Bottled Up (12 page)

“How do you
think
it was?” she asked him.

“I don't know. That's why I'm asking.”

“You know if you used last week or not,” she said.

“Fess up, man,” said the one guy who'd been quiet up until then. He was wearing a blue T-shirt with my brand of cigarettes and a lollipop sticking out the top of the front pocket. “If it was clean she wouldn't be bustin' on you.”

He looked at me and put a hand out for me to shake. “I'm Anthony, by the way.”

“So what did you find?” Mark asked her.

Claire put her elbows on her knees. “Why are we playing games? You know and I know and everybody in here knows you had a dirty urine. Now
you
tell us what you were using. This is what getting honest with yourself and others is about. It's not about you taking chances and trying not to get caught.”

“Come on already,” Darius said. “Stop screwing around.”

“I had a joint the night before group. One joint. Big deal.”

“Where'd you get it?” Anthony asked.

“I was hanging out with a guy who had some and—”

“What guy?” Anthony pushed.

“Just a guy.”

“What's his name?”

I didn't know why Anthony gave a crap who it was. I figured maybe he didn't like Mark too much.

“It was Tommy, right?” Paco asked.

“Yeah. So what?”

Darius shook his head. “You hanging out with him again?”

“So it's not surprising you used that night,” Claire said. “We talk about staying away from the people, places, and things that tempt you. If you put yourself at arm's length of your drug of choice, you're going to pick it up.”

“He had ecstasy too, but I didn't touch that.”

“You still used,” Anthony said.

“You guys never slipped when you first tried to quit?” he asked.

Nobody answered.

I wasn't sure what was going on or why I had to be there for it. I wasn't like these guys. I didn't want to stop using, but if I did, I could do it whether I had stash in my pocket or not.

“This is your last slipup, Mark,” Claire said. “Strike three and you're out.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You get two dirty urines,” Darius said. “On the third one you're out of group.”

“Pip, do you want to tell us about the urine I took from you last week?” Claire asked.

“That one doesn't count,” Paco said. “Right, Claire? Because he didn't start group yet.”

“It counts in the bigger picture but not for getting tossed from group.”

“Maybe I could get one of you guys to take care of filling my cup today,” I said, smiling.

“Just don't ask Mark,” Anthony said.

“You don't have to take a urine off Pip today,” Mark said. He leaned against me and inhaled. “He had a couple of joints and half a brewery on the way here.”

“No kidding,” Darius said. “Why'd you even bother coming to group if you were going to come stoned out of your head?”

“I didn't want to come here,” I said.

“Why don't you tell the guys a little bit about yourself and why you've joined the group,” Claire said.

I looked at their faces. Every guy was watching me except for Mark. He was sucking on his overall strap. Claire started moving back and forth in her chair again. I didn't know what to say.

“I got blackmailed into coming here. My principal said if I didn't do the counseling gig, he was going to toss me out of school and call my house to tell the folks all about it.”

“Throw you out for what?” Paco asked.

“I don't know. Stupid stuff.”

“Right.” Anthony laughed and shook his head.

“So what?” Mark asked. “Your principal never called your house before?”

“He never called before to tell them I was expelled and should be in a rehab.”

“So what were you afraid of?” Darius asked.

“I just don't need the hassle.”

“You mean you don't need your old man giving you another black eye is what you don't need,” Darius said.

Who the hell did this guy think he was?

“You don't know what you're talking about,” I said.

“Yeah, I do. You turned white as blow soon as I said that.”

“Let's ease Pip into the group scene a little slower, Darius,” Claire said. “None of you guys told your whole story in one session. Why should he?”

She put a hand on Paco's shoulder. “How about each of you share with Pip what you're doing in group and what it is that
you
want.”

“We talk about that a lot in here—what we want,” Paco said. “I want a girlfriend, a roll of cash, a sports car, and season tickets to the Knicks.”

“But what are you really saying you want?” Claire asked.

“Love, security, mobility, and entertainment.”

Anthony laughed. “Claire taught him those big words,”

“What do you want, Anthony?” Claire asked.

“A woman who makes a lot of money, who can't talk so I don't have to listen to her bitch. She's got to cook, and I'll take one of them sports cars too.”

“That's your macho answer. That's not what you've been telling me.”

Anthony looked around for a second as if he was trying to decide whether he should answer. He took the lollipop out of his pocket, tore off the wrapper, and shoved it in his mouth.

“I want to be a fireman like my father and my grandfather. I can't do that if I'm drinking a keg of beer on weekends and snorting coke every day.”

Mark sat up and took his strap out of his mouth. “I want to get all the assholes off my back. I got a principal too,” he said to me. “I got a parole officer and a loser father and a dead mother who all get on my case in their own way.”

“I want people to respect me,” Darius said. “Not because they're afraid of me, or because I got the bottle to pass around or the best weed in my pocket. I want respect because I'm doing the right thing.”

I laughed a little. It was all sounding like the end of some movie they show in health class.

“What's so funny?” Anthony asked. “You're so stupid, you don't even know how to use a roach clip.” He looked at the group. “Check out the burn on this guy's lip.”

Darius gave me a look that meant death. “You'd better not be laughing at me, punk.”

“Sorry, man,” I said. “You guys just sound so friggin' serious. You know, lighten up a little.”

“Smoked as much weed as you did before group, we'd all be laughing too,” Mark shot back.

“They sound serious because this
is
serious,” Claire said.

