Drew is on the drums again while a few of us are outside under the deck in the cold, chilling out. Suddenly there’s shouting inside, and I race back in. Apparently Mingo made a move on Angel’s friend, who turned him down, and then he tried to hook up with Angel right in front of Robert. Robert is now threatening Mingo, who’s cursing him back. So far they are both just yelling, but the whole thing is about to blow, so I step between them.
“Hey, man, that wasn’t right!” I shout. “You don’t make out with someone else’s girlfriend.”
Mingo is stunned by my verbal attack, and for a second he just stands there, staring at me. I take his silence to mean that he’s seen he was wrong and that the fight is going to end.
“It’s just not cool,” I press on.
I am so wrong about his mood. I watch as his face gets redder and redder, and in a few seconds I can almost see steam coming off his neck. I try to convince him again, thinking that his loyalty to me and Robert will eventually make him feel bad and quiet him down. Bad call. He’s shaking with rage. All I’ve done is redirect his anger from Robert to me. If I was sober, I might have caught on earlier.
Even in a good mood, Mingo can be a nuclear bomb waiting to go off, and now I’ve become his detonator. He suddenly lets out a scream and charges me, slamming his elbow into my chest. The impact knocks me off my feet and into the cement wall. He yells that he’s going to kill me and looks like he means it, but when the pain hits me, instead of getting scared, I stupidly get angry.
For a split second I move faster than he does and trick him into a headlock. I try to throw him to the floor, forgetting that he’s an amazing athlete — and that I don’t know how to fight. He easily jerks his head out of my grip and gets me in a bear hug. He squeezes my chest so hard that my breathing is completely cut off, and I can feel my ribs about to snap. Then, all at once, he loosens his grip, curses me, and shoves me full force into a wooden section of the wall that breaks when I hit it.
He stands over me after I fall, breathing hard, waiting to smash me again. His eyes are wild and his forehead is covered with sweat. The person I’m looking at seems insane.
No one else has moved since the fight started. They’re all as afraid as I am. Robert is probably glad he’s not in my place, although he should have been. In the silence I realize that the drumming has stopped, and suddenly Drew walks in and stands between Mingo and me. He has his hand on Mingo’s huge arm, trying to hold him back. Calmly he says, “Chill, bros. Friends shouldn’t fight.”
Chapter 49
EVEN IN THE MIDDLE of getting beaten up, I can see that this is a really funny scene: Mingo, as big as an elephant, being held back by Drew, who barely comes up to his waist. The ridiculous confrontation is too much for the crowd, and little by little people begin to chuckle. I let out a gasp of relief. Only Mingo still has his fight face on, but in the end he turns away with a grunt.
“You okay, bro?” Drew asks, helping me to my feet.
“Yo, man.”
I limp outside to get some air. My ribs feel cracked and there’s blood on my leg, but at least I’m beginning to sober up.
The relief doesn’t last for long. Once out the door, I step over a body lying on the frozen ground. It turns out to be Eddie, apparently passed out in his own puke. Someone says they haven’t seen him move in a long time, and I quickly forget about my ribs.
I bend down to check Eddie’s breathing. His face is like ice. He tries to speak, and I can’t understand him, but in any case I know he’s alive.
The person suddenly standing next to me is my father. He has heard the noise from the fight and has come downstairs in his bathrobe. He is beyond anger and is headed for disgust, but he forces himself to talk softly and deal with the crisis at hand.
“We have to find a way to get him home,” he says calmly.
Just then, a car pulls up to the house, and by luck one of the girls in the backseat knows Eddie. My father makes sure the guy who’s driving isn’t stoned and convinces him to take Eddie home. Together, we lift Eddie to his feet and drag him to the car.
Between this latest drama and the fight, everybody is down and the party is obviously about to end. I’m feeling really depressed, and I’m hurting inside as much as I’m hurting outside.
After everyone leaves, my father and I stand in the basement room, checking out the wreckage of the evening — the bottles, the spilled ashtrays, the broken wall, all of it. He stares into my bloodshot eyes with a look I’ve seen many times before and just shakes his head. He’s too depressed to speak.
“Sorry, Dad” is all I can manage to say.
He is someplace else in his mind when he answers, “It’s okay, I know you didn’t want this either. Go to bed. We’ll clean up in the morning.”
I know what he’s really thinking: Never again. This is the last time. The last party.
Of course, it won’t be. Even at this moment, we both know that in my life it’s either times like this or nothing at all. And “nothing at all” is worse.
Two hours later, I’m asleep when the phone rings, and my mother says it’s for me. It’s a social worker at the emergency ward of the local hospital. Sara has been admitted there with an overdose of something and is having her stomach pumped. She’s given them my number, not her own family’s.
I tell my parents what’s happened and that I have to help her, and then I’m off to spend a few hours at the hospital, at the bedside of my good friend Sara.
Another Saturday night with friends.
Flying
Chapter 50
THE CONTRASTS ARE GETTING really crazy; they’d be too extreme for anybody to handle, let alone a teenager. Last night I passed out from drinking in my basement. Tonight I’m doing seventy miles per hour on my street-legal dirt bike and I’m lost somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike.
