her, you know? It was like she thought if she nagged me enough, I’d stop.”
“And that didn’t work.” It’s a question, disguised as a statement—a trap I fall headfirst into.
“Of course she couldn’t make me stop. I couldn’t even make myself stop.”
“You were powerless,” Fisher says.
I’ve read the literature; I know what he’s getting at. We admitted that we were powerless over drugs, and that our lives had become unmanageable.
“Yeah,” I whisper, digging my nails into the edges of the freshly healed scab on my wrist until blood seeps onto my sleeve. My using was the detonator Savannah and I constantly circled, neither one of us willing to call it by name.
Habit.
Problem.
Addiction.
Fisher tosses me the box of tissues from his desk. I catch it easily and press one against my wrist until the white blooms red. “Do we really have to talk about this?” My voice sounds weak, pleading, and pathetic.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Eli. I’m trying to hold up a mirror. Since the first day we met, you’ve been telling me that you want to leave, want to get back to your regular life. But from where I’m sitting, it looks like there’s not much of a life to go back to anymore. Your grades have plummeted; your relationship with your family is circling the drain. The only things you had going for you were lacrosse and your girlfriend, and now you’ve lost those, too. Why do you think that is?”
Fisher’s question is a bucket of water on the simmering rage I’ve felt since Savannah broke up with me. My anger melts into a wave of grief. It’s all my fault. Savannah, lacrosse—I let it all slip through my fingers. When I go home in three weeks, I’ll be lucky if they let me back into school, let alone onto the team. Spring training 101: No booze. No smoking. I’m pretty sure heroin goes without saying.
I think about Benny’s Disney book, the waxy pages I’d flipped through last night, trying to make sense of the pictures. Mom was easy to pick out—the only figure with earrings and long hair. And Benny, the short one. But there were two men in the pictures: Steven and me, I guess.
Except I didn’t go to Disney.
The morning of our flight, I was sleeping off a bender. I hadn’t even packed. Mom was beyond pissed. She’d shoved dirty clothes into my lax bag and said I could spend the whole week doing laundry in the hotel for all she cared. It was Steven who convinced her that I was too old to enjoy the trip, and I’d be bored watching Benny on all the kiddie rides. I’d told myself that was what Steven wanted anyway, a week alone with his real family. They’d left me behind with a hundred bucks for takeout and strict instructions not to have anybody over while they were gone. While the three of them lived it up in the Magic Kingdom, I’d spent a week on the cracked leather couch in Chase’s basement, nodding off into crusty bowls of mac n’ cheese, too fucked up to know what I was missing.
Had Benny missed me? Had he drawn what he’d wished for? His big brother beside him on the big kid rides, chowing down on burgers and greasy French fries, fist bumping Mickey. I wasn’t there for any of it, but Benny had drawn me anyway.
Just because you’re hovering at the starting line doesn’t mean it’s going to turn out any different. You’re an addict, Eli.
An addict.
The word is a one-two punch to my gut. I fold over my knees, hands crossed at the base of my neck, and I stare at the floor between my feet.
An addict.
There’s nothing left to hide behind. Nothing but this office and Richard Fisher and the truth.
I can’t bring myself to look Fisher in the eyes, so I fix my gaze on a worn spot under his desk where his chair has left permanent indentations on the cheap industrial carpet.
“You’re right.” The words have the bitter tang of humiliation, of despair. I fight rising panic, the urge to run from the room and never look back. But I press on, forcing out the words that claw like a caged monster on the inner walls of my skull. Once I’ve said it, I can’t take it back. Saying it out loud makes it true. I cling to one threadbare strand of hope: if I’m broken, Richard Fisher can fix me.
“I’m an addict,” I whisper, the words barely audible. The admission is the rush of crimson from a severed vein—I sink into the couch, drained and bone-tired.
Fisher’s eyes are full of knowing. “Acknowledging your addiction is the first step, Eli. Sometimes that step can feel like a thousand miles. But once you’ve taken it, you can start the real work of recovery. After acknowledgement comes acceptance and then action. My sponsor once told me that recovery is just those three steps, over and over again. The rest is maintenance.”
He hands me a white folder from a pile on his desk. STEP TWO, the folder reads, and then across the bottom: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
I’m too exhausted to think past the next thirty seconds, much less a whole new packet. How many freaking steps are there anyway? Fisher must have a whole library of these damn things.
“Remember Step One?” Richard Fisher asks. “Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness?”
