It surprises me how easily this lie has come into my head and out of my mouth. But it is a practical lie. Lucky for me there has been a shift change and because Richard Cross has only been in for one day, there seems to be some confusion as to who is family. When I ask, I am told he has no other visitors. The nurse then directs me down the hall.
With the exception of the rhythmic puffing and wheezing of the machines that are pumping stuff in and out of him, Mr. Cross's room is quiet, although the lights are ablaze. He is not conscious. I'm not sure why I thought he would be, but I now realize he won't hear my apology or anything I have come to say. Still, I sit in the one chair next to his bed.
I guess him to be roughly in his mid-thirties. His entire head, right down to his eyebrows, is swathed in a huge white bandage, like a giant wasp nest engulfing his head. I can't tell what color his hair is, or if he has any at all. His twenty-four-hour beard is dark, though, so I imagine his hair is too. I think it strange how his beard continues to grow while he lies there unaware of what has happened to him.
His face is calm and uninjured. Chase had whacked him from behind. On the wall across from where I sit, above Mr. Cross's bed, are taped two drawings. The one closest to me is a unicorn on a hill backed by a fringed sun. The other is a unicorn lying in a stable with a
Band-Aid on its head. They are drawn in crayon by a child. The one with the Band-Aid says,
Get better soon, Daddy
. Beneath the unicorn, in big, uneven letters are the words,
love Hannah.
The
n
's are backward. Richard Cross has a little kid.
I look at Richard Cross, and I wonder again how it came to this.
At first only Chase was affected by his habit. He'd emptied his bank account and sold everything that he owned. Then Mom and Dad became involved, and me, of course. Any excuse to borrow money, anything we owned that he could pawn, he did. Once we'd wised up he started harassing Grandma and stealing from her before hitting on Mom's sister, Aunt Gail. Then there were the teachers at school who gave him every opportunity when he was flunkingâmake-up exams, special assignments, until he was finally kicked out. And now, Richard Cross, some guy he doesn't even know, is lying here in the hospital fighting for his life.
I think Richard Cross must be cold. His chest is exposed, with lots of tubes and instruments attached to it, monitoring his life. I am careful not to disturb any of them as I pull the extra blanket at his feet up to his waist.
“Gordie?”
I look up. The nurse I spoke to before is standing at the door. She is a redhead about Richard Cross's age. Her nametag says
Lisa
. I realize she is talking to me.
“You'll have to leave for a while. The doctor needs to see Mr. Cross.”
“Yeah, sure.” Swinging my backpack over my shoulder, I leave the room.
On my way back to the bus stop, it occurs to me how nobody lives the way my family does. My life is not normal. We hide everything that can be pawned or sold. My parents don't even keep wine in the house. Aspirin, painkillers and allergy tablets are out. It's a good thing none of us has a serious illness that requires medication, because we'd be out of luck.
Nobody I know worries about waking up in the middle of the night with a space cadet rummaging through their room, searching for money, credit cards, anything to get that next hit. Or to pay off drug debts. “You have no idea what they do to guys who don't pay,” Chase whined at me at three o'clock one morning months ago. I was sacked out. I'd worked five shifts in a row, and exams were coming up. Chase was rooting through my drawers.
“Get out,” I told him.
“But, Gordie,” he whimpered, “I need sixty bucks right now. They're going to break my hands if I walk out that door without it.”
He harasses my friends for money. He lies, he manipulates, and it's embarrassing. He's sick, Mom and Dad keep telling me. It's a disease. Try to be understanding until he's got it under control.
I am not convinced. Nobody stands there with a gun at his head, forcing him to smoke ice. Nobody runs him down and sticks a needle in his arm. Chase makes that decision every time he scores.
I have gone over everything I can think of and I've come to the conclusion that nobody mistreated him. Nobody crushed his dreams or did anything to Chase. Mom and Dad encouraged him and they taught him right from wrong. I just think that once Chase took that first hit he didn't want to stop.
