Clean Read online

  CHRISTOPHER

  I hadn’t slept in three days and I was scared. I had always managed to keep things under control, but it was getting harder and harder. It felt like there were all these things piling up, all these secrets, and I felt like I was going to explode.

  JASON

  I was drinking and looking around on the Internet, and Jessica was just playing on the floor with her toys. And I needed another drink, so I went downstairs to the den, where the bar is. There are a lot of stairs. And they’re wood. Hard. And I forgot to close the baby fence thing. And it was open. And Jessica was following me. I didn’t know.

  OLIVIA

  I remember the sound of sirens. Someone pulling on my arm asking if I was okay. A dog’s wet nose sniffing my neck. A growing crowd and a chorus of muted voices. “Is that the Cunningham girl?”

  CHRISTOPHER

  I was out of my mind, but I can remember sitting down on my mom’s bed and deciding that I’d had enough. I think I said something like, “Mom, I think I’d like to go to rehab, please,” and she just kept blinking at me. I remember the blinking. I told her I had a drug problem and I needed help, but I don’t think I waited for a response. I just left her there blinking and went upstairs and fell asleep for two days.

  EVA

  The girl came home, and there he was, sitting at the dining room table that hadn’t been used in almost three years, with her stash sitting on a plate in front of him, everything arranged in neat little piles like a grotesque Passover plate.

  KELLY

  The cops said I drove my car onto the neighbors’ front lawn. I crushed their front porch and destroyed their prized rosebushes. I remember the nausea I felt when I looked next door, like the ground had suddenly disappeared and taken my stomach with it. I remember holding my breath, asking myself, How can I not remember doing that? I remember thinking, What if those rosebushes had been people? What if that porch had been some little kid’s bedroom?

  JASON

  I remember the sound of her falling. I remember the soft thump, thump, thump, in slow motion, like that sound was the only thing that existed, like everything else was frozen. I was frozen. There was just the sound of her little body falling, like a sack of potatoes, like a baseball mitt. And then silence. That was the worst part. The silence.

  OLIVIA

  The doctor said I’d had a heart attack. I’m seventeen and I had a heart attack.

  KELLY

  I pretty much hid in my room the whole time I was waiting to go to court. My parents didn’t even have to punish me, because I did it myself. I stopped going out. I stopped talking to my friends. Suddenly none of it seemed like that much fun anymore. But I thought my friends were going to at least make it hard for me, at least call and beg for me to come out. But they didn’t. Not once. Everyone at school found out what had happened and tried to make it a joke, but when I didn’t laugh with them, they were just like, “Bummer,” and then they went off to have fun without me. No “Are you okay?” No “Do you need anything?” Not even good-bye.

  EVA

  It was usually so easy to be cruel to him, but there he was, exposed, without the protection of his cave, his face painted with a new devastation. And there was something else there too, something like fear, and the girl realized she was terrified too. The father said, “I found this in your room.” And all the girl could say was “Yes.”

  OLIVIA

  Everyone sent flowers. All of my mom’s rich charity friends. All of Dad’s business partners’ wives. The hospital room was like a giant gaudy bouquet. The IV in the back of my hand itched. Fluids. I was dehydrated. And calories, the nurse said. I was malnourished. Then she shook her head and said under her breath, just loud enough that I could hear, “How can a rich white girl be malnourished?”

  CHRISTOPHER

  When I woke up and went downstairs, Pastor Tom was in the living room holding my mom’s hand. She was crying softly and wouldn’t even look at me. Pastor Tom said he’d made an appointment. He didn’t mention what for. He told me to get dressed and grab something quick to eat on the way. I made some toast, plus a couple pieces for my mom. I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, and she just sat there crying, and I knew she would never look at me the same again.

  JASON

  Jessica’s out of the coma now. She came home just before I left for this place. Permanent brain damage, they say. She can’t talk anymore. She can barely walk. She just sits there and looks out into space, like she’s searching for something.

  KELLY

  The judge let me off easy. One look at my sad sweet family and I had his sympathy. Instead of juvie and a criminal record, I was ordered to go to rehab. So here I am. I guess I’m lucky.

  EVA

  The funny thing was, the girl wasn’t really mad. She mourned her medicine flushed down the toilet, but there was a larger feeling, a foreign feeling, like she was almost happy that he’d sifted through her secrets, happy that he’d finally seen things of hers.

  CHRISTOPHER

  I e-mailed Todd before I left. He didn’t even ask if I was okay. All he wrote back was, “Did you tell?” and I knew he wasn’t talking about the drugs.

  OLIVIA

  It’s hard to lie when doctors can do toxicity tests while you’re unconscious. And it’s impossible to think up a story when someone else beats you to it. I woke up to everyone knowing what chemicals were in my body, but no one had any clue how they’d gotten there, so they jumped to the natural conclusions. I woke up to my father crying, wondering how his straight-A daughter could have succumbed to peer pressure, how I could have used his money to buy drugs off the street. I did not correct him. I did not tell him where the drugs were from. I glanced at my mother hiding behind him, and she couldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I told my father. “I’m sorry.”

