Òîëüêî øðàì çàçìåèëñÿ íàä áðîâüþ... Ïóëÿ, ê ñ÷àñòüþ, ïðîøëà ñòîðîíîé. Âîò ìû ÷îêíóëèñü.Êàê "çà çäîðîâüå", Íó à ïüåì, ðîâíî "çà óïîêîé"... È ãëàçà... Êàê âðàòà â íåèçáåæíîñòü, Òåìíîëèêîé òðåâîãè ïîëíû. Íå ìîãëè ìû, ïîéìè, ñâîþ íåæíîñòü Ðàñòåðÿòü íà äîðîãàõ âîéíû. Áûëè, áûëè ñåäûå òóìàíû, Èõ ïîä Êóðñêîì ðàñïåë ñîëîâåé. Íàä âîéíîé ñîëíöå òîæå âñòàâàëî

Come Clean

come-clean
Àâòîð:
Òèï:Êíèãà
Öåíà:367.47 ðóá.
Ïðîñìîòðû: 333
Ñêà÷àòü îçíàêîìèòåëüíûé ôðàãìåíò
ÊÓÏÈÒÜ È ÑÊÀ×ÀÒÜ ÇÀ: 367.47 ðóá. ×ÒÎ ÊÀ×ÀÒÜ è ÊÀÊ ×ÈÒÀÒÜ
Come Clean Terri Paddock Mesmerising, moving novel from an exceptional author about one girl’s struggle to cope after being wrongly admitted to a boot-camp-style rehabilitation centre. A powerful and page-turning read.Justine is trying to cope with the desperate loneliness she feels now her twin brother, Joshua, no longer lives at home. After trying to drown her feelings with her first ever experiment with alcohol, she is woken early by her mother one Sunday morning. Bundled into the car by her livid parents, Justine is driven to Come Clean, a rehabilitation centre for drug addicts and alcoholics. Confused, vulnerable and covered with vomit from her first hangover, Justine is forcibly admitted to cure her “addiction”.There she begins a strict boot-camp routine of humiliation and discipline, where they attempt to strip her of her identity in order to rebuild her a better person. Justine escapes the daily torture at the centre by talking to Joshua in her head, reflecting back on their childhood and trying to puzzle out why her brother was a tortured soul… and why he chose to leave her.Because of the intensely personal nature of the narrative, this book engages the reader instantly and, however tough the subject matter, it is a real page-turner. At its heart, Come Clean is about a girl's inability to deal her grief and her family’s ignorance of her pain. Justine shows strength, resilience, courage and hope while living a nightmare reality.This is a book which should and will attract controversy, as teenagers and society struggle to identify the problems and the treatment for drug and other teenage addictions. Come Clean Terri Paddock To my sister and all other Straight survivors Table of Contents Cover Page (#u2e4958fe-aaff-59d1-b0c1-6983a2f78cf4) Title Page (#u27bb9854-09a0-52eb-9792-b78e4436c7b0) PROLOGUE (#u8c7ccdbc-764b-552c-b084-873ab333bd16) CHAPTER ONE (#uccb336ca-11de-559e-819d-f548d6a78952) CHAPTER TWO (#u208646fd-b170-5ff1-ac17-b77abec89a31) CHAPTER THREE (#u22d14be6-dfaa-5f7a-85c5-8c79c6f9ded8) CHAPTER FOUR (#ubc8544ce-7169-5cc8-89c6-4a6ab1f807a2) CHAPTER FIVE (#ud0ca8d7b-5b65-55f9-b188-085c634199b6) CHAPTER SIX (#u900b5a5e-8801-5629-a616-71a591816400) CHAPTER SEVEN (#u5845aaab-e962-527b-b5db-113bee979d03) CHAPTER EIGHT (#u60c31813-0eb0-5d3d-85b7-69141ac3027b) CHAPTER NINE (#u551a7c76-9391-5493-83c0-9437d602e5ac) CHAPTER TEN (#u8afee4a8-244f-574a-8595-f98b88591a5f) CHAPTER ELEVEN (#u49e44ddf-4402-5223-b162-674112bdd893) CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FORTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FIFTY (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo) CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo) EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgement (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) PROLOGUE (#ulink_6d8fcab1-49c6-5f43-bf69-b7ef3946924e) You, Joshua, had a problem. Joshua had a problem, many problems; Joshua was problematic – this was what everyone said, as they looked to me, their eyes formed like question marks, curving into pointless concern. Joshua is a problem, and, God forgive me, I listened, nodded, agreed. Which, by association, must mean I’m a problem too. CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_446d6030-03de-5969-8969-a58baec4da90) I’m busy in the swimming pool, dreaming of you and me under water, gripping on to each other’s chubby wrists, our cheeks big and round with stored breath, our eyes big and round and locked on each other, the chlorine on our skin, bubbles ringing our faces and our feet kicking out behind us. And when I rise reluctantly to the surface, away from the water-mottled laughter, the heartbeat in my head and the hum of trying not to breathe, I’m dry and nowhere near the pool. I don’t hear the alarm or any other sound. On a Sunday there should be bustling about – Dad shouting for Mom to find his tie with the blue stripes, Mom shouting for Dad and everyone to hurry up, the smell of brewing coffee that Dad drinks by the mugful to stay alert during the minister’s sermon. There’s nothing. I attempt to pry my eyes open but my lashes have bound themselves together. I rub at my lids. I’m in the rollaway bed again, in your room, looking up at walls and ceiling, blinded windows, bed frame. The clock face looms somewhere on the night stand above my head. 10:47 a.m. We’re cutting it fine. I should bolt out of bed immediately, but… I let my head fall back into its hollow in the pillow and try with all my might to lie very, very still. But the stillness only draws attention to the trouble spots. My head’s exploding. My mouth is completely coated in a foul-tasting furry substance, my tongue swollen, glued to my teeth and the roof of my retainer. My muscles ache, my skin feels tight and goosepimply at the same time, the hairs on my arm stand up like the bristles of a brush. Down below, my stomach burbles, daring me to make any sudden moves. I turn my nose into the pillowcase for comfort. It hasn’t been washed since and I can still smell you there. I sink into that smell. Footsteps pound heavily along the hallway overhead. They’re on the stairs, avalanching down. I hold my head as the door swings open, banging hard against its stop at the back. Mom flicks the light switch and the brightness makes me wince. ‘Get up.’ She’s wearing her navy woollen dress and already has her hair combed and sprayed into place, her nose powdered, navy pumps buffed. I whimper. ‘Get up. Now, Justine.’ ‘Mom, I don’t feel so good. I think I might be sick.’ She makes a noise. ‘You’re not sick. That’s not sickness you’re feeling and you know it.’ ‘But Mom, we’re not going to church, are we?’ ‘Suddenly you’re too good for praying?’ ‘We’ll be late, you hate ducking in late.’ ‘We won’t be late. Not if you get a move on.’ ‘But Mom…’ ‘But Mom nothing. Get up, I said. Do you hear me? Now! Get!’ Her voice has the edge. I prop myself up unsteadily on one elbow. ‘We’re going to church and then we’re going to the mall. We’ve got errands to run, lots of errands. We’re leaving in ten minutes and I expect you to be dressed and ready.’ She yanks the door to on her way out, my head cracking between the hinges. Ten minutes. I throw back the sheets and swing my feet to the floor, but as soon as I pull myself erect, my stomach lurches. Vomit rises in my throat as I dash to the bathroom. I crouch over the bowl there. The porcelain’s cool, smooth like vanilla ice cream against my cheek, and the nausea subsides. Delicately, I get to my feet, brush my teeth and retainer, scrub my tongue and splash water on my face, then stagger back into your room to dress. There’s no time for a shower or even to venture upstairs to my closet for a decent outfit. The blouse I was wearing last night is soiled with God-knows-what and my pantyhose ruined from a shoeless midnight sprint across the muddied football field. I dump them in the trash can. My tartan skirt’s wrinkled but passable and, thankfully, long, and I find an old turtleneck at the back of one of your half-empty drawers. By the time Mom returns, I’ve buckled on my Mary Jane shoes and tied my hair back, just avoiding tearing the scalp from my screaming head, and have started rummaging in the medicine cabinet for that blasted Tylenol and where, oh where, has that water glass got to? Mom gives me the tip to toe once-over and clucks disapprovingly. ‘This is how you dress for church nowadays?’ ‘I only had ten minutes.’ ‘Where on earth are your pantyhose?’ ‘They had a run.’ ‘Every pair? Oh for heaven’s sake.’ She checks her purse for lipstick, tissues and Tic Tacs as she shows me her back. ‘Get your coat, your father’s starting the car.’ At last, the Tylenol. I dump two out and pop both down my throat, but still no water glass. I slurp direct from the tap but can’t get a good angle, can’t sluice my mouth enough. The pills lodge halfway down my gullet, trapped in the furry sludge. I cough, grab my coat and a pair of sunglasses and follow Mom out to the garage where Dad glowers behind the wheel of the Volvo. As Mom settles into the passenger seat, Dad motions for me to hit the garage door opener. The chain overhead creaks, the garage murk dissipates as the midwinter light crawls in through the widening opening. I don the sunglasses before it can reach my line of vision and try to catch a parental eye through the windshield. Dad’s already pulled down his visor and Mom’s staring straight ahead to where the lawnmower’s stored. Her face is splotched and extra puffy, but her eyes are dry, hard and glassy like marbles. ‘Come on, dammit,’ Dad grumbles. I scramble into the back seat next to his neatly folded overcoat and buckle up in double-quick time. Dad eases the car out of the garage, checking his path in the rear-view mirror in case the rose bushes bordering the driveway are in a mind to scratch his paintwork. Once clear, he reaches to the visor for the garage door remote. He clicks, nothing happens. Click, click. ‘Goddammit!’ I know he wants to order me to get my ass up and shut that frigging garage, but for some reason he doesn’t. He leaps out, the car door hanging open and dives into the garage himself. I take advantage of the opportunity. ‘Mom, look, I’m sorry, really I—’ ‘Shut up.’ ‘But—’ She doesn’t move her head one inch in my direction. ‘Shut up, shut up!’ The garage door begins its descent and Dad shimmies out beneath it just in time, the rubber seal catching the back of his suit jacket and leaving a smear of dirt that he doesn’t seem to notice as he climbs back into the car. This is bad. Worse than the time you and I trapped the neighbour’s cat in the mailbox, worse than when we got picked up by the cop for loitering in the Kmart parking lot, worse than when you brought home the report card with two ‘D’s and I tried to forge Mom’s signature, worse even than when we skipped fifth period so Lloyd Taggart could drive us and Cindy round the block in his Dad’s Audi, even though he only had a learner’s permit and we hadn’t even started our semester of Driver’s Ed. I shiver and wish I’d gone upstairs for a new pair of pantyhose, wish I’d remembered my gloves. I start coughing again and swallow hard to force the Tylenol down but the pills won’t budge. I cough until my nose runs. ‘Dad, please can we stop at the 7-Eleven for a Big Gulp of Diet Coke?’ ‘You know the rule, Justine. Or have you forgotten that one too?’ ‘Just some water then.’ ‘No drinks allowed in the car. Now quiet.’ I lock my jaw to contain the coughs, my nose still dripping like a garden hose. I’d like to ask Mom for one of those tissues of hers, but I make do with the cuff of your old turtleneck. We coast through the neighbourhood. Past Cindy’s house with the peeling green shutters, past our old elementary school, past the playground where you knocked your two front teeth out on the jungle gym. At the lights, we right-turn-on-red on to Route 5 and join the stream of Sunday brunch traffic. Dad speeds up and thumps the wheel if the lights threaten to stop him – as they do, one after another. ‘Damn timing mechanisms are way off,’ he mutters. We switch lanes, manoeuvre round slowpokes and honk at other roadrunners. As we crest one steep hill and then another, my stomach drops away, and I have to cover my mouth with my hand and bite back the bile. ‘Dad, I’m gonna be sick. Pull over.’ ‘You know the rule. Scheduled breaks only.’ ‘Dad!’ Twisting round now, Mom takes a good look at me. ‘I think you’d better stop, Jeff. She’s pretty peaked.’ Dad sighs, flicks on his blinker and gestures at other drivers. There are two lanes to cross to the shoulder and I’m not sure we’re going to make it. I’ve flung the door open and am familiarising myself with the gravel before Dad’s got the hazards on. Please, please, please. My stomach convulses, jolting my whole body. I feel wetness at my eyes but nothing else is coming up. Cindy told me last night I should puke before I went to bed: hurl, drink two great big glasses of ice-cold water, swallow three Tylenol, then pass out. It didn’t work. I wretch dryly a few more times and then get back into the car. We drive on. Outside, Route 5 slips by – and before long so does the turn-off by Tastee-Freez for the road that leads to the cul-de-sac where our church is. ‘Aren’t we going to church?’ ‘We’re going to the mall first.’ I consult my Swatch. ‘But church starts in fifteen minutes. We’ll never make it in time.’ ‘We’ll go to the later service.’ A truck driver behind us leans on his horn, heralding another wave of nausea to crash over me. ‘Dad, please pull over again.’ ‘Not on your life.’ ‘I’m gonna be sick.’ ‘You’re not going to be sick.’ My stomach rolls, pressing me forward into my knees. ‘I am.’ ‘You’re not going to be sick.’ I heave again and here comes the long overdue foulness, spilling out into the well behind Mom’s seat. It splashes up on to my shoes and the grey leather upholstery. Mom gasps, ‘Dear Lord.’ Our car swerves as Dad’s head whips round, the trucker’s brakes squeal, and the sudden motion only makes things worse. ‘Holy shit!’ I spit to get the lumps and acid burn off my tongue, but then another eruption flecks my loosened locks of hair and my skirt and your turtleneck, spattering on to my shins as it drums on to the floor mat. I grope for something to wipe my mouth and my hand lands on Dad’s overcoat. The belt droops into the vomit as I pull the coat to my face. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Dad flails at me with his right arm, the car veering into the adjacent lane to the blaring protest of other drivers. ‘Sorry.’ ‘Dear Lord, I’m so ashamed,’ wails Mom. ‘First Joshua, now you. What’s the matter with you, Justine?’ She’s got a whole clutch of tissues unpursed now and is dabbing at her eyes. ‘Do you see what you’re doing to your mother? Did you think about that when you were gallivanting around last night?’ ‘I wasn’t gallivanting.’ ‘Don’t talk back to me, young lady.’ ‘I wasn’t talking back.’ ‘I’m warning you.’ ‘Oh, Lord, Justine. How could you?’ ‘Mom, it was one time, just—’ ‘Just nothing.’ ‘I mean—’ ‘Quiet! I can’t bear to hear another word out of your mouth.’ Dad rolls down the front windows to dispel the vomit stink. Mom hates driving with the windows down at any time of year, but despite the cold not even she’s going to kick up her usual fuss. She flips her visor down to determine the havoc the wind’s wreaking on her hair and shoots me an evil eye care of the vanity mirror. The wind cyclones through the car, turning my bare legs blue. I try to appear contrite but am pretty busy feeling cold. I fold my arms and cover my lower half with Dad’s coat. I would sell my Michael Jackson collection for just one sip of water to get rid of this post-puke taste in my mouth. I slip out my retainer and gross myself by inspecting the bits clinging to it. No question, the thing needs a rinse. I use the lining of Dad’s soiled coat to swab it clean, but it still looks too disgusting to insert in my mouth so I stash it in the flip-out ashtray in the door. No one’s ever smoked in this car – that’s another one of the rules – so it’s as hygienic in there as anywhere. I lean back against the headrest and close my eyes. I’m exhausted. If it weren’t so cold, if my head didn’t hurt so much and my bangs weren’t slapping so ticklishly around my cheeks with the wind, I might be able to doze off. It’s good to have the glasses on so Mom and Dad don’t know if I do. As it is, I do drift. I can see myself last night. In the gym bleachers, too morose for words, with Cindy at my side. Beth and Kelly are there too but they aren’t my best friend so they don’t know what to do and sit there acting awkward, like unnecessary appendages. Cindy isn’t too certain what to do either. So she produces a brown paper sack from her backpack, scans the area for teachers, then furtively extracts a can of Milwaukee’s Best from the sack and presses it into my hand. ‘You need it. Take your mind off all this family shit, just for tonight.’ I don’t even like the taste of it, but Cindy assures me that if you drink real fast you can hardly taste it at all. What does Cindy know. She also said the Wrigley’s Spearmint would mask the smell, she said our parents had better things to do than wait up for me, she said the beer – then the pineapple wine cooler then the rum – would make me feel better. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When I open my eyes, we’re on the interstate. Cars zoom past in the opposite direction, loud as dying insects. ‘I thought we were going to the mall,’ I shout. ‘The one across town,’ Dad shouts back. I close my eyes again and then I must doze, because when I reopen them, we’re off the interstate and the wind chill has tapered some. Mom still has her visor down and is eyeballing me through the mirror as she reapplies her lipstick. According to my Swatch, half an hour or thereabouts has passed. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Your dad’s lost.’ She touches the corner of her lips then applies another coat. ‘It’s not bad weather for February, is it? What do they say about weather in February, Justine? It’ll tell you if you’re going to have an early spring? Or is that Groundhog Day? Maybe Groundhog Day is in February? I don’t know. Is it? Maybe it is.’ This is the most she’s said all morning. ‘What do you think, honey?’ Honey? She’s talking to me? ‘Errr, I don’t know, Mom.’ ‘I never can remember those minor holidays. What’s the point in declaring a day a holiday anyway if you’re not going to give people time off, I ask you. Justine?’ ‘Dunno.’ For a millisecond, I think maybe I’ve actually made it through the worst. Maybe something magical happened when I was napping and now all’s forgiven. But then I see Harvey’s Shrimp Shack. You know Harvey’s Shrimp Shack, how could you forget? That falling down old barn of a building with a neon sign tacked to the front that flashes ‘All You Can Eat Shrimp – $5.97’. The Shrimp Shack is not a chain, it’s a one-and-only, but we’ve passed by it before, too many times. And every time I pass it I wonder, why on earth $5.97, why not $5.95 or a round six bucks? I don’t consider the conundrum this time, though, because there’s just a single thought spooling through my mind: the Shrimp Shack means one thing and one thing only. Then a few other thoughts occur to me, too. One, there is no later service than eleven thirty; two, the mall across town closed down a month ago; and three, Dad never gets lost. CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_e3aa64ca-3c32-5901-85a7-999bef6706d8) ‘Where the hell are we going?’ Mom winds down her lipstick, careful not to catch the edge – she must be wearing about 112 coats by now – and she replaces the cap. ‘To the mall, of course.’ I swore – said hell to our parents as loud as you please and she didn’t bat an eye. I clutch my hands together, squeeze hard till all I can feel is bone. ‘What’s going on, Mother?’ ‘After we finish the errands, maybe we can go to that new frozen yoghurt stand. It’s a funny concept, isn’t it? Frozen yoghurt? I never have liked yoghurt, I imagine there aren’t many people who’d claim to be yoghurt fans. Just the thought of it, just the word – yoh-gert. It’s a funny sounding word, foreign sounding, rather unpleasant, a funny food. But freeze the stuff, and people can’t get enough, you’ve got a craze on your hands. Amazing. And they do have such inventive flavours, don’t they? You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Justine? Pay a visit to the frozen yoghurt stand? We can get one of those waffle cones with the sprinkles on top. You’d like that.’ ‘The yoghurt stand is at the other mall.’ She brushes nonexistent hair out of her eyes and flicks her visor mirror closed so I can’t see her face any more. ‘I’m sure they’ll have one at this mall, too.’ ‘We’re not going to the mall, Mom. You know we’re not.’ My voice rises. The 7-Eleven slides past our open windows, the Hardee’s with the kiddies’ playground, the David’s Son motorcycle repair shop, the Green Valley block of low-rent town houses. ‘Why are you going on about the damn mall?’ ‘Of course we’re going to the mall. We’re going to the mall to do some errands.’ ‘What errands?’ ‘What errands? Oh, you know, the usual things.’ ‘I don’t know.’ Mom hesitates. ‘Well, we’ve got to go to the dry cleaners for one. And, then there’s the, uh, we’ve got to stop off at JC Penney’s because I need some blue thread for my sewing kit. And, well, while we’re there we should probably buy you some new pantyhose because you don’t appear to have a pair left to cover yourself with. And—’ ‘Mom, there are no errands.’ ‘Of course there are, why else would we be going to the mall?’ ‘Stop it!’ I snap, trying desperately to retrace the route in my head, in case it comes to that. ‘That mall closed down over a month ago. There is no Penney’s, no yoghurt stand. They’re all shut.’ Cindy will have to steal her sister’s car or get Lloyd to drive. And she’ll need directions. You get on to the interstate heading north, I’ll say. Then how far do you go? What exit do you take? Is it a left or a right after the lights? How many miles do you drive? How many minutes? Look for the Shrimp Shack, the Shrimp Shack’s the marker. Our mother’s pint-sized head moves about in juttery starts the way it does, like a bird. Tilting from side to side, bobbing down repeatedly as she inspects her lap, her cuticles, the contents of her purse. Peck, peck. ‘Mom. Where are we going?’ She punches Dad in the arm. ‘Jeff, why don’t you say something? Am I the only one here?’ She punches him harder. ‘Jeff, say something dammit!’ Our mother swears this time. Our mother never swears. Maybe I should jump. How bad could it hurt after all? We can’t be going more than 35 mph. I will my hand to the door, my fingers glance the handle. Just yank then tuck and dive, like a gymnastic exercise that Mr Zarrow or Ms Loy or whoever taught us in PE class, nothing more. I screw up my eyes and squint at the tarmac, whizzing by. It’s hard, black, gravelly. No. Dad slams the blinker and turns into that road. There’s no reason to say or do anything now. I cast about frantically for a road sign, but can’t locate one. Why don’t I ever know the names of roads? Warehouses flank us on either side. Strictly business trade. Look for the warehouses, I’ll say, there’s the Caterpillar tractor warehouse, the Billy’s Printing Supplies warehouse, the Dutch Tulips warehouse. Half a dozen others, all locked up, Sunday-quiet and stacked full of bulbs, books or heavy farm equipment. All corrugated iron and identical from the outside except for the choice of potted shrubbery, the executives’ initials on the VIP parking spaces, the company logos. Only one warehouse is logo-free. It’s even more nondescript than the rest. This is where we’re going. Of course it is. No logos, no shrubbery, no signs, no initialled spaces. But it is open for business. There’s a smattering of cars in the front lot and I can see lights and the manned reception desk through the glass of the double doors. Dad eases into an empty space a few yards from the entrance, kills the engine and leaves the keys dangling in the ignition. The fob – in the shape of a miniature, but perfectly formed, set of dentures – knocks against the steering column. My knuckles are white and taut, my veins braided like blue-coloured macram? beneath the surface of my skin. Dad lumbers out of the car. ‘I’ll go and tell them we’re here.’ Mom keeps nodding even after he’s gone and out of sight. She fishes in her purse for Tic Tacs: I can hear mints clattering against plastic. ‘What’s going on, Mom? Tell me. Please.’ ‘It is cold, isn’t it? I think we ought to roll the windows up now, don’t you? I just hate driving with the windows down.’ She leans over and notches the key enough to power the internal electrics then presses fingers on the automatic up-buttons for all four windows. The planes of glass hum until we’re sealed in. ‘That’s better, isn’t it? I think so, too.’ ‘Why are we here?’ ‘Tic Tac, Justine?’ She rattles the box. Laughter springs up within me even as my eyes wobble. I unfasten my seat belt. ‘This is no time for mints, Mom. Listen, I know I was bad last night, but it was just once. I was – was…stupid. I promise, Mom. It’ll never happen again. Can we go home now? Please.’ ‘Oh. That’s right, you’re thirsty. You don’t want a mint, you want some water. How silly of me. Let me go get you a glass.’ ‘Are you listening to me, Mom?’ ‘Certainly, Justine. Mommy’ll bring you some nice cold water.’ She snatches the dentured key ring and darts into the building after Dad. Probably I should make a run for it then and there. But, like our parents, I’m not thinking clearly. We all need a chance to come to our senses. By the time they return with another woman – and without any water – I’ve thumped all the car locks down. Our father realises this when he tries to open my door. ‘Open the door, Justine.’ I pretend I’m stone. Like when we were little and used to play statues. ‘I said, open the door.’ Ferociously, he jiggles the outer handle. ‘Helen, the keys. Where are the keys?’ Our mother delves back into her handbag. The bag is on the small side and it’s a big ring of keys, but they appear to have gone missing nonetheless. Her hands tremble, like my own. One by one, she removes the familiar purse contents and places them on the kerb. When the purse is empty, Dad seizes it from her, rips the lining pockets inside out, tips the whole thing upside down and shakes it, lint and stray pennies go flying. Then Mom discovers the keys in her coat pocket. Dad brandishes the dentures fob like a mad prison warden. The keys for the Volvo jingle heavily against those for the house, which domino the ones for the practice, the spare set for Mom’s VW and the little skeleton one for the cabinet where he stashes the Novocaine and other anaesthetics. ‘We’ve got the keys, Justine.’ ‘I can see that, Dad,’ I holler. Still I don’t open the door. Dad marches to the driver’s door and inserts the appropriate key in the lock. The button pops up. He grins triumphantly, but I pound the button back down quicker than he can lift the handle. His grin turns to grimace. After a few more tries, me punching the button down each time, he scurries round to the passenger side. I’m there before him too and we rerun the same routine. ‘Helen, get the spare keys.’ Mom stands, flummoxed, with her purse disembowelled all over the pavement. ‘Where are the spares, Helen?’ ‘In the key cabinet, Jeff. At home.’ Dad removes his tie and circles the car a few more times, until he’s panting. That’s when the other woman steps in. She places her hand on his elbow. ‘I don’t think that’s necessary, Mr Ziegler.’ She’s pretending to talk to our dad, but her eyes are trained on me so I glare straight back. ‘Justine knows she can’t stay in there for ever. She’ll come out when she’s ready.’ I grit my teeth. I’m not sure whether or not I’m scared shitless or angry as hell. I bead up my eyes and fix them on her. Her own eyes – small, grey and widely set – hold my gaze. She’s nearly as tall as Dad and there’s too much of her body, too tall, too wide, too much. Around her neck hang two cords. At the end of one is a discus of keys, fobless and even more crowded than Dad’s; at the end of the other, a whistle. I recognise this woman. Her name is…Hilary, I think. I’m pretty sure she’s the director of this place, the big cheese. I don’t know her last name – they never use last names – but I know her. She sat in on my sibling interview soon after you were admitted. Your intake, that’s what they called it. Barely uttered a word then, just watched me like she’s watching me now. I didn’t like her. Didn’t like her then, don’t like her now. I would say hate, but Mom told us never to say you hate on first impressions. Hate’s a thing that needs time to grow. Ten minutes pass, maybe less, maybe more. I press the spot on my forehead just above the bridge of my nose until I glimpse stars. Twenty minutes. I unbutton my coat. Thirty minutes. There’s no air in here. Forty minutes. The smell from the vomit is horrible. Forty-five minutes. The smell’s overpowering, it flavours the air. I pinch my nose and take short, sharp, shallow breaths so I don’t have to taste the wretched stuff all over again. Fifty minutes, it must be fifty minutes. I consult my Swatch for the 2,367th time. I’m hyperventilating, my head is ratta-tat-tatting. I may pass out. If I pass out, they’ll get me. What would you do in this situation? An hour later, I open my door and puke at Hilary’s feet. She doesn’t move, just blows her whistle until four new feet bound into my field of vision. ‘Very good, Justine. Now you can accompany us inside of your own accord or Mark and Leroy can assist you.’ I raise my eyes to Mark and Leroy who are standing, stonyfaced, legs apart, arms folded, shoulders swelling. They should be visiting college football recruiters, and arguing with our dad about who’s likely to make it to next year’s Rose Bowl, not witnessing me wring my guts out. ‘Your choice. What’s it going to be?’ CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_b49e5780-9713-5551-b52a-b3f65549e68f) A week late, dragging along an uninvited guest. That’s how we arrive in this world. It’s that time of day where people don’t know whether to call it night-time or morning and Mom’s been in labour for going on ten years. She alternates between a shade of puce and a white so white you could lose her on the gurney if you crossed your eyes. The doctor shouts at Mom to push and she pushes and pushes and pushes. ‘I can see the head!’ bullhorns the doctor. Then, in a motion that might seem sudden if everyone hadn’t been congregating so long round Mom’s nether regions, you slide out. ‘It’s a boy!’ You’re holding on to your winky and wailing. Mom throbs in strobe-light fashion, one constant pulse of pain, but still reaches out to draw you to her bosom. ‘A boy.’ Her lips flutter into a feathery smile. ‘Here comes another one!’ announces the doctor. ‘Another what?’ ‘Eh?’ The doctor’s clearly half deaf. How else can his missing that second heartbeat in the first place be explained? A fresh contraction doubles Mom up as one of the nurses wrenches you from her. And then here comes me, follow-the-leadering you right out the trap door, a little soggier, a little quieter, with nothing to hold on to but Mom’s umbilical cord, which I let go of pretty swift-like. That’s how we imagine our birth, anyway. We can’t say for sure. Mom never told us particulars. When we got to an age of wondering after such things, she’d answer vaguely. ‘It was such a long time ago,’ she’d say. Or, ‘They had me so drugged up, kids, I didn’t know who was coming or going.’ Or, if maybe we’d been why-ing her for awhile already, she’d just snap, ‘Because,’ even though it wasn’t a ‘because’ kind of question in the least, or, ‘Does it really matter?’ This is what we know for sure: we were born sometime in the morning (5:00 a.m.? 11:52 a.m.?) on 25 August at the University Hospital in Piedmontville, North Carolina, home of the Central State University, where Dad was finishing up his dental degree. You came out first and, seven and a half minutes later, I appeared. We’ve never had it confirmed but we strongly suspect Dad was nowhere in the vicinity of the hospital when we made our grand entrance. We figure he arrived later, at a respectable hour, the sun high in the sky. Maybe he’s been taking an exam or memorising a textbook or practising with his drills. Or maybe he’s late because he’s picked Grandma and Grandpa Shirland up from the airport. Grandpa’s still alive at this point though already ancient and doddery, gone soft in the head with age. He clings to Grandma’s arm and stops to let his heart slow down after the excitement of the doors that whooshed open and closed all by themselves. Meanwhile, Dad barrels past the nurses’ desk unannounced, his leather soles dog-whistling along the swept salmon-and-lime-speckled tiles. He heads the wrong way, striding purposefully towards geriatrics until some doctor or orderly or whoever it is at the hospital on glad tidings duty recognises him and steers him in the right direction while attempting to share said tidings. Dad listens with one ear and nods his understanding, but all he hears is ‘boy’ and ‘twins’. And his mind adds those two words together in an equation that goes boys + twins = identical = two sons. Because twins mean identical, right, and identical means, if nothing else, same sex. Right? You’d think they would have taught him otherwise at some point in all that expensive medical education of his. But what do budding orthodontists know? Dad knows twins are identical and boys are little creatures who grow up into men who carry on the Ziegler name. He hauls up at the viewing station and shoulders his way through some other newborn-gawkers to the front of the glass so he can size us up. We’ve been stashed in the same crib and, to be honest, we’re not too impressive. Downright tiny, only five pounds apiece and drowning in hospital regulation cotton. And we’re yellow, shrivelled and flaky – overcooked, as Mom used to say – these are things she remembered to tell us. But we’re men-to-be. Dad eyes his progenies and, without consulting Mom who’s got many days and weeks of drugged-out-ness ahead, he decrees us Joshua and Justin. He tells the nurse or orderly to write it down. And they keep shtoom, do as they’re told and write down Joshua and Justin Ziegler. ‘How adorable,’ coos Grandma who’s just caught up, towing Grandpa behind her like a badly hitched trailer. Then Grandpa judders to a halt and follows Grandma’s finger to where it crooks at us through the glass. Just a bundle of baby under a single snowy blanket. He lowers his chin, squints and peers through his Norman Rockwell bifocals. ‘Amazing, Jeff,’ he says to Dad. ‘How on earth did you and Helen manage to have a two-headed baby? Ain’t that funny.’ That last bit is true, Grandpa really did say that, or words to that effect. Grandma Shirland has been telling us that story for years and others around the family have been retelling it to their neighbours, their friends, mailmen and each other until it comes full circle back to us and they tell us again like we never heard it before. And the naming thing was also true, though Dad didn’t let that one get round quite so far. I imagine he was pretty disappointed when he realised I didn’t have a winky. He tacked an E on to my name on the hospital form, wrote it in himself, a big messy capital letter that didn’t match any of the pretty orchid-like penmanship that blossomed across the rest of the page. And I became Justine. CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ccf67871-e0b4-5d61-bc7b-2caab795ed0e) The Amazon woman named Hilary repeats the question. ‘What drugs have you used?’ ‘None.’ She sways slightly in her seat, left to right. Hers is one of those office swivel chairs with wheels for feet. All of the chairs in the intake room are woefully mismatched. Four chairs, none the same. Mine’s a correct-your-posture ladder back, splintering wood, no cushion. ‘You sure about that?’ ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ ‘Alcohol is a drug too.’ ‘OK, then, alcohol, I’ve had alcohol.’ Dad grunts. He’s lumbered with a forest-green garden chair, plastic and stackable. It’s not a piece of furniture that’s kind to the spine or accustomed to bulk. Its front two legs splay out beneath Dad as if in pain; he struggles to keep his neck and shoulders straight despite the sag. On the wall above his head hangs a needlepoint godsquad quote: ‘Believe in Him’ it commands. The rest of the walls are whitewashed, bare except for a few dusty cobwebs that cling to the furthest reaches of the ceiling. The spiders have vanished. ‘Anything else?’ ‘No.’ ‘You sure about that?’ ‘Yes.’ A checked, Formica-topped table is shoved up against the wall just behind Hilary. On top of the table sits a pile of papers – some normal-sized and lots of little scraps – and on top of the pile is a clipboard. She picks up the clipboard and taps her pen against the metal clip. I focus on the tabletop. The Formica is yellowed, curling up at the corners like a half-peeled banana. I’m hungry. And thirsty and tired. But I’m struggling to hold myself together. I saved Mark and Leroy the effort of flexing their muscles. Raised myself up, held my head high, carried myself into this dingy place with as much dignity as possible. I’m still thinking, though, that bruises, broken bones, abrasions or come what may, I might have been better off jumping from the car. Hilary curls the top pages over the back of her board. ‘According to our files, there may have been other substances.’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ‘Marijuana perhaps. Mary Jane, grass, dope, weed, call it what you will.’ That makes me giggle because I never knew marijuana was called Mary Jane which only puts me in mind of my shoes, a girl I knew in kindergarten, and the nougaty candies in the mustard-coloured wrappers we used to love to chew even though they stuck to your teeth for hours on end. That candy business infuriated Dad, who made us floss three times on the spot. ‘Something funny?’ ‘No.’ ‘So how many times have you smoked marijuana?’ ‘I haven’t.’ ‘Never?’ ‘Never.’ She checks the page, glances from it to me and back and forth again. And waits. I wonder. She couldn’t mean that time with you, could she? That doesn’t count. I just wanted to know what you and those weirdo friends of yours were doing. I remember it, last summer, how for weeks on end I heard you stirring in the night, watched from my window as you crept out and down the drive to where that trash-heap of a car was idling with its lights off. Where were you going, my Joshua? I had to know. One night, past twelve, I crept down the stairs and met you at the front door. ‘I’m coming too,’ I announced. ‘No, you’re not.’ ‘I am. Unless you want me to wake Mom and Dad.’ ‘You wouldn’t.’ I opened my mouth as if to scream. ‘All right, all right, come if you must.’ I followed you outside in my slippers and, by the time we reached the car, my feet were sodden from the puddles formed by Dad’s sprinkler system. I didn’t recognise the three other boys in the car. They didn’t look much like boys at all. They were older, their features harder, their faces in need of a razor. ‘Who the hell is this?’ snarled the driver, who had a perm and sideburns resembling cotton balls. ‘My sister. She’s cool.’ We drove around a lot, stopping occasionally in deserted parking lots. You and your friends nursed a case of beer, smoked and shared a bottle round, even the driver swigged at it. I slouched down on the hump in the back, wedged between you and a chubby guy with an earring. You passed the bottle over me. Finally, we parked down by the river and you and the driver went for a walk. You didn’t say goodbye to me or tell me where you were going, and the other two just kept smoking and talking over my head. I wished I was home, tucked up in bed, fast asleep. After a while, the one in the front rolled another cigarette and offered it back to Chubby. He eyed me suspiciously as he took a long drag, then he jutted his elbow in my ribs and handed it over. I knew it was no Marlboro, I wasn’t that stupid. I could tell by the sweet smell, by the way they pressed it up against their lips with their thumb and forefinger and held their breath afterwards, their chests puffed out and faces screwed up in constipated expressions. I could tell but I accepted the thing anyway and tried to do like they did. That’s when you reappeared. You reached in through the open window, whacked me on the back and started me coughing. ‘Stop it! Don’t do that. You hear me, don’t ever do that.’ Then you hollered for a while at Chubby and the other guy. What the hell did they think they were doing, you wanted to know, just what the frigging hell. They drove us home after that and you never let me join you on midnight rides again, no matter how much I threatened to scream – as if I would. I didn’t want to come, though, not really. ‘Once,’ I concede. ‘I smoked marijuana once.’ Our mother wags her head despairingly and tears at her hankie. Mom has the only comfortable chair in the room. An armchair that’s deep-sea blue and coffee-stained. But it’s low slung and she’s sunk down into it, engulfed, making her seem even smaller than usual. ‘And?’ ‘And what?’ ‘Any other substances?’ I’m tempted to snap ‘no’ again but am not in the mood for more backpedalling. ‘You tell me.’ ‘Prescription drugs maybe?’ ‘Only when they’ve been prescribed.’ ‘And other times?’ ‘Nope.’ Hilary pokes her pen through the hole in the metal clip of her board, where the nail would go if the board was hanging on the wall. ‘Your father is a doctor.’ ‘He’s an orthodontist.’ ‘I stock painkillers,’ Dad interjects, defensively. ‘Painkillers perhaps?’ Hilary asks. Do they think I’ve been tiptoeing into Dad’s office on the weekends? My eyes drift unconsciously to Dad’s denture fob which peeks out of the pocket of his jacket, now draped over the arm of the garden chair. All other eyes trail mine. I blush. ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ ‘There’s time for that later. Please answer the question.’ ‘No, I haven’t used any of Dad’s painkillers.’ ‘OK then. How about caffeine?’ ‘Are you serious?’ ‘Absolutely.’ ‘Well, I drink Diet Coke but I’m not much for coffee.’ ‘I mean caffeine pills. Vivarin, No-Doz, that kind of thing.’ ‘You can get those over the counter.’ ‘Many things sold over the counter can be abused,’ Hilary informs me. ‘So, have you used caffeine pills?’ ‘I still don’t think it counts. I was cramming for exams.’ ‘I’ll take that as a yes then. How about solvents?’ ‘I don’t even know what a solvent is.’ ‘Glue, paint thinner, lighter fluid, aerosol sprays, nail varnish—’ ‘Be serious.’ ‘Magic markers?’ Her eyebrows hike knowingly. ‘That definitely doesn’t count! We were just kids, we liked the smell.’ ‘Mmm-hmm.’ She lifts her pen to her mouth and chews on the cap. I’m hungry, tired and so so thirsty. ‘Tell me, Justine, why do you use drugs? Do you know?’ ‘I don’t use drugs.’ ‘Alcohol, then.’ ‘It was one time.’ ‘Last night you mean?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘OK, assuming last night was the only time you’ve used alcohol—’ ‘There’s no assuming, last night was the only time.’ ‘Fine, assuming it was the only time, why don’t you tell me why you drank last night?’ ‘I don’t know.’ I shrug my shoulders, cross and recross my arms and then my legs. My chair couldn’t be less comfortable. ‘I was upset, it was there, it was no big deal.’ ‘No big deal?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you feel guilty when you use?’ ‘I don’t use. Would you stop saying use that way? It’s not like that.’ ‘Do you feel guilty about last night?’ I address our parents now, beseechingly. ‘Yes, yes I do. I feel very guilty. I wish it had never happened. It wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t even any fun.’ ‘Interesting,’ she nods. ‘You were expecting it to be fun.’ Dad seizes on Hilary’s implication. ‘Is that what you wanted, Justine?’ he demands. ‘A little fun?’ Can’t they hear anything I’m saying? Don’t they understand? I feel like I’m speaking a different language. ‘I wasn’t expecting anything. I hadn’t thought about it enough to expect anything. I’m sorry. Mom, are you listening? I’m sorry.’ Mom slides her eyes away from me, and Hilary lets my apology hang there for a moment, unanswered. Our father shifts in his chair, the green plastic legs creaking beneath him; Hilary wrests back control. ‘How much money do you spend to support your habit?’ ‘I don’t have a habit.’ ‘How much money do you spend on drugs?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘Alcohol included?’ ‘Alcohol included.’ ‘Have you ever been to a party?’ ‘What’s wrong with parties?’ ‘Nothing’s wrong with parties per se,’ she concedes. ‘Do you go to them?’ ‘Not counting my parents’ dinner parties or country club socials?’ ‘Not counting them.’ ‘No, I’m a complete and utter social outcast. I never get invited anywhere.’ She doesn’t appreciate the sarcasm, and neither does Dad, whose eyes are boring into me like I’m one big, blackened cavity. ‘Please answer the question.’ ‘Yes, I’ve been to parties.’ ‘Is there drinking and drug-taking at these parties you go to?’ ‘Don’t know about drugs.’ ‘But drinking?’ ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ ‘What radio station do you listen to, Justine?’ ‘Q105.’ ‘The rock station?’ ‘Yeah.’ There goes the eyebrow again, arching in Dad’s direction as she scribbles. ‘Have you ever been to a rock concert?’ ‘Yes, I have, with Josh. And, before you ask, we had our parents’ permission, too.’ ‘What was the last book you read?’ ‘I suppose you want me to say On the Road or Naked Lunch or something.’ ‘Just the truth, thank you.’ ‘Great Expectations.’ ‘For pleasure or for class?’ ‘Class.’ ‘What’s the last book you read for pleasure?’ ‘That would be On the Road.’ She smirks. ‘Are you going to ask me about movies now?’ ‘No. Thank you, Justine. That’s fine.’ Hilary flips to another page on the clipboard. ‘Now, if you could answer yes or no to the following questions. Do you ever have difficulty waking up in the morning?’ ‘Doesn’t everyone?’ ‘Yes or no, please.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you often feel that something dreadful is going to happen?’ ‘Well, I didn’t see this coming if that’s what you mean.’ Mom roots around in her purse with fierce concentration. ‘Yes or no,’ says Hilary. ‘No.’ ‘Do you ever fear being enclosed in a small place?’ My eyes roam the walls. Where have the spiders gone? Did they escape or did they die and shrivel, plummet to the carpet, their carcasses vacuumed away in a twice-monthly tidy up? ‘Someti—Yes.’ ‘Have your friends ever been in trouble with the law?’ ‘No.’ ‘You sure about that?’ ‘Yes.’ Returning to the pile of papers, Hilary pulls out a wodge of pages belted with a rubber band. One-handed, she rolls the band off and shoots it on to the table. I pinch the bridge of my nose. Oh, for one lousy glass of water. As she rifles the pages, the top one breaks loose and flutters to the floor. The thick black frame round the edge identifies it as a Xerox of a smaller piece of paper. The writing on the page within the page is fainter, but there’s no mistaking the loops of the ‘I’s, the circle-dots above the ‘i’s, the doodles in the margin, the date marked in the top right-hand corner and framed with a box. I haven’t had the strength to even look at it, let alone write in it, since before you left, but I still recognise it in an instant. ‘That’s my journal! What are you doing with my private journal?’ Hilary, ignoring me, finds the page she’s searching for. ‘According to this, your friend…Lloyd, is it? Yes. Lloyd Taggart. He was caught driving without a licence. He was also found to be in possession of a fake ID.’ I lunge for the entry fallen on the floor. ‘What the fuck are you doing with my journal?’ ‘Language!’ gasps Mom and Dad hunkers forward, practically growling. ‘Do you want to answer the question?’ Hilary continues. ‘No, I don’t actually.’ ‘Answer the question, Justine!’ Dad barks. I glare at him. Journal-snatcher. I can see it in the way his cheek twitches. I imagine him asking his receptionist, Zoe Micklebaum, to run the book through the photocopier for him. I can see her laughing, saying, you can’t run a bound notebook through a photocopier, Dr Ziegler, but cracking the spine and forcing the book roughly down on to the plate of glass all the same. Later at home, she’ll complain to her muscle-bound husband, Felix Micklebaum. ‘Photocopying little girls’ diaries ain’t part of my job description,’ I hear her saying, ‘but ooh the things that pass through that young Justine Ziegler’s addled brain.’ This is the woman who snorted like a hog when we last saw her. ‘Imagine,’ she’d said, ‘if I ever married your dad, kids, my name’d be Zoe Ziegler. Imagine, ZZ.’ ‘Was your friend Lloyd in trouble with the law?’ ‘Technically, I guess so.’ ‘Yes or no.’ ‘Yes. But something like that, it doesn’t really count.’ ‘It seems a lot of things don’t count as far as you’re concerned.’ She swivels left, swivels right. The keys on her necklace chain shift noisily in the canyon between her breasts. ‘Have you ever run away from home?’ ‘No.’ ‘Don’t you lie, Justine! Don’t you do it!’ Our mother’s near hysterical. ‘I haven’t.’ ‘Yes, you have. That time your father grounded you over the cleaning rota.’ ‘That doesn’t…we were at the library.’ Three pairs of eyes pin me down, unimpressed. ‘We were gone for less than four hours.’ Silence. ‘We were only eleven.’ ‘Yes or no.’ ‘Good grief. Yes.’ ‘Do you hide things to cover up your habit?’ ‘I don’t have a habit. No.’ ‘Do you ever miss school because of your habit?’ ‘Are you hearing me? I don’t have a habit.’ ‘Fine. For the following questions, please answer Never, Rarely, Occasionally, Often or Always. Do you seek approval from others?’ ‘Sometimes.’ ‘Never, Rarely, Occasionally, Often or Always, please.’ ‘Occasionally.’ ‘Do you fear criticism?’ ‘Occasionally.’ ‘Do you overextend yourself?’ ‘Occasionally.’ ‘Do you have a need for perfection?’ ‘Occasionally.’ ‘Are you being honest?’ ‘Occasionally.’ Hilary lifts her pen off the page. ‘I’m talking about now. Are you being honest now?’ ‘Don’t I have to answer Never, Rarely or whatever to that?’ Hilary cocks her chin to the side in a wary be-serious way. ‘Yes, I’m being honest.’ ‘So everything applies to you, but only occasionally? Does that sound truthful to you?’ ‘Yup.’ ‘Yes to which question?’ ‘Both.’ Hilary sighs. ‘Fine. Let’s move on.’ She locates her place on the clipboard again, pen poised. ‘Do you isolate yourself from other people?’ I hear Mom draw in her breath. ‘No.’ ‘Justine, please answer Never, Rarely, Occasionally, Often or Always.’ ‘I thought we were back to yes/no.’ Hilary swishes her head in slow-mo. ‘Never, Rarely, Occasionally, Often or Always.’ ‘Never.’ Mom pushes the air out of her lungs like it was noxious fumes. ‘OK, rarely,’ I concede. ‘Do you fear being rejected or abandoned?’ ‘Occasionally.’ ‘Do you find it difficult to express your own emotions?’ ‘Occasionally.’ ‘Do you have trouble with intimate relationships?’ ‘I’m only fifteen. Are you going to make me out be a sex maniac too?’ ‘Are you?’ ‘I’m a virgin.’ I expect her to say, ‘Sure about that?’ but she doesn’t. Mom and Dad appear momentarily relieved. ‘Do you respond with anxiety to authority figures?’ ‘Yes!’ I roar, then make sure to add, ‘Occasionally.’ ‘Fine. Now I’d like to ask you a few questions about your relationship with your brother.’ My vertebrae stiffen against the rungs of my ladder back. ‘I don’t want to talk about him.’ She distributes sympathetic nods to Dad, Mom and me in turn. ‘I realise it’s a sensitive subject but I think it’s necessary.’ ‘I don’t want to talk about Josh.’ ‘Do you think Joshua is more important than you are?’ ‘That has nothing to do with anything.’ ‘I’m not so sure. Did you feel rejected when Joshua started spending more time with his druggie friends than with you?’ ‘Stop it.’ ‘How did you feel when he ran away to Florida?’ I imagine you in Miami, tanned and smiling, wearing pastel print shirts and sipping matching cocktails in fluted glasses with umbrellas sticking out of them. How did I feel? ‘Stop,’ I tell her. ‘Did you think that he’d abandoned you?’ I think I say stop again. Stop, stop, stop. ‘Were you ever embarrassed by Joshua’s actions?’ ‘Joshua never did anything to hurt or embarrass me.’ ‘Maybe it’s not something he did, maybe it was just the way he was. He did have a certain reputation after all, didn’t he?’ ‘No. I said, I don’t want to talk about this.’ ‘Did you resent Joshua for not letting you help him?’ I fling myself into tantrum mode, just like when we were kids. I scream at the top of my lungs, pound my feet on the floor, slam my hands against the sides of my seat, splinters shooting into my palms like poisoned darts. ‘Would you fucking leave Joshua out of this?’ Mom’s crying but I don’t allow myself to cry. Dad uncrosses his legs and plants his feet full-sole to the floor. Hilary starts to gather up her papers. ‘OK, Justine. Thank you for being so patient. Just one final question. What do you want to get out of life?’ ‘Right now? Right this minute?’ ‘Sure.’ ‘I want to get the hell out of here.’ ‘Anything else?’ I pause, roll my shoulders. ‘I want a 1500 score on my SATs, I want to graduate from high school magna cum laude, I want to go to an Ivy League college and fall in love with a future Supreme Court judge and have babies and discover a cure for cancer and do lots and lots of great things. You know, the usual.’ Our mother beams and our father makes a comforting chip-off-the-old-block kind of noise. I’m the golden child again, I can feel the weight of my halo resting round my temples and I love it. Hilary, too, manages a small smile. ‘Excellent. Well, we’ll see what we can do about that.’ CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_25d5e89f-3ac7-526f-b208-59e3f379170b) Our earliest actual memory, that’s something different. I don’t know who had our first memory first, or if I really remember it or just think I do because we talked about it so many times. I’m a baby, lying on the sofa, the one with the fruit-basket pattern. Daddy’s not in the frame of my memory and neither is Mommy – could be she hadn’t followed us home from the hospital yet after her long stay. What is in the frame is the ceiling: white, stippled and big as life until my hands come windmilling in. They keep doing that, diving in front of my face in their arc to sink themselves in fistfuls into my mouth. I try to fix my gaze on them for a minute but they’re moving too fast. And then, shifting my head, I see, beyond the fleshy pad of my palm, I see myself, my whole self. Not two feet away from me, lying on a plate of pears on another cushion on the same sofa, wearing the same romper suit, dripping the same saliva from the same hand. I’m staring at me, except of course it’s not me, it’s you. I stare at my hand and then I stare at you and I start to cry because I’m kinda scared. Then you up and do the same thing. Wail, wail, gasp. We look at each other, see the other one crying and then we stop, just like that. Mom discovered this trick later. If you came down with a bug or couldn’t sleep, she’d tuck me in the crib with you. And vice versa. The healthy, happy one calming the other down. Sometimes, of course, it backfired and we both got cranky, wide-awake or sick. I remember catching chickenpox off you, for instance, when we were in preschool. Mom had to separate us then because picking each other’s scabs was just too irresistible. CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_a7835e6e-9e89-5e4a-94f4-638ad7f942bd) I’m alone in the room now, and oddly calm. ‘I’ll just take your parents next door for a quick word,’ Hilary said as they jangled out of the room. I shut my eyes and hunch my shoulders up to my ears, let them drop, roll my head round on its axis, listen to my neck muscles pop and stir. All things considered, I think I handled Hilary’s interrogation pretty well. Those questions about you were out of line, and I wasn’t expecting that part with my diary, but surely that showed Dad in a worse light than it did me. How could he? Snooping around in my private possessions. I blanch at the thought of him inspecting my blushers and strawberry lip gloss, the new grey kohl eyeliner that I haven’t quite got the knack of, flipping through my Judy Blume books and my Seventeen magazines to see the pages I dog-eared, the words I underlined, rifling through my underwear drawer, his fingers catching on the stray tampons hidden beneath my new bikini briefs with the little silk rose at the front. The questions were more intense this time round, much more pointed than when I had to come in for the sibling interview, but really the gist was the same. I was nervous then, too, sick to my stomach after the night before with you. Just a precaution, more a formality than anything, that’s what they told me at the time. All siblings are interviewed when a person is entered into the programme. And so they asked me some silly questions about parties and drinking and my favourite General Hospital characters and then they sent me home. I switch seats, slipping into our mother’s chair, still warm and scented with her perfume, Chanel. When we were little, we’d curl up in Mom’s lap and let her read to us or we’d read to her. I liked it best when it was late at night and we were bone tired. I’d shout dibs on the lap then coil up with my feet tucked into the crook behind Mom’s knees, my cheek resting on her breast, her ribcage rising and falling like a cloud, and I’d drift off with the sound of you and Dr. Seuss spinning echoes around me. There were more questions today, more drugs named, a lot more testing and prodding. And I admit I was worried for a while, really worried. But I was myself, I answered honestly, just like I did before and it all came straight in the end. Right about now, Hilary should be telling Mom and Dad to stop overreacting. Justine? A drug problem? Don’t make me laugh. She’d couch it in all that counsellorese, of course, but either way, it’s obvious, isn’t it? She knows it and now they know it. Maybe it’s no bad thing we went through this whole rigmarole, if only so Dad could be proved wrong for once. I glance at my Swatch, the one you gave me, with the confetti strap. I can’t tell for sure whether it’s two thirty or three thirty, but I can tell by the position of the minute hand that Hilary’s quick word hasn’t been very quick at all. What are they doing next door anyway? I decide to see for myself. I try the door only it doesn’t open, not all the way. It gives about three inches and stops. I peer through the gap to see the chain on the outside. They’ve locked me in. Beyond the chain, I can see Hilary chatting with our parents in front of the glass double doors to the parking lot. ‘I think you’d better go now,’ she says, ushering them out. They’re leaving and I’m locked in this room with crappy chairs and a Formica-topped table. My calm evaporates. ‘Hey!’ I scream. ‘Hey!!’ So loud it makes my throat hurt. ‘Mom, Dad, what are you doing? What the—What the—What are you doing?!’ The double doors are separating, drawing our parents back out into the February day. ‘Hey!! Don’t leave me here. I didn’t do anything wrong. Please! Don’t go!’ Mom’s crying again. She turns and bends towards me like a tree blown by a gale, her arms outstretched like hopeful limbs. But Dad has her by the waist and is pulling her towards the Volvo. Frantic, I try to force my arm and leg through the chained gap. If I can just squeeze myself through, if I can just get into our mother’s arms, I know I’ll be safe. But it’s too tight, the chain’s too strong. My face is hot and swelling up, too big for the gap. ‘Mom, please. I love you Mommy I love you Mommy I love you I promise to be good I promise to be good.’ Mom wails. ‘Give my baby a glass of water. She’s thirsty, so thirsty, my baby needs her water.’ ‘Mommmmmm!’ I scream until my scream has nowhere else to go and so tails off of its own accord. Our mother watches my scream fade away and part of her seems to disappear with it. Her panting slows and we reach out for each other. Then her arms drop, in a clunky, bent-elbow motion, like a Barbie’s, and her face recomposes itself into something different, something bitter and blameful. She looks at me and doesn’t like what she sees. ‘Why don’t you ever cry, Justine? You never cry.’ I touch my cheek in reply but I don’t need my finger nor our mother to tell me that my face is hot and swollen but still dry. Dad drags her off as she starts to howl again, more subdued this time, and her howls fade until the only screaming left is mine. I call after them, even though I can’t see them any more. ‘Please don’t leave me here, please Daddy.’ I’m stuck between the door and the doorjamb, the metal chain slicing into my neck. I go limp and hang there as Hilary stands, her clipboard still in hand, and watches me from the reception area. Mark and Leroy reappear. Mark – or the one I think is Mark – stands to one side of the door to the intake room. He stomps on my foot like an anchor and grabs me by the arm as Leroy unhooks the chain. They slip me out of the room and Leroy takes hold of my other side. Mark reeks of BO and Leroy’s hands are rough like packing boxes. When I struggle against him, my skin chafes. I stop struggling. ‘Your parents have asked to leave you here for a three-day evaluation,’ Hilary informs me. ‘After that, we’ll report back to them with our recommendations. Do you understand?’ No, I don’t understand, I don’t understand at all. This could not possibly be right. ‘I’m not a drug addict, I’m not any kind of addict. I don’t have a problem.’ ‘Well, your parents are very worried about you. And frankly, based on your behaviour here this morning, Justine, I think they’re justified.’ ‘But I don’t belong here. You can’t keep me.’ She considers that. ‘In fact, we can. Do you understand? We can.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s not right.’ One of the double doors swings open again and our father strides back into the centre. A wave of relief washes over me. It’s OK now. They’ve changed their minds, come to their senses at last. Dad walks up to me and he’s going to throw his arms round me, he’s going to apologise, kiss my burning cheeks and take me home. ‘Oh Daddy,’ I blubber. Our father isn’t such a bad man really, he loses perspective sometimes, but he’s got a heart and soul and mind that tells him what’s reasonable and what’s not, what’s right, what’s not. He approaches then stops abruptly. He hauls something out of his pocket – a handkerchief? One of Mom’s Tic Tacs? The denture fob with the keys to the car that has drying vomit in the back seat but who cares because that’s the car that’s going to take me home and I’ll never be nauseous again? ‘You forgot your retainer, Justine,’ our not-unreasonable father tells me. ‘You know better than that. That’s expensive orthodontic equipment and you need to treat it with some respect.’ He places the retainer in my hand, then makes to leave again. ‘Daddy. Please.’ I can see the lines round his eyes, dragging everything down. ‘Justine,’ he says, ‘you must believe me. It’s for your own good.’ And perhaps he means the retainer or Hilary or this godawful day or all three. Is he being our father or Jeff Ziegler, orthodontist extraordinaire, or someone else entirely? Whoever he is, he spins on his heel and heads for the door. The smear that the garage door bestowed on his suit jacket is the last I see of him. I hope no one tells him about the smear, I hope it sits so long that the grease becomes well and truly ingrained so that even a dry cleaner can’t budge it – that stain will be there for ever and his shirt will be ruined. A reminder of this day. The double doors squeak on their hinges and swing shut and my stomach does something funny at the sound of it. The ground falls away and, though Mark and Leroy’s hands are still on me, they feel like feathers. My body is numb. ‘Do you understand now?’ Hilary repeats. Simultaneously, Leroy and Mark tighten their grip and still I can hardly feel their fingers. ‘Do you understand, Justine?’ I nod. My eyelids are dry and rough like the boxes Leroy has been packing and they chafe against my eyeballs. ‘Very good, then. Welcome to Come Clean.’ I’m still nodding as my knees buckle and I swoon into blackness and Mark’s stinking embrace. CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_20d399e4-9c64-5001-abe8-76d067920452) When I come to, I’m in a room smaller than the intake room and it’s dark. There are no windows and the only light is eking through beneath the door that I don’t even need to touch to know is locked. My tartan skirt has hiked up to expose my legs and the soft skin at the backs of my thighs is sticking to the cracked leatherette cushions of the couch I’ve been laid out on. I can’t breathe. I wonder for a second if my lungs stopped working when I fainted because I’m puffing now like I’ve been under water: like when you used to dunk me at the swimming pool and I’d get chlorine up my nose and I couldn’t breathe, and you’d hold my head under while you chanted Marco Polo Marco Polo, and I couldn’t wait to do the same to you once it was my turn. My other vital organs feel as if they stopped and started again too. I’m hot and cold at the same time and my heart is thwacking inside my chest. I don’t know how long I’ve been in here, hours probably. I try to read my Swatch, my favourite Christmas present last year. I love it, I’ve always loved everything you gave me. Even though it’s near impossible to tell the time because there isn’t a second hand and no numbers. You’d tease me by saying I was the ditzy one – spatially retarded in fact – not the watch. Retard, you’d call me, but you’d say it with affection and that’s how I’d hear it too. In the dimness, the hands are too fuzzy to discern at all. The room has an undisturbed air about it, like no one but me, twisting in my unconsciousness, has moved in here for quite some time. My memory is one thing that didn’t stop working when I passed out. I know exactly where I am, if not the precise location within the building. And I know I’ve got to escape. I try to retrace the route in my head so I can tell Cindy. But what the heck is the name of the road, Justine? Is it right or left off the main drag? And how many miles after Harvey’s? I don’t know. Cindy will figure it out. She has to. She and Lloyd will find a map and find a way, they’ll get me out of here. I’ve just got to reach a phone so I can call her. I survey the room, my eyes adjusting to the dark. I can make out forms though colours and textures blur into shadow. There’s the couch I’m lying on, about a foot shorter than me, and two folding chairs, leaning up against the wall to the right of the door, and a trash can, wicker maybe, looking empty and skeletal even in the dimness, and framed things on the wall, yet more needlepoint godsquad pronouncements I’m sure. To the left of the sofa where my feet have been dangling is a spindly side table and there’s something on it. It’s not a phone, though, that’s clear. It’s smaller, looks like a tube or canister of something. I lean in and squint. No, it’s a cup, a plastic cup, but it’s tipped over on its side, thanks apparently to a collision with my feet. The tabletop is a pool of liquid, dripping into the carpet. I dab my finger in it. Water, my glass of water. I remember how thirsty I am. My lips crack with rawness and when I lick them my tongue sticks like it does to my teeth and the underside of my still foul-tasting retainer. I would hock my Michael Jackson collection and all my Esprit sweaters for a drink of water. Why would anybody put a glass of water in a place like that, where a person could so easily reach out and kick it accidentally. It’s almost laughable, the sheer stupidity of it. But then it occurs to me. It wasn’t a stupid thing, not thoughtless at all. Plenty of thought went into it. They did it on purpose. She did it, Hilary. She did it to spite me. She did it so that when our mom lost the steel in her lip, started feeling guilty later and called up to see how I was adjusting and asked, is my Justine OK, did you give my baby her glass of water? Then Hilary would be able to say with a straight face and clear conscience, ‘Of course we did, Mrs Ziegler.’ And Mom wouldn’t think to ask, ‘But did she drink the damn water, or did you, you evil woman, put it somewhere it was certain to get knocked over so she’d never get a drop of it?’ Mom wouldn’t think to ask that and she’d go to sleep tonight never realising how thirsty I am or how dry my lips are or how I’ve got nothing to wash down this taste of bile and vomit and betrayal. There’s movement on the other side of the door. Rigid with fear, I listen to the chatter of the key ring on the other side, the scraping of metal on metal as the key’s teeth match up with the lock’s grooves, then the turning of the mechanisms deep inside and then the click-thud as the bolt snaps back. Should I hide? There’s nowhere. Should I pretend to be asleep? Wait behind the door to pounce? Throw the wicker wastepaper basket over her head? Even as I’m asking myself, I’m imagining Hilary twirling the massive ring of keys round her neck like a witch doctor spins a string of skulls, working his spell over each of his victims. But when the door opens, there’s no Hilary. Instead there’s a girl. She flips on the lights too suddenly and almost blinds me, but I can see her through my squinted lids. I don’t know her. She’s dressed in a billowy red sweat suit and is several inches shorter than me and wider, almost round like a ball, with pale skin and straight red hair, greasy and slicked back into a ponytail twitching high and off-centre atop her head. Mark and Leroy are back, lingering behind Pony Girl in the hall and they don’t enter all the way when she does. She sashays in swinging a Kmart plastic bag which she flings on to the sofa. ‘Your clothes,’ she says. ‘I’m fine in what I’m wearing, thanks.’ ‘Not regulation.’ She tosses her hair and gestures towards the bag again. I reach into it. There’s a green synthetic tunic littered with pink polka dots and a pair of brown corduroy pants. I hate cords at the best of times, the sound they make as you walk, the friction, the ribbons of material rubbing up against one another, leaving funny brush patterns and picking up lint from wherever you sit down. I hate them and these ones are two sizes too big, cheap and nasty to boot. Very cheap, judging by the price tags still attached to them as well as the tunic. ‘These aren’t my clothes,’ I tell Pony Girl. ‘Your parents brought them for you.’ Our parents? I take a step towards her. ‘Did they come back? Are they still here?’ ‘No, they left them here,’ she says, her breath stinking in my face. What’s that smell? ‘They left them when they left you.’ I rub the bridge of my nose. There’s a spot there where, if I close my eyes and press hard enough, it feels like I’m giving my brain a pinch. A little squeeze that rockets pain like prismed light into my thoughts. It hurts most when I use the knuckle of my forefinger, but it only hurts for a second and then sometimes it helps. It makes things clearer. Like now, like how it’s clear to me now that our parents must have had this planned, who knew how far in advance. Maybe weeks, maybe hours. Time enough for Mom to go shopping at Kmart. Perhaps she went this morning while I was still asleep, dreaming of you and swimming – how long ago was that? I can’t fathom it, nor can I fathom how my very own mother could shop for me at Kmart of all places. We never shop at Kmart. And how could she pick out quite such an atrocious outfit? I’ll look like a tree with the brown pants and the green top – a cherry tree, even, thanks to those hideous pink polka dots. What was she thinking? But hang on a minute. Perhaps it isn’t all bad. There is only one change of clothes. You don’t give a person just one change of clothes if you expect them to be gone a long while. It is only an evaluation, isn’t it? After three days I’ll be able to go home again and everything will be peachy keen. Maybe I’ll only have to stay one day. One change of clothes, one day. ‘You can change into them after the strip-search,’ the redhead says. ‘The what?’ ‘Strip-search. We’ve got to check you ain’t trying to sneak any contraband into the programme.’ ‘You must be kidding.’ “Fraid not.’ ‘I don’t have any contraband and I’m no way going to take my clothes off to prove it.’ ‘Sorry, chickie,’ she says, not appearing the least bit apologetic. ‘Them’s the breaks.’ ‘No way. Uh-uh.’ She reaches out and picks at the hem of your turtleneck. A loose thread dangles and she yanks at it until it breaks, causing the material to bunch up round the stitching at the edge. ‘I’m not gonna have to get Mark and Leroy there to restrain you, am I? You wouldn’t like it that way, I bet you wouldn’t.’ On cue, the two bruisers square their shoulders and bristle threateningly. Around the corners of Leroy’s mouth flickers a faint hint of a smile. My own shoulders slump and I can feel my lower lip start to quiver. I blink and focus on a point on the wall. I can read the needlepoint now: ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’ it tells me. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Good, it’s always so much easier with a little cooperation.’ From the back pocket of her sweat pants, Pony Girl unfurls a pair of rubber gloves. Not the surgical kind, skintight and unobtrusive. These are kitchen gloves. Thick and bright yellow, the kind you use when you pick up Brillo pads and scrape the grill after a barbecue or when you want to clean the oven. Mom used to wear gloves like that, I recall, when we were little. She warned us not to listen to that flimflam about dishwashing liquids that were good for you – no matter what the commercials said, the grease, the suds, the serrated edges of steak knives and the tines of all those grimy forks, those things were bad bad bad for your skin. You had to wear gloves to protect your hands, to keep them young and unlined and so as not to break your nails, especially after you just paid five dollars for a manicure. Mom would kick up a fuss if she couldn’t find her kitchen gloves, which she couldn’t sometimes if we’d swiped them from their place, under the sink with the Drano and the vacuum bags. We liked to play dress-up with them. You’d pretend they were evening gloves, the elbow-length satiny kind like Audrey Hepburn would wear in those old films you liked to watch. Mom had gloves like Hepburn’s, too, which she wore sometimes when she dolled up in long dresses with short sleeves and went out with Dad, buttoned up tight in one of those tuxedos with the ruffled shirts, for the annual dental association ball. But she kept the real evening gloves stowed in a shoe box at the top of her closet behind some crumbling family photo albums and we couldn’t reach them. So we made do with the kitchen gloves – not that she ever thanked us for the substitution. Pony Girl pulls on her kitchen gloves, bringing me back to attention as she wrestles the cuffs right up to her elbows, the rubber cracking against her funny bone, just like you did when you were pretending to be Audrey Hepburn. No giggling now, though. ‘Get undressed,’ she demands. I raise my eyes to Mark and Leroy. That hint of a smile is still break-dancing around Leroy’s mouth and it seems to have spread like a yawn to Mark as well. I’d like to rub those smarmy grins off their faces with an eraser the size of a double-decker bus. I’ve never undressed in front of a boy in my life. Except for you, of course, but that’s not the same. Not even Dad has seen me naked since I was maybe six. Pony Girl follows my gaze and now she’s grinning too. ‘Feeling shy, are we?’ She crosses to the door and kicks it shut, the two fools jumping back just in time to avoid sore noses. ‘Right, but remember, they’re just on the other side so try anything funny and they’ll be in here like that.’ She tries to snap her fingers but can’t with the gloves on so she claps her hands together instead, creating a dull plop of a sound. I crouch down to unbuckle my Mary Janes. I want to step out of them gingerly, but my feet have been sweating and, without any hose, my soles have stuck. I pry each shoe off with the toes of my spare foot. Pony Girl’s impatient and nags me to ‘hurry up already’ as she drums her rubberised fingers together. My tartan skirt falls off as soon as I unbutton it at the back. I have to roll your turtleneck up over my head, turning it inside out as I haul it loose. My hair, drawn through the too-tight neck, springs free from the shirt all staticky, like I poked my finger in a socket. It takes me less than a minute until I’m standing in nothing but my bra and panties, my hands clasped at my belly. ‘Underwear too.’ I hesitate and Pony Girl rolls her eyes. ‘Underwear too!’ she shouts. ‘For fuck’s sake, don’t you people understand English. Howya think a strip-search works?’ I bite my lip and wriggle my arms up behind my back in search of the catch to my bra, but my fingers are shaking and I can’t disentangle the hooks from the eyes. I slip my arms out of the straps and twist the clip round to the front. Even seeing it, though, it takes me four attempts to undo both hooks. I slide my panties down next, hustling them past my knees and ankles, and deposit them on to the dusty carpet with the rest of my Sunday not-so best. ‘Spread ‘em – arms and legs.’ It’s just like on some TV police show, Cagney and Lacey maybe, the one with the lady cops. Except it’s longer now, more drawn out, more humiliating – and without clothes, of course. She starts in my hair, raking roughly through it with her clumsy, kitchen-glove paws, then she pokes in my ears and I’m wondering how how how could I hide any contraband there and what do they mean by contraband anyway, what does it look like and why do they think I would have any? Then the gloves brush against my cheek. I remember Mom used to get awful mad when she’d go to do the dishes and those kitchen gloves of hers weren’t there. I close my eyes and feel the honeycombed grip of the right palm – or is it the left? – abrading my face. Gripped not for scrubbing faces but for holding on to plates, holding on even when they’re wet and slippery. ‘Open your mouth.’ And I open my mouth and in slips a sheathed forefinger, probing my gums and my incisors and molars, pushing down my tongue, poking into my tonsils – or not the tonsils, but that dangly doohicky at the back, the cartoony bit they always show flapping about in Popeye when Olive Oyl opens her trap big enough to swallow the screen and lets rip with an almighty screecher. Our mother also hated it when somehow we’d accidentally puncture one of those gloves, though I always reckoned it was more likely to be the fork tines than our little hands that were to blame. Pony Girl’s kitchen-glove thumb is clamped over my nose and I’m inhaling the rubber that smells like balloons and tastes like them, too, this glove in my mouth, tasting like after we’ve been blowing up birthday balloons all afternoon, like we did for our tenth birthday party when all the kids from school came. And I wonder if this is what a condom smells like and tastes like, and I swear I don’t know for myself but I imagine it must be because it’s called a rubber too. The finger is out of my mouth and I have somehow managed to avoid throwing up again. Whatever the cause, if there was a hole in those rubber kitchen gloves, the ones packed away beneath the sink, the corrosive soap and grime could seep right into your bones and it was as bad as not wearing any gloves at all, according to our mother. Pony Girl’s finger is trailing my own spit down my cheek and around my neck and down. And I’m wondering what exactly it is that I’ve just had in my mouth, just exactly how many strip-searches these gloves have been a party to and just how exactly do they clean them afterwards? And maybe I am going to be sick on second thoughts. Our mother always wore kitchen gloves. Up until our family got a dishwasher, anyway, which it was our job to load and unload. Pony Girl’s rubberised finger is wet and slipping down my sternum, ringing round my neck and scooping under my armpits where usually I’m ticklish. And I’m thinking if maybe I laugh now she’ll stop, if maybe I pretend we’re playing a game to see who’s the most ticklish, it’ll startle her and she won’t be able to go on. But she does go on. Then we got a cleaner too, as well as the dishwasher. The cleaner, she was named Marjorie. She came in twice a week, so Mom didn’t even have to wear the kitchen gloves for handling the mop or scouring the countertops or anything. Pony Girl’s finger is snailing down my arm and checking under my fingernails for contraband – what contraband, how small is contraband, how microscopic does contraband come? – and then it’s back circling my waist and skidding down my stomach and then… I am not going to scream or pee or flinch or cry or sneeze or plead – and then it is delving deep into my pubic hair, down and down and beyond. Our mother still has lovely soft hands. My eyes are closed. And Mommy, I swear I’m a virgin. CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_fb85aad4-7203-51dc-8924-88cb8d4f33b9) I have a memory that floats around in the early-time ether. We’re two, maybe three. I only retrieved the memory because of something my best friend Cindy Gregory told me in the seventh grade. Cindy had this kooky old aunt named Anastasia who was an astrologer, who told us that everyone was supposed to know the time of day they were born. If you didn’t know the exact time, Anastasia said, then you couldn’t ever have an accurate astrology reading because you couldn’t ever know your precise alignment with the stars. Something like that. It always bugged me that Mom couldn’t remember the time, but we were never big into astrology so on that count, I guess, it wasn’t a disaster. But Aunt Anastasia did cause me to recall this other time. We couldn’t have been old enough to talk properly, but I remember us talking to each other, like cartoon thoughts bubbling up out of our skulls except only you and me could see them. We could read, too. We were bright young sparks, even if nobody else knew it. We little Einsteins were with Mommy – because we called her Mommy then – nearing the checkout at the A&P. They have all these candy bars, rolls of mints, bubble gum and cheapo pocket pamphlets displayed around the checkout to distract you, because the cashiers at this A&P are high-school dropouts and the waits are always long. I’m feeling a whine coming on, I want a Chunky bar. You’re bored, too, but easily entertained by the cheapo pamphlets, cardboard that melts in your mouth. You start fingering one that’s got a picture of a fierce but friendly looking lion on it. A lion like Aslan out of The Chronicles of Narnia – only we wouldn’t have known that then because, though we could read, Dad didn’t buy us the C.S. Lewis box set until we were nine. ‘A – U – G – U – S – T,’ you tell me. ‘August, that’s us.’ ‘Yes, very good, Joshua, that’s Daddy,’ Mommy pipes in, getting it wrong as usual. ‘What a good boy to remember Daddy’s birthday.’ When you shove the corner of Daddy’s birthday into your mouth to see what flavour it is, Mommy slaps it out of your hand. ‘Tastes baaaad.’ She tidies it in its rack and leafs through the other cheapo pamphlets, until she finds another, much more boring-looking one that’s got a picture of a lady lounging on it. ‘Hey, twenty-fifth of August. That’s you.’ I curl up my lip. Mommy doesn’t hear. ‘Virgo, the Virgin. That’s you.’ ‘What’s a virgin?’ you ask, disappointed as I am that we can’t be something as cool as a lion. Why does Daddy get to be a lion and we’ve got to be some lazy old bag on a chaise longue? ‘Don’t like the sound of it.’ ‘Sounds stupid.’ You tear the pamphlet from Mommy’s grip and proceed to drool on it in protest. There’s another woman behind us in the line. She titters and coos away. ‘They’re so cute. Are they twins?’ CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_dadfc574-b45c-5d92-b344-da6756a27b07) The stump-brown Kmart cords are more like three sizes too big. They bunch round my ankles and the only thing that’s holding them up is Pony Girl. She’s removed her damnable kitchen gloves – never again to be associated with Audrey Hepburn and playing dress-up with you on Indian summer afternoons so sunny and lazy we could see the dust move through the air – and has hooked her fingers through my rear belt loops which she’s hitched up high enough almost to touch my shoulder blades. The loose cord material swishes and grumbles between my thighs as she steers me away from the scene of my humiliation. She instructed me to leave all my real clothes, bar my bra and day-old panties, in the room. She made me hand over my Swatch and even my retainer. Nothing with wire or metal, including no jewellery, no belts, no barrettes. Hair ties were OK, she said, her own ponytail bobbing in evidence, but I didn’t have one of those, so my hair stays electrified. I couldn’t care less about the barrette or the retainer – good riddance – but the loss of the watch is a blow. Ordinarily, I’d claw at anyone who tried to take it off me, but I’m no longer in a state to protest. I’m silent and glum as Pony Girl leads me out of there, past Mark and Leroy who fall in behind us, down a dim, low-ceilinged corridor, past other small empty rooms like the last one and other rooms with closed, signposted doors, and into a large meeting hall. This is the main warehousey part of the building and the height of the room soars accordingly, with tubes of fluorescent light buzzing from the iron rafters up there in the distance. I recognise this room at once. This is where we came for the ‘Open Meetings’ when you were in the programme. Every Friday night, as if none of us had better things to do on a Friday night, Mom, Dad and I would file into this room with the rest of the parents and siblings and we’d have our one chance to see you, sitting at the front of the room with the rows – boys on one side, girls on the other – of other…inmates, patients, clients? Phasers, that was the term they used. You’d sit at the front, usually in the back row on the boys’ side but sometimes in the first or second or third, I always counted, and you’d stare out at us, the collective families. Every week I’d try to catch your eye. Though we were a much larger mass, I was sure you could sense when I arrived, was certain you knew exactly where I was. But if you did, you never showed it outwardly, never caught my eye, smiled at me, waved, blew me up cartoon bubbles to read your thoughts or made one of our secret hand signals, the three-fingered rub of the nose perhaps, the fanning across the chin or even the Fonzie thumbs up. Today’s phasers are congregated again here, but to one side with a grey concertina partition half unsprung across the middle of the room. They’re not in neat parallel corn rows like you were either, though they are still separated from the opposite sex. Their chairs form a sort of ellipse in the middle of the room, boys all arcing on the right, girls mirroring them on the left. The female arc is somewhat shorter than the boys’ one, which makes the careful arrangement appear strangely asymmetrical. I scan the boys’ section. Left, right, left. Some faces look familiar, but I can’t be sure. I know none of them attend JFK High. Encircling those seated, a smaller number of boys and girls stand straight and Mark-and-Leroy-sentry-like, legs wide, hands tucked into the smalls of their backs. And here again, towering above all heads, seated and standing, in the centre of the group, is Hilary, a young man with slicked-back blond hair and model looks pacing at her side. As we enter, the phasers are all chanting: ‘…make a list of all persons we have harmed and make direct amends to them wherever possible.’ The model guy nods vigorously then karate chops his right hand into the palm of his left and shouts, ‘And Seven!’ Hilary spots me before the group can respond. As she blows her whistle, a couple of the female phasers, startled by the sudden noise, scrunch up their faces and raise their hands as if to cover their ears. But they seem to reconsider mid-action and let their hands settle back into their laps. ‘Newcomer arrival!’ announces Hilary as Mark and Leroy peel off from behind and Pony Girl propels me through a narrow aisle of chairs, into the centre of the circle. All eyes are on me, including Mr Model’s. He appraises me from the electrified ends of my hair to the tips of my Mary Janes, which are just barely visible beneath the acres of cord. He lingers on my leather-bound toes for a beat or two then lifts the cuff of one pant leg at the back and sighs all weary-like. The sight of my heels pains him. ‘She’ll need new shoes,’ he informs Pony Girl disapprovingly. ‘There weren’t any shoes in the bag.’ ‘Whose problem is that?’ Pony Girl’s jaw tightens. ‘Mine.’ Next, he assesses my chest, looking down at where my cleavage would be showing if I weren’t wearing this stupid tunic. ‘Did you check out her bra, too? Did you remember about the underwire?’ ‘Yes,’ claims the girl, even though she and I both know that’s a lie. She checked a lot of things, too many things, with those kitchen-gloved hands of hers but my bra wasn’t one of them. Mr Model ogles my chest, unconvinced, as he should be. Will he grab hold of my boobs and check for himself? Maybe he’ll just shoot one of his own hands right up under my shirt and have a grope? Instinctively, I tighten my arms across my chest, shrink back into the crook of Pony Girl’s elbow. ‘It’s imperative not to forget the underwire,’ he chastens. Pony Girl’s arm solidifies against me. ‘Yes, Dwight, imperative.’ Dwight, his name’s Dwight, dismisses her with the wave of a hand. She releases my belt loop and shuttles off to assume a standing position at the back. Beneath the cover of my oversized trousers, I clench and unclench my buttocks, try to jiggle the wedgie she left behind loose, but Hilary snatches up the loop position again before I can. Dwight turns back to the rest of the group. ‘Who of y’all wants to remind us what the rule is on footwear?’ The phasers go mad at the question. They bounce in their seats and wave their arms. At first, their reaction reminds me of Norman Macalister, the brainy sycophant of second grade (and third, fourth, fifth and so on) whose hand would always shoot straight for the ceiling every time the teacher asked the class a question. Couldn’t stand for one minute not to be teacher’s pet, the little nerd. You hated him. This lot, though, they make Norman’s eager-beaverness look like indifference. As Dwight strides around contemplating who to call on, their gesticulating grows wilder. They’re waving in different directions at slightly different speeds but all getting faster and faster and harder, their wrists snapping in the air as they pump their arms up and down, side to side. Elbows fly in neighbour’s faces and no one slows. Several brows start to redden and bead with perspiration and still they don’t stop. They wave, flap and pump like…like wild birds or I don’t know what. ‘What the heck are they doing?’ I say, to no one in particular, not expecting anyone to hear me over the din anyway. But Dwight hears, fires daggers in my direction, and everyone else hears too, the flapping stopping as suddenly as it started. The phasers stare at me aghast. ‘Did someone ask me a question? Did I just hear a fucking question asked out of turn? I’m sure I did.’ He sucks in air loudly so no one in the room can mistake his astonishment. ‘But let’s take things in order, shall we?’ Dwight points to an exhausted-looking boy in the front row. ‘Jim P, tell us the rule on footwear.’ Jim P jumps to his feet. ‘Shoes should be used for walking purposes only! No brands or druggie images allowed! No heels allowed! No shoelaces allowed!’ ‘Thank you, Jim. You may sit down,’ and Jim P sits. ‘And because a question has been asked, let’s deal with that too. Who wants to tell this little newcomer –’ and he says the word like he meant to say cretin, scumbag or something worse ‘– what it is ya’ll are doing?’ Again the flapping until Dwight points this time to a girl. ‘Beth C.’ ‘Dwight. We are motivating for the privilege of answering your questions!’ ‘And?’ Beth C hesitates. ‘And?’ ‘And what else?’ ‘Um, um, a-a-a-and sh-sh-sh-sharing with the group?’ ‘Yes, and sharing with the group. Thank you, Beth.’ She sits down. ‘Now, who will explain the rule about talking to superiors which this person has so blatantly transgressed?’ Flip, flap, flop. The chairs scuff loudly against the floor as the group motivates. ‘Louise.’ ‘Newcomers must never speak directly to a staff member unless called upon to do so!’ ‘Thank you, Louise.’ Dwight comes to a halt in front of me. ‘I think since our new arrival is so very new we’ll overlook her error. For the time being.’ He pauses dramatically for full effect. ‘Hilary, over to you.’ Hilary yanks me forward by the loop and, not expecting it, I nearly lose my balance. ‘This is Justine. She’s fifteen and was a student at Kennedy High School right here in Carrefort.’ Was a student at Kennedy High. I don’t like that one bit. I am a student at Kennedy High, I want to shout. I’m a near straight-A student, as a matter of fact, a sophomore, on the honour roll semester after semester, secretary of the student drama society, member of the pep squad and the JV girls’ basketball team and pretty damn popular too. And I don’t fucking belong here. ‘Does anybody know Justine?’ asks Hilary. Only one arm flaps in response to this question. It’s a big beefy arm playing the piston from the far end of the boys’ arc. ‘Earl,’ calls Hilary. And Earl lumbers to his feet. Very familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen his face before, but can’t quite place where. ‘I know her,’ reports Earl. ‘I got high with her once.’ ‘Liar!’ I shriek and am rewarded with a thump on the back from Hilary and another tug of the belt loop. ‘I did,’ counters Earl. ‘We smoked some joints in the back seat of my druggie friend’s car.’ Chubby! He’s lost the earring, gained a lot of weight but it’s him, it’s definitely him. So that’s how they knew about that time, that one time. ‘She came out with us one night with her brother, her twin brother.’ Dwight studies me more carefully. ‘Joshua Z,’ he realises. There’s a collective drawing-in of breaths. At mention of your name, everybody else examines me anew. Some curious, some confused. They hunt for signs of you in my face, try to decipher your features in mine. Make the connection, make it fit. ‘My, my, little Joshua Z’s other half,’ Dwight tuts. I don’t like the way he says your name, like he’s chewing on it or something. And I don’t like the way he says ‘z’ apostrophe ‘s’, ‘zeez’, like disease without the ‘di’. ‘Right,’ Earl confirms. ‘I got high with her and her druggie twin.’ ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I say, ‘not at all.’ I wait for Hilary to chirp in with ‘You sure about that?’ but she doesn’t utter a word and instead Dwight pronounces, ‘It never is.’ ‘Thank you, Earl,’ says Hilary. ‘Who’d like to welcome Justine to the programme now?’ Flap, flap, flap. ‘Emily.’ Emily bolts up from her seat. ‘My name’s Emily, I’m sixteen and I’m an alcoholic and an addict! Welcome to Come Clean, Justine! I pray that you’ll find the same peace and serenity that I’ve found through my Higher Power and the programme!’ ‘Thank you, Emily. Justine, you may sit down.’ A sentry totes forward a chair and Hilary pushes me roughly down into it. Dwight claps his hands together like cymbals. ‘Right, phasers, maybe we can get on with our drills now. Where were we, where were we?’ Flap, flap. ‘Simon G.’ ‘Dwight, we were on Step Seven!’ ‘Correct. So, Seven!’ And the phasers call out in unison, ‘We seek through prayer and communion to improve our contact with our Higher Power and to communicate His will to other addicts!’ ‘Very good,’ says Dwight. ‘Very good,’ concurs Hilary. CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_9e2683ba-fec4-50cf-9366-6cb0d5db5cc4) Pony Girl’s name is Gwen. I discover this at the same time I discover that this day isn’t going to get any easier. At the end of the drills, it’s roll and dole call. ‘Roll and dole!’ Dwight bellows and for a millisecond I think it’s a command. Like when our elementary school teachers – Miss Fawcett, Mrs Wolf, Mr Newhouse or whoever it was used to lead us through fire drills and they would shout out ‘Drop and roll!’ because that’s what we were supposed to do if we ever got engulfed in flames. We’d have to fall to the floor that instant and roll like logs to demonstrate that we could do it without thinking, even in a moment of crisis. We had no real problem dropping and rolling, except sometimes when Wayne Westbrook, before I put him in his place, used to spit in front of you so you couldn’t help but roll in the frothing speck of a puddle and get his cooties all over you. Then it was no fun. But if ‘roll and dole’ is a command, no one else acts on it too sharpish. The phasers’ bottoms stay welded to their seats until Hilary pops off, reappearing with her clipboard which she hands to Dwight. He reels off names. ‘Anne A with Lisa M, Andy C with Greg A, Beth D with Jennifer J, Brad with Eric H.’ People are moving round me now, girls descending from the standing positions at the back to hook the belt loops of more terrified looking girls at the front. I’m one of the last names to be called. ‘Justine Z with Gwen,’ Dwight shouts and here comes the ponytail again, loping towards me and grimacing. As she lifts my belt loop, Dwight plumps a hand on her shoulder. ‘I want you to take care of the shoes, Gwen,’ he says, lowering his forehead and fixing her with a disappointed look. ‘You should know better.’ His and hers mountains of winter coats are piled up en route to the back door and they put me in mind of the ownerless stacks of clothing torn from Jews on their way to the concentration camps, like in that documentary we watched once on PBS. I wish I’d agreed to let Mom sew a name tag into my collar like she used to do when we were little, because mine is just another black woollen coat, a needle in a haystack of black woollen coats and I doubt I’ll ever be able to find it again. Gwen makes it clear she doesn’t care one bit whether I do or I don’t. She hands me a coat from the top of the nearest pile – any old coat, someone else’s coat with a button missing and, I discover, pockets made useless by holes the size of fists – and she shuffles me on. We exit through the back of the building where there’s a larger parking lot and a jam of cars and parents and kids being spirited round by belt loops. Gwen steers me towards an oatmeal-coloured four-door sedan and hustles me into the back seat; my head collides with the frame as I manoeuvre my body into place. There’s a man at the wheel who I assume is Gwen’s dad. ‘Buckle up,’ he says as we nudge our way into the stream of departing cars. Gwen ignores him so I do too, but after a second she growls, ‘Didn’t you hear my father? He said buckle up!’ She stretches across me, whips the seat belt out and over my torso, fastens and tightens it as far as it will go. About fifteen silent minutes into the drive, Gwen pipes up and orders me to relinquish my shoes and bra. My hands aren’t shaking so bad any more so I manage to unhook my bra from the back, but I make sure Gwen’s dad isn’t peeping before I slip it out via my sleeve. Gwen snatches it and my Mary Janes. ‘If you tell anyone about the underwire,’ she says as she rolls down her window, ‘if you breathe one word, I swear I’ll kill you.’ I hate it when people say things like that. People just say them like they were commenting on the weather – I’ll kill you, I’ll murder you, I could just die, I wish I were dead and buried – and they never think. Maybe Gwen does mean it, but I still flinch when she says it and she obviously means something pretty hateful by it because the next thing she does is launch my belongings out through the open window and into the passing traffic. I can’t believe it when she does that and I’m so unprepared, I don’t do a thing to prevent it. Too late, I twist and watch as my things recede into the distance. The shoes tumble to the side of the road, one of them landing heel-up in a puddle while the bra seems to float on the car’s tailwind for a second and then gets sucked under the muddy wheels of a florist’s delivery van. I watch until I can’t see any of the items any more and suddenly I’m gripped by sadness. They were the last things, the very last things I had that were my own. I want to slap this Gwen person but then I remember I still have my day-old panties. Kind of gross after thirty-six hours but the thought calms me. I’ve still got something that’s mine. Throughout this, Gwen’s father acts like he doesn’t notice anything; his eyes remain glued to the road ahead. I can’t imagine our dad wouldn’t have something to say on the matter. If only to holler, ‘You know the rule, Justine. No littering.’ In the evening’s gloom, I can’t see the house much when we arrive, except to make out that it’s two storeys and the driveway bends up and round to the back. And I’m none too pleased, as I step out with my bare feet, to find the path to the door lined with pebbles. I attempt to tread carefully but Gwen’s having none of that. I wince as she trots me across some of the sharper ones. The dinner table is set. There are sloppy joes, sweet corn and salad, and Gwen’s mom, dad and a sulky little sister who eyes me suspiciously. Ten or eleven, I’m guessing. Gwen’s dad is thin, dark, weary-looking; her mom has red hair like Gwen’s but it’s paler and permed into tight frizzy curls. And she’s a horrible cook. I’ve never liked sloppy joes and these are the worst. Too gunky and juicy, soaking up the buns until they turn into nothing but mush that clumps under your fingernails. I’m so thirsty. The sloppy joes make it worse as they’re on the spicy side. I wish I had a frigging glass of water. ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ I ask Gwen’s mom. ‘Did anyone say anything to you?’ Gwen snaps. ‘You’re not supposed to say anything until someone says something to you. Got it?’ ‘I just—’ ‘Shut up already!’ ‘It’s OK, Gwennie,’ the mom interjects, ‘I can get her a glass of water, it’s no bother.’ ‘Do you mind, Mother. I’m handling it.’ ‘But—’ ‘Milk. There. Drink!’ Gwen screeches, slamming a too-full glass on to my place mat so that the milk splashes on to my plate, wrists and the sleeves of my polka-dot tunic. I wipe the back of my wrist dry with my napkin and then everyone watches me as I sip at the milk. It’s whole milk and has been sitting out; close to room temperature, it tastes like cream to me. Our family only ever drinks skimmed milk and only ever ice cold and usually only with cereal anyway. I sip some more and the milk curdles on my tongue and makes me even thirstier. I shovel a forkload of sweet corn into my mouth. Gwen waits until all mouths are full and bulging before announcing, ‘Family rap!’ Her parents exchange wholeheartedly unenthusiastic looks. ‘Whose turn is it?’ ‘I don’t know, Gwennie,’ her mom says, lowering a soggy crust from her lips. ‘Is it yours?’ ‘You wish. No, I think it’s Dad’s actually.’ ‘Not tonight, Gwen. It’s been a long day,’ says the dad. ‘All the more reason. And it’s your turn.’ ‘Not tonight.’ ‘Tonight, tomorrow night, every night, Dad.’ ‘Burt, maybe you should make an effort,’ urges the mom. ‘Hell, whaddya want me to say?’ ‘Tell us what happened to you today.’ ‘You don’t want to hear about that.’ I have to say, I really don’t want to hear about that and it doesn’t look much like Mom or little sis do either. But Gwen forges ahead and manages to wheedle an appetite-numbing story out of her father about some small humiliation from his too-long day. From what I can gather, Gwen’s dad’s a section manager at some manufacturing plant and today he tells his team they can have fifteen extra minutes for lunch because they’ve been hammering or welding or sawing away so hard, but then the big boss shuffles down at the end of the usual lunch hour and sees these guys hanging about, drinking from their Thermoses and chomping on apples and whatnot, and he says to Gwen’s dad, ‘Hey, what the effing eff are these guys doing hanging about.’ So the big boss overrules Gwen’s dad, sends the whole team back to work and docks them five minutes apiece off their next break. ‘How did you feel about that, Dad?’ ‘How do you think I felt?’ ‘I don’t know, you tell me.’ ‘I felt like an asshole. All my guys think I’m a sorry, good-for-nothing asshole.’ ‘That’s great, Dad, that’s really great,’ says Gwen, squeezing his knuckles in encouragement. ‘Thanks for sharing.’ ‘Can I watch Happy Days tonight?’ asks little sis as she pulps the remains of her sloppy joe bun with her fork. ‘You know you can’t.’ ‘I wanna watch Happy Days. Mom, why can’t I watch Happy Days?’ ‘No TV, not while we’re in the house,’ Gwen reminds her, jerking her thumb in my direction. ‘And stop saying that name.’ ‘It’s not fair. I never get to watch any of my shows any more. Dad, it’s not fair.’ ‘Them’s the breaks,’ declares Gwen. ‘I wanna watch Happy Days! I wanna watch Happy Days!’ ‘Trish, I’m warning you, you’d better shut up and you’d better stop saying that druggie name or I’m going to report you and you’ll hear about it in the next sibling rap.’ ‘Quiet, Trish,’ pleads the mom, all hushed and hurried. ‘No TV,’ Gwen bangs her knife on her plate like a gavel. ‘And you’d better not turn that radio of yours on either. Don’t think I don’t know when you do that. I can hear it through the wall.’ ‘It’s not fair.’ ‘Quiet, Trish,’ says the mom. Directly after dinner, Gwen says it’s time to get ready for bed. She leads me into the bathroom for my ablutions – one of your all-time favourite words because it sounds like a body sneezing and burping at the same time, you used to say – and I wait for her to leave but she doesn’t. She squirts Colgate on her toothbrush, which she sticks in her mouth as she also drops her pants and plops down on the toilet. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ she says through a mouthful of foam, ‘we haven’t got all night. There’s a spare toothbrush on the counter. The blue one.’ The blue one’s gnarled and obviously used, but I don’t want to risk asking for another. As I lean down to wet the toothbrush beneath the tap, Gwen spits into the basin. I close my eyes and brush. And I hear Dad reciting the dental care mantra in my head, like he used to do when we were little and he’d stand at the bathroom door to make sure we were doing it right. Up and down, up and down, to the back then to the front then to the back and up and down. Then, don’t forget, kids, floss is your friend. You always hated flossing, it made your gums bleed; so sometimes, when Dad wasn’t watching, we’d skip that part. But I wish I had some floss now. With so much foulness passing through my mouth today, I could do with a good floss. Gwen’s a brisk brusher – oh how Dad would disapprove – and she gives her face only the most cursory scrub with the washcloth and one pump’s worth of hand soap from a sink-side container. I’m hoping she’ll beat a quick retreat after that but she doesn’t, not even when it’s my turn for the toilet. Our bedroom, which I’m marched into next, is not technically a bedroom because there’s no bed. There are two mattresses and a neat stack of sheets and comforters against one wall, but no other furniture to speak of. It’s a room as empty as the day you move in. Gwen doesn’t even call it a bedroom. ‘Inspecting the phaser room!’ she bellows as she hands me and my belt loop over to her dad. Then she drops to her knees and rakes through the bare carpet with her fingers. She crawls from one corner of the room to the other tearing into the synthetic weave, poking down the sides by the skirting boards, getting eye level with the windowsills. She checks the door to what I assume is the closet and seems satisfied to find it locked. Turning her attention to the mattresses, she peeks to see what’s sandwiched between them (nothing) then lets them plop down on to the floor and leaps on them, one springing step each, like a trampoline. One of the mattresses, the one with the deepest sag in its belly, is kicked into the corner farthest from the door. Next Gwen shakes out each sheet, each frilly comforter, each sad pillow, and tosses them in equal measure on to the separated mattresses. As she makes her way back towards me, her eyes remain on the floor, scanning each step, each inch. ‘All clear!’ she reports. Her father rolls his eyes and backs away without a good night. The mattress in the corner is my bed for the evening. Rammed in the corner like that, it makes me feet like a dunce, like I should forget how to spell and sit on my own till teacher calls time, like I should wear a big pointy white cap. Gwen undresses, twisting off her Velcro-strap sneakers as she yanks down the bottoms of her sweat suit. I avert my eyes from her rolls of blubber, trying not to think how unpopular she must be with the boys, even if it does give me some pleasure. Still, I can’t help but notice her nipples which are the size of Franklin Mint special edition silver dollars and wonder how you get nipples like that. ‘Get ready for bed,’ she orders, stepping into a pair of oversized men’s boxer shorts. ‘What should I wear?’ ‘What have you got?’ ‘Nothing. You know I haven’t.’ ‘Watch it, dirtball, don’t you get sassy with me.’ ‘I—’ She groans then pelts me with a wadded up T-shirt with UNICEF stamped on the front where a pocket would have been. ‘Don’t get anything on it.’ The T-shirt is too small – I think it must belong to Trish – and the stitching on the label causes the back of my neck to itch, but I squeeze myself into it. Gwen snaps the lights off before I’ve finished folding up my clothes and the room is darker than I expect it to be. I grope my way towards my dunce’s mattress. ‘And don’t even think about crying,’ Gwen hisses from her mattress. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s fucking cry babies keeping me up all night.’ I pull the covers up to my chin and try to imagine that I’m in our rollaway, which is similar in its proximity to the floor. After you left, I found myself sleeping in the rollaway more and more, just like when we were little. I didn’t plan to. Grandma came so I gave her my room and Mom made up the couch in the TV lounge for me. That was the official sleeping arrangement. But I kept tossing and turning out there on the couch, my butt wedging itself into the space between the cushions. About midnight one night, I got up to walk around and passed your door, slightly ajar, the glow from your old Mickey Mouse night-light you never bothered to throw out silhouetting the frame. I kneed the door open, maybe hoping to find you, and there was your room, just as you left it. Except for the rollaway. It was wheeled out from its hiding place beneath your proper bed and jacketed with a sheet now coated in dust. I didn’t mind, didn’t stop to think twice. I yanked the pillow and bedspread off your bed, crawled into the dust and fell asleep at once. Mom found me like that in the morning and started bawling all over again. She said I oughtn’t be sleeping in your room. Grandma Shirland massaged the small of Mom’s back, little circular motions interspersed with pat-pats, calmed her down, changed her mind, bless Grandma. She said if it helped me, what was the harm. ‘Trust me,’ Grandma Shirland told Mom. ‘It’s OK.’ But I can’t make Gwen’s dunce mattress feel the same. The sheets are icy cold, they feel faintly wet and smell of chlorine. I scissor my legs to warm up. It doesn’t have much effect and I wish I had some socks. I wish that eternity ago that was this morning I’d taken the time to run upstairs and root out my thickest, warmest pair of black woollen tights. Not that they’d probably still be with me even if I had taken the time. Without my tights or a good pair of ski socks, I’m sure my feet will become frozen little approximations of appendages by morning, like the marbled and immovable chips of Greek statues they display in museums. My dunce pillow has lumps in funny places and no matter how I plump it, my head feels like an eggshell, fragile and lopsided. I plunge my nose into the pillow’s innards hoping to come up with that smell of you that’s lulled me to sleep in the past. I love to sink into that smell. Sorta musky, still fresh nearly and…something. Not a bottled thing, not just a combination of sweat and salt and anti-dandruff shampoo and deodorant. You asked me once, ‘How do I smell?’ and I leant in and ran my nose across you like a dog would and I thought about it, really tried to capture it but all I could say was, ‘Wonderful, you smell wonderful, Josh.’ You pressed me, ‘Yes, but what’s it like? Describe it.’ I answered, ‘You smell like you.’ But the dunce pillow doesn’t. It smells of piss, mildew and other people’s dead skin cells. There’s no way I can drift off to never-never land with my nostrils full of this. There’s no way I can sleep at all. I listen as Gwen tosses once, twice, three times. She smoothes her bedspread then punches it away from her. She grumbles and lashes out at someone. ‘I know that,’ she retorts to the empty room and then her breathing grows heavy, punctuated by an occasional piggy-like snuffle. I should have peed more. I couldn’t let go, not fully, when we were in the bathroom earlier, not with her standing over me like that, toothbrush in hand. But out of nowhere, the need hits me. My bladder’s about to burst. I can hold it, no problem. I try not to think about it, I count sheep, think of drifting off, think of you floating on a raft in the pool on a summer’s day with the sun beating down and the radio playing our favourite Duran Duran songs from the table on the patio. I listen to Gwen sleep. I don’t know how long I listen to her but it feels like a very long time indeed as I tauten my privates, grit my teeth and envisage miles of sandy desert and no swimming pools at all: what a silly idea, no water, no waves, none of that. I count her snuffles – one, three, five, seven. I figure they’re at least two to three minutes apart. She hasn’t moved in, what, fifteen minutes. I decide to take a chance. I creep towards the door, thinking myself weightless while simultaneously trying to gird my bladder. It’s working. I always was the best at hide and seek because I could be so quiet. I knew the places you’d gravitate to, sure – under the sink with the Audrey Hepburn rubber gloves, behind the garbage cans in the garage, under the bed in Mom and Dad’s room, beneath the tattered tarpaulin shrouding the barbecue out back or under the cushions for the poolside chairs – but that wasn’t my real advantage. Though you were the one hiding, I was always the one who had the element of surprise on my side. I’d sneak up behind you, soft like a whisper, and tap you on the shoulder as calm as you please, as if all I hankered for was the time of day, and you’d jump out of your skin, startled and scared and packing your heart back into your chest every time. You’re half Indian, you’d tell me, and I’d say, you’re half not. And we’d laugh. I’m at the door. Nothing has stirred and, as long as my pee doesn’t splash too loudly, I’m certain I’m in the clear. My fingers close over the doorknob… And the place erupts. The doorknob sets off a siren that rips through the house and maybe the whole neighbourhood. Gwen leaps out of sleep like it was last year’s fad and lunges for me, screaming, ‘Escape, newcomer trying to escape!’ With an elbow to the chest, she tussles me to the ground and hefts herself on to my strained bladder. Footsteps come running up the stairs and down the hall, coming from all directions. Gwen’s mom arrives at the door, her robe slouching off one shoulder, her husband out of breath behind her and sulky Trish, looking rather uncharacteristically delighted, weaselling in between them. I blush. What must I look like to them, what with Gwen on top of me, my body spread-eagled on the floor with nothing but a too-tiny T-shirt and two-day-old panties on to cover up my shame? ‘What the hell happened?’ wheezes the dad. ‘She was trying to escape.’ ‘No, I wasn’t.’ ‘I caught her red-handed, literally. She thought I was asleep but I wasn’t. I caught her.’ ‘I just needed to go to the bathroom,’ I protest. ‘A likely story.’ I admit it doesn’t seem very likely that I should have to pee, given that I haven’t had a single drop of real liquid for the entire day – whole milk notwithstanding. But nevertheless, the need’s there and rather urgent. ‘It’s true.’ ‘You went before we came to bed.’ ‘I needed to go again.’ ‘Stop lying!’ screams Gwen and she jounces up and down on my prostrate body for emphasis. This, as I’m sure Gwen herself comes to agree, is not a smart move, for my bladder, after a valiant effort, finally succumbs to the inevitable – all over both of us. CHAPTER ELEVEN (#ulink_7b4b863e-4235-5414-8178-03a92467609f) We want a baby; we aren’t babies ourselves any more so it’s time for another one. We realise this for definite one afternoon when we’re playing with Christy Crybaby. We’re four or thereabouts, I think. Christy Crybaby ‘cries real tears and wets herself too’. She comes with her own bottle that you can fill up straight from the faucet and her own diapers that snap on and off. If you press her tummy, her eyes stream, just like the box says. Her thumb’s the same shape as the nipple of the bottle so when you’re not feeding her she has something else to suck on. We love Christy Crybaby, but then doesn’t everybody? Christy Crybaby is the most beautiful, most loveable doll ever born. She has blonde-blonde hair that curls up into little babydoll ringlets, appley cheeks, eyes the colour of the brightest bluest blue in the Crayola box, limbs chubbed out with baby fat and fingers that dimple at the knuckles. Everybody in the whole wide world loves Christy Crybaby. She has an entire row of her own in the KayBee Toy Store and her own TV commercials. The Christmas before, we begged for our very own Christy Crybaby and yowled with glee when we stumbled downstairs before daybreak on Christmas morning and found her perched and glowing blondely atop the other presents that had to stay wrapped to seem half as exciting. Grandma Shirland elbowed Grandpa Shirland as we tussled to release Christy from her box. ‘Do you see? It’s Christy, Christy as in Christmas. It’s a Christmas baby.’ ‘That’s downright funny all right,’ Grandpa pronounced gruffly. Grandpa finds everything funny in an isn’t-that-slightly-out-of-the-ordinary way. Grandma and Grandpa gave us two little stuffed bunny rabbits that year. One for you, one for me. They were very cuddly. We named one Bunny and the other Funny, after Grandpa. Grandma and Grandpa Shirland always gave us one apiece of everything. ‘No reason to squabble that way,’ said Grandma. ‘They never squabble,’ Mommy told her. ‘They share everything, they like to share.’ She said that with pride, I could tell, like that made us different from other kids. We liked being different, though we didn’t know many other kids at that point. So most things we had just the one of. And most times, that was fine. Until there was Christy Crybaby, the most wonderful baby doll ever born. We’re playing in our room one afternoon after Christmas. At night, we take turns sleeping in the big bed versus the rollaway. Sometimes the one in the big bed rolls over and lands accidentally-on-purpose on to the one in the rollaway. That makes us laugh. We both like sleeping in the rollaway because it has a close-to-the-carpet, slumber-party feel about it. That’s why we take turns. Once you tried trundling me under the big bed with the mattress, but my face caught on the frame. It hurt real bad but I didn’t cry or squeal to Mommy. Scouts honour. You reckoned if I sucked up real tight I woulda fit under. Another time we tried it out on Christy. We mashed her down into the guest mattress, then squeezed her under the big bed. We had the darndest time getting her out. She kept jamming on the big bed’s frame coming the other way. When we did finally rescue her, Christie’s pretty plastic face was crosshatched from the big bed’s box springs. This afternoon, we’re coddling Christy Crybaby, not tormenting her. We’re playing nursery maids; we’re the maids and the rollaway is the nursery. There are other babies in the nursery – grizzly Teddy Kennedy in the corner, Miss Piggy, Bunny and Funny, Barbie, Skipper and Gl Joe. But Christy’s the nursery’s star baby. You’ve already had your turn at changing her and now I’m preparing her feed. ‘How’s my wittle girl, today? Is my wittle baby feeling huuungry?’ I tap the miniature bottle on my wrist, like I’ve seen them do on a TV hospital show. ‘Ooh, Miss Wilmington, I don’t know if it’s the right temperature.’ You’re a nursery maid after all and we’ve named you Miss Wilmington, Wilma Wilmington. Maybe it was Wilma Flintstone I saw testing the formula bottle for Pebbles. You grab the bottle from my hand, rub it between your hands and sit on it a minute before giving it back. ‘That oughtta do it, Miss Betty.’ ‘Thank you, Miss Wilmington.’ Then I say to Christy, inserting the bottle teat into her permanently puckered mouth, ‘My wittle baby must be weally huuungry now. Oh yes she is.’ As Christy feeds quietly, you attempt to wrap a Kleenex diaper round the Gl Joe that Dad gave you. Only Joe’s legs don’t open wide enough and he’s got a featureless but still noticeable bulge in his crotch that keeps getting in the way and the tissue keeps ripping when you wind it round his waist. You throw him out of the nursery. ‘He doesn’t even look like a baby,’ you grumble. Then you’re back at my shoulder, hovering. ‘It’s my turn now.’ ‘Nu-uh, you just had her.’ ‘That was ages ago.’ ‘Nu-uh. She hasn’t even finished her bottle.’ ‘Close enough, bet she’s already peed herself.’ You stick a digit down there and pull it out dripping. ‘See, she needs changing. Lemme.’ ‘You been sucking that finger, that’s how come it’s wet. Bug off.’ You flop back on the mattress, making all the babies jump in their shoe-box cribs, except Teddy Kennedy who’s too big for a crib. ‘Not fair, we need another baby. We can’t both be nurses and mommies to Christie. We need another.’ I tip the bottle out of Christy’s mouth. She looks at me silent, kind of accusing-like. ‘It would be sorta nice if she burped occasionally or maybe if she said something every once in a while, like Trisha Talk-Talk. Maybe Mommy’ll get us Trisha Talk-Talk for our birthday.’ ‘No, not Trisha Talk-Talk. No good. I want a real baby. We need a real one.’ We discuss the traits our new baby should exhibit. It should be a girl, of course, a little baby sister. She should have Christy’s hair, eyes and cheeks but her mouth should close and she should be able to cry, though not too much, and say ‘Ma-ma’. By the time our mommy searches us out, we’ve hatched our plan. I’m holding Christy and you’re holding the bottle. ‘That’s a good girl, drink it all up.’ Mommy cracks the door open and leans into the room with her head and shoulders to see what we’re playing. ‘Everything OK, kids?’ ‘Yup.’ She ventures further into the room, a light-bulb-bright smile pasted on. ‘You hungry? Need anything?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘Oh. OK, then.’ She waits, looming Godzilla-like at the edge of the nursery. ‘Do you want me to help you feed Christy?’ ‘No, Mommy, we can do it,’ you say petulantly. ‘Besides, there’s only one Christy Crybaby.’ ‘I know that, Mister Man.’ She wants to reach out and muss your hair but catches herself. ‘Mommy,’ I chip in, this is part of the plan, ‘we need another baby. Please can we have a baby sister now, a real baby?’ ‘Please Mommy, pretty please with cherries on top.’ Mommy’s arms are crossed but loose, now she locks them down tight against her tummy. She chews her lip. ‘No.’ ‘But why not? You’re no fun.’ Mommy’s eyes start to swim. ‘I’m afraid not. No.’ Êîíåö îçíàêîìèòåëüíîãî ôðàãìåíòà. Òåêñò ïðåäîñòàâëåí ÎÎÎ «ËèòÐåñ». Ïðî÷èòàéòå ýòó êíèãó öåëèêîì, êóïèâ ïîëíóþ ëåãàëüíóþ âåðñèþ (https://www.litres.ru/terri-paddock/come-clean/?lfrom=688855901) íà ËèòÐåñ. 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