The Masochist Boy (6)
Which was good, because when he came back to school the next year, the first person he saw was Vivien, talking eagerly to a good-looking boy in the hallway. "I’ll see you after school," he was saying, "in the park." Robby shifted his pack to the other shoulder and walked up to them. "See you in the park, Jason," called Vivien as the other boy left. Robby stared after him, stunned. He was one of those golden-haired blue-eyed boys with a smile that could kill small animals at close range; one of those Junior Game Show Hosts kind of people who everyone loves. He was wearing baggy jeans and a designer shirt and backpack. He looked down at his own clothes. He was wearing the same old black pants and black Nirvana shirt. He didn’t own anything else. "Hello," he said to Vivien. "Hello," she smiled. "How was your summer?" "Um…alright. How was…how was yours? Who is that kid?" "Oh, him? That’s Jason Wayte! I met him in Pennsylvania over the summer. His bungalow was right next to ours. We spent practically the whole summer together." His mouth hung open. He tried to close it, frustrated with his own reactions, and said: "Oh." "He took me tons of places with him. We had the greatest time! I wish you would have been there. You would have loved it." "I’m sure," said Rob. "He says he thinks his father might have a job for mine, and he’s going to ask tonight. That’s what he was saying just now. He’s really sweet that way." She frowned. "Are you alright?" "Oh. Oh, yes." He clamped his mouth shut. He was not going to do anything stupid. He’d survived the whole summer. So Vivien had a new friend. Good for her. "Good." She smiled, then looked at the color-coordinated map. "Darn it. We only have English together, and that’s at ten-thirty. Oh well. We’ve got to get together some time; I want to talk to you." Then her face lit up. "Wow! I’ve got biology with Jason! I hope we get the same seats we had last year. Those were good seats. What classes have you-Rob?" He said abruptly: "I’m going to be-I’m going to be late-better-I’d better go." She began to say something like: "But Rob, class doesn’t start for fifteen-" But he was gone before she finished the sentence. The periods dragged by. It was the same as it had been two years ago; he was sitting alone in a corner, because no one wanted to sit with him. Even in English, Vivien was halfway across the room. He tried to find her after school let out, but she was nowhere to be found. He waited by her locker, but she didn’t come. So he started to the park. He saw her on Fifty-Seventh and Layton, taking the turn towards the park that they usually took. She was walking with Mr. Sunshine, Jason, listening with rapt attention to something he was saying. Rob decided he wouldn’t go to the park that day. Instead, he started for home. Three blocks away Tom and Will caught sight of him and started to chase him. He leapt through the door in two unearthly bounds, let it slam behind him. He heard his mother throwing up in the bathroom. He ran up the stairs to his room. He felt too sick even for the heroin and that filthy needle. He sat on his bed for a moment, just thinking in stunned disbelief. Then, quietly, he took out his notebook and deducted the one thousand bonus points he’d given himself for last year. For the first month, he tried. He still waited by her locker, he still looked for her. Sometimes he found her. But she didn’t have any time for him, usually; Jason was taking her to the movies; Jason was taking her to the park; they were going shopping; they were going skating. And on the few days when she did have time, it was all about Jason. "Do you know what Jason said to me yesterday?" "Jason has a…" "Jason’s doing this after school…" "So then Jason said…" "Jason thinks…" He didn’t get it. He just didn’t get it. He knew Jason Wayte; the kid was in three of his classes. He wasn’t a bad guy; a little pompous, sometimes. His father was rich, and he was a little bit spoiled, but he was still a pretty friendly guy. Didn’t have much to say to a loser like Rob. But Rob still didn’t see what was so special about him. He even went as far as to ask a girl named Theresa, although seeing as how Theresa was popular and couldn’t be seen with the likes of him, he wasn’t allowed to ask her until everyone else had already left and she told them she was using the bathroom. "What makes Jason Wayte so special?" repeated Theresa, her eyes wide with disbelief. "What are you, stupid? He’s like, the cutest boy in the world! Oh my gosh, those eyes-that hair-" "Wait a minute," he interrupted incredulously, "you mean the only reason you girls are friends with him is