Clean Read online

  But Olivia won’t turn into a monster. She won’t lose her mind one day and go on a killing spree and end up on a Law & Order episode. What I’m afraid of is that she’ll destroy herself, turn her pain inward until it kills her. And the whole time everything will look perfect on the outside. No one will know she’s dying until she’s dead.

  “Really, Olivia,” Christopher says. “You don’t look good.”

  “I think we should get the nurse,” says the New Guy.

  Olivia puts her hand on her forehead and closes her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her.

  “My eyes,” she says.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  “Everything’s glowing.”

  Eva stands up. “Okay. We’re going to the nurse now.”

  We all stand up. Jason notices from his table across the dining room and stands up too. Olivia rises, and we all circle around her, grabbing at her, anticipating her fall.

  “Stop hovering,” she says with a little laugh, and that makes me smile. It’s a sad joke, and we all know it. I doubt her parents have ever shown her this kind of concern.

  We start walking toward the door. Everyone’s looking at us. The AC in charge says, “Hey, where you guys going?” He’s a new guy with a big scar across his cheek and dressed in denim from head to toe. It seems like we have a new AC almost every day. I guess it takes a special person to do this kind of job. I guess most of them figure out quickly that they aren’t that person.

  “She’s going to the nurse,” Jason says, taking charge. I think he’ll do well in military school. His arm touches mine, and I don’t flinch. I know I should hate him, but I don’t.

  We’re almost to the door when Olivia goes limp and falls to the ground.

  Her body starts jerking. Her legs kick. I feel her feet kicking my legs.

  “Oh, God,” someone says.

  Her eyes are closed. Her skin is suddenly porcelain. She is hard and fragile and she is going to crack. There is no life inside.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Someone protect her head!” Jason yells, and Eva crouches down and collects her, holds her in her lap. “Olivia,” she says. “Olivia, please.”

  Her lips are turning blue and the floor is a puddle around her. She has wet herself. Olivia, you have finally lost control.

  “Someone get the nurse!” Jason yells, and Christopher goes running. The new AC runs over but seems to know Jason’s in charge now. Olivia keeps shaking, and there is a thin line of blood trailing down her chin.

  “Oh, God,” someone says again.

  God. Why would you do this to her? She doesn’t deserve this. All she’s ever done is try to be good.

  Olivia’s body goes limp. Everything is still. No one moves or makes a sound.

  “Olivia,” Jason says.

  She doesn’t move. I can’t tell if she is breathing.

  “Olivia.”

  Nothing.

  “Oh, God!” I scream. It has been me saying it this whole time. Oh God oh God oh God oh God. Please, God. Please.

  CHRISTOPHER

  Come here,” Eva says,

  and pulls my arm.

  “Ouch,” I tell her, even though it didn’t really hurt, but she can’t just go around pulling on people’s arms like that. It’s after community meeting and everybody’s outside smoking as usual. They’re still talking about Olivia’s seizure, and I just can’t take it anymore. I’ve been staying as far away from anyone not in my Group as I can, because it just makes me mad to hear them talk. It’s like they have no right to say anything, because when did they ever talk to her? When were they ever nice to Olivia? They have no right to start pretending they’re best friends now.

  Eva’s still pulling on my arm and it’s actually starting to hurt, so I say, “What do you want, Eva?” and she stops pulling and looks at me and says, “Christopher, what happened to you?” and I’m like, “What do you mean, what happened to me?” So she says, “You’ve changed,” and I say, “Of course I’ve changed. I’m three weeks sober and my friend is in the hospital,” and she says, “It’s more than that.” I don’t really have anything to say to that, so I just stand there looking at her, trying to ignore the hot, tight feeling in my stomach and chest that keeps coming up all the time, that’s been pretty much permanent since yesterday.

  “You’re, like, really grumpy,” she says, so I say, “I, like, totally have a right to be grumpy.” Then she says, “But you’re, like, never grumpy,” and I’m getting really tired of this conversation and every other single conversation I’ve been having lately. “What’s your point?” I ask her, and she just says, “Come with me,” and starts walking toward the stairs that go upstairs, even though everyone’s still on the smokers’ patio and we’re not allowed to leave the area. “Where are you going?” I say, and she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even turn around. I look behind me, and the ACs are busy watching everyone on the patio, and everyone on the patio is busy watching each other, so nobody notices Eva walking into forbidden territory.

  “Eva, you’re breaking the rules,” I say, but I follow her up the stairs anyway.

  “So tell on me,” she says.

  “We’re going to get caught,” I say.

  “So turn around,” she says, but I don’t. I keep following her, but I don’t know why. I’m supposed to be the good kid, right? I’m supposed to follow the rules and not get in trouble and be a perfect little angel all the time, but maybe I’m getting tired of that. Maybe I want to do something else for a change. Look where being the good kid got Olivia. In a hospital, probably with tubes coming out of her everywhere.

