Burnout Read Free Page A

of my eyes and saying, “Oh man.” I drink the water. First a sip, and then a gulp, and then I’ve drained the whole thing. “I feel really weird right now.”
    He swallows, and nods, takes the empty water bottle from me and sets it on the seat behind him.
    I sigh and pull my feet off the bench. They fall to the floor with a
thunk-thunk
. My feet are filthy, all the way up to my calves. Caked with dried mud, tight on my skin, itchy.
    “Have you seen my shoes?” I ask.
    He shakes his head, hesitates, and then says, “Do you remember what you took?”
    I blink at him, pretend not to understand. “I can’t find my shoes.”
    “I know, hon, but you need to remember what you took. The drugs,” he says.
    The drugs!
He said it like he was saying
the boogeyman!
Or
terrorists!
    “I don’t do drugs.” I say firmly, just like we role-played at New Beginnings. He doesn’t understand. “I made a promise.
And
I went to rehab,” I assure him. “I’m just having an emergency.”
    I’m not making sense.
    “It’s . . . it’s going to be all right,” the MTA guy says,trying to sound reassuring. “The cops will call your parents for you.”
    “My mom’s upstate,” I tell him. “She’s painting at a friend’s cabin. She can’t come get me.” My voice cracks.
    It happens again. Darkness crams itself between the seconds and I tumble right in. “Did you say something?” I ask, when the seconds splice themselves back together.
    “I said, everything’s going to be okay.”
    “My mom didn’t want to leave me alone in the apartment, but I told her she could trust me, and now look what happened.”
    “I’m sure she’ll understand.”
    “My dad will come first. He’s in Greenpoint, but he’s not my real dad. He’s the Tick’s dad. My dad was a sperm donor. But I call the Tick’s dad
Dad
, you know? Because he is. Even if we don’t live with him.”
    The MTA guy blinks at me, and I want to stop talking, but I can’t.
    “I’m clean. Clean as a whistle. They tinkle-test me at school. I leave the sample with the school nurse.” It is killing my throat to talk this much, but he doesn’t believe me. “Something happened to me,” I tell him, “you have to help me. I didn’t do this to myself.” I hold my arm out again.
    “Help is coming. You need to calm down now.” I hear a slight hint of a Southern accent.
    “You think I’m on drugs?” I ask him.
    He manages to shake his head and shrug and sigh all at the same time.
    “Is that what you told the cops when you called them?”
    “I just told them there was a girl that needed help. That’s all.”
    “Do you think they’ll put me away?” I groan. “I bet they try to put me away again. Rehab’s no joke, mister, even the one I went to, which was like the neutered version. It’s not Nan’s Fun-Time Musical Sing-Along, you know. I don’t want to go back there. I don’t
need
to go back there.”
    “And you won’t go back,” he tells me, “because you haven’t done anything, right?”
    I smirk at him. “You know that’s not how it works. I’m a kid.” I make a zero shape with my hand and hold it up. “I have zero rights. They’ll send me just because I
look
like a screwup, when really I’m just having . . .”
    Darkness.
    “An emergency?” he asks, and his voice brings things back into the light.
    “Right! An emergency.”
    “I think you’re going to be just fine. The cops are going to be here soon.”
    “The cops,” I repeat. “It’s all going sideways, isn’t it? Imean, I’m sitting here, suffering from some kind of non-drug-induced amnesia, and my brain is all funny and I’m hearing myself talk and it sounds like somebody else is talking, except it’s coming out of my own mouth, you know? And all this is happening and you’ve called the cops and they’re going to put me back in rehab and my mom is going to be so upset and my little brother is going to cry. But I’ve been trying so hard and I haven’t hung out with