How to Lose Yourself Completely

Chapter One

ONE

You wake up on a moving bus somewhere in northern Minnesota, and for a few seconds you think he’s still alive.

This happens almost every day when you’re awake, but you haven’t yet opened your eyes.

That’s when you see him. Slouching in a doorway.

Eating olives from a jar. Sitting next to you on your bed in the heat of summer, reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

You can see it all so clearly. His lanky body sprawled on the bed.

His eyes searching the page as he tries to make it through the last chapter without meeting a bad end.

But before he does, and before you can ask him if he’s real, your eyes flash open to a pink sunrise blurring past your window, and immediately, you remember where you are.

You are on a school bus you boarded this morning in the parking lot of your old junior high.

And judging by the road noise, this bus has seen better days.

The constant drone puts your thoughts in a blender, and it takes you a second to get your bearings.

You are not in your old room. You are not with your brother.

You’re in a seat by yourself, fists clenched in your lap, and your cheek numb against the cold glass of the window.

Outside, a line of jagged pines cuts through the rising sun.

Inside, it’s hard to see much of anything, even your fellow passengers.

They must have been there this morning, but it was pitch black outside, and you were distracted by your dad, who was there to make sure you actually got on the bus.

It was so dark he almost did a face-plant as he helped you with your new sleeping bag and survival gear.

He isn’t the world’s most coordinated guy even in broad daylight, and he couldn’t even hug you without accidentally stepping on your foot.

You were okay with the hug, though, which broke a quiet tension that had haunted you on the drive over.

You were less happy when your dad decided to speak.

Because what he said was:

“Just try. Okay, Case?”

This was not the right thing to say for two reasons.

One, it implied that you haven’t been trying to feel better since the funeral.

And two, it suggested that you don’t usually try at things.

Both of which aren’t true. You want more than anything to feel better.

And you try way too hard at most things.

You once heard anxiety described like a duck moving across the water; on the surface everything looks smooth, but beneath, it’s all frantic motion.

This sounds about right to you, so maybe all your dad has been seeing is the surface and not your little duck legs, paddling for their very lives.

You managed to swallow your anger, though, and moments later you were sad as you watched him shuffle back to his dented Prius with the bumper sticker that reads FOLLOW ME TO THE WAFFLE HOUSE!

He gave you a half wave before getting inside, and he seemed hesitant to leave, which was odd since this whole thing was his idea.

Your mom had to work early at the hospital today, but she made your favorite dinner last night and refolded the clothes in your bag.

Just thinking about all your shirts in there, sitting in perfect squares, is enough to make your throat catch.

Sometimes when you’re up late, your mind doing its usual laps, you think if you don’t start to feel better soon, you’ll have to live with your parents for the rest of your life.

This is comforting at first. Then you remember the way they scream at each other over the deafening drone of the coffee grinder in the morning, and how your dad still walks around in his briefs, which have a number of see-through patches in the back, and you feel like you would probably slowly turn into a very different person if this was your fate.

The bus goes around a bend in the road and a blinding ray of sun cuts through the windshield, setting the air aglow.

But, still, it’s hard to make out your fellow travelers behind the row of tall seats.

The only thing you know about them is that, like you, they are in high school, and like you, they are willing to go out in the middle of nowhere for weeks with total strangers to confront their overwhelming anxiety and try to find a reserve of strength to overcome it.

Adventure Therapy.

That’s what it’s called.

The phrase made you laugh out loud the first time you read it on the website.

You imagined yourself whining about your life as you rappelled out of a military helicopter and hacked through a dense jungle with a machete.

The specifics of what you’re actually going to do have been kept secret, but there are pictures of canoes and overgrown hiking trails on the FAQ page, so you know it’s going to be something outdoorsy, and something that counts as an “adventure.”

But that could be anything, really.

Using a public bathroom can be an adventure with your condition.

“Excuse me.”

A disembodied voice sends your thoughts dissolving like thinning mist, and it takes a second to realize that the words are being directed at you.

“Do you have a Klonopin?”

“What?” you say.

The face that greets you is fuzzy in the half light, but the voice sounds like a guy’s. And, sure enough, the longer you stare, the more the rounded silhouette of a short afro comes into focus. Then a pair of retro, brow-line glasses.

“Klonopin. It’s a central-nervous-system depressant. Do you have one I could borrow?”

His voice is soft with a slight quaver, and you can’t tell if he’s being condescending or just as clear as possible about what he needs.

