Chapter 6
MICAH
S undays always had a purpose. For some, it was the last day of a weekend free of work. For others, it was the last day they could spend with their family before the rush of school and activities chewed into each day. People went to church on Sundays and prayed for salvation to something far more vast and powerful than they were.
My Sundays, I went to the Collective, determined to find a way to fix Ada. I’d been on the search for months, and when I ran into one wall, I wandered somewhere else, hoping to meet someone with a modicum of wisdom to share how I could make my sister better.
The Collective wasn’t just a community center; it was an entire community. Outside, kids played kickball, while adults hung out near the food booths. Inside, life classes were held on the first floor; today I headed up to the second floor toward the Nar-Anon support group.
I sat down and looked at my phone to see if Ada had reached out. She’d been silent for days and sent all of my calls to voicemail. Yesterday she turned off her location sharing. She did that when she was pissed at me, and as much as I knew it’d happen, her disappearance fueled my imagination, waking me in the night, panicked, thinking our invisible string had severed.
The therapist walked inside and closed the door. She looked about my age and always wore Vans and yoga pants, her long nails painted weekly in a variety of bold colors. She didn’t write anything down on a notepad like the one in the last group I attended. And she didn’t give sad eyes like the one I’d attended before that.
She listened, and she thought about what she was going to say. I liked that. It meant she wasn’t going to dole out the same useless shit I’d heard before.
The young woman next to me sniffled, her hands twisting around themselves as she tried to hold back tears. Her mouth quivered at the corners as she whispered, “I know I shouldn’t let him back in my life again if he doesn’t stop using, but... I just can’t cut him out. I’m—I’m not ready.”
That was talked about a lot here, stopping contact with addicts. My folks did it after Ada walked away from her third round of rehab. It tore them apart, their love for Ada, and it took me pleading with them to go to therapy for them to understand that their love could bring them back together. They believed in their choice of cutting Ada off. Now I wondered if it would help Ada realize how much danger she was in if I were to cut her off too.
Ada bore the burden of guilt for driving on the highway with her friends after pulling an all-nighter studying for the LSATs. Her best friend called her up for a ride back to her apartment because everyone had celebrated her birthday a bit too hard. It was an easy request, but when Ada wrapped her car around a light pole and was the only one who walked away alive, she refused to consider herself lucky. She thought she was being punished.
She’d been thrown into war with dark and cunning demons, and it had crippled her defenses. She’d lost her love of life, her blazing confidence. I’d always admired her brazenness, how her charisma was so infectious it was impossible to ignore.
I lost my sister that night. And if telling her that her bedroom was no longer there for her would bring back my best friend, then maybe I should do it, but I could not yet make myself believe that wouldn’t make things worse.
“Ada called me last week asking for money, which isn’t anything new. I told her she can come back to our apartment. I give her safety, and she refuses. I’ve attended a dozen groups like this before to figure out how to get her to realize she needs to live. And that’s why I’m here. I need someone to tell me how to make it happen.”
I clasped my shaking hands and pushed my elbows into my thighs to stop my bobbing legs. “I-I want her back. I need her back.”
The therapist nodded like she was unpacking what she’d heard. “We’re all here because we care, and it’s not a one-way journey. But I challenge each of you to remember that the person you’re trying to speak to is not who you believe they are. You’ll end up disappointed if you think they’re someone else when you talk to them. And one way to help with the disappointment is to stop talking.”
“Don’t you get it? If I stop talking to her, she dies. My parents are having a wedding renewal coming up, and if she tried, they’d probably talk to her again.” I covered my wrist with my other hand and squeezed it, my pulse pounding against my fingertips as anger floated up from my belly into my throat, the pressure making it hard to breathe. “What are we supposed to learn from coming to these meetings? Are we supposed to just let the people we love wither away and fucking die ?”
I couldn’t hold back, my voice growing with the surge of fury rising inside of me. The sensation of everyone’s eyes on me and the room’s stillness clawed at my throat, paralyzing it. I swallowed through the unbearable pressure, preparing for the quiver that would happen once I gained my voice again.
My cheeks puffed as I exhaled a long breath and wiggled out the tightness in my jaw. With a throat now raw from suppressing the urge to scream, I cleared my throat and trudged on.
“I wish I could go back in time and make sure she didn’t get behind the wheel. I want—” I closed my eyes, held back the sudden blur of tears, and clenched my wrist harder. “I want her to come home.”
“Sometimes you just need to let someone hurt without telling them how to deal with their pain,” the therapist said from my left. “You can keep the line of connection open with her, allow her a place to stay, or help her get to rehab if she wants that, but you can’t force sobriety onto someone. They have to choose it for themselves.”
It was an impossibility for me to not try to help Ada, especially when she didn’t even have the will to survive anymore. For the last two years, she’d toed the line between life and death. I couldn’t just sit idly and let her make the mistake again and again.
I rested my elbows on my knees and stared at the floor. I’d witnessed what happened to Ada when my parents cut her off, how quickly she spiraled.