It’s ten o’clock on an August night. I’m in a pouring rain and can barely see where I’m going.
School is out for the summer, and all I want to do is ride. Even though I’m pretty out of it from all the medicine I’m on, the thrill of riding brings me back to life with a rush of adrenaline. This is all about life . . . or maybe the opposite. Dirt bikes and motorcycles have been an obsession of mine ever since I can remember. When I ride, I move in a way I can’t anywhere else. It feeds my need for danger. I can see myself in the future, riding all the time, never having to worry about school or jobs or friends, never having to explain myself to anyone.
A sudden compulsion to test just how close I can get to crashing makes me jerk the handlebars to the right, almost to the point where I lose control. I should be scared out of my mind, but the thrill makes me do it again, this time a little farther to the right, just to see how much I can get away with.
The bike shudders and starts to slip out from under me. The wheel is angled near the point of no return, but I just manage to get control back.
Tonight I started out on a peaceful ride on dry local streets, but I’ve gotten lost and now I’m trapped in a nightmare on the turnpike.
I have the option of pulling off the road, but that will leave me in the middle of nowhere and I’ll never get home. Also, it would be dangerous. I’m in the fast lane, and the traffic on my right is a high-speed stream of cars and trucks. I drop the speed down to around forty in an attempt to cut over, but the drivers behind me lean on their horns, so I give the bike more throttle again.
The stinging rain starts to get heavier, and I can’t see anything. This is crazy dangerous.
My helmet doesn’t have a visor and I’m wearing only a light sweater because I didn’t plan to be here, or in the rain. There’s no chance of being rescued by my parents because I don’t have a cell phone. My hands are so cold I can hardly feel them, and I wonder whether my fingers will work at all the next time I use the hand brake.
At this point I’ve been lost on different highways for two hours, and there’s almost no gas left in my tank. Every new road has taken me farther away from home until I’v
e ended up here, wherever I am. I’m sure that somehow I’ll get out of this. I always do. But I’m also scared about the odds of it ending in a horrible accident. Every biker has at least one, they tell me. And often only one.
When the turn-the-wheel compulsion comes again, I do a substitution tic, an idea given to me by one of the therapists I’ve had.
Instead of twisting the handlebars, I arch my back until I’m lifted completely out of the seat. This makes me steer with my fingertips, but at least I’m not skidding.
People passing me must think I’m the dumbest driver ever, doing stunts in these conditions, risking my life for no reason. I wish it was only a stunt.
In the distance I see a toll plaza coming up fast, and I squeeze the hand brake tightly instead of using my foot brake. I’m not thinking clearly. How could I be? My bike pulls sharply to one side, and for a few frightening seconds I’m totally out of control. Though my dirt bike has been adapted for the street, it’s made for off-road riding and is too light for the highway and for this speed. But the thrill of velocity always wins out over sanity. At the last moment, the thick tire tread catches hold of the pavement and the bike is stable again.
By now I’ve had enough and need help bad. I’m in way over my head. My body is numb from the cold, and I have no hope of finding my way home by myself.
When I pull up to the tollbooth, I ask the man inside for help, but he doesn’t seem to hear me and only asks for money. I haven’t got any because I’ve spent it all on the other tolls.
While he’s writing down my name and address, a miracle happens. A woman in the lane next to me rolls down her window and asks if I need help. It must have been obvious to her that I was in bad shape.
Someone is watching over me on this night, because it turns out that the woman lives in my hometown. This is the best news I’ve heard in my entire life. She tells me to follow her home.
Forty minutes later when I walk into my house, my parents are crazy with worry. I look like I’ve been swimming and have turned blue from the cold. When I tell my story, they shake their heads in disbelief. This is just another in a series of disasters I’ve been involved in over the years. Some of them have given my mom migraines. I hope this one won’t.
Before I take a hot shower, I need a drink, a real one. After what I’ve been through, my father hasn’t got the heart to say no and pours one for each of us.
In a little while the steam from the hot shower transports me to another place. My mind has seized on a Beach Boys song about traveling around the world, and it plays over and over again. Bermuda, Bahama, come on, pretty mama.
I close my eyes and see myself back on the highway.
The road is smooth and dry and endless. The sun is out, and I’m going faster than I ever have. There is no sense of danger, just pure joy.
My bike and I are flying.
Flying in the wind.
End of the Line
Chapter 51
IT’S NEAR THE MIDDLE of my junior year, and everything is pretty bad again. I’m acting reckless and don’t care what I say to people, which is only pushing them farther away. There are too many nights spent drinking on the basement couch until I pass out. My parents are trying to stop me, but they can’t, because I lie and won’t listen to them. And because they don’t know any other way for me to get some peace either.
I’m hopelessly behind in my schoolwork. I’m fat and a chain-smoker. I’m depressed over not being able to change my life.