I tip my chin, thumbing through the pages.
“Step Two is about being open to getting help. When we realize that drugs are hurting us, not helping like we thought, we have to figure out a different plan. The Twelve Step program asks us to look outside of ourselves for something positive that can help us choose a different way of life. That’s what we call your higher power.”
“As in, God?” I ask doubtfully. The only version of God I can muster looks like he walked right out of the Sunday comics—long white beard, hooked staff. A cartoon.
Richard shakes his head. “Not necessarily. Your higher power can be anything that resonates with you, and that usually takes a little while to figure out.” He squints at me for a minute, the light crisscrossing his glasses. “The first time I worked this step, I was six months into a three-year prison sentence. My son was dead, and my wife hated me. I was pretty sure that if God did exist, he had to be a raging asshole, and I was better off without him. So I picked the next best thing—the underside of my bunky’s bed.”
“Seriously?”
“It was bigger than me, and if it could hold my bunky’s fat ass up in the air like that, it had to be stronger than me, too. It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could do until I started trusting people again.”
I toss my bloody tissue toward Richard’s trashcan, but it falls to the ground a good foot too short, earning a flicker of a nose wrinkle from Richard Fisher. “Can you hear how lame that sounds,” I ask, “or are you immune to cheesiness after thirty years in this place?”
Richard chuckles. “You’d be surprised how cheesy can ring true sometimes. How bad you start craving something simple and real when the rest of your life is a complicated shit show.”
I think about my life back home, the arguments it seemed like Mom and I were getting in almost every weekend, the constant effort of resenting Steven, the exhaustion of trying to do everything right, so that I didn’t lose Savannah, so that I never had to go back to being a nobody again. The words simple and real settle in my brain like fallen leaves on campus in October, quiet but just right.
“Sometimes,” Richard continues, “people in treatment choose to think of this program, or their small group, as a temporary higher power until they get more clarity. Maybe you could try that.”
I think of Prison Tat with his bulging biceps, Will’s blue faux hawk, and Mo, who’s constantly spouting program-ese. I give Richard Fisher a skeptical scowl. “Seriously?”
“Believe it or not,” he says, “the people here have all felt like you at some point, Eli. Lean on them a little. Nobody gets through this stuff alone.” Richard glances up at the clock. “We can talk more about this tomorrow. For now, though, I’d like you to get started on the packet. You’ll be processing some of the questions in group tomorrow.”
“More sharing?” I groan.
“You bet.”
I tap the folder against the flat of my palm, and I will myself to look Fisher in the eye. Because I’m empty now, and I need him to tell me that there’s something that will fill me back up again.
“If I do this,” I begin, and Richard Fisher raises his eyebrows. “If I do these packets, and I share in group, and I come here and talk to you, then I’ll get better, right?” The question lodges in my throat, and I blink away tears that burn at the back of my eyes. “I’ll get my life back. And maybe—maybe I’ll get Savannah back, too?”
Richard Fisher gives me a small, sad smile. “The work of recovery is a long road, Eli, and we can’t know how it will turn out. Once we take down all the things we were hiding behind, our lives become more honest, more authentic. We see the world differently, and sometimes we find we don’t want the same things we did before. But let’s take it one day at a time, okay?” He motions toward the folder in my hand. “That’s the place to start.”
I promise Fisher I’ll start on the packet, but I leave his office in a fog of doubt. I needed him to tell me he could fix me, that A+B=All Better, not give me a bunch of philosophical mumbo jumbo about a “higher power.” Because no matter what Fisher says, I know the only person I can depend on is myself.
At first glance, the Step Two questionnaire looks like another dirty laundry list of all the fucked up things I’ve done. I flip through it, lounging on a picnic table in the visitors’ yard after lunch, the afternoon sun so warm at my back I could almost forget where I am, almost forget my admission in Richard Fisher’s office.
Almost.
Blacked out? Check.
Driven a car while under the influence? Check.
Lied? Cheated? Run from the cops? Check. Check. Check.
I swear these packets are like flashback tours through the worst kind of haunted house, the kind you can’t get out of until you’ve seen everything there is to see. I’ve been on an emotional tilt-a-whirl since Savannah left, a constant seesaw between hating her and missing her so bad it hurts. But as I skim through my own answers to these questions, a quiet truth slows my swirling emotions into a dull ache: No wonder she left you.
I skip the rest of the questionnaire and flip to the next part. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I skim the page.
