Chapter 6
Luke
I’m being transported against my will. Again. Happens a lot. Far more of my adult life has been spent with a big man’s arms wrapped around me than I ever thought possible.
I’ve done this enough times to know that I can come quietly, but that’s not going to be on brand, and they’re going to be suspicious. Ironically, they’ll think I’m on something. It’s actually easier to go down fighting. And it plays into my natural instincts and talents.
Two big men paid to put up with exactly this kind of shit are accompanying me. They work for the rehab, not for Aiden. If they were our guys, I’d get a little in the way of deference. As it is, these two are treating me like a piece of shit they dragged off the street.
“Get the fuck off me!” I kick one of them in the stomach. Half-strength. This is basically professional wrestling at this point, but I’m the only one who doesn’t know it’s real.
“Quiet down, or we’ll sedate you,” the other one growls.
“Don’t you know who the fuck I am?”
I ask the question just as we all come tumbling out of the depressing van that always goes to places like these.
Cars don’t have enough room to restrain people against their will.
I let them half-lead, half-drag me to admissions, asking that question over and over in increasingly arrogant and agitated tones.
“You’re an addict.”
A man with a clipboard, shaved head, and a ratty little fucking goatee says those words to me like he’s a prophet from god making a proclamation from on high.
God, they love to talk down to you. The fucking nerve to act like they’re better. A lot of the people who work in these places have also dealt with addiction in the past, but that doesn’t stop them being smug as fuck.
“I’m Luke Levin.”
Clipboard guy gets a stupid fucking smirk on his face. “Is that some kind of country music singer or something? You want me to call you Rockstar, Rockstar?”
Ah, fuck. He’s going to be incredibly obnoxious. It’s going to be so hard to not punch him in the mouth right away. I guess I can store the beating for the end, but that always makes me feel like I’m a bully.
“Alright, Rockstar,” he says, thrilled with his little pet name. “Let’s get you settled into a room now, shall we?”
“Get the fuck off me,” I say to the other two guys. “I can walk on my own.”
They let me go.
I run.
Just for the fun of it, I sprint as fast as I can toward the tree line. I know there’s a fence with razor wire at the top just behind it, but I’ve got a trick for getting through that stuff. It’s called having a thick jacket and praying nothing too sensitive gets caught on the way over.
I scramble up the chain-link like our arboreal ancestors, and…
Crack!
I get tossed off the fence, fall a few feet, and tuck into a roll. I’ve learned how to fall properly over the years. The parkour trend in the early two thousands really paid off for me.
“The fuck!” I curse as my arm cramps. It feels like I got full-body whacked with something very unpleasant. An unseen force. Something supernatural, maybe.
“We added electricity,” Clipboard Goatee says. He’s slightly out of breath from scurrying over, but he is ahead of the other two guys who are bigger, but slower.
“It works,” I groan as I am hauled up between the two of the grunts. They carry me all the way back to the rehab’s main building. There are cabins in the rolling grass beyond it for people who have proved themselves, but I won’t be going out to those yet.
“As I was saying,” Clipboard Goatee says. “You’re an addict.”
This is a script. He’s not wrong about my flaw, but he is wrong about the fact that I am high. I am not high right now. I’ve never been more clearheaded in my life. I haven’t touched so much as refined sugar in weeks.
“It’s going to be a rough few days,” Clippy says. “You have to be prepared to suffer a little. If you feel very bad, worse than usual, then you can always call for one of our nurses. My notes say you’re a repeat guest, so you’ll be familiar with the basic procedures.”
“Get fucked.”
He smiles in the way people who enjoy power do. The wild thing about the clipboard is that we have tablets now. You have to really commit to a clipboard. You have to enjoy shuffling paper in and out of a clip and flipping it around officiously. He’s such an asshole.
“Are you going to take your own shoes off, or are we going to have to wrestle them off, Mr. Levin?”
“Fight me, bitch.”
“Sorry,” he says. “I meant, are you going to remove your shoes, belt, and jacket, because that looks like it contains some sharp items in the form of those cute little badges you’ve got pinned on there.”
Those cute little badges are from Teddy, and that comment is enough to make me swing at Clipboard for real. The two men who are paid to save his ass manage to do that. I feel the back of my pants being yanked down and something sharp pricking the top of my butt.
