His eyes go kinda wild as he yells, “Well, we’ll just see about that now, won’t we?”
He stomps off toward the office and I follow, dragging my feet on the ground behind him.
Not surprisingly, I guess, Adam seems to take my transgression just as seriously as everyone else. His face goes very kinda angry, or whatever—jaw set, eyebrows all furrowed and shit. He tells me to take a seat and I do, on one of those low-to-the-ground office chairs with the little wheels. It makes a metallic, sort-of-groaning noise as I lean back.
“So, Nic,” he says, his voice deep and affected. “I’m Adam, the weekend manager. We haven’t had a chance to meet yet.”
I don’t say what I wanna say, which is, “No shit.”
I really don’t say anything at all.
“Well, look,” he continues, crossing his thick, tanned arms, all covered in coarse-looking white-blond hairs. “When I talked to Chip this morning, he told me you two made some kind of a deal that you were going to change your attitude and not make any trouble. He also told me that if you went back on this deal in any way, I was to ask you to leave immediately. Now, do you remember having that conversation with Chip yesterday?”
What I really want to do is roll my eyes, but I’m able to stop myself. “I remember,” I say, sucking in a lot of breath—holding it—exhaling. “But I wasn’t causing any trouble. It’s just… for some reason when I was listening to that speaker, all this shit started coming up for me. I don’t know, it’s like, I used to get so much out of those meetings, but today I couldn’t connect at all. I mean, it just seemed like such bullshit. And that was really scary to me, man. I’m serious. I know how much I need those meetings, so feeling like that, fuck, it freaks me out. I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to buy into that shit again. And, believe me, I want to super fucking bad.”
My body’s rocking back and forth involuntarily. I look around the cramped, institutional white-painted office. There are no photos on the wall, no inspirational posters, no art prints, nothing—nothing to focus on but the shelf holding the client folders. Actually, I’m pretty sure mine hasn’t even been started yet. I mean, I definitely can’t see it up there.
“Hey,” says Adam, I guess noticing that I’ve spaced out for a second. “Is this boring you? ’Cause there’s nothing keeping you here if you wanna go. Hell, I’ll even help you pack. Because I can tell you right now, this is not how I want to be spending my Sunday, either. So if you wanna leave, leave. Otherwise, I’d stop giving excuses and start improving your attitude. ’Cause all I hear you saying right now is that your addict has total control over you. So if you want to give in to that, fine. Otherwise I don’t wanna hear one more complaint about you criticizing the program, or anything else, ’cause we got no tolerance for that here.”
I really do wonder for a second if this guy might just be fucking with me or something. Maybe this is like some initiation, some hazing thing for the new people.
“Wait, are you serious?” I ask, allowing myself a kind of forced laugh. “I can’t talk about having doubts or anything? I mean, I’m telling you, I’m genuinely freaked about this whole thing. Should I just, like, pretend I’m not feeling this stuff?”
Man, his expression goes even angrier than before. “I’m not gonna debate with you, okay? We don’t debate here. You listen. So if you think you can start doing that, then you’re welcome to stay. If not, just come into the office and we’ll get your discharge paperwork all ready.”
He turns back toward the small computer monitor in the corner and immediately starts typing something.
Me? I walk over to the house pay phone.
The pay phone that’ll be off limits to me for however long they feel like making it.
I have no change, but I have that phone card Sue Ellen bought me, so I go on and give her a call. There are a few guys outside smoking pretty close to me, so I turn my back and hope to God they’re not rats, like everyone else in this goddamn place.
Sue Ellen answers after the third ring, the connection all crackling like a beat-up old record spinning around. Still, her voice comes through soft and sweet and beautiful and like the best sound I’ve ever heard in my goddamn life. It takes about two minutes to convince her to get me the bus ticket. I mean, I can hear her anxiety, and I’m scared, too, but she tells me to go to the station—my ticket from Gallup, New Mexico, to Charleston, South Carolina, will be waiting for me. Besides all the fear and everything, I can tell we’re both excited. Before we hang up, we both say, “I love you.” It feels very real.
So immediately I go back to my dingy-ass room and pack my things quickly—filling my duffel bag with the few clothes I have left and then putting into my backpack some stuff I figure I’ll need on the bus: a notebook, some pens, a Michael Chabon novel I borrowed from Jason before things got bad, a couple of packs of cigarettes, some energy bars left over from my mom’s care package, and a bottle of water. Now, I guess, all that’s left is to get my guitar back from Adam and, I hope, convince him to give up all my meds. I tell myself for, like, the thousandth time that it’s all gonna be okay. I tell that to myself over and over, even though I know damn well just how many things could go wrong. I mean, what if Sue Ellen asks me to leave after a couple weeks? What if
