Life on the Level (9 page)

I look through the peephole. There’s a wooden slab that passes for a table on top of bales of hay. Not everyone is from the rehab center though. People with gaunt faces lay on heaps of hay, staring at the ceiling. I see everything from joints to bumps being taken from the backs of hands.

Oh, Vilma. Don’t do it.

I’m tired of hurting people
. Isn’t that what she said? Does she still mean it?

I’m not one to be all holier-than-thou. I’m not one to judge them. What would I be doing if I had been invited to join?

When I see him, my body is filled with rage. Taylor Patrick. His was the voice I heard on my run. Here, he’s the king of the castle. He pats Maddie on the head as she lays out snacks on the table, along with cartons of cigarettes and other kinds of drugs. The only thing that’s missing is syringes. It’s hard to miss the bulge in his pocket where he keeps shoving money.

He takes a bottle of whiskey. The amber color is hazy in the dark. How much does he put away while taking advantage of the people he’s supposed to be helping? How many people are in on this?

I watch Vilma go over to the table where Taylor is holding court. He’s surrounded by girls in ripped shorts and trucker hats. They look like they’re barely out of high school. One of them makes herself a drink in a red Solo cup. I feel like I’m stuck in a country song that doesn’t end well. But do they ever end well?

Vilma looks over her shoulder. She scratches the inside of her wrists. I can’t hear what Taylor is telling her, but I know how this works. First one’s on the house, anywhere you go. He’s giving her a little taste, making sure she’ll come back for more.

I watch her indecision. She shakes her head, then takes one of his cigarettes instead. I want to beat the shit-eating grin off his face. I walk further along the barn wall and come across another hole. This time I see something that makes my heart skip. A poker table.

It looks brand new. The top is properly green, and I can see the plastic on the side of one of the table legs. There are five players. Four bearded dudes sit in a circle, their fat hanging out the sides of their sleeveless shirts. The fifth one chomps down on a cigar. He reminds me of my daddy, just in the way he holds his cards and puffs on that cigar. He doesn’t make much chatter with the other guys at the table. That’s where they’re different.

My daddy might have been a lot of things to a lot of different people, but everyone loved him. I have his blue eyes, and his blonde hair. Some people used to tell us we looked exactly alike, but really I look like my mother.

I want to get closer.

I want to smell the cigar smoke and sit at the table and watch the other players trying to watch me.

Maybe I’m not as strong as I thought.

I can feel my insides waver even more when the dealer starts to shuffle. Crack, shuffle, crack. There’s the small blind and the big blind, and someone else shuffling a second deck. It’s clear they don’t know each other. I bet they’re truck drivers. Except one, who has a gun on his hip in a deep brown leather holster. He’s got tattoos, and an emblem, and for the first time I notice the way his pant leg caves in at the knee. I bet he’s a wounded soldier.

I realize my hands are shaking again.

I press them against the barn walls to stop it.

I start to stand when I see the pothead on the bale of hay looking at me. He squints to make sure I’m not some figment of his imagination.

“Hey!” he shouts at me.

My heart rises to my throat.

“Hey!” He points, trying to get Taylor’s attention, but his words are failing him.

Luckily for me, I’ve already turned around. I run faster and harder than I ever thought I could, and I don’t stop until I’m in my room. I run the shower, strip, and jump under the cold stream, afraid that if I don’t, I might throw everything away for one more game.

In the morning it feels like a dream. I’m cold, and my hair is still damp. I lie in bed for a long time, replaying last night. The pothead doesn’t know me. Besides, the most he would have seen of me was an eye and maybe part of my face. My eyes feel swollen, but at least my hands aren’t trembling. I’ve never reacted that way to a poker table before. It scares me how much I wanted to deal myself in. It scares me how much I wanted to throw everything away. I even considered giving Taylor my money.

Is my disdain for Taylor the only thing keeping me from gambling?

If that guy hadn’t seen me, what would have happened?