My worsening condition is having a big effect on Jessie, too. She’s always said she wants to teach special-needs kids, and I think that growing up with me is probably one of the main reasons. Now she’s decided to teach people with Down syndrome. I know she’s serious because last summer she coached a Special Olympics team with severely handicapped kids and grown-ups. Some of them were in wheelchairs and some had been born without parts of their bodies. She loved helping them and they loved her and chanted Jessie, Jessie, every morning when they saw her arriving. She has a real gift as a teacher and coach. This seems to be the only good thing that’s come out of what’s been happening to me.
In the past four months I’ve had two new doctors, which brings the total to more than a dozen. The latest one believes that OCD is the main cause of my body movements. He says that most people with Tourette’s also have some OCD, but like everything else about me, my OCD isn’t the typical kind.
I don’t have to wash my hands over and over, or go in and out of doorways dozens of times. And I’m not a checker who has to keep going back to make sure they’ve done things such as turn off the stove or lock the doors.
But all OCD people get stuck on their compulsion. The new doctor’s theory is that Tourette’s starts my body doing something, and then instead of being able to let the tic shut off, I get caught on the movement because of the OCD. My OCD gets stuck on my Tourette’s.
Looking back now, I wonder if a lot of the things I did were more symptoms of OCD than Tourette’s — like my need in elementary school to form my letters perfectly and put them in exactly the right place on the lines.
My doctor believes that my high level of anxiety is also intensifying everything else. Still, with all his good thinking, so far his medicines aren’t working any better than anyone else’s.
One smart thing he does is to help me get off Risperdal for good. I’d been living in a thick fog and had been unaware of it. It was as if a sudden wind blew it all away. I’d had no idea how drugged out I was from the Risperdal. Now at least I feel connected to the world. Unfortunately, I’m also more in touch with the reality of what my life has become.
In an attempt to stabilize my mood, I start taking Zyprexa, another antipsychotic used to treat bipolar disorder and mania. At first my body calms down a lot, but the drug makes me very angry. Paxil is back again, too, but it stops working after two weeks and makes me even angrier. My whole life is like a movie about kids on drugs, but my drugs are supposed to be good for me.
My doctor’s thinking prompts a flow of new drugs into my mouth. The bottles litter our house, with most of the pills still untaken: Geodon, Lamictal, Seroquel, Topamax. I’m so desperate I even go back to tetrabenazine, this time in a much smaller dose, until it again makes life too miserable for most people to even imagine.
Nothing works.
Nothing works.
Nothing ever works.
This isn’t me just repeating and getting stuck on the same words. This is reality.
Finally, based on the radical theory that we should try to do the opposite of everything we’d done before, the doctor wants to prescribe pergolide, a drug that would increase the chemical in my brain that we’ve always thought was one of the problems. This seems to be a desperate move a doctor makes only when he thinks you’re at the end of the road. Is that where I am?
Maybe pergolide is the radical solution we’ve been looking for, but by now I’ve had it. I decide not to find out. I’m finished, wiped out, sick of being a walking medicine cabinet, tired of symptoms and side effects. I like being clear and awake, and I never want to be in the fog again. This is where I draw the line, and my family finally agrees with me.
It’s over. No more drugs.
Except, of course, the only one that’s ever worked: alcohol.
Rock Bottom
Chapter 52
I TAKE ANOTHER MOUTHFUL OF VODKA and feel a warm wave spreading through my body. The serenity that liquor brings is better than any medicine I’ve ever taken and is the only way I get relief from my restless body. I’m not worried about the consequences of liquor anymore. I know they can’t be any worse than the consequences I experience every day without it.
Lying on the basement couch, I think about where I’ve ended up. My junior year of high school continues to be more of a disaster than the end of my sophomore year. I’m not going to school much because I’m unable to sit still or concentrate on what my teachers are saying. My obsessive need for nicotine makes it worse. Noises are constantly
coming out of my mouth that no one can deal with. My friends call only when they want something, and my compulsions are making me hurt myself again. I have scars and bruises everywhere.
Tonight I need to feel better any way I can, and I’m finally drifting off into a deep, drunken sleep.
Somewhere around three or four in the morning, I’m aware of having a hard time breathing. I start coughing but not enough to wake up completely. When the coughing becomes almost continuous, I can feel my lungs burning, which eventually forces me out of my stupor.
My eyes open to a room thick with a new and unusual haze. When I look for the source, I see smoke coming from the couch cushion beneath me. Maybe the entire couch. There’s a glowing red circle two feet in diameter that slowly spreads as I watch. The edge of the fire is only an inch from my arm. In the middle of the circle are the charred remains of a cigarette filter that had dropped away from my mouth when I fell asleep.
I’m setting the whole house on fire!
Chapter 53
I LEAP OFF THE BURNING COUCH, afraid that at any second the whole thing will burst into flames and set fire to the walls of our house. My mind fills with horrifying images. The fire will become an inferno that will break through the ceiling and blaze up the first-floor stairs. My sister will be asleep in her room when the smoke and flames pour in too fast, and she will be unable to get up and run. The fire will then rip across the hall to my parents’ room.
The instinct to scream catches in my throat. I don’t want my family to find out what I’ve done. There has to be a way to stop this disaster myself.
I don’t know what to do, though. I should still be drunk, but I’m stone-cold sober and totally aware of what’s happening.