Each day, I carried the burden of guilt as I slowly began to understand that my unwavering trust in the special connection between Ada and myself made me oblivious to the early indications of her addiction.
I’d end up waking up to a phone call worse than the night she totaled her car—she’d be gone forever.
After the support group ended, everyone walked out into the buzz of people involved in various activities both inside and outside. On Sunday afternoons, the Collective hosted an afternoon potluck event to help with community building.
I had a hard time getting into the laughter, music, and conversation, so I slid on a pair of dark-lensed glasses to hide my bloodshot eyes. I managed to get through the crowd without drawing any attention.
That was interrupted when someone called my name. I looked over my shoulder as Leon Walker, one of the founding directors, waved at me and headed my direction. I’d seen him around, but we’d never spoken to each other. I wondered what he wanted to say.
“Hey there,” Leon said, offering a hand to shake. “Been seeing you here on Sundays, and I haven’t introduced myself to you yet.”
The smile I had forced through made my lips ache. For someone who ran a whole-ass community center, it was a little jarring that Leon reached out individually. This place saw a ton of people, but somehow the three founders—Leon, Toryn, and Mariah—always made an effort to befriend everyone and make them feel welcome.
“Hey, how’re you doing?”
“Ah, you know, busy as always. Scheduling summer programs always get hectic. Gonna have a full house for the next few weeks,” Leon said, nodding toward the crowd of kids running around in the background. “Wanted to know if you were interested in hanging around for the potluck. We got a wonderful local barbecue place hosting, and it is out of this world.”
“Unfortunately, that won’t work out today,” I said, affecting my voice with regret as I nodded my head to my car. “Maybe next time.”
“Well, potluck will be here all summer,” Leon said without any judgment in his tone.
That was one thing that kept me coming back here, how no one ever pressured anyone to stay. Some people left for months before returning to the Collective, and every volunteer welcomed them with joy.
Before I could come up with an excuse to way to break off the conversation and head to my car, Leon asked, “How do you feel about volunteering?”
I blinked, thrown. Definitely didn’t intend for this guy to show up asking me about that. “Like, objectively or personally?”
“I was aiming for personal, but now I’m curious about your opinion,” Leon said, tucking a hand into the pocket of his denim shorts.
“I can be persuaded either way depending on the circumstance, but I can’t say in good conscience that I won’t come up with an excuse to get out of it if something else comes up that’s more motivating.”
Leon’s laugh was famously infectious and impossible to avoid joining. It settled the jittery melody humming under my skin, and the tight fist gripping my heart loosened.
It was the first full breath I’d taken in the last half hour.
There was still laughter in his voice when Leon said, “I’m not sure if this’ll be an easy sell, but Hard Knox Roller Derby is having a fundraiser where it’s an open lap to the public. All the concession sales will go to the Collective.” He knocked his knuckles against the clipboard and handed it to me. “You free?”
The bout was Wednesday. Ada had played on the derby team for three years while she was in college and had loved it. When she’d first joined, I thought she’d lost her damn mind, but when Ada got her mind fixated on something, she was going to do it no matter what anyone said.
Before we’d figured out that she was using drugs, she’d faded off the roster. She’d also been telling us she withdrew from classes, but after we saw the drugs hidden in her bedroom, my parents found out she’d failed out of her last semester.
She’d been on pills and coke for six months.
I still went to see the derby team play, still clinging, in a sense, to the Ada I missed. I hadn’t heard from her in several days, but this could be a lifeline back to her, to get a glimpse of the fun and life of her past. Her interest in something again.
I still followed the team on social media. New people had joined since Ada’s time, and the long-timers were still hanging around.
“Yeah, I’m free,” I said, forcing the words past the tightness in my throat. I clicked the pen top on the clipboard, wrote down my name and number, and handed it back to Leon. “I got a friend who’ll come too.”
Leon did a small fist pump. “The event is at the World’s Fair Park at seven, so we ask that you show up an hour before.” I nodded along, feigning ignorance, as if it was my first time ever doing it.
I got back to my car and found multiple texts from Ada, continually apologizing and begging for my forgiveness. I couldn’t make Ada get clean, but there was a chance if I showed her what used to make her happy. Maybe then she’d want to try.
I hit the button and called Ada. When the line connected, I took a breath and said, “There’s something I want you to check out.”
There was music booming on the other line, mixing in with an argument I couldn’t make out. After a full minute of waiting, Ada said, “Tell me where I need to be and at what time and I’ll be there.”
She didn’t say goodbye when she hung up, which had become the norm between us. Ada had lost most of the light that had burst out of her. Now all that remained of her presence was a miasmic fog and its death grip on my throat.
The connection between us was fading into obscurity. Loneliness washed over me, sending shivers down my spine and making my stomach churn with nausea. I rolled down my window and closed my eyes, feeling the warm breeze brush against my face as I wished that loving someone didn’t have to be so torturous.