I brush my teeth, then make my way downstairs. I’ve slept through breakfast, and I’m glad not to have to socialize. My skin feels too tight. My head throbs from all sorts of withdrawal. I pace around the first floor, unable to figure out what I want to do. It’s my day off from sessions. I could go to the art room, where Vic from Iowa (cocaine and fire) is working on a clay sculpture. Or the library, where Linnette from California (alcohol) is working on her novel. I could go and get a riding lesson from Jillian, the equine instructor. I could go back to my room and hide under my covers until these feelings stop taking over my body.

“River!” Helen shouts at me from the entrance.

“Hey.” I walk over to her.

“What are you doing?”

I shake my head and try to put on a smile. “Trying to find something to do.”

“Great. Go put some boots on. We’re going hiking.”

I look down at my feet, then back at her. “Do you really think I own hiking boots?”

Five minutes later, I run back downstairs in my black, clunky military boots. I got them at Trash & Vaudeville back home. I feel incredibly out of place in my denim shorts and Fleetwood Mac T-shirt. Everyone else is in polo shirts and khaki shorts and Timberlands.

Except for Hutch. He’s in cargo pants that highlight his massive calves and big leather boots. His T-shirt is white and well worn, and there’s already a wet splotch on the chest where he’s sweating. He looks me up and down and smirks. I want to lick that smirk.

“You guys are a fanny pack away from a Park Ranger cult,” I say.

“Let’s go, Joan Jett,” Helen says. I think if she could pull me by the ear, she would.

Despite some side-eyes and general glares at my short shorts, I think this is going over pretty well.

On the way out, we pass Taylor. He’s on his smoke break. He waves at everyone leaving, and promises Helen that he’s going to work on the leak in the men’s bathroom. I do my best to avoid looking at his face. If I look at him, my rage from last night will return.

“Bye River,” Taylor tells me.

I can’t help but look at him. It’s a natural reflex when someone calls your name in public. He smiles. I decide I don’t like his smile. It’s artificial. It’s makes his face squish together from trying too hard. He doesn’t call anyone else’s name, just mine. I give him the cool-person nod, and walk a little bit faster to catch up to the others.

Once we’re out of Taylor’s sight, I drag behind. Mostly because I’m tired from yesterday, but also because I keep stopping to marvel at the nature. Growing up surrounded by concrete, where the only bits of grass are in designated rectangular patches on the sidewalk, I’m amazed at everything I see. In New York, nature is sectioned off by blocks. Here, nature is wild. It reaches high into the sky. The trees and branches look like they’re waking up from a long sleep and stretching. Birds fly freely, openly. Animals look at
us
like we don’t belong.

Julie falls behind the group and walks beside me. “I didn’t bring hiking boots either.”

I laugh. “See? I’m not the only one.”

She smiles meekly, then glances at Hutch. That’s the reason she’s here. She’s got the biggest crush on him. I want to tell her that it’s not going to end well, but I should be telling myself the same thing too.

I realize Julie and I have one thing in common. She wasn’t invited to last night’s barn black market either. I wonder if she knows anything about it.

“I heard you last night,” she says. “I stopped crying after the third week. You’ll get there.”

Was I that loud or was she listening at my door?

I nod silently, then hop over a fallen log. “What was the one thing that made you cry?”

“Missing my family mostly. I know they hate me now. I messed up too many times. After a while, people stop having hope that you’ll get better. That’s the one thing I wish I could get back. Not even for me, but for them.”

It’s hard to believe that Julie is only nineteen. I’m twenty-four going on twenty-five, but sometimes it feels like I’m going on a hundred. I feel old and hard and withered and I don’t know how to make it stop.

“What about you?” she asks. “What were you missing?”

Whatever I tell her, it’s going to end up snaking its way through whomever she speaks to. Some people just can’t help it. Some people just need to speak and don’t realize that they might be hurting someone in the process.

“My dad,” I say.

She pats my back. We’ve fallen behind quite a bit now. The trail is harder, and my breathing gets rougher the steeper the incline. My thigh muscles burn from sprinting last night, but at least there’s a cool breeze.

Hutch turns around and walks over to get us. He’s got a backpack full of granola bars and water bottles. His skin is shiny with sweat, and the closer he gets, the more I can smell it. I hate being sweaty, but I like being sweaty with him.

“You ladies okay?” he asks.

“Is he talking to us?” I ask Julie. “Where are these ladies he’s talking to?”

Julie blushes scarlet, and walks past us like there’s a fire at her heels.

I bite my lip. “See what you did?”

“Me?” He turns around to walk beside me. “What did I do?”

“Don’t even.”

“How can I even without knowing what I did?”

I look at him from the corner of my eye, but don’t turn my face. “A blind man can see that girl has the biggest crush on you.”

He shakes his head. “River.”

“I’m just telling the truth. It’s not like it’s a secret.”

“Is there anything I can do to let her down gently?”

“Give her a new counselor? Slice up your face to make yourself hideous? Stop being so understanding and kind? You know, be a regular man.”

“I am a regular man.” There’s a branch in the way, and he pushes it down to let me walk first.

“The fact that you think you’re a regular, normal man tells me that you live in some sort of fabricated world that isn’t real.”

“The fact that you
don’t
think this is regular man behavior tells me—”

“That I live in the real world?”

“Are you always so contrary?”

“What do you think?”

He turns to look at me. I can feel his dark eyes searching my face, but I won’t look at him. Looking at him does funny things to me. Looking at him will throw me back into a tailspin of missing something that was never mine to begin with. I made the choice. I picked him, and when it was over, I left him.

We fall into an easy stride. Too easy. Being with him shouldn’t be this comfortable. I’m incredibly aware of his presence. He’s too tall and too big not to notice.

“Have you been able to sleep?” he asks.

“Is this normal-man Hutch asking, or counselor Hutch asking?”

He pulls on the straps of his backpack. “I don’t always separate them. Though… I want to when I’m with you.”

Maybe he doesn’t separate himself. But I do. There’s the cowboy I met at the bar with his strong hold and firm kisses, and then there’s the counselor with his easy voice and banter.

“I had some Percocets with me when I came in,” I tell him. “In my bra lining.”

He stops dead in his tracks. He runs his hands through his thick, dark hair. “River…”

“Relax, Officer Cowboy.” I chuckle, and let him catch up to me. “I threw them out. I didn’t have even one. But now I can’t sleep. It’s impossible. I haven’t gotten more than four hours a day since I got here. My brain won’t shut off, and it’s too quiet all the time, and I’m tired.”

“So hiking was the answer?” I can’t tell if he’s playing with me or just being sarcastic.

“You try saying no to Helen. She’s already pointed out that I have the least amount of ‘participation’ marks. It’s not like I’m getting a prize at the end. And if you tell me that the prize is some hippie bullshit like fulfillment, I will shove you down this hill and blame it on a mountain lion.”

He chuckles for a long time. Now there’s the kind of smile I like. “There aren’t mountain lions around these parts. Only grizzlies and deer.”

My fear of the wilderness from last night becomes acute. I look over my shoulder, but all I see are trees. Hutch just laughs at me.

“You’re such a city slicker.”

I reach out and jab him on his bicep. It’s like hitting stone. I pull my hand back and massage my knuckles, ignoring the tickle I get in my belly after touching him. Meanwhile, he keeps his gaze on the trail up ahead, his thumbs hooked into the loops of his backpack.

“What do you do instead?” he asks after a while.

“Huh?” Sweat drips from my entire body. How is this supposed to be a fun activity?

“When you can’t sleep?”

I walk around the facility, and discover black market dealings. Mostly I lie awake thinking about Hutch, the structure of his face, the feel of his hands. The memory is starting to fade away, so I have to concentrate to remember.

I clear my throat. “I think about the past. Things I can’t change. Minutia.”

“Tell me,” he says. I remember when we first met, and he tried so hard to get me to divulge things about myself. It’s the same now, only I’m not trying to remain anonymous. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I want to tell him.

“Like, a few years ago I went to search for my mom. My dad warned me that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for, but…”

“But no one tells you what to do,” he finishes for me.

“Exactly,” I say, laughing. “Except this time I think, what if I had listened to my dad
just that once
. He never told me what to do, so it was a big deal for me. I was just afraid that maybe she was sorry and didn’t know how to apologize. Maybe she was too afraid to make the first move. Maybe she wanted me in her life but didn’t know how.”