I try to avoid talking to people in the days following Chase's arrest. My friend, Jack Bentz, says I'm crazy if I think that what Chase has done reflects on me, but I can't help but feel that it does.
It's Jade that gets me talking about it. She works in the same hardware store. She started working around the same time I did, but while I got the job so I could buy a new guitar, Jade got it so she could eat. She lives with her mother and her nine-year-old sister, Holly, and they're always broke.
Jade's mother has been sick for a very long time. I've been to her place only once, to drop off her paycheck when she couldn't get out. Mrs. Scott was lying on the shabby old couch in the living room of their apartment, all pale and sweaty, a tube running from her nose to an oxygen machine. “Her lungs fill up with fluid,” Jade told me. “She coughs all the time, especially at night, and she can't leave the house without dragging the oxygen along.”
In the six months I have known her, Jade has taken her mother to the hospital at least three times. Jade's father left after Holly was born. He couldn't deal with her mother's illness: the medications and treatments, the trips to the hospital. Jade never seems to blame him. She talks about him like she understands that not everyone can handle that kind of thing. Since he left, they've survived on the little disability money her mother receives.
Anyway, after all she's been through, I guess Jade is just really in tune with the way people are feeling. She seems to be able to sense when something is wrong.
“Oh, you must be just sick,” she says after I tell her about going to see Richard Cross in the hospital.
That's one of the things I really like about her. She's never automatically assumed that because we are brothers that I am in any way like Chase.
“Wow,” she says, delicately unwrapping a cheese sandwich. “Don't you wish you could turn back time? I bet your brother does. Twenty-four hours ago everything was so different.”
“Not really,” I say. “It's been coming to this for two years.”
“He's been into drugs for two years?”
“Yeah, as far as I know.”
“I'm sorry.” She smiles as she squeezes my hand. “Hey, do you want a tart? When Mom's feeling up to it
she loves to bake. She made about five dozen yesterday. I feel bad if I don't eat what she makes, so every couple of months I gain about fifteen pounds. She's actually quite amazing when she's feeling good, a virtual whirlwind. She cooks a pile of meals to freeze and she bakes; she has the apartment cleaned from top to bottom in the space of only a few hours.”
“Thanks,” I say, not only for the tart she passes me, but also for changing the subject so smoothly. “What kind are they?”
“What kind? Oh, she usually grinds up whatever she's throwing out of the fridge. I know there were some old Brussels sprouts I couldn't bring myself to cook for Holly and me.”
I jerk the tart away from my mouth like I'm about to eat a toad. Jade laughs. “Gordie, I'm kidding! They're butter tarts. Go ahead. What are you doing this weekend?”
“Picking up my guitar. You know, the one I've been slaving away for by working here? I took it in to have the strings changed and some adjustments made. I can hardly wait to get it back.” I bite into the tart.
“That is so cool,” she says. “How's that tart?”
I nod as I chew. “Good. I could eat more than one. Which is more than I can say about Brussels sprouts, that's for sure.”
For the rest of the afternoon we don't talk about Chase. Jade doesn't ask about how he got into drugs or
what it's been like living with him now. These are things I would never tell her anyway, because the details are so skuzzy that even I am revolted all over again every time I look back on how Chase started on the road to where he is now.
The first time Chase smoked ice, Mom and Dad had left us alone over a three-day weekend. That was two years ago. It was a non-stop party with every freaky friend Chase could round up. Dad had left a hundred dollars for stuff like milk, peanut butter and bread. Chase spent it all on booze. To this day, I don't know how he got hold of it; he was only sixteen. He spent three days drinking and puking.
He skipped school on the Friday, so that by the time I got home he was already smashed. “Hey, Gordie,” he said, when I walked in the door. “Dinner's in the cooler.” His goofball friends laughed. I'm no prig, but when I saw a smoldering cigarette butt lying on the coffee table next to the ashtray, it hit me that I didn't want to take the heat when Mom discovered the burn. She'd go ballisticâafter going back to work she'd spent her first paychecks on new living room furniture.
