Very LeFreak (15 page)

CHAPTER 23

You could take the song out of her ears by taking away her headset, but the song remained the same: always in her heart.

The best way for Very to make it through kitchen duty was to make a song game out of it.

Kitchen duty was a mandated ESCAPE chore. With no automated food-processing machines or dishwashers allowed, Dr. Joy cleverly managed to cut ESCAPE’s labor costs by forcing the residents—who were
paying
to be there—to help with food preparation and cleanup. Dr. Joy should be featured on the cover of
Forbes
magazine rather than
Psychology Today
, Very figured. “Shrink Shrinks Costs by Squeezing Joy from the Hands That Feed Her,” the headline would read. The inside pictorial spread would show ESCAPE residents in kitchen-duty servitude—preparing vats of glutinous oatmeal for breakfast, cutting cucumbers to put into elegant-looking lunch sandwiches, peeling and chopping vegetables for dinner—and post-meal cleanup glamour poses featuring residents washing plates with Joy brand dishwashing liquid (whose manufacturer would gladly compensate for the product placement, as would that of Glad, for displaying its plastic wrap and storage containers) and cheerfully mopping floors with the maniacal gleam of Mr. Clean on their faces.

Very survived kitchen duty by thinking of the experience as an experiment in socialism. Everyone did his or her part to contribute to the collective whole, and if she signed up for duty alongside Kate and Erick, her comrades-but-not-friends (for their own safety), the time passed more quickly.

What was timeless to the experience, Very would discover, was disco music.

Kitchen duty was as segregated as eating in the dining hall. It wasn’t a scene like the high school cafeteria with the popular people in one corner and the rejects in the other; the social breakdown was more like a case of Olds versus Youngs.

The Olds at ESCAPE were the forty-plus crew, who were not as technologically adept as their younger comrades but perhaps had more to lose because of their addictions, having had more time on earth investing in material accumulation. They were people at kitchen duty like Bob from Phoenix, a fifty-five-year-old architect, who had lost his once-thriving business to online gambling. Or Irma from Atlanta, a mother of eight, grandmother to eighteen, and great-grandmother to four, who had her house foreclosed on when she went into credit card debt from online shopping. (Luckily, one grandchild in there was solvent and could afford rehab.) Minnesota Suzanne had lost tens of thousands of dollars—and her powerful status as president of her local Leisure World Tenants Association—when too many too-trusting residents at her retirement community entrusted her with their online stock-trading choices.

The Youngs were people like Very and Kate and Erick, and like Enrique from Miami, a twentysomething music promoter who, when so many people showed up for the electronica club night he conceived, thought it meant people
wanted
to be electronically Tasered during their music reverie. Or people like young mom Raelene from Alabama, thirty-one, whose live Internet sexcapades during her kids’ school hours went awry when her oblivious husband came home early with a sick child in tow, and the ensuing fight was streamcast for all the pervy online world to watch. So deeply Inside, Raelene hadn’t thought to power off the webcam.

The Olds versus Youngs tended to segregate themselves, whether consciously or not, in the dining hall and at other group activities, and even, Very discovered to her horror, in kitchen duty. The Olds were some bossy bitches.

It was the second night of kitchen duty toward the end of her first week at ESCAPE, and Very was assigned to dinner preparation.

Bob took charge first, announcing, “I’ll fold the napkins tonight.” Which meant Raelene would be stuck setting the napkins out at each table, while Enrique had to set the cutlery out.

Irma seconded with, “I’ll measure the flour.” Which meant Very would be stuck kneading the bread dough.

Suzanne topped it off with, “I’ll make sure the refrigerator is stocked with the necessary ingredients.” Which meant Kate and Erick would be peeling and chopping the carrots and potatoes.

The Olds then “supervised,” in the form of sitting at a corner kitchen table playing gin rummy after their meager tasks were completed, while the Youngs had no choice but to pick up the slack. Raelene and Enrique took on setting up the tables in the dining hall, while Very, Erick, and Kate set out to their food-preparation tasks in the kitchen.

Erick arranged carrot sticks on a platter to resemble fishies.

Kate spewed invective at the Potato Men she sculpted with the potato peeler. “You! Potato Man! Can’t-be-trusted, lying, no-good, mean jerk! How I hate you! I bid you be chopped into french fries and devoured by gluttons!”

