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 I manage to unhook my bra from the back, but I make sure Gwen’s dad isn’t peeping before I slip it out via my sleeve. Gwen snatches it and my Mary Janes.
‘If you tell anyone about the underwire,’ she says as she rolls down her window, ‘if you breathe one word, I swear I’ll kill you.’
I hate it when people say things like that. People just say them like they were commenting on the weather – I’ll kill you, I’ll murder you, I could just die, I wish I were dead and buried – and they never think. Maybe Gwen does mean it, but I still flinch when she says it and she obviously means something pretty hateful by it because the next thing she does is launch my belongings out through the open window and into the passing traffic.
I can’t believe it when she does that and I’m so unprepared, I don’t do a thing to prevent it. Too late, I twist and watch as my things recede into the distance. The shoes tumble to the side of the road, one of them landing heel-up in a puddle while the bra seems to float on the car’s tailwind for a second and then gets sucked under the muddy wheels of a florist’s delivery van. I watch until I can’t see any of the items any more and suddenly I’m gripped by sadness. They were the last things, the very last things I had that were my own. I want to slap this Gwen person but then I remember I still have my day-old panties. Kind of gross after thirty-six hours but the thought calms me. I’ve still got something that’s mine.
Throughout this, Gwen’s father acts like he doesn’t notice anything; his eyes remain glued to the road ahead. I can’t imagine our dad wouldn’t have something to say on the matter. If only to holler, ‘You know the rule, Justine. No littering.’
In the evening’s gloom, I can’t see the house much when we arrive, except to make out that it’s two storeys and the driveway bends up and round to the back. And I’m none too pleased, as I step out with my bare feet, to find the path to the door lined with pebbles. I attempt to tread carefully but Gwen’s having none of that. I wince as she trots me across some of the sharper ones.
The dinner table is set. There are sloppy joes, sweet corn and salad, and Gwen’s mom, dad and a sulky little sister who eyes me suspiciously. Ten or eleven, I’m guessing. Gwen’s dad is thin, dark, weary-looking; her mom has red hair like Gwen’s but it’s paler and permed into tight frizzy curls. And she’s a horrible cook. I’ve never liked sloppy joes and these are the worst. Too gunky and juicy, soaking up the buns until they turn into nothing but mush that clumps under your fingernails.
I’m so thirsty. The sloppy joes make it worse as they’re on the spicy side. I wish I had a frigging glass of water. ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ I ask Gwen’s mom.
‘Did anyone say anything to you?’ Gwen snaps. ‘You’re not supposed to say anything until someone says something to you. Got it?’
‘I just—’
‘Shut up already!’
‘It’s OK, Gwennie,’ the mom interjects, ‘I can get her a glass of water,
