says that it’s not my fault, that our dad is a sick person and our mother enables him to be that way. I try to delve deeper into this conversation with her, but she doesn’t want to go there, so she politely asks to be left alone so she can read her Animorphs books. Allison is willing to do anything to get ungrounded, and that usually involves doing laundry or babysitting, while her allowance of ten dollars per week is withheld. Once free, she does the same thing I always did, getting out of the house and bouncing around her friends’ houses for as long as possible.
With retrospect, I’ll know that this is a turning point for my siblings too. They do their best to ignore how my parents treat me, but their overall morale and emotional health noticeably deteriorates as the months go by. I’ll later come to believe that they must have suffered just as much, if not more, than I did by being forced to act like they condoned the abusive behavior directed at me over the years, and to sometimes participate in it.
Toward the end of the summer, my parents decide to enroll me in a private Catholic high school for the upcoming fall semester. I don’t want this, but no one asks or cares what I want. There’s no discussion. They tell me after the fact. As I am preparing to start a new school and face a new crowd, I discover that Giovanni, two of my other friends, and several of the girls we hang out with took the school’s placement test late that summer and are also scheduled to start there in the fall. I don’t know if they’re all going there for me, but Giovanni makes it clear to me that my going there is the reason he’s switching. He says, “My family will always be here for you.” It seems strange to me that he would do that, though I am deeply touched. And so with school around the corner, I begin to feel optimistic again. However, those feelings prove to be short-lived.
Shortly after making the varsity football team as a freshman, I tear my right hip flexor tendon so violently that during the course of its separation, bone fragments are ripped from my pelvis. The injury is so bad that I can barely walk. It’s a particularly big blow because the only time I am allowed to leave the house other than to go to school is to lift weights with the football team two or three times a week.
Then, a rumor spreads through this smaller, snobbish private school that Giovanni and I are supplying older kids with pot, which inexplicably doesn’t afford any favor with the student body. Sure, we caught a few rides with older guys here and there and smoked with them, perhaps selling a few bags to them at a football game, but I’m essentially on lockdown, lucky enough just to be able to spend time at the Russo house. Kids pass by us in the hallway and one of them will stop, point a finger, and say, “You do drugs,” and then keep walking as though we’re stinky swine. To be cool at this school means to be better than other people. Kids are constantly trying to place themselves above those who threaten their social status. My flashy watch gets stolen out of my backpack during lunch and days later I see an upperclassman I thought was my friend wearing it. What can I do or say? “That’s my watch, give it back?” How can I ever become cool and fit in? Without winning football games, it seems as though an intangible bargaining chip that once existed with my peers and the school administration has disappeared, and I’m totally out of luck. The girls I once courted on a regular basis no longer look at me. Several teachers scorn me. They refuse to call on me or rudely respond to my questions.
I desperately miss having contact with the ladies, so Giovanni and I start arranging outings on weeknights with several girls from our former school. We all sneak out from our houses, and the girls pick us up late at night. We drive around for a while before parking to get high and fool around. It’s not long before we get pulled over by the police at an inner city park and are arrested for possession of a controlled substance. The cops say they’ll let us all go if our parents come get us, so I reluctantly make the call home. My dad is not happy when he shows up at the park and takes me home. Giovanni later tells me that his parents weren’t upset about having to get him, but were mad that we don’t just hang out at his house, that we don’t just ask them if it’s okay for us to have girls over. I’m so used to sneaking around that I never even thought to do this. My parents really can’t treat me much worse, so nothing changes at my house and it’s as though the incident never happened. I go to court about a month later and my parents pay a small fine.
As the weeks go by, I basically become a recluse who survives by evading my parents’ strong grasp. I sneak out constantly—pretty much all I want to do is stay out of my house and get high. The wonderful herb provides a mental escape from the hell at home and the ridicule at school. It dumbs emotional responses and pain.
At one point, I arrange for a weed deal to take place in the middle of the night at a gas station a few miles away. A lot of the pot comes from Erik, but we get it from older guys too. The guy I’m meeting now I know through my sister, and I make it to the gas station on foot. I buy the weed and then he offers to also sell some stems and caps from the most potent kind of magic mushrooms. Weed is the hardest thing I’ve done so far and I’ve been wanting to try shrooms for a while, but I’m pretty sure I can only sneak around if it’s just pot that I’m getting high on, and that I’ll get caught if I take the stems and caps home. The guy understands, but offers a single cap of a mushroom the size of my thumb for me to try then and there, free of cost, and this is too hard to resist.
Afterward, I head home and sneak back into my house through the ground floor window. A couple hours later I’m stoned out of my mind when all of a sudden the cap hits me. I’m instantly surrounded by the noise of a blown-out speaker turned all the way up, the sort of white noise someone gets when they turn the television volume way up when it’s not turned to a channel. My bell is rung, and I’m thrown into outer space as the innards of my own home become foreign to me, like I’m experiencing them for the first time.
Just as I’m crawling into bed, my bedroom door slams open and the lights go on. My dad must have heard me fumbling around and now let’s out a “What the hell . . .” I don’t follow what he says next, but I think he’s saying that he heard a noise; I think he thinks I’m sneaking around, but his words sound so completely jumbled that he might as well be speaking in tongues. Unable to understand him, I call upon my reserves of wit and slowly explain that I had just been reading a book, and dropped it against the wall, where it fell loudly, and I fumbled putting it away in the dark, having just turned off the lights. I must sound sober and intelligible enough, because he sniffs the air, looks around, and then goes out into the dark hallway. His shadow fades slowly, but his eyes pierce into mine, staying on me as if I’m a threat, until he’s fully out of sight.
The bust by the cops was annoying, but I put it aside. I still sneak in and out of school during the day to smoke with the older guys. I also catch rides to and from school with them, often getting so stoned that I can’t remember much about the contents of my classes throughout the day. I last one full semester of my freshman year at the school before I’m asked to leave, which means I’m getting kicked out. The administration meets with my parents and says that my grades, combined with my rebellious behavior, make me unfit for their program. They suggest that I’m poison and not even Catholic, so I have no business being there any longer. I don’t even know what we are—Congregational or Presbyterian or some kind of Protestant denomination? Religion doesn’t make any sense to me, and from my experience with it so far, I have no desire whatsoever to try and figure it out.
Giovanni is not asked to leave the school but does so voluntarily once I’m expelled. He tends to blend in with other kids pretty well, so he avoided being singled out like I was. Over time, all the friends of ours who followed us also return to our old district, except one girl who graduates from the private school.
My home life deteriorates even farther after I get kicked out and I can tell it’s now nearing its breaking point. My father’s abusive treatment and scorn since he caught me throwing the party have not subsided. I’m trying my best to humor them and endure their parenting tactics in the hope of eventually regaining my freedom to resume my former lifestyle, but the level of abuse