  JASON

  My mom’s slap hurt worse than my dad’s punches, his kicks to my side that cracked my rib. Because when she said “It should have been you,” I knew she was right.

  KELLY

  Something is seriously

  wrong with Olivia. It’s been days, and I don’t think I’ve seen her smile once. How is that even possible? Even the most depressed person in the world has to smile sometimes. She’s over there on her side of the room cleaning like her life depends on it. All we have to do is pick stuff off the floor and make our beds, but she’s doing that thing where she lines up all her shoes so they’re pointing in the exact same direction. I guess I’m supposed to be watching her so she doesn’t do anything crazy, but how am I supposed to know? Everything she does looks crazy to me.

  “Hey, Olivia,” I say. I guess it won’t hurt to be nice to her. And if I’m stuck in this room for the next twenty minutes, I might as well talk to somebody. It’s better than sitting on my bed and staring at the wall, which is pretty much the only other thing there is to do.

  “What?” she says. She’s tucking the sheets so tight that there are no wrinkles anywhere. Her sleeves are rolled up and I can see her tiny muscles straining against her skin and bones. God, she’s skinny. She’s pulling as hard as she can, and it looks like her arms could break.

  “It’s only a sheet,” I tell her, but she says nothing.

  She starts on the other corner. “Do you have a boyfriend?” I say.

  “No.” She doesn’t even look at me. Aren’t girls from families like hers supposed to have better manners than this?

  “Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business.” She’s adjusting the pillow so it’s in the exact middle of the bed. She moves it an inch to the left, then about a half centimeter to the right.

  “I bet you think I’m a slut, don’t you?” I say. Now she looks at me. It takes her a while to say something.

  “No, I don’t think that. I don’t really think anything.”

  “Liar,” I say, but in a nice way. “I know what people think about me.” I could be hallucinating, but I swear she relaxes a lit
tle. She almost looks me in the eye. “What’s your dream guy like?” I ask her.

  “I don’t have a dream guy,” she says.

  “Are you a lesbian? It’s totally cool if you are. My aunt Lorrie is a lesbian.”

  Back to angry face again. She’s at the dresser now, taking out all her clean clothes. “No, I am not a lesbian.”

  “I didn’t really think so,” I say. She unfolds one of her sweaters, then refolds it and puts it back into the drawer.

  “You know what’s weird?” I say. “I don’t really like hot guys.” I think she just rolled her eyes, but I don’t care. “I go out with all these hot guys, but they’re assholes, you know?” I don’t know why I’m telling her this. Maybe because I know she won’t tell anyone. In order to gossip she’d actually have to talk to people.

  “There’s this guy in my history class I kind of like,” I tell her. “I think he’s in the drama club or something. He’s kind of short and he’s not really that cute, but he always seems happy. Like, genuinely happy, you know? Not happy like he’s high or making fun of people; he just seems happy with himself and the way things are in the world. I did a group project with him one time and he was really nice, like he really listened when I was talking. I think he likes me, but I can’t really tell. That’s weird, you know? Usually I can totally tell when someone likes me.”

  Olivia shows no sign that she’s heard anything I’ve said. Talking to her is only slightly better than talking to a wall.

  She’s on her knees now and moving something around under her bed. “Do you want help with that?” I ask her.

  “No,” she says to the floor. She’s not wearing a belt, and her size double-zero jeans are riding low on her hips. I can see each vertebra of her spine sticking out of her back. She turns to get farther under the bed, and her jeans drop even lower, and I can see the bone of her hip. It’s decorated with a dozen or so thin red lines, perfectly straight, perfectly parallel. If she were anyone else, I’d probably think it was some kind of weird pseudo-tribal tattoo. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Olivia’s a cutter, but it’s scary to see it all of a sudden, her pain turned into these sad, precise scars. I feel like I should look away, like I have seen something way too intimate.

  She turns around and catches me looking. Her face turns red and she pulls up her pants and crawls even farther under the bed.

  “What are you doing under there?” I say. Just act like nothing happened.

  “Nothing.”

  I don’t know why, but I go over and sit on her bed.

  “Don’t mess up the sheets,” she says.

  “I’m not,” I tell her.

  “I’m just trying to keep everything organized,” she says.

  “You do that a lot, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Try to keep things organized.”

  She pulls herself out from under the bed and just sits there, looking straight ahead like she didn’t even hear me.

  “Why does everything with you always have to be so perfect?” I ask her.

  “I don’t know,” she says, and all of a sudden she seems exhausted, like she can’t keep her posture straight, like she barely has enough energy to keep her head up.

  “It sounds hard,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Being you.”

  She looks at me like I just offered her a million dollars but like she doesn’t trust me, like she thinks I’m playing a trick on her and I’m going to take it back any second. I never thought I’d say this, but I guess I kind of feel sorry for Olivia. I wonder if anyone’s ever really noticed how hard she’s working and how crazy it’s making her.