  Eva stops at the top of the stairs, and I run into her. “Hey,” I say, and she goes “Shhh” with her finger in front of her mouth like I’m in trouble for talking in church. “Where are we going?” I whisper. “Just be quiet,” she says, then pokes her head into the hall and looks around. She motions to say the coast is clear, and I notice a new feeling in my chest, something much nicer than what’s been there lately, something lighter, electric, almost like the feeling I used to get from meth or coke. She whispers, “Channel your inner ninja, Christopher,” and before I have a chance to ask her what she’s talking about, she runs across the hall to the big fire door by the bathrooms, the one with the big sign with red letters that says DO NOT ENTER, and I run after her without thinking, and it’s like one of those war movies where the soldiers jump out of their hiding spot and start running exposed, trying to dodge enemy bullets as they head toward safety. Except this is not a war zone, it’s just a glorified clinic in a suburb of Seattle, and I don’t know what I’m running from and I don’t know where I’m going.

  We’re at the door and her hand’s on the metal handle, and she’s got a look in her eye like anything is possible. “What are you doing?” I ask her.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” she says.

  “You can’t get out this way.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There’s no way out.”

  “Of course there is,” she says. “There’s always a way out. They just tell us we’re trapped here, and we don’t question it. But I bet you a million dollars we can just walk right out and no one will notice.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “I dare you, Christopher,” she says. “I dare you to break the rules, just this once.”

  The feeling in my chest gets stronger. The electricity spreads into my shoulders and down my arms until I can feel it tingling in my fingers. “But I don’t want to leave,” I say, and I mean it, but something about it feels like lying, like we’re talking about something entirely different from what we’re talking about.

  “Don’t worry, Christopher,” she says. She grabs my hand, and the warmth in hers mixes with the electricity in mine.

  “But I want this, Eva,” I say. “I want to stay sober.”

  “I do too,” she says. “We’re not running away. We’re going to come right back.”

  �
��What are you talking about?”

  “We’re just taking a little vacation.” She smiles and looks me in the eye. “Don’t you need a vacation, Christopher? You’ve been serious your entire life.”

  I hear the door open downstairs, then the voices of everyone coming back in from the patio. A surge of electricity shoots through me, and I realize right then that Eva’s right. I do need a vacation. I need to do something, anything, that’s different from everything I’ve ever done before.

  Without saying anything we push together and the door opens just like any other door. No alarms go off, the sky doesn’t fall, we’re not sent straight to hell for breaking the rules. I breathe in the fresh, cool pine-scented air. I feel my heart beating fast inside my chest. Eva says, “Go,” and we start running.

  We run and run and I don’t know how long we run. I just know that the air feels good against my face and down my nose and in my lungs. Everything in my body stings like little pinpricks, but I keep running. Eva’s breathing sounds painful, but she’s got a look on her face like pure bliss, and I feel like laughing, this feels so good.

  “Scream,” she yells at me.

  “What?” I yell back.

  “Just start screaming.” And then she opens her mouth wide and a great big “Aaah” comes out, so I do it too. I open my mouth and just push.

  We’re running down the street screaming like a couple of crazy people, the trees and quiet houses whipping around us. Cars drive by, and I don’t care what they think. All I care about is the stinging in my lungs, the burning in my legs, the cold tears in my eyes, my voice loud and raw and ugly. Eva slows down and turns, her eyes wild. “Fuck,” she says, and hunches over and tries to catch her breath. “Fuck,” she says again.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fuck yes,” she says. “I’m better than okay.” She manages to steady her breathing a little. “Damn, I need to get into shape.”

  There’s a little park up the road, so I start running toward it. “No more running!” Eva yells, and hobbles behind me. I want to keep moving. I never want to be still again.

  “Just a little farther,” I say.

  “Listen to you.” She laughs between wheezes. “You’re such a rebel.”

  I reach the park and find a swing and start swinging. I don’t know when the last time was that I was on a swing. It feels like I haven’t been outside in forever. Eva gets on the one next to mine and we don’t say anything for a while, just keep swinging, up and down and up and down, flying and falling at the same time.

  “How are you feeling?” she says after a while.

  “Great,” I tell her, and I don’t remember ever feeling this good without drugs. Even then there was always something not quite right, like this anxiety under every good feeling, a yearning for something else, a tight ache that would keep me on edge.

  “See,” she says. “And you didn’t even want to come.”

  “Eva, you’re crazy,” I tell her, and I mean it in the nicest way possible.

  “Thanks,” she says. “You are too.”

  We just swing for a while, and the chains make a squeaking sound, like metal breathing, and I start thinking about Todd, about how in all those months of him climbing into my room at night, we never once did anything like this. We never just sat together like this, comfortable, not using each other for something. And all the other kids at church that I’ve known for as long as I can remember, we’ve never even known each other at all.

  “Thank you,” I say to Eva, and she doesn’t have to ask what for. She just smiles and nods and keeps swinging.

  “You know what?” she says.

  “What?”

  “I think it’s going to be okay.”

  “What is?”

  “I don’t know. Just… it”

  “Oh,” I say, and then I feel a little pinch of sadness, because maybe I’m not so sure about that anymore, that things are going to be okay. Because in these last three weeks the world’s gotten bigger than it’s ever been in my whole life, and I realize I don’t understand any of it. I’ve always had faith, that blind sureness I was taught by my mother and my church, but I’m starting to think I need more than that to get through this.

