Giraldi loved it.
“I just spoke with Ms. Butler,” he said. “She told me so far you're in compliance with counseling. And you've been going to all your classes too, but I can't tolerate you getting into fistfights.”
“Our deal had nothing to do with that.”
“Don't you think you get into enough fights, Phillip?”
“Pip.”
“Look at you. Look at that shiner. You're going to go through life wearing your bad attitude on your face forever.”
I just stared at him.
“You're making some changes. You're going to all your classes. But if you're going to continue to get sent to my office I won't be able to ignore that. You have to toe the lineâthe whole line.”
He had no idea that by getting on my back, he was making it harder for me not to smoke that joint I had waiting in my sock
just in case.
But I did it. I got through the whole friggin' school day without one toke of weed.
I picked Mikey up. Took him to T-ball practice. Read some more of that Jekyll and Hyde book, then took Mikey home.
He wanted me to shoot hoops with him outside in the driveway. Instead I smoked a cigarette and sat on the side while he took shots. He was running up and down the driveway with his Superman cape flapping over his back.
“I know why Daddy drinks those bottles on top of the fridge,” he said out of nowhere.
“Why?”
“He drinks them because he's sad.”
I didn't tell him how stupid I thought that was. “What makes you say that?”
“I can just tell.”
“And drinking makes him so happy, he yells and chases us into the garage?”
Mikey put the ball under his arm for a second and thought about that.
“Maybe it can't make him happy,” he said. “But it makes him mad and that feels better than being sad. Right?”
I flicked my cigarette across the street. I didn't know what to say.
He almost made sense.
I remember coming home from somewhere when I was twelve. I walked into the house, and my father was sitting on the couch with Mikey on his lap. The kid was like two years old. My father was smiling at him, doing googly baby noises and trying to get him to laugh.
He didn't know I was there. He was playing and then all of a sudden he stopped. His face droppedâlike his head went somewhere else that made him real sad.
One second he was playing and the next he had just stopped cold.
I didn't get it.
I went to the Site for the hell of it. Where else was I going to go?
I wanted to get out of my house. I needed to get out of my house. It's just as hard to be
home
without a buzz as it is to be in school.
Johnny and Slayer weren't aroundâI was alone with the underground crew. I sat down against Beattie's headstone.
“Hey, man,” I said to Beattie. “It looks like it's going to rain.”
The clouds were doing some crazy stuff over my head. They were moving and changing faster than I'd ever seen. If I'd been stoned I'd just figure I was seeing things, but this was for real.
“I'd rather be out here in the rain,” I said to Beattie. “It's better than school or home, where I can't friggin' breathe.”
Then I remembered who I was talking to. “I guess I shouldn't be complaining to you. I mean, you
really
can't breathe. At least you got plenty of grass,” I joked, and pulled a handful of it out of the ground.
The clouds were running a race and it was starting to get dark.
“Thanks for not asking me a lot of stupid questions,” I said. “You're pretty smart for a dead guy. You know that I don't have any answers. But let me ask
you
a question.”
I lit a Marlboro and blew out some smoke.
“What the hell does this mean on your pillow here? âBeloved Husband, Loving Father.'”
The rain started falling in buckets. No drops. No sprinkles.
I lay back and closed my eyes.
The rain put out my cigarette.
I got up pretty easy the next morning. I didn't have that after-high feeling from smoking the day before. It was the first time in a long while I'd gone a whole day without weed. Hell, I didn't even have a beer.
I was kind of laughing to myself. I knew I could do it. Drugs weren't my problem.
Life was.
I grabbed a Pop-Tart and drank some milk out of the carton. Mikey was watching cartoons. Bugs (the real one) was fighting it out with Daffy Duck.
Rabbit season. Duck season. Rabbit season. Duck season.
Mom looked like hellâlike she forgot to brush her hair or maybe forgot to wake up.
The Grinch didn't wake up feeling too good either. “Mikey,” he yelled. “I thought I told you no cartoons first thing in the morning.”
Rabbit season.
“Sorry, Dad.”
Mikey got up from the living room floor and turned off the television.
“Don't talk back,” yelled the Grinch.
And the morning just went on like that. The Grinch was riding Mikey for everything. Even when I tried to jump in to get him yelling at me instead, he kept right on the little guy. Mikey was shaking from trying so hard not to cry. Eat your breakfast faster. Wash your dish. Sweep the floor. Wipe your nose. Stand up straight. When he smacked him in the back of the head, the kid finally lost it and got tears all over his shirt.
“We got to go,” I said, grabbing Mikey's backpack and sort of pushing him out the door.
Walking to school, he didn't say much. He kept his head down and kicked rocks.
“How come Mom doesn't make him stop?”
I was wishing he'd just ask me something about M&M's.
“She can't do anything,” I told him.
“But you do,” he said. “You yell at him. You get me away from him sometimes. Youâ”
“I just do what I been doing since I was your age. You can do it too, you know.”
He shook his head but didn't say anything until we got to the front of the school.
“Dad said last night he was still going to the zoo with me.”
“Great, Bugs. You better get moving or you'll be late.”
He pulled the straps on his backpack and tossed a rock into that hole before going into the building.
I wondered if he was ever going to be able to deal with stuff the way I did when I was sixâthe way I was still doing ten years later.
I didn't want to think about it. Thinking about how he was going to turn out when he was sixteen made me feel sick to my stomach.
I want to know what the hell I'm doing.
School sucked.