because he looks nice?" " ‘Friends’? ‘Looks nice’? Boy, you are stupid. We’re not friends with him. He takes us out on dates! I’ve gone out with him seven times," she added proudly. Then she scowled. "Although lately he’s been going out with this brainy girl who has a squeaky smile. I don’t know what he sees in her. She skipped like two grades, plus she gets, like, A’s in every class and she’s such a goody-goody-" "What’s her name?" he asked. He knew it before she answered. "I don’t know. Something with a V. Vivian or something. She’s so small and short and flat. I don’t know what he sees in her. Say, are you alright?" He nodded a couple times, heartbroken, and started home. "He doesn’t look good," she said to herself, delighted. "Wait till I tell Penny." Vivien going out with someone for their looks. Well, could he blame her? Could he really blame her? All teenage girls did that. Why should he blame her? Why should he expect more from her? Besides, if she was this kid’s girlfriend, then that was good; that meant that she could still be friends with him. When she got around to it. Except all she wanted to talk about was Jason. He really didn’t want to hear about Jason, or look at the pictures they’d taken together, or go anywhere with the both of them; he thought he didn’t really care for Jason that much. In fact, if Jason got hit by a truck tomorrow, he wasn’t sure he would be particularly sorry. Jason was good-looking and popular and had thousands of friends. He didn’t need to take Rob’s only one away from him. Jealousy, thought Rob, is an ugly thing. He would sit on his bed, cross-legged, and he would wonder what they were doing, wherever they were. He could almost imagine them. He imagined all the wonderful things Jason must be doing right now. Jason would buy her a necklace and take her out for dinner and show her a movie. Then he would drive her home in his sports convertible. Rob didn’t have a car. His mom’s had three wheels missing. And then they would start talking, while they were driving home in his million dollar car. Jason would say: "Where were you on Sunday?" and she would say: "Oh, nowhere." "No," he would say, "you can tell me, Vivien. Where were you?" And she would say: "Oh, just helping out this other kid I know. His name is Robby Schultz. I knew him last year." And he would say: "Robby Schultz? Isn’t he that suicidal druggy? I don’t know what you see in him. He takes drugs, doesn’t he? Heroin? That’s illegal!" "Oh yes," she would say, "all the time. So sad, really." And he would say: "And he doesn’t have any good clothes. And he doesn’t have a car, either. Not even a Volvo!" And they would laugh, and he’d continue: "So what do you see in him? You wouldn’t go out with him, would you, darling?" And she would be horrified, and say indignantly: "Of course not! He’s too thin and too pale anyway. I never said I would go out with him! It’s just, I feel sorry for him, you see, and I helped him a lot last year, so I thought I’d drop by every now and then and just, you know, do what I have to. Trust me, I’m only doing it because I have to." And then they would burst into haughty laughter. By the time he had imagined the last part, Vivien had gone from wearing her usual clothes to a sparkly dress with a pearl choker and a fur boa and gloves and diamonds, and Jason had gone from baggy dreams and designer shirt to an expensive tuxedo and tophat, and the car was no longer a trendy convertible but a Rolls Royce with plush velvet seats. Vivid imagination can be a curse. Or was he just hallucinating? By the third week of school, he was considering dropping out. Whatever plus he’d gotten out of going last year was gone. Those darned teachers were still yelling at him, Tom and Will were still beating him up, and Vivien was too painful to even think about. He could easily have claimed that he needed to drop out to take care of his mother, who had just been diagnosed with lung cancer due to smoking drugs. They were going to operate on her, and she had an inhaler, and for the moment was well enough to live at home, but now they were warning her about cholesterol and blood sugar and fluid in her lungs and who knew what else. She would never stick to the rules if left alone; she needed some one to enforce them. He would stay home and listen to her snapping and lace his veins up with heroin and forget about life in general. When he turned eighteen he would kill himself so people would never be able to point to him and say he was a bum. He thought about it, sitting on his bed. And then he made a sudden decision. No. He wasn’t going to do that. He was going to go to school. He was going