“I know what it is,” you say. “Just…”

“Just what?” says the voice.

“Did you really come on an anxiety trip and forget your meds?”

A frustrated sigh.

“No, I’ve got, like, half a Walgreens with me, but it’s in my duffel under the bus. I usually keep a lucky one in my pocket, but today I forgot. Go figure. Anyway, I…”

“I’m a Xanax person,” you say.

“C’mon, man. What is this? Amateur hour?!”

You are momentarily quiet at this judgment. It has never occurred to you that people might have such strong feelings about nearly identical sedatives.

“Sorry, sorry,” he immediately says. “I’m a little edgy. Moving vehicles aren’t my thing. And I usually have my support animal, but he couldn’t come. Which is why I need the…”

He clicks his tongue and trails off and then seems to actually look at you for the first time.

“I’m Troy,” he says.

“Case,” you say.

He extends a sweaty palm, and you shake it before he yanks it away. He’s silent after that, and you remember that before you stopped going, your therapist was always telling you to ask questions. People like being asked questions, she said. It plays to their vanity.

“So what is it?” you say.

“What is what?”

“Your support animal.”

“Ah,” he says. “Right. You mean Turbo. He’s a wiener dog. Thus, the shirt, I guess…”

He points to a white ringer T-shirt with bright blue ribbing around the neck and sleeves. You have to squint to make out the faded letters stretched over his skinny chest, which read: THE GRASS IS GREENER UNDER MY WIENER.

“Oh,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll snag one, by the way.”

“One…”

“Xanax. Sorry. Sometimes I forget the whole context thing. But I’ll take it, you know … if the offer’s still on the table.”

You dig into your pocket, where you feel the familiar ovoid contours of the pill.

Sometimes all you need to do is just dip your fingers into your pocket and touch the edge and you start to feel a little better.

Still, it doesn’t feel good to fish this little talisman out of your pocket now to give it away.

“Thanks, man,” Troy says when you hand it to him.

Then, instead of swallowing it, he quickly chews it into a paste, a trick that only the professionally anxious know makes it kick in faster (at the expense of the worst aftertaste imaginable). After that, he salutes you for some reason and disappears behind the wall of his seat again.

Outside, the sun turns the air a chalky white and it begins to rouse a few more of your compatriots.

You hear a yawn or two. The telltale candy-rattle of a pill container.

And that cartoon-bubble-popping sound a phone makes when a message goes in or out.

Once you reach your destination, deep in the Boundary Waters, your phones will no longer work, so it makes sense that people would be using them while they still can.

You don’t want to use yours, though.

Not because you have no one to text—you still have a few loyal school friends, even after your months of isolation—but because you know if you get your phone out now, you’ll just look at pictures of your brother, Sean.

And, if you do that, the suffocating guilt will almost certainly return and you might even start crying.

Right now, you have a chance, however short-lived, to be the guy who doesn’t cry first on the therapy trip.

So you keep your phone in your pocket. But because just thinking about all this is making you feel bad anyway, you decide to get up and walk slowly to the bathroom at the back of the bus, where you close the old accordion door and look in the mirror.

“Wherever you go,” your therapist once said, “there you are.”

It was the name of a book or something. You never read it, but the phrase stuck with you.

And here you are in this bathroom: same floppy haircut you’ve had since freshman year, and the same lost expression on your face.

You take a breath and try, just for a moment, not to think of your brother, who, ironically enough, actually liked the outdoors.

Hiking. Fat-tire biking. Cliff-diving. He was always trying to get you out of the house, and he would have been beside himself with excitement at the thought of a wilderness mystery trip.

If he were here right now, he would surely be punching you in the arm and telling you, with his face too close to yours:

“C’mon, Space Case. Get out of your head!”

You draw one long breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth—and flush the toilet in case anyone outside somehow wants to prove you didn’t really go to the bathroom (yes, this is actually the kind of thing you worry about).

And then, while you’re splashing water on your face and trying to shake the feeling that coming on this trip was probably a terrible mistake, you suddenly hear a voice from somewhere else on the bus.

It’s too distant to make out any words, but you stop anyway, water dripping from your forehead into the tiny basin below.

Even though it’s far away, and even though there’s a door separating you from the sound, you know immediately whose voice it is.

It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s one you know very well.

A voice you used to hear almost every day before things went terribly wrong.

A voice you were sure you would never hear again.