Sometimes it can be hard to trust anyone other than ourselves, especially if the adults we thought of as our higher powers have let us down.
A memory comes to me like a swift kick in the ribs. I flip open my journal and sketch the night with words.
I was eight years old, and Dad had promised to take me to a baseball game. Steven had just started coming around, and he’d bought me a brand-new Phillies cap special for the game. I’d packed my glove in case a fly ball came my way. Dad told me I might even be able to get it signed. He promised lots of things—pizza, ice cream, the best seats in the stadium. And then he didn’t show.
I sat on the front porch steps until it was dark, and Mom came outside.
“He’s coming,” I told her, as she sat down beside me. A neighbor’s TV blared the game through the open window next door. Glowing blue light filtered out into the yard. “He’s coming.”
It wasn’t until later, when a brisk pounding on the living room window woke me from a dead sleep, that I knew Dad had finally shown up. I’d run to my window, pressed my face against the glass. Mom was on the porch. They were arguing, gesturing wildly and yelling so loudly that one of our neighbors shouted at them to keep it down. Mom put her hands on Dad’s chest and shoved; I watched him stumble backward.
“No!” I screamed, pounding on the glass so hard it rattled. Dad glanced up. I knew from the look that passed over his face that he had heard me. But instead of coming inside, he turned and headed back to his bike.
“Dad!” I hollered, taking off out of my room and down the stairs so fast I almost tripped on the hem of my pajama pants. “Dad!” I burst through the front door and out onto the porch just as the motorcycle revved to life. “Dad, wait!”
Mom tried to stop me, but I yanked away from her, so that all she held onto was a handful of my pajama sleeve. But it was enough. By the time I jerked free, Dad was already pulling away from the curb. “Dad!” I screamed, running up the sidewalk barefoot, ignoring the stab of chipped concrete in my soles. “Dad! Come back!”
Porchlights flickered on. I darted into the street as the bike’s taillights disappeared around the corner. “Dad!”
“Eli,” Mom said, panting as she finally caught up with me, “come back inside.” She tugged at my hand, her eyes skipping furtively toward the nearest house, where an old lady had lifted the corner of her living room curtain to peer out at us. “People are watching.”
When I didn’t budge, Mom dropped to her knees in front of me. “Eli, honey,” she said, pushing my hair out of my eyes, her fingers gently brushing my scar. “Eli, look at me.”
“He left me,” I whispered, the truth washing over me like ice water. Dad wasn’t coming back. We would never be a family again.
Mom gripped my shoulders, forcing me to meet her gaze. “This didn’t have anything to do with you, okay, buddy? This was not your fault.”
I stared hard into her hazel eyes, black like holes in the soft glow of light from the street lamps. “I know,” I told her, shaking free from her hands. “It’s yours.”
For a second, Mom looked stunned, as though I’d slapped her. Then her lips pressed into a tight line. She stood up, gripped my hand firmly in hers, and silently led me back to our house.
After that night, Dad didn’t come around as much anymore. Birthdays and special events, if I was lucky. At school, I’d stare out my classroom window and imagine his bike pulling into the lot. Then I’d wait for the intercom to buzz on, calling me to the office where my dad would be waiting. We’d eat soft pretzels and cherry water ice, and we’d count the boats, and everything would be the way it was before. And when that didn’t happen, I decided maybe Mom was wrong. Maybe it was my fault after all.
“What are you working on?”
I startle, slamming the notebook closed. Libby’s standing next to me, dressed in ripped jeans and a t-shirt, her hair pulled up in a high ponytail.
“Geez,” I say, quickly ducking my head to swipe at my eyes. “Where’d you come from?”
Libby’s eyes narrow. “I’ve been standing here for like two minutes.” Her eyes flicker to my purple notebook, half-hidden under my clasped hands. “Must be some deep dark secrets in there, huh?”
I look past her, thinking of deep dark secrets and the scars on Libby’s wrists. “Relatively speaking.”
She smirks. “I’m surprised to see you out here. Kinda figured you’d be up in your room, stewing in post-breakup self-pity.” She waves her hand, shooing an invisible fly. “The afternoon speaker starts soon. You coming?”
I turn back to my step work, flip to a random page, and pretend to read. “No thanks,” I say. “Pretty busy stewing at the moment.”
Libby holds up her hands. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“No problem.”
I peer up from my notebook. Libby’s blonde ponytail swings against her back, brushing her shoulders as she walks away. From this angle, I could almost mistake her for Savannah.