  “Eva, can I tell you something?” I say.

  “Is it that I’m beautiful?”

  That makes me smile. The Eva I met three weeks ago would never have said something like that.

  “Yes, that’s one of the things I wanted to tell you,” I say, and she smiles and closes her eyes and points her face to the sky, and she is beautiful, she really is.

  “You know the guy Todd I’ve talked about?” I say. “The one I did all the meth with?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He didn’t make me pay.” I don’t know why I’m telling her this. I didn’t think I’d ever tell anyone. We were just sitting here swinging, and out of nowhere this thing was in my mouth, all sharp and hard and cold. I was thinking about faith and how it’s not everything anymore, and all of a sudden there was this new thing in its place, this truth, and my mouth had to open to let it out.

  Eva looks at me with something new in her eyes, something familiar, something I think I used to have. It’s the stillness that comes from trusting that everything’s going to turn out just the way it needs to. I don’t know where or how she got it, or how long it’s going to last, but it looks beautiful on her.

  “I did other things,” I tell her. “He made me do other things.”

  She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me with that look in her eyes that says I can tell her anything and she’ll still be there, she won’t run away.

  “At first I didn’t want to. He was mean about it. Violent. He said he’d kill me if I told anyone. But after a while he didn’t have to force me. I just did it. After a while I started wanting to.”

  She reaches out her hand and wraps her fingers around mine. Our swings are out of sync for a few moments, but slowly they catch up until we’re swinging in time. She squeezes my hand, and I know I don’t have to tell her that I enjoyed it, but I do anyway. I tell her that even though he was cruel and dumb, even though I was scared and ashamed, my body had a mind of its own. I tell her how I learned to close my eyes and pretend it wasn’t him, how I could pretend he was handsome and kind and gentle, how I could pretend he loved me and he didn’t think what we were doing was disgusting, that I was disgusting for wanting it. The thing is, you don’t get many choices when you’re stuck in a secret. The world gets so small, you learn to be grateful for whatever you can get.

  “Did you love him?” Eva says.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I hope not. I hope love feels different from that.”

  We hold hands for a long time, swinging limply, our feet scraping the gravel beneath us. It’s like we’re on the cover of some morbid Hallmark card, two kids waiting in a park on the edge of a funeral. The scene is a muddy pastel, with tiny versions of ourselves. Eva is wearing a frilly dress and pigtails, and I’m in an oversize tuxedo and top hat. You can tell from the picture it’s going to rain soon, even if you can’t feel the moisture in the air, even if you can’t smell it.

  It’s cold and we’re not wearing coats, and the sweat from our running absorbs into our clothes and our bones. Eva’s hand seems like the only warm thing I have ever touched, and I love her at this moment more than I have ever loved anyone.

  “Are you ready to go back?” she says.

  “Almost,” I tell her. I take a deep breath, feel the cold air in my lungs, taste the pine from nearby trees, taste the smoke from a distant chimney. I feel the sharp wetness of drizzle on my face. I breathe in, close my eyes, feel the swirling of life and faith and truth inside me. I breathe out, and they are all still there.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m ready.”

  KELLY

  In the next few days

  we’ll all be gone. Jason graduates tomorrow. Then he’s off to military school. It’s me the next day, then Christopher and Eva. Olivia was supposed to go home af
ter that, but who knows what’s going to happen now.

  After we’re all gone, Shirley will have a brand-new Group and will probably never think about us again. I wonder how many kids filter through here in a year, how many broken lives they attempt to put back together. I wonder how often they succeed. I’ve heard the statistic that only 10 percent of us stay sober for a year after graduating. What about the other 90 percent? Were the rest of us just a waste of time? Are we going to spend the rest of our short lives getting higher and higher until we can’t get high anymore? What then?

  Or maybe some of us just aren’t done yet. Maybe we’ll choose recovery eventually, but just not yet. Maybe this was just practice and we collected everything we learned here, filed it away to use later when we decide we really need it. Later, because we’re so young and we have years’ worth of partying left in us. Later, because we still have time before we hit rock bottom.

  But Olivia—I don’t think she has another bottom left. How can there be any lower for her to go?

  The rest of us, I don’t know. Even though we’re only sixteen or seventeen, maybe this is our last chance. Or maybe it’s not. The scary thing is that there’s no way of knowing. I want to be one of the 10 percent who make it, but how many of us say that, and how many of us end up drunk a few days later? Maybe I’ll get out in the real world and forget everything I learned in here. Maybe the voice will come back, the one that tells me I have everything under control, that I shouldn’t worry, that it’s okay to relax and have a drink even though everything is falling apart, because a drink is the only thing that can fix it. And maybe that voice will win, and it’ll put those drinks in my hand and it’ll put that coke in my nose, and it’ll tell me it’s okay to drive. But this time it won’t be the neighbor’s porch and rosebushes that suffer. This time it will be someone’s sister or friend or father or daughter, and I will have traded their life for the chance to get high.