Eventually, I accepted Sundays with them was gonna be the thing that started my weeks. Even during the days when I didn’t want to go to their place or have them at mine, I pushed through it because the idea of ever missing it would be a sign that everything was going to shit.
Duncan walked out of the kitchen, the tip of his tongue poking at his lip ring, eyes creased with worry. “You can join Tristan and Kurt at the Collective on Sunday. They go to dinner every week with Maddie.”
I pointed between Duncan and Chance. “And you’ve already spoken to them about all of this?”
“Not officially,” Duncan said, taking a chair from my dining room table, flipping it around, and straddling it. “But they won’t mind.”
I scratched my arm and rolled my neck. Duncan gave a lot of his life to support me, and I should’ve been able to shift my routine a little for him by now. But the sour fear still sat in my stomach, and I gritted my teeth to stop it from bleeding into my voice when I said, “Well, at least I get a week of dinners out of it.”
Chance smiled for real this time. “I’ll make sure to bring you back a souvenir.”
“Damn right,” I said, giving Chance a pat on the knee as I stood up. “Now let’s go eat, okay? I’m starving.”
MICAH
Sundays always had a purpose. For some, it was the last day of a weekend free of work. For others, it was the last day they could spend with their family before the rush of school and activities chewed into each day. People went to church on Sundays and prayed for salvation to something far more vast and powerful than they were.
My Sundays, I went to the Collective, determined to find a way to fix Ada. I’d been on the search for months, and when I ran into one wall, I wandered somewhere else, hoping to meet someone with a modicum of wisdom to share how I could make my sister better.
The Collective wasn’t just a community center; it was an entire community. Outside, kids played kickball, while adults hung out near the food booths. Inside, life classes were held on the first floor; today I headed up to the second floor toward the Nar-Anon support group.
I sat down and looked at my phone to see if Ada had reached out. She’d been silent for days and sent all of my calls to voicemail. Yesterday she turned off her location sharing. She did that when she was pissed at me, and as much as I knew it’d happen, her disappearance fueled my imagination, waking me in the night, panicked, thinking our invisible string had severed.
The therapist walked inside and closed the door. She looked about my age and always wore Vans and yoga pants, her long nails painted weekly in a variety of bold colors. She didn’t write anything down on a notepad like the one in the last group I attended. And she didn’t give sad eyes like the one I’d attended before that.
She listened, and she thought about what she was going to say. I liked that. It meant she wasn’t going to dole out the same useless shit I’d heard before.
The young woman next to me sniffled, her hands twisting around themselves as she tried to hold back tears. Her mouth quivered at the corners as she whispered, “I know I shouldn’t let him back in my life again if he doesn’t stop using, but . . . I just can’t cut him out. I’m—I’m not ready.”
That was talked about a lot here, stopping contact with addicts. My folks did it after Ada walked away from her third round of rehab. It tore them apart, their love for Ada, and it took me pleading with them to go to therapy for them to understand that their love could bring them back together. They believed in their choice of cutting Ada off. Now I wondered if it would help Ada realize how much danger she was in if I were to cut her off too.
Ada bore the burden of guilt for driving on the highway with her friends after pulling an all-nighter studying for the LSATs. Her best friend called her up for a ride back to her apartment because everyone had celebrated her birthday a bit too hard. It was an easy request, but when Ada wrapped her car around a light pole and was the only one who walked away alive, she refused to consider herself lucky. She thought she was being punished.
She’d been thrown into war with dark and cunning demons, and it had crippled her defenses. She’d lost her love of life, her