“I figured
you'd
say that,” I told her. “Don't you see these guys are just yanking your chain—saying what you want to hear?”

“Screw you,” Darius said. “If you can't be serious get the hell out.”

“Wish I could.”

“Tell us what
you
want, Pip,” Claire said.

“He don't know what he wants,” Darius mumbled, looking as if he was getting ready to spit.

“I want
not
to come here, and I want everybody to get the hell off my back.”

“I'm with you,” Mark said.

“You just don't want your old man to kick your ass,” Darius said. “That's the only reason you're here. You're scared.” He smirked at me, and if I wasn't so stoned I would have decked him.

“Go to hell,” I said.

“Been there and back, butthead.”

“Pip,” Claire said. “Think about it. It's important. What do you really want out of life?”

Walking home from group, I was thinking about what would happen if Giraldi called the house to tell my father I was expelled and that he thought I was using drugs. I'd seriously get my ass kicked, then I'd get sent real far away to rehab. But maybe being sent away wouldn't be as bad as I thought. Maybe I could handle the biggest ass-whipping of my life and then get hauled away and never have to deal with the Grinch again.

I just had no idea what a rehab would be like. They could make you shave your head or have you running laps and doing push-ups every day. They could feed you crap like oatmeal and tofu every meal.

What I knew was a lot easier to deal with than what I didn't.

I was trapped.

I couldn't go to the group stoned or have a dirty urine, or I'd get thrown out.

I had to go to the group or Giraldi was calling home.

If Giraldi called home I was dead.

I was still thinking about all this when I walked in the front door. There was a big vase on the kitchen table filled with flowers. The card was to Mom from my father. I knew without even reading it. And Mikey was playing with some super-expensive remote-controlled toy he'd been asking about for like a hundred years.

My father handed me twenty bucks as soon as he saw me.

He was feeling guilty. Maybe you could even call it feeling sorry. I'll call it being crazy. He handed me the money, then asked me what happened to my face.

No joke.

I couldn't chance having Giraldi call. I never knew what stage of crazy my father was going to be in from one day to the next.

I shook off whatever was left of the drinking and smoking I'd done that day. I shook it off and looked my life in the eye. Looked at Mikey playing as if he was some happy, normal kid. Looked at Mom on the couch with her eyes closed. At Dad, smiling at me.

When Jekyll turns to Hyde, somebody always gets hurt in my house. If Giraldi called, it would probably be me—but maybe not just me.

I couldn't take chances. Not with this. I was trapped.

I needed a joint.

I had my head out my bedroom window. I was smoking a joint and a cigarette at the same time. I'd lit both, figuring if anybody walked in and caught me, I could say it was just a Marlboro they were smelling. I wasn't thinking straight.

“Whatcha doing?” Bugs asked me as he walked into my room. The kid never knocks.

I dropped the joint and let it fall out the window, but cursed when I saw it was Bugs and not the Grinch.

“Get out of here, Mikey.”

“But I—”

“I said get out.”

I shoved him out of my room and slammed the door behind him. I heard him stomp off into his room, then
his
door slammed.

I guess I should have let him talk. I kept pushing the kid away. But I had so much on my head already.

I went across the hall to his room and opened the door. He was sitting on the floor with action figures in his hands. They were fighting with each other. He was making pow-pow sounds and a few uggghs.

“What did you want, Bugs?” I asked him.

“Forget it,” he said without looking at me.

“Come on. You wanted something.”

“I beat Dad at checkers—that's all.”

“That's all?”

“No.” One of his action figures fell over and died. The other one stood on the dead one's chest. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“So ask.”

“Why does Daddy drink that stuff off the top of the refrigerator anyway?”

I rubbed my hand over my face. I didn't need this.

“Why don't you ask him?” I said.

“Forget it. I knew you didn't know.”

I started to walk out of his room.

“You don't know everything—do you?” he said.

“Nobody does.”

“But you know everything about you. Right?”

“I guess.”

“So why do you smell like Daddy sometimes and smoke cigarettes?”

“Mikey, I'm going to bed.”

“You don't know all about you either—do you?”

“Maybe I'm just not saying, Bugs.”

“Daddy couldn't tell me either.”

“Tell you what?”

“Doesn't matter.” He got up off the floor and took his Superman pajamas out of his drawer.

I went back to my room. I took out everything I had in my pockets and put it all on the dresser—the old bottle cap, the twenty-dollar bill, the picture of my father and me.

I wasn't worried about Bugs. He could take care of himself.

I had my own stuff to figure out.

I tried. I tried not to smoke—I tried to get through the whole day of school without a joint. I had to. If I showed up at group and gave a dirty urine, I was toast. I knew Giraldi was waiting for me to screw up. He called me into his office just to ask if I was doing the right thing.

I told him to call Claire and ask her. He said he was just about to.

Go ahead. Have a friggin' party trying to screw up my life.

I couldn't sit still in school. I was ready to kill somebody. I kept taking bathroom passes just so I could get out of my seat—walk the halls. Kirkland kept me after class again to see if I was all right. If he thought I was going to tell him how I got my shiner, he was the one smoking too much weed.

Coach Fredericks threw me out of gym. I didn't want to play the stupid floor hockey game anyway. Some punk, Steven, hit me with the stick right in the friggin' shin. I wasn't my regular cool, chilled-out self, so I popped him one. Not too hard. I mean, I just shoved him into the wall and gave him a sucker punch right in the gut.