  “You know what?” I say. “I think I can help you.”

  “How?”

  “I am totally qualified to teach you how to be a slacker.” She doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t even smile, which actually hurts my feelings a little. “Oh, lighten up,” I say. “You’re on vacation.”

  She sits up a little straighter, smooths out her sweater, and runs her fingers through her hair. There’s definitely some pretty in there, something soft. But she blinks, and just like that, she’s ice again.

  “Are you going to tell?” she asks.

  “About what? All your crazy organizing? Do you want me to tell?”

  “What do you think?”

  “What about the other thing?” I say. She acts like she didn’t hear me. “I saw the cut marks, Olivia.” She looks away, tugging on her sleeve. “Don’t you think you need to talk about it?” She doesn’t say anything. “Don’t you think you need to talk about something?”

  She pulls away and stands up, looks in the mirror and tucks the stray pieces of hair behind her ears. She runs her hand along the clothes in our shared closet, each hanger perfectly spaced.

  “Hello?” I say, but she says nothing, just shuts the closet door and walks into the hall like I don’t exist.

  DRUG & ALCOHOL HISTORY QUESTIONNAIRE

  QUESTION #3:

  What were the negative consequences of your drinking and/or drug use? What problems have you had as a result?

  self-destruction hangovers

  self-harm humiliation

  blackouts overdoses

  trouble in school trouble with the law

  trouble with my parents

  loss of trust loss of relationships

  loss of respect

  spent all my money on drugs worthlessness

  sadness

  stole money for drugs

  powerlessness

  rage had sex for drugs

  shame

  depression

  unwanted sex anxiety suicidal thoughts

  pregnancy loss of control

  STDs liver damage

  rape abortion heart damage

  weight gain

  lung damage

  weight loss

  guilt brain damage

  fear anger bad grades shame

  loss of ambition shame

  shame

  PERSONAL ESSAY

  CHRISTOPHER

  Something I’ve realized since I’ve been here is that my world is very small. Like, freakishly small. Like, not normal. I’ve never been anywhere. My whole life I’ve pretty much stayed within a one-mile radius of my house in my crappy neighborhood of Renton. But it never really struck me as weird until now, because I guess everyone else I know is pretty sheltered too. I’m homeschooled, so the only other places I go are church every Sunday, Bible study every Wednesday night, and youth group every Tuesday and Saturday nights. All of these take place at my church, which is a five-minute walk from my house. Church, church, church. My entire life takes place between home and church. Church and home. Sometimes Mom will send me on an errand like to pick up milk at the corner store, which is three blocks away. But that’s rare. Most everything we need gets delivered. My mom got a big personal injury settlement around the time my dad left when I was a baby, plus the government gives her money because she can’t leave the house to go to work or anything, so that takes care of that. We’re a very self-contained family.

  OLIVIA

  There’s not much to say about me, really. My existence is defined by how I compare to everyone else in my family. Every year marks another handful of awards earned by my brothers, another promotion for my father, another article in the newspaper about my mother’s fund-raising galas. And then there’s me, invisible and “better-than-average.” That would be good enough for most people, but not for me. “Average” is still in the title.

  JASON

  When I was nine, I broke a plate when I was washing the dishes and my dad whipped me with his belt until I bled. I didn’t cry. I stood there, bent over the kitchen table with my naked ass in the air, getting whipped so bad it hurt to sit for a week. But I didn’t cry. I don’t have much to be proud of, but I’m proud of that.

  EVA

  This girl is a sixteen-year-old pothead and pill hound. It wasn’t always like this. No. She was someone else once. There was sun
shine and whispering grass. There were neighborhood parks with sandboxes too wholesome to be shat in by wandering cats. Clean sandboxes. That was the world. That was the first day. But on the second day, there was cancer. There was a mother, gone. On the third day, there was silence. There was a hole, bottomless. There was the girl, consuming everything in sight, trying to fill the hole. There was no one around to tell her to stop.

  KELLY

  You know those losers who dress up like cartoon characters and go around posing for pictures with kids? I pushed one over once. At Disneyland. Donald Duck, I think it was. He was posing for a picture with the twins, and I just walked up to him and pushed him as hard as I could. He fell onto his back, and his stumpy little arms and legs were flailing all over the place, and my sisters and all the other kids were crying, and parents were hugging them, comforting them like they’d just seen someone get murdered. And you could hear poor, stupid Donald screaming inside his giant costume head, and he couldn’t get up even though other employees ran over and were trying to help him. So he ended up just taking off his Donald Duck head even though I’m sure it’s probably totally forbidden, and there he was—this scruffy, fat, sweaty, panting man who looked more like a child molester than a cartoon duck. And I just stood there looking at my parents for a reaction, any reaction. But they were too busy comforting Shayla and Nicole, hugging and kissing them and telling them everything was going to be okay.