Regrettably, Very had to admit that there was something to Dr. Joy’s assertion that kitchen duty had therapeutic value. For Very, it came as she was kneading bread dough while singing aloud to the KC and the Sunshine Band song in her heart, if not on her iPod, at that moment: “I’m your boogie man …”

To her surprise, from the corner of the room, a man’s voice—Bob’s!—answered with: “That’s what I am.”

Very had thought it a fluke, but then Suzanne and Irma chimed in with: “I’m here to do …”

And then the voices united to include Kate’s and Erick’s: “Whatever I can.”

The Youngs and Olds all looked up from their respective tasks, wondering if what they thought had just happened had indeed happened.

To test it, Very tried a new song—her signature song, as it were. Again she sang aloud: “Young and old are doing it, I’m told.”

The Youngs and Olds collectively answered with: “Le freak, c’est chic.”

So it was true, then. Disco music
was
the great equalizer.

And even if the Youngs and Olds bridged only this one gap, the irrefutable evidence was now clear: At this moment in time, Very was in the exact place where she belonged, with the people, whether friends or not, whom she was meant to share it with, and vice versa.

This rehab was straight-up for real.

CHAPTER 24

Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated
.

Erick and Kate had been right.

Very was getting used to ESCAPE. She wouldn’t describe herself as fully assimilated, but her resistance had worn down, and she was, after a week in, fully acclimated.

The withdrawal pains had subsided. Very no longer sprang out of bed in the middle of the night to search for messages from El Virus. She wasn’t mentally calculating all the unread e-mails she was unable to answer, nor was she visualizing emoticon responses to substitute for human interaction. When she walked, she saw white clouds and blue sky and green trees, and not artificial yellow smiley faces and jumbled-together black punctuation marks.
:/phew
. Without the constant stimulation of video games, Very felt her blood pressure going down, as if her body was acknowledging gratitude for not rushing a constant adrenaline surge through it. Certainly, Very’s mind felt clearer, and her balance much improved from not regularly swerving and jumping to match the fast and furious goings-on of an on-screen virtual world.

The hardest bite of all? Her body had acclimated to not being on constant alert for a buzz against her flesh that indicated new messages vibrating through her iPhone.

Oh, her iPhone.

She could give up all the other crap, but that one, it was so exquisitely beautiful, such a perfect little piece of technology, so smooth and compact and powerful and … well, she missed that one a hell of a lot, but she didn’t
need
it. She was doing fine without it; she wasn’t going into withdrawal-pain shock spasms or anything anymore. iPhone. Whatever. Totally casual. She’d get back to it whenever. Not a big deal.

The bummer part was just as she was getting used to ESCAPE, the place changed. Erick and Kate were graduating. They’d made it through their twenty-eight days and were headed back into the world, to their real lives. Once back on the outside, Kate planned to start a support group for teen girls who were the victims of cruel Internet games. Erick planned to learn how to swim, for real. Very would have to find new people to needlepoint with. Or maybe not. The Christmas-stocking elves Very had been working on in their company had turned out complete disasters and looked positively satanic. The needlepoint elves frightened Very, and not in a beguiling goth-metal way, but in an ickily creeped-out way. Maybe Very would have to find a new form of art therapy once she lost the companionship of Erick and Kate.

“Are you scared to leave?” Very asked them.

Per tradition, the almost graduates were being thrown a campfire get-together on their last night before legitimately escaping from ESCAPE. A small group of fellow ESCAPE convicts (Youngs) sat around the fire at the designated fire pit behind Jones’s house, celebrating Erick’s and Kate’s imminent reintegration into the world. The group drank herbal tea and munched on trail mix. Someone strummed an acoustic guitar, but no one was singing. The sounds of fire sparks and cicadas were enough backup.

Very’s last campfire had pretty much put the death seal on her relationship with Bryan. She was like her mother with fires. Dangerous.

Kate said, “I’m scared to go back out there. Absolutely.”

Erick said, “Mostly I’m scared to talk to people again in a real setting. You know, in an environment that’s not artificially maintained for nonartificial living. I don’t know what I’m supposed to talk about if I’m not all the time talking about my addiction problem.”

