Life on the Level (8 page)

“That’s another bet we’ve got going on,” Fran says, then clamps her fist over her mouth. “Sorry.”

“I say he’s into blondes,” Julie says. “But the Playboy Bunny type, sorry River.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re all wrong.”

“Okay,” Hutch says, holding his hands up. “You’re all going to get me fired. No bets. Especially you.”

“Chill. I’m not taking a bet. I’m just going to state a fact. I see you with a pretty brunette. Someone small, but athletic. Someone sweet and polite. Someone nice. Someone you can trust. She probably rides horses and knows the difference between a dinner fork and a salad fork. Really put together.”

I lean back in my chair and hold his stare. I can feel the other girls watching us. I can feel their giddy energy as they wait for one of us to blink. Suddenly, I feel like I’m back at a table again, confident that I have an excellent hand. Does he see what I’m doing? I want him to say yes. I want him to say that I’ve figured out his type so that no one will ever think he could be with a girl like me.

Hutch blinks. He smiles that heartbreaking smile of his and throws up his hands. “You got me.”

The girls cheer and holler, patting me on the back. This time, Ransom looks over his shoulder and gives me a thumbs-up. I want to flip him the bird, but Hutch is getting up.

“I think I’ve had enough torture for the day.” He glances my way, then busses his tray and heads outside.

“That ass is dangerous,” Fran says, now that he’s gone.

“Do you think it might be a patient?” Julie whispers.

My heart gives a guilty little thump.

Vilma shakes her head. “Doubtful. He’s a total teetotaler. Remember when he got that last counselor arrested for smuggling in drugs?”

“Wait, what?” I ask. Also, considering I met Hutch at a bar, he is most definitely not straight-edge.

“About two months ago,” Fran says, like she’s reciting a story from People magazine, “there was a girl who overdosed. Hutch found drugs in the counselor’s office.”

“Really?” I ask. “That’s something they neglected to put in the pamphlet.”

“Do you really think he’s into brunettes?” Julie asks hopefully.

“Maybe.” I smile. “I was just guessing.”

“That man can have anyone in the world,” Vilma tells her. “What would be want with an addict like you?”

Julie frowns, and eats her food.

Vilma is right. What would Hutch want with an addict? Still, hearing that he’s had a smile on his face for a week, I get a funny feeling in my stomach. Because it was me. I put that smile there. And that’s a bet I’d put money on.

So maybe Ransom was right. Vilma, Fran, and Julie are okay. Fran is a terrible gossip, Julie is a bit depressing, and Vilma is painfully honest. But they’re still real. They’re unflinching about their addictions, and a part of me feels terrible for assuming they were in denial about themselves.

Maybe the one who’s in denial is me.

They convince me to stay for the bonfire after dinner. A few yards behind the facility is a giant circle of stacked stones. Logs create a circle of benches around a roaring fire pit. The flames are the same color as the sunset. I inhale the smoky air, the smell of cedar. The air is so clean it
hurts
as it expands in my lungs.

“I’ve never made s’mores,” I confess, taking a branch from the assembly table.

“What?” Helen says. She holds a branch with five smaller branches. It looks like a hand, and the marshmallows at the ends look like fat white finger stubs.

I shrug. “I’ve never been camping. I grew up in a city where the biggest park is manmade and the trees are transported from other places.”

“Still,” Stevens says. “I’m from Detroit and even I’ve been camping.”

“I’m doing it now, aren’t I?” I sass him.

“This isn’t camping,” Helen assures me. “We’re doing a camping trip at the end of the month. You should sign up.”

I make a face, and they laugh at me. I find a spot around the fire, and am just starting to toast my marshmallows when I notice Maddie coming down from her room. There’s something different about the way she walks. She’s trying to keep herself steady, and even though she’s doing a hell of a job, I notice the difference. She slinks her way around the fire and settles onto a log bench. She huddles under her oversized hoodie and shivers. It isn’t exactly cold.

“Maddie!” Fran shouts from the other side of the fire. “Missed you at dinner. Here, I saved you some marshmallows. What’s wrong?”

“My stomach hurts. I think it was the bacon this morning.” Maddie manages a weak smile. One look at her and I know she’s high. But how could she be high?

