I slam the door shut—pull my jacket tight around me—leave footprints in the muddy snow as I trek to the smoke pit.
A whole bunch of us are there, for some reason talking about how terrible Christmas is. Smoking cigarettes, huddled in against ourselves, under the protection of the little wooden shelter.
Sue Ellen is sitting with her legs crossed, rocking back and forth, smoking all exaggerated, like a teenage girl.
“I think this last Christmas of mine has to be recorded in some book as, like, one of the worst Christmases in the history of Christmases,” she says, exhaling through a big O she’s made with her mouth.
She goes on to tell us, first off, that she’s part of a big family, and that her cousin, Lily, who’s twenty-five, announced at Christmas Eve dinner that she was six months pregnant. According to Sue Ellen, the pregnancy was the result of her cousin not wanting this deadbeat, unemployed douche bag to break up with her. Said douche bag had agreed to marry her, but they had nowhere to live and no money. Well, if that didn’t cause enough of an explosion, Sue Ellen’s brother came to the Christmas dinner drunk as shit and then proceeded to get a whole lot drunker. He started yelling at everyone, screaming obscenities, talking about how he knew they all hated him—all this before storming out the door, turning on the car, and driving over the front lawn before screeching out of there. The police called about twenty minutes later—her brother was in custody after having crashed his car into a nearby lake. The punch line of the story was her sister’s husband saying, “Man, this sure beats karaoke.” Which, I guess, is what they usually would’ve done.
Anyway, we’re all laughing super hard at the way Sue Ellen tells the story. And, of course, I can’t help staring at her—her pale skin stinging, red from the cold. I’m staring, staring, and that’s how Melonie catches me. I mean, I didn’t notice her walking up at all.
She clears her throat, and I glance over in immediate terror to see her bundled-up, wide pig face, bordered by a thick black scarf and a black, furry hat.
“Nic,” she says, not smiling at all, her eyes looking at me intensely. “I need to talk to you in my office before group, okay? Can you walk down with me?”
My stomach tightens.
“Is it all right if I finish my cigarette?”
She pauses for a couple seconds.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No, you’d better come now.”
I stamp out the rest of my cigarette and then follow Melonie down the hill.
Honestly, I’m not sure what the hell Melonie expects, exactly, when she sits me down and says, “Nic, I want you to tell me the truth now: Is there something going on between you and Sue Ellen?”
I try to make my face look as disgusted as possible.
“What? You mean romantically?”
She nods.
“No way,” I say, kinda loudly. “Not at all. I mean, I think she’s fun to talk to and all, but that’s it. She’s like a little girl, you know? Like my little sister. Besides, I’m not even into girls my age. Believe me, we’re just friends, that’s all. I could so not be interested in her.”
Melonie reclines slightly, and I figure that must be a good sign.
She smiles some.
“Oh, good, Nic, I’m so glad to hear that. But you do understand why I asked, don’t you?”
My shoulders rise and fall. I’m trying to look, what? Incredulous? Something like that.
“Honestly,” I tell her, “not really. I mean, we have been spending a lot of time hanging out, but I figured anyone who had eyes could see all I want is to help her.”
Melonie leans way forward, resting her elbows on her knees. She makes her eyes intense, so it’s like she’s about to drop one of her profound insights on me.
“It sounds to me,” she says, pausing a whole lot like some bad TV actor. “It sounds to me like she reminds you of your mom—or even Zelda. Sue Ellen is just another woman in trouble who you think you can save. I believe you when you say you have no romantic intentions toward Sue Ellen. Still, I can’t help but notice that you’re repeating a similar pattern. You couldn’t rescue your mom, and you couldn’t rescue Zelda, so now you’ve found someone new to reenact your fantasy with—even if it is on a strictly platonic level. Why don’t you check in with yourself and see if that resonates at all?”
I nod my head, okay.
I mean, I gotta say, at this point I’ve definitely been here long enough to know how to handle this. To get all defensive—tell her to fuck off, like I wanna do—is only gonna be taken as an admission of guilt. What I’m supposed to do, if I want it to look like I’ve made progress in the program, is just to accept the feedback, ask myself whether it feels true, and if it doesn’t, just let it go. So, yeah, knowing all that, I just nod my head, saying, “Yeah, okay, I’ll think about that. I mean, that could be playing a part in this, for sure. Right now it doesn’t feel like any of this is even that important, but I’ll take it in, for sure.”
Melonie seems very pleased. I stare at her little baby teeth all lined up straight in a row. She’s smiling real big.
“Good, Nic, good. You know, you’re really making so much progress. I mean, God, when I think about how you were when you first got in here, I can’t even believe you’re the same person. There was a while there where I didn’t think you were gonna be able to make it here. I