All I did was watch the red hand tick-tick its way around the clock each period. The only good thing about being there was Kirkland's class. He talked about Jekyll and Hyde and I actually had some clue of what he was saying. I got to sit next to Jenna the whole time too. She smelled like some kind of flower. I'd never really liked flowers, but whatever one was hiding out in her perfume was doing something to me.
Group made me crazy tooâa bunch of guys sitting around in a circle like they were getting ready to play duck-duck-goose. I was having trouble getting used to it.
It started with Claire talking about the urine checks from the other day. Everybody's was clean except mine. Surprise, surprise.
“You clean today?” Anthony asked me.
“I took a shower,” I said.
“So this guy is always going to be a wiseass then?” Darius asked.
“Did you use today?” Paco wanted to know.
“No. I didn't do anything.”
Claire looked at me. “What was that like for you?” Her question was right out of some psychology book.
“It was no big thing.”
Mark made some pig snortâlike he wasn't buying a word I said.
“Come on,” he said. “You went all day without your almighty weed and you're cool with that?”
“I could stop if I wanted to. I just don't want to.”
“But now you have to,” Mark said. “Or you're tossed out of high school.”
“And your old man kicks your ass,” Darius said, smiling.
“Lay off the old man stuff,” Paco said. “The only reason
I
came here was 'cause my father dragged me by the hair. It was either this or military school.”
“What's
your
old man think about you coming here?” Anthony asked me.
“He doesn't know.”
“See?” Darius smiled again.
“He doesn't know shit about me. Why should I tell him about this?”
“Do you want to tell us anything about your family?” Claire asked. “Whether or not you have brothers or sistersâif your parents are divorced or together.”
“My parents are still together.”
I didn't want to say out loud how I wished they weren't. These guys wouldn't be able to wrap their heads around that one.
“I have a brother too. Mikey. He's six.”
That was all I was going to say. It was somebody else's turn to talk. I was tired of being on the spot.
“Does your old man hit you?” Paco asked.
I squinted my eyes into a what-the-hell's-the-matter-with-you look.
“My old man used to take a belt to me,” he said. “When I got bigger he just used his fists.”
“That's hard, man,” I said.
“He likes to drink. He gets sauced and takes it out on me and my mama. It's better when he pops me, though. She don't take it too good.”
Nobody spoke for like a minute. I sure as hell had nothing to say.
“So what happened to your eye?” Anthony asked.
“I was kissing a trainâthings got out of hand,” I said.
Nobody said a word. Claire didn't even swivel in her chair.
“So we all going bowling tonight?” Anthony asked. “We got to keep Mark and Pip off the street.”
They all started talking about hooking up at the bowling alley.
Clean and sober activity,
Claire called it. It was supposed to be one of those things to keep us away from the people, places, and things she was always talking about.
I kept quiet. They went on about where they used to hang out and the places they've been going to lately.
“You coming with us?” Darius asked me.
“No, thanks. I got something else going on.”
Darius wasn't smiling. “Friday night. Of course you got something else going on. What is it?”
“Just hanging out with some friends.”
“They use?” Mark asked.
“So what if they do?”
“See, Pip, they're not going to like that in here,” Mark said. “You heard how they ripped into me last time.”
Then they spent ten minutes trying to tell me how I should stay away from my friends. How my friends are going to bring me down and keep me using. They didn't get it. If I wanted to use I was going to do it whether I was with Johnny and Slayer or not. First Giraldi tells me I have to go to counseling, then I have to stop using, and now I have to stay away from my friends.
Screw them.
I remember playing with Matchbox cars when I was a kid. I made bridges out of blocks and ramps out of books. I made a different sound for every car. Some engines purred, some rumbled.
I was the driver for every one of them. Fire engines, tow trucks, police cars, Mustangs, BMWs, and demolition cars with the Pennzoil stickers all over them.
I was king of the roadâthe roads I made.
Before I went out I spent about ten minutes in my closet. I was looking at the two bags of weed Johnny had given me. The bag he gave me to smoke and the bag I was supposed to sell. I never even split that bag into smaller ones. I knew I wasn't going to sell it. I wasn't a businessman. When Johnny looked at a bag of weed, he saw a way to make money. When I looked at a bag of weed, I saw how many joints I could roll and smoke myself.
I shoved both bags back into my closet and left the house.
That wasn't easy. I'm not even 100 percent sure why I did it. Maybe because I'd already gone all day without using. I figured I'd finish out the night without the weed and keep that urine check clean.
But that didn't mean I wasn't going to drink.
I met Johnny and Slayer and a couple of other guys at the parking lot behind the post office. They had a keg of beer and everybody was smoking pot. One guy was passing around speed. I'd had two beers and was thinking about getting out of there. Standing around in a parking lot leaning against Johnny's mother's red Escort wasn't doing anything for me.
Johnny came over and put a small mirror under my chin. It was a little square mirror like the kind my mother keeps in her pocketbook.
“It's time,” he said.
“What?”
“Take a hit.”
I looked at the mirror and saw the two lines of white powder going across it.
“Time to take a ride on the white train,” Johnny said, and handed me a rolled-up dollar bill to snort it with.
“Thanks for the cash,” I said, took the dollar out of his hand, and shoved it in my jeans.
“Very funny,” he said. “Come on. I saved it for you.” He wiped his nose and pinched his nostrils with two fingers.
“I'm not up for this tonight.”
“What's with you, man?”
I didn't want the group to be right. I didn't want to use just because I was with these guys. I wasn't about to give my friends up right along with everything else. I couldn't let go of everything.