I didn't know it was the first time Chase got into meth. I found out later. I didn't know, because when I saw what was going on, I stayed with Jack for the weekend.
I came home an hour before Mom and Dad arrived home. Chase and his friends had done a really lame job of cleaning the house. Two of the lightbulbs in the basement were broken and the pieces they hadn't used as pipes still lay on the floor. “Gordie did it,” Chase told them, “playing basketball.”
I gaped at him while he signaled for me to keep my mouth shut.
Over the next few months, he spent nearly every weekend at one friend's house or another. He'd started hanging out with a couple of real losers: Harris Reed and Ryan Linscott, guys Jack and I had voted most likely to become hit men. The two of them had been in trouble for one thing or another since they were in nursery school. Harris lived down the street from Jack. Their mothers worked in the same office, so I'd heard plenty of stuff through him.
A couple of months later, the calls started coming from school. Chase had missed biology. He'd missed the whole afternoon. He'd missed entire days. Chase was not going to pass the term. Then Mom found a pipe in his room.
“It's Harris's,” he told her. “I didn't know he was into the stuff. When I discovered it, I stole it, hoping it would smarten him up. I've missed so much school because I've been trying to keep tabs on him.”
Mom and Dad appeared skeptical.
“Look,” said Chase, “if it was mine, do you think I'd be dumb enough to leave it out in the open?”
Of course not. One of their own children could never be that dumb.
Dad looked puzzled more than anything, while Mom was relieved. “Well,” she began cautiously, “an addiction is not something to fool around with. Perhaps I should phone his mother. I know you're trying to help, dear, but it is beyond your experience.”
Chase frowned, as though he was actually considering that she should. Finally he said, “I'm not sure that would be such a good idea. His parents are going through a divorce. They're kind of messed up right now. Don't worry, I've talked to the counselor at school.”
Amazingly they believed him. Not only that, they congratulated him on being such a good friend. Still, Chase was not to hang around with Harris until he pulled himself together. He was also grounded on weeknights until his marks improved.
He managed to get around this by telling them he had to work with friends on group projects, he had to go to the library, or he had to practice if he was to make the soccer team.
Somehow he did make it through that term, even though he spent every weekend spun out. He was awake for thirty-six hours before exams, hyped up, cramming. He never made it through the next term, though.
By Christmas he hardly went to school at all. School was such a struggle, he sobbed to Mom and Dad. He just didn't get it. They gave him money for private tutoring and money for additional textbooks; it all went to his dealer. Chase would be flying for days, and then he wouldn't get out of bed for three in a row.
I never understood how Mom and Dad couldn't see that he was hooked, how they could be so naïve. It took me awhile to realize it was because they didn't want to see it. They made every excuse to avoid admitting that drugs were the reason he was in such bad physical shape. Or, maybe they truly believed their own excuses. I couldn't tell for sure. He was stressed-out over his failure at school; stress does terrible things to people. It prevented him from sleeping, and he couldn't eat, which is why he'd lost thirty pounds. They made appointments with the doctor; he never showed up.
Considering his poor grades, my parents knew it probably wasn't a good idea to allow Chase to go on the school trip to France over spring break that year. But he'd feel left out if they didn't, and perhaps the trip would inspire him to start working harder. They gave him a fifteen-hundred-dollar money order to take to school. Chase disappeared for three weeks. He went on a bender with his druggie friends. He was the ice man. They had a high time on the money that was meant to fly him to France.
My parents were frantic. They thought he'd run away or maybe even committed suicide because he was doing so badly at school. Then, for what would be the first of many times, the cops arrived at our door. Chase had been hauled out of a meth house and was charged with possession. Mom stumbled like someone had hit the back of her knees, and Dad was at a complete loss for words.
When they brought Chase home from the remand center, he looked like he'd been living in a trench. He smelled worse than an old rummy. His face was all broken out in crank craters, and he even had lice. Mom really flipped out when she saw the little white bugs crawling all over his scalp, dropping to his shoulders.