Addiction
. That was the basic component of the ESCAPE program Very just could not get on board with. That one simple word. It implied so much desperation and lack of control. Addiction meant alcoholics, and people who abused narcotics, and bulimics who couldn’t keep their Twinkie habits in check. The a-word didn’t really apply to the people at ESCAPE. It was a word Dr. Joy bandied about to sound smart, Very assumed. It wasn’t possible to be
addicted
to technology, because even Dr. Joy acknowledged that when ESCAPEes went back out into the real world, they could never escape technology. An alcoholic needed to stay sober to survive, but a “technology addict” couldn’t maintain a job or a relationship or any kind of life in the modern age without reconnecting in some way, shape, or fashion. Dr. Joy said it was all about “finding the inner tools” so that “balance in the outer realm” could be achieved. Very suspected it was more about getting over the hump of one problem in life before moving on to the next one.

Very could recognize she had a problem. Sure. No problem to acknowledge the problem. She was too attached to technology and had let that problem get an eensy bit out of control. But was she an
addict
? Too heavy a label, IVHO (In Very’s Humble Opinion).

“I’m really going to miss you guys,” Very acknowledged to comrades Erick and Kate. Needlepointing with them had been the highlight of her days at ESCAPE so far. It kept her hands occupied, and she could talk with kids her age who understood and had been through similar experiences. It was like college, without all the thinking. Kind of awesome, and with better cookies and fair-trade coffee. “How did your reintegration go?” Very asked.

Just before leaving, residents who’d been cleared by Dr. Joy were allowed a night out on the nearby town, to begin the process of integrating back into the Real World.

“Scary,” Erick said. “Everybody in town looked … green. It was like a swamp of human algae. I wanted to be sick.”

Kate said, “We walked by a 7-Eleven and I almost freaked out when someone came out of the store holding a Big Gulp.”

“But you didn’t freak out?” Very said hopefully. “You were okay?”

“I managed,” Kate said.

“You’ll be fine on the outside,” Very said, not sure of that, but wanting to reassure.

“You’ll be fine on the
inside,”
Erick reminded Very.

“We’re really going to miss you, too, Very,” Kate said.

Kate smiled sexily at Very, then over to Erick.

Erick smiled sexily at Kate.

Erick’s and Kate’s sexy gazes both circled back to Very.

“Final celebration?” Kate asked.

Erick gulped. Like he knew what maybe was about to be proposed. All that sexual-tension-by-needlepoint, about to approach its crescendo, in flagrant disregard of ESCAPE’s “no fraternization” policy, which no one followed anyway, judging by the condom stash that could be found buried under the mattresses at most cabins.

Very’s body tensed anew.

Danger. Danger
.

There would be no three-way, no thought of a three-way, no dalliance whatsoever. The poison girl would not strike these young lambs.

Very leapt to her feet. “Good luck out there in the world, guys!” she said. She had to get out of this scene before she caused more trouble. No matter how attractive her fellow coeds were—and they were hella attractive—Very’s celibate loins would not be tempted. She’d made that promise to herself, and she intended to stick to it. “See you in the morning for a final goodbye.”

“I guess you and I will have to frame our pieces to hang on Jones’s wall without Very’s help,” Kate sighed to Erick.

“Disappointing,” Erick said.

Back in her cabin, alone, Very sat on her bed and fondled the One Week medal she’d received that morning at breakfast. Dr. Joy—and pretty much everyone else—said the first week was the hardest. If you could make it through the first week, the rest would be smooth sailing, relatively speaking (and Sunfish only, please, no thoughts of powerboats).

Very indeed felt a small sense of accomplishment. She hadn’t achieved anything in a long time, not since getting into Columbia, and once there she’d gotten involved in so much online hustling that she’d stopped trying to do well at academics. Her only accomplishment her whole time at Columbia, Very realized, was that she hadn’t alienated Lavinia so badly that Lavinia had abandoned her. That, and her wicked parties. And, Very had cocreated The Grid. That had been a rather cool thing she’d pulled off, even if it didn’t count as an accomplishment. (Did it?)

Why hadn’t Lavinia abandoned her? Very would abandon Very, if she could.

She was a complete fuck-up. Very would admit that about herself without hesitation.