to learn. He was going to study. He was going to pass the tests and graduate and surprise everyone! Seriously, did he expect Vivien to be friends with a loser? If she didn’t want to, should he handle it by moping around his room? No way. He was going to show them all. He was going to get A’s. He was going to deal with the drugs. He was going to call up his aunt to come and take care of his mother. He hadn’t seen her since he was eight, but he thought he remembered her. Melanie, her name was. She was maybe forty-four, and she had two kids who were older than him. She lived a few states away, but that was alright; she would come. And he would take better care of Jenny. He would do all the things for her that he’d wanted somebody to do for him when he was little. He would make her happy and proud that he was her brother. He made a list in his notebook: Grades. Heroin. Aunt Melanie (1-555-876-2332) Jenny. He couldn’t do anything about the car or the clothing, but if he worked next summer…you never knew. And anyway, these were things he needed to do for himself. Forget Vivien. He was going to remake himself. He was going to be proud of himself. He was going to do it all this year! He pressed the STOP button on the Nirvana cd. No more feeling sorry for himself. It was time to kick things into high gear. He froze in the doorway. Narcotics Anonymous. The chairs were arranged in a little half-circle, with the instructor’s stool in the middle. There were three other kids in the group; they were already there. The meeting wouldn’t start for another five minutes or so, but they were just sitting in their chairs, listless. One had spiked purple hair and a nosering; another looked like any other kid off the street, shorts and a t-shirt, and kept biting his lip and looking away; and there was another girl there with black lipstick and a leather jacket and boots who had pulled her seat all the way into the corner where she could glare at everybody at once. He’d been warned by the pamphlet that these meetings were tough. The pamphlet said that NA wasn’t founded to coddle addicts. It wasn’t going to help them avoid their responsibilities. Tough love, the pamphlet said. We’re here to help you help yourself. His first instinct was to turn around and run, run all the way down the stairway and out of the stupid building and into the street and hope a car got him. But that would have been avoiding his problems, exactly what had gotten him where he was now. He braced himself, and took the empty chair. The instructor was about his aunt Melanie’s age, and for some reason he reminded Rob of Melanie’s late husband, his uncle Jeff. He’d only met Jeff a few times, when Melanie had taken them to stay at her house; but he was the sort of man who was always completely baffled by everything and who messed everything up, but still meant well at heart; one of those people you couldn’t help but love. "Hello," said the man, smiling at all of them. "How are you guys?" There were a few mumbles. Not more than that. "Glad to hear it," he said. "My name’s Jeff." Rob blinked. I do need help, he thought. He was hearing things. And he hadn’t even felt the things working yet. "We’re going to go around the circle, and I want each of you to tell us your names and a few things about you, alright? Before we begin the real business of the day. You guys are all in it together; think of yourselves as sailors on a sinking boat-" The boy in the shorts sobbed loudly. Jeff winced. "Ok, my bad. Think of yourselves as-as soccer players! You kids play soccer, don’t you?" Yes, thought Rob. And in my spare time, I also fly a commercial airplane. That’s what the instructor would say next. Think of yourselves as pilots on a crashing jet liner! He raised one eyebrow. It was actually sort of amusing. "Think of yourselves as-soldiers marching out to war! Yeah, that’s it. You’re all on the same team; you’ve got your big guns and your helmets and your camouflage, and you’re lining up against the enemy, and the enemy is the same for every one of you: drugs. Now, I know they make you feel good; but that’s their weapon. You cannot allow yourselves to be fooled. That’s their way of singing you to sleep so they can stab you in the back! You don’t want that, do you?" The boy in the shorts sniffed and wiped his eyes with the back of his hands. "I see that you don’t. So you should get to know the other boys and girls here; they are your backup, your support, your reinforcements. You’ve all got to help each other out and even if we haven’t won by the end of this year or even the next, victory is close at hand! All hail!" Nobody did. "You’ve probably had enough