’Cause, see, the thing is, besides Melonie, there are, like, fifty of these people called counselor’s assistants—you know, CAs—who are constantly swarming the grounds like an infestation of head lice.
As far as I can tell, their only real job is to spy on us—or me, in particular—and report back to our counselors whatever it is we’ve been doing wrong.
And, fuck, man, somehow they’re able to catch everything.
I mean, at least with me.
Other people can be walking around holding hands and flirting like crazy, but if I so much as even look at a girl, I’m telling you, Melonie’ll get me—every time.
And she knows I can’t do shit about it.
Like I said, I’ve got no money—no one to bail me out. If they kick me outta here, I’m on the streets—the fucking streets of Phoenix, Arizona. If it was San Francisco or LA, at least I’d have a chance. But here? Man, I don’t even know where the nearest store is.
Not to mention that the longer she keeps me here, the more money my parents have to pump into this bullshit place.
It’s brilliant, really.
I mean, at this point my parents are so desperate they’ll do just about anything Melonie tells them. She’s replaced a God I’m pretty sure neither of them actually ever had in their lives in the first place.
And if I try to argue, shit, they all just assume I’m resisting ’cause I secretly wanna go get high. If I try to call this place out on its bullshit, the staff just dismisses me, telling me it’s my “addict” talking. As if, because I’m a junkie, I’ve somehow lost all ability to reason—to analyze and critique situations. Maybe when I was high I didn’t know the difference between reality and psychosis, but I’m sober now, and I’m telling you, when it comes to this place, the emperor has no clothes—no clothes at all.
But I’m as good a bullshitter as anyone.
I can’t wait to see Melonie’s chunky, placid, dopey-looking face when I tell her me and my girl are over. That I’m ready, like Jonathan said, to commit fully to the hard work that lies ahead of me here.
Ch.4
So I wake up, right? Even before the bedside alarm clock goes off—just lying there awhile—the thick comforter pulled right up to my neck—staring at the goddamn Lincoln Log ceiling.
Gray light, all dull and muted, floods the room.
I turn onto my side—shut my eyes—open them—just trying to get my head to shut the hell up.
There’s this feeling of… I don’t know.
Hopelessness, I guess.
Images of suicide are projected against the textured blur of my unfocused eyes.
Blood turns to poison—gasoline—lit fires.
A gun barrel is there, pressed up against my temple—cold, heavy, tangible.
My finger squeezes the trigger tight—my arm jerks back.
A noise so loud my eardrums burst open.
A serrated kitchen knife plunges in behind my ear, slicing through the vital arteries there.
There is a chain wrapped serpentine ’round my throat—a dog’s choke chain and leash—secured to a heavy wooden beam beneath the ceiling.
I kick the chair out from underneath me—feel the metal cutting in, the heaviness of my body. My lungs spasm, legs twitching, stomach convulsing. Sexual arousal. Fluids draining out.
But, honestly, if I was gonna do it, I mean, really fucking do it, I’d take the easy way—the only way: a shot of black tar so thick my hand would have to struggle against the plunger.
No pain.
Just bliss.
And one final nod.
I’ve told Melonie about it.
I mean, it kinda freaks me out—these fantasies of death.
She tells me there’s actually a term for it, so I’m obviously not that unique or anything.
Suicidal ideation.
I’m pretty sure that’s it.
She also tells me that killing myself would be a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
Thing is, my problems really don’t seem all that temporary.
I mean, why do you think I started getting high in the first place?
I was twelve years old.
My friend’s brother got us some weed—a dime bag, that’s all.
We hiked down to a creek near his parents’ house—trees grown over thick—mud and veins of ivy pulling at our shoes like thousands of clutching fingers.
The smell.
Damp, rot, sweet.
We huddled together, terrified of cops and parents and parents’ friends.
The bowl was passed to me.
I took a hit, holding the smoke in my lungs for as long as I could—feeling the drug reach out into the cavities of my brain—spinning webs of pixie dust and cotton candy.
I felt open like a child—full of wonder—innocent, like I could never remember being.
I had permission to do anything—act any way I wanted.
I was high.
That was my purpose.
But most of all, more than anything else, smoking herb gave me freedom.
I didn’t care anymore.
I didn’t need to hold my family together.
I didn’t need to rescue my mom from her abusive husband.
I didn’t need to worry that my dad loved his new wife and children more than me.
And nothing, I mean, no one could touch me.
It was instant relief.
At only twenty bucks a gram.
But, unfortunately, I mean, what no one told me, was that my tolerance would build. By the end of high school, I was smoking all day, from the moment I got up to the moment I passed out—but it wasn’t really working for me anymore.
I was barely getting high at all.
The relief had been taken away.
And I was stuck with the pain of living as myself again.
I needed something—something to take it all away.
And then I found hard drugs.
After that, man, pot seemed like baby aspirin.
And I went down.
I mean, down, down, down.
Sleeping in the devil’s bed.
As Mr. Waits would say.
But, you know, after all these years, even hard drugs aren’t really doing it for me anymore.
And maybe that’s the scariest thing of all.
’Cause if I can’t find something else—some way to live with myself—then, yeah, suicide’s gonna be all I’ve got left.
And, honestly, it doesn’t seem all that bad.
Or that far off.
But I figure I can keep