Very looked over to the 12 Steps chart that a previous resident had needlepointed and left framed on the wall of her cabin. Obviously Very wasn’t an
addict
, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to give the steps a thorough read and take stock of whether any of them legitimately applied to her. The primo party girl had nothing better to do, since she’d opted out of the campfire night.

Step 1—We admitted we were powerless
over our addiction–that our lives had
become unmanageable
.

So okay. Step 1 applied to her. Before coming to ESCAPE, her life had become unmanageable. She couldn’t survive the pressures of school; she’d alienated her friends; she was in love with an online rogue who probably didn’t even exist! She’d brought on an information overload that had finally crushed her. She’d done it to herself. And it hadn’t crushed her because she wasn’t strong enough to take it. It had crushed her because it was just too.fucking.much. Sensory malfunction.
Beep beep beep
. Systems crash.

Step 2—Came to believe that a Power
greater than ourselves could restore us
to sanity
.

Very wanted to be restored to sanity. The problem was, she couldn’t be sure she’d been sane to begin with. She loved her mom, but Cat had been iffy on the sanity scale. And Very didn’t have the luxury of knowing about the paternal half of her DNA. Was Very genetically predisposed toward crazy and didn’t even know it? And if that was the case, maybe Step 2 had some merit, and she indeed needed to call upon a higher Power to steer her through. Very didn’t know for shit how to do it herself.

Step 3—Made a decision to turn our will
and our lives over to the care of God
as we understood God
.

Very had never been introduced to God, so she didn’t feel comfortable turning her will and life over to Him. But if she could think of Step 3 as an algorithm, perhaps it could work.

If God is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship
Enterprise,
then Very could turn her will and life over to Him
.

No, that imagery made her too hot. Nix that one.

If God is the luscious-voiced Ella Fitzgerald, then …

That one could work. Very could willingly give herself over to the Great One, her favorite singer ever. God could be Ella—hella yella yeah.

Praise be and give Very back her iPod already.

Step 4—Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
.

Well, duh. Had Very been doing anything else at ESCAPE? Not really.

The “fearless” part sounded kind of egotistical, but the “moral inventory,” yes, that part was crucial, and helpful, and Ella would probably agree that Very could use a lot more of that activity.

Step 5—Admitted to God, to ourselves
and to another human being the exact
nature of our wrongs
.

Are you there, Ella? It’s me, Very LeFreak. I hurt other people because of my problem. But maybe I hurt myself most of all. Shabba dabba deeba doo?

Step 6—Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
.

Ella, if I’m being honest, it pisses me off that the word “defect” has been introduced here. I like machines, but I’m not an alien. My parts
are all in order. I just need a little tuning up. I resent the word “defect” being thrown into the equation, on behalf of myself, and all other might-be addicts of any race, sex, orientation, religion, etc
.

Step 7—Humbly asked God
to remove our shortcomings
.

Ella, here’s the truth. I
do
need help. I am lazy, and irresponsible, and selfish, and I curse too much, and I’d subsist on Red Bulls, Doritos, and chocolate chip cookies if I could. I prefer the virtual world because the real one is hard, and cruel, and scary, and I don’t know if I have what it takes to make it on my own. I’d like to do better
.

Step 8—Made a list of all persons
we had harmed, and became willing
to make amends to them all
.

This was an easy one. Very loved lists. She’d put Bryan at the top of the list, then Lavinia, and maybe Aunt Esther because Very had been such a handful of a niece for an old lady to be stuck taking on. Also, there was that girl in kindergarten who lent Very her Barbies because Very’s mom wouldn’t let her have Barbies; that poor, generous girl who’d gotten those Barbies returned with their hair cut off and feet amputated deserved an epic apology. Very had given Dreabbie and Dean Dean some grief, too. Add them to the list. Plus, that boyfriend in high school whom Very swore she hadn’t cheated on but she totally had, and …

Cat. Her mother. Cat should probably jump ahead of Bryan to number one on the list.

Very had been the reason her mother had gone into the downward spiral that ended her life. But her mother was gone; it was too late now for Very to make amends to her.

This hurt worst of all.

Step 9—Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
.

She was cut off from technology right now, but when she was released, Very decided, she could do this. Make amends to those she still could make amends to. Send some
sorry
e-mails to the people who mattered.