Come Clean. Terri Paddock
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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.
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