They pin me down until the world starts to swim and spin, and then they put me on a stretcher, carry me indoors, take everything except my socks and my underwear, dress me up in some light blue scrubs like an oversized doll and deposit me on a bed in a room painted in what was probably supposed to be light pastel sage green, but which takes on a highlighter tone under officious bright white light, creating a more horrifying color than can be adequately described with any amount of words.
We are at the intersection of sterile and contemporary, and it sucks.
I could fight the drugs, but instead I let them take me down into slumber. I haven’t gotten a full night’s rest since Teddy died. I need the sleep.
When I wake up, someone is looking at me. I am immediately aware of it, even though I am looking up at the popcorn ceiling that dates the place inexorably.
“Hey,” a guy says to me.
“Hey,” I groan, looking over at my roommate. They always give you one. It’s part of the rehab.
He’s a lanky boy with greasy brown hair and acne. He’s got big brown eyes and he’s wearing a sweater that has to be three sizes too big for him, and jeans that are three sizes too small.
“How the hell old are you?”
“Nineteen,” he says.
“Christ,” I groan. They’ve decided to make me a goddamn babysitter. That has to be one of their most stupid ideas yet.
“I got sent here because I stole a car, sold it for parts, and then used the money to buy stuff.”
I don’t need to ask what stuff he’s talking about. There’re only three things guys like him buy: alcohol, drugs, and video games. Well, four things, I guess.
“Whose car?”
“My stepdad’s.”
“Gotcha.”
“Yeah. He’s pissed. He let them charge me. Judge said I could do this or go to jail. So I chose this.”
“Good call, buddy,” I say, sitting up slowly. “What time is it?”
“Almost dinner time. They’re having tacos tonight.” He bounces his foot on the floor repeatedly. “You want to go now?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I want to go now.”
I get up and pad through the halls in socked feet. Not really supposed to do that. Supposed to wear the plastic slides that flop loudly with every step, but then again I have never much been one for the rules.
“What’s your name?” I ask the kid.
“Mark,” he says.
“I’m Luke,” I introduce myself as we line up with red plastic trays, and dinner ladies put two tacos on our plates, and then a cup of chocolate pudding to the side. The woman behind the counter looks at Mark and puts a second pudding on his tray. That’s sweet. She has motherly energy.
The dining hall is all eyes on me. That’s how it is in places like this. Everyone’s an anonymous celebrity for an hour or two at least. I keep my head down, and Mark and I take a seat at a spare table. The kid’s already decided to stick himself to me.
I take a few bites of institutional tacos. We can have anything we want at home. I could have tacos flown from Mexico if I wanted. But there’s something about tacos made this way, in a metal pan, with slightly stale shells and the wrong kind of cheese that’s kind of comforting.
Hell, maybe I did need rehab. I’m starting to feel more like myself in spite of the fact I haven’t been on drugs whatsoever. I’m clean, and I intend to stay that way.
“What are you in for?” Mark asks, his voice cracking a little with nervousness as he risks asking me a question I might take offense at.
“Bad decisions,” I tell him. I’m not going to get into any details with him, obviously. But it’s good to be friends with your roommate. Means they can cover for me when necessary. And it’s going to be necessary.
And then the cozy little charade is broken by the guy who needs to feel in control of everything all the time. Him and Aiden should get together. Aiden would fucking destroy him.
“Piss test,” Clipboard says, putting a cup down on my tray. I know intellectually it’s clean, but it agitates me that he’s interrupting a meal with that demand.
That’s going to be interesting. I’m going to test clean. And that’s going to make them think I am cheating somehow.
I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, I guess.
“You know where to leave it,” he says. “At the nurse’s station,” he adds, in case he’s wrong.
I finish my tacos, eat the pudding, then I go and take a piss in the cup.
I drop it at the nurse’s station, then head to the common room. The television is on there. Cartoons.
I settle into an armchair and watch while a small carousel of humanity slides around me.
I could be comfortable here, in a place like this. Everything taken care of, meals provided, no real responsibility besides to yourself. It’s a place out of time, and it lulls me into a false sense of both security and indifference.
“Alright,” Clipboard says. “Think you’re funny, do you?”
I brace myself for a very stupid conversation with a very stupid man.