of my rambling, though," he added quickly. Let’s start with-Monica. Monica, why don’t you tell us all a little about you? And why don’t you come and sit with us in the circle?" Monica bared her teeth and hissed at him, twitching. She reminded Rob of a ferret. "Alright," said Jeff, clearly a little bit desperate, "now you." "Name’s Twister," mumbled the kid with purple hair. "Live over on the other side of the city. My brother drove me here." "That’s nice," said Jeff. "Do you have any hobbies?" "Yeah. I like painting and stuff." "That’s great-maybe we’ll get to see some of your work someday?" "Maybe," Twister grunted. "Well, that’s great. We’re making progress. How about you? What’s your name?" "My name’s Jackie," said the boy in shorts. He bit his lip. "And?" prompted the instructor. "And-and I have a-a gerbil. I like gerbils. I really-I-" The group sat there for a moment, waiting in vain for him to finish the thought. After a time, Jeff sighed and said, to Rob: "Who are you?" Rob paused. They were all looking at him; the kid with the purple hair with something like curiosity; the boy in shorts with heartbroken eyes, biting his lips; and Monica in the corner with beady suspicion. These kids were all as unlikely as he was. He felt strangely at ease. Due in part to the pills he’d taken a half hour ago, but also due to something that he could have sworn was confidence. He was going to kick it, he was. It was like he was separate, looking back on something that had happened to him years ago. He said: "I’m Robby." "And?" prompted the teacher. He smiled. And he was. They were weird, the drug meetings. That’s what he called them; the drug meetings. The first sitting was misleading; Jeff did have a stern side, and he used it. They talked about why they were addicted, what they were going to do about it. Alternatives to heroin? His teacher had said that he could take, for a small period of time, doses of methadone to deal with withdrawal symptoms, but it wasn’t the best idea; there is no drug cure for a drug problem, said his teacher. Cold turkey? Asked Robby, somewhat disappointed. Cold turkey, but more than that: strength. For everyday that you do not take your heroin, you become a better person. He said, picture G-d smiling down on you. Give yourself a sticker. Picture your entire family smiling down at you. They love you, and they want you to be drug free. Picture it. They were given little chores to do, to teach them responsibility. If they stayed clean and showed up on time and did enough of their chores properly, they were granted more respectful jobs, more privileges. If they slipped up or started taking drugs again, they moved back down to the beginning. It was sometimes tough and frustrating; but Twister, who’d been there a little bit longer than Robby had, usually noticed when he began to get angry, called him over to the side and gave him a little encouragement. A little encouragement goes a long way. Twister cared about him, and it made Robby smile to know it. The meetings were actually just a side group managed by NA and paid for by his high school; but only four had signed up, and of those four, only two had signed voluntarily. Robby and Twister really wanted to quit; Monica had been signed up by her mother, who was just as ferretty and snappy and twitchy as she was, and as far as Monica was concerned, she wished everybody could ‘go jump in a bleeping lake’. Jackie, as Rob learned, was an extremely insecure kid who’d had the misfortune to lose two parents who had, it might be said, spoiled him, leaving him and his hamster Jeremy to an aunt and uncle who were not particularly fond of children. Robby felt sorry for him, but the kid’s weeping fits grated on his nerves. Still. The class was actually helping him. Whether it was that or his own sudden determination, he didn’t know, but he was not taking as much as often anymore. He was down to one bottle a day, one and a quarter on weekends. He didn’t know why. What the heck, he thought, people always give themselves more treats on weekends. The drugs weren’t giving him as much pleasure, either. Maybe it was because he was preoccupied. He was occupied. He was busy. He divided the day up into slots. First came waking up-he tried to say goodbye to Jenny before he left-and then school. Then came home, and his pills (still took the sleeping pills, but he was trying to stay away from heroin-three shots a week), and then he would take Jenny out, usually to the park, or sometimes to a library or the petting zoo in the mall. Except on Tuesdays-on Tuesdays came the drug meetings from four to six thirty. Then came supper. Since the only thing they ever had in his house was ketchup and potato chips, he had that. Then he would study for at least an hour, and he would spend the rest of the night writing. He tried not to throw up in front of Jenny any more; he had rules involving Jenny. He helped her with her homework when he could; tried to ask her about her day. He didn’t want her to get depressed and take drugs. And while she was extremely surprised the first few times, he could see she was so much happier. She smiled. She had this habit of bringing home little animals and insects that had lost their way and hurt themselves, including smashed worms. He teased her, sometimes, as a joke; he called her Mother Theresa. And she smiled, then, too. She was such a cute little kid; she deserved to smile. As for his aunt, she couldn’t come-not yet, anyway. Her son David was having problems with his marriage, and she had to act as referee, or something like that. She was going to try for January. Until then…just keep an eye on your mother and watch out for your sister and you should be alright. And Robby-you stop all this nonsense with the pills, yes? And he told her about his drug group. And she said: That’s wonderful, Robby! You should be so proud of yourself. I’m proud of you. That’s maturity, Robby! That’s wonderful! What a responsible adult! Maybe your mother will catch on. He hoped so. And he was proud of himself. It’s amazing what a little self-confidence can do. Hope When you look at the sky and see a star shoot by Think of me, think of me. When a bad day drags by and you would like to cry Think of me, think of me. Because you know that I know that somewhere inside There’s a beautiful smile waiting for a free ride And you know that I know that you know it’s free So use it often and then think of me. -Robert Schultz Jefferson Memorial High School Grade 12 Article appearing in the December issue of Teen Arts and Smarts: Writer’s Spotlight With D.A. and Monica "The Story of Jeanine Ann" If you haven’t checked this piece out, you don’t know what you’re missing. Sent into your friends at Arts and Smarts by a kid who would only identify himself as Rob, this is the fascinating and unconsciously disturbing story of a little girl growing up in a troubled home. It’s hard for D.A. and me to effectively summarize this piece because the magic is not so much in the storyline as the words themselves, but we’ll try: Jeanine Ann, whom the writer refers to as Jenny, lives in a broken-down house in the slums of a city. We find out early in the story that her family is dysfunctional at best; she doesn’t know who or where her father is; her mother has never really gotten over her own wild years as a teenager and spends most of her time smoking on the couch; and her older brother, who is given no name throughout the story, is a depressed and suicidal heroin-addict who has been in and out of the hospital many times and who Jenny cares for with a note of desperation. Jenny also has an abusive uncle who swings by often a time; she has learned to deal with this by hiding inside the trash can when he comes to visit. The story documents an important stage in Jenny’s and every child’s life: the preteen years, the impressionable ten and eleven and twelve-year-old years that sometimes determine the course of a lifetime. It shows us as an objective observer the horror in Jenny’s daily routine: She wakes up, eats for breakfast what little she can find, checks on her brother to make sure he is still alive, walks to school. Jenny has only three outfits that are worn and mismatched and no longer fit because her mother last bought clothes for her two years ago; she has no money for lunch, and through all her afternoon classes can only concentrate and how hungry she is. Jenny is afraid to go home, not only because of what she will find there, but also because there are a few gangs who hang out by her corner in the afternoon. Sometimes her dash to the house is punctuated by gunshots. When she arrives home, she does her homework as studiously as possible, and then once more checks on her brother. Usually she finds him on the floor or possibly on the bed, choking on his own vomit, and sometimes bleeding; often enough she has to call an ambulance. In most cases he is high. It should be noted, however, that sometimes he is not, and sometimes he even motions for her to sit with him and tell him how she liked school. Jenny loves her brother, and her brother loves her, and as such Jenny values this one-on-one time with him more than forever; and thus she is always struck deeply when he takes the heroin pills again.
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