“Yeah,” Fran says. “I felt gross too. I think Lunchman Larry is trying to poison us.”

I think back to what the girls said about Hutch finding the drugs with the counselor. She sneaked out two nights ago, but she’s been fine since then. Maybe I wasn’t looking…

I look at the counselors, and I wonder if I should tell someone. Sky would tell me,
Yes! Say something!

But I’ve still got months here, and my self-preservation tells me that I can’t be the girl who snitches. Maddie leans her head against Fran’s shoulder and giggles as she eats her marshmallow. Maybe she really does have food poisoning. Maybe I just want to find something wrong because everything’s too perfect.

“How’s your first s’more?”

Hutch is standing beside me. His presence startles the thoughts out of my head. All I see and feel is him.

“Let’s find out,” I say.

Avoiding Hutch is going to be harder than I thought. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing. For me, it’s that he’s everywhere. He’s as big as the roaring fire. He’s the cool, end-of-summer breeze. He’s the impossible blanket of stars and skies. He’s the bearer of graham crackers.

“So what,” I ask, “I make a sandwich?”

“It is so much more than a sandwich. It’s a little bite of heaven.”

“I don’t know what heaven’s supposed to taste like. Do you?”

“I do.” For a moment, Hutch looks at me. He hasn’t been making much eye contact. Not the way he looks at everyone else. But now, he watches me, and his answer sinks into my skin. The implication is ripe with the things we are not supposed to be doing.

I clear my throat.

He breaks off a piece of chocolate, and instructs me to hold out my flaming marshmallow.

“Don’t let it burn too much. You have to blow it out.”

“Finally, something I’m good at.”

He acts like he didn’t hear me, but I catch the vein in his throat throb.

“Okay, pull.”

“Why is making s’mores so sexy?”

“River.”

“Hutch
.” I pull the stick out, while he smooshes the sandwich together. It oozes down his fingers. I want to lick those fingers.

I bite down and let the sugar melt on my tongue. “That’s the second best thing I’ve had in my mouth all week.”

Vilma catches the last of my words. She saunters over in that cool way of hers. “Dirty girl. What was the first?”

Hutch looks like he’s carefully waiting for my answer. I wonder if he thinks I’m that much of a loose cannon. Like I’m going to rat him out or put him in a precarious situation. I hope he knows I wouldn’t do that. I hope he knows that I’ll protect both of us.

“Whiskey,” I blurt out.

“Damn,” Vilma says. “I miss drinking. Not the hangover part, but right in the middle when you start to feel
nice
, you know?”

I nod. Why did I have to say that? Now Fran, poor girl, chimes in. “I miss the numbness.”

More people catch onto what we’re talking about. They gather around. What do you miss, River Thomas?

I miss the moment where I wait to see if my bet was a good one. I miss knowing I was right. I miss my friends and my dad and coffee with a kick. I miss my own bed and noisy Manhattan streets and shitty bars and rigged jukeboxes and rude waitresses. I miss wishing I were somewhere else. I can’t share any of these things. I hold them too close to my heart.

“I miss orgasms,” Debbie says.

“I miss the high of not knowing if I’ll live through the night.”

“I miss my kids.”

Ransom nods from across the fire. “I miss my friend.”

“I miss my dad,” I say, and no one is more surprised than I am that I’ll admit that to a group of strangers.

There’s a hush that falls over us. I’ve never been around people like this before. I’ve only surrounded myself with people who understand me. No judgment. Sky and Leti. They always love me and want the best for me. But in their love, even in their toughest love, they couldn’t say no to me. Here, it’s the toughest kind of love because it comes from strangers. Strangers who are going through the same thing as me.

If there was any doubt that I should be here, it’s gone.

The nights don’t get better. And when I do sleep, the dreams get worse. I see a man with a hideous scar chasing after me. Taylor makes his way into my dreams, too. He mops blood from the floor and calls me “girly.”

Some nights I can hear other girls on my floor crying. It must be loud because the walls are mostly soundproof.

Some nights I walk around the facility. I feel like a ghost wandering around. I’m not exactly supposed to be out of bed.

I walk down the corridor. I’m pretty good at sneaking around and not getting caught. I firmly believe you can’t truly know what goes on in a place unless you see it when the lights are out. It’s like seeing a show behind the scenes or the sausage being made. It might not always be pretty.

Once I saw the writer girl asleep in the computer room. Another time I saw the front desk clerk follow one of the rehab techs into a closet. I haven’t seen anyone sneaking
out
of the building since that first time. Maybe it was a one-time orgy thing. Who knows what people do out here in the middle of nowhere?

I lie to myself in thinking that I’m not out of bed hoping I’ll bump into Hutch again. I tell myself I just like being awake in the middle of the night. I’ve even gotten used to the taxidermy on the walls, although in the middle of the night it feels like the dead animal heads are watching me. I head down to the kitchen. I wear socks to keep my feet from making any sounds. When I get closer to the cafeteria, I hear a crunching noise. I take another step to the kitchen doors.

Then there’s a shadow walking towards me. I duck behind the garbage can, and try as best as I can to be quiet. My heart thunders in my ears. Taylor comes strolling out of the kitchen with a black bag thrown over his shoulder.

Then Maddie stumbles out after him and loud-whispers, “Wait up!”

She has another black bag over her shoulder. They run into the back of the house.

Now, I can do one of two things: I can go back to my room and try to get sleep, or I can follow them. If they didn’t have garbage bags flung over their shoulders I’d think they were just sneaking off to bone.

Before I can talk myself out of it, but after giving them a good enough head start, I follow Maddie and Taylor out the door.

Stepping into the cold night is almost enough to make me turn around. But the more steps I take through the grassy path, the more I commit. I get a terrible feeling in the pit of my gut. Even with what I’ve seen in my most terrible moments at backroom poker nights, I’m still not ready for what I might see.

What is in those bags? Are they stealing our entire supply of chocolate and Doritos? How bad could it possibly be in
Montana
?

Have I really spent my whole life thinking that people from the city are worse than people from the middle of nowhere?

Dear River, make better choices.

At least I’ll get to tell Sky that my time here had a little bit of an adventure. Making my way up a hill in the dark to see what the sketchy ranch hand is up to, I realize that if this were a scary movie, as the non-virginal blonde, I’d die. I’d die so dead. And it might not even be the murderer that would kill me. I hear things—animals? I hope they’re animals—making noises nearby. I mean, University of Montana’s mascot isn’t the grizzly bear because there’s only one of them in the area. Did Helen even tell me how many bears were nearby?

I stop moving as I crest a small hill. From up here I can see the dilapidated barn, and a sense of relief washes over me. It’s lit from the inside. If I wait for the wind to blow the right way, I think I can hear music. Suddenly, I know exactly what I’m going to find.

Then I hear voices coming from behind me. I recognize Vilma’s bossy tone and Fran’s panicked whispers. I throw myself onto the ground. I haven’t done this much hiding since I lived with my mother. I forgot what hiding was like until now. I lie perfectly still, hoping the dark and the wild grass will shield me. Luckily, the women seem to be just as preoccupied with the lions and tigers and bears that prowl this countryside as I was. Fran squeals and complains about the dark, and Vilma shushes her, reassuring Fran that they’re going to be fine.

I have to say, I’m a little hurt that I wasn’t invited to this party. But as the new girl, I guess I haven’t been trusted with whatever illegal activities are going on here.

Turn back, the little Sky voice tells me. You won’t find anything good there. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for, and I mean that in both the literal and metaphorical sense of things.

All I know is that information is a powerful thing. My daddy knew that. Hell, even Hutch told me that. When the coast is clear, I keep walking toward the barn. I wonder if this can count as my daily hiking activity. (I know, I know—it can’t.) I haven’t had this much exercise since the summer in the city when my train stopped working and I had to walk everywhere for two days.

When I finally make it to the barn, I keep to the outside walls. Vilma and Fran go through the door. The thing is a safety hazard but there’s no point in fixing something that’s supposed to be broken, I guess.

“Splinters!” Fran cries out.

I stumble into something metal—I think it’s a pail. I hiss through the pain in my foot. No one hears me over the terrible hip-hop music, and no one comes out.

What would they do if I just turned up? I find a big enough crack in the wall and crouch down. I feel like a creeper right now. Is this why I came to rehab? To stake out the illicit activities going on under the counselors’ noses? Why am I surprised, really? I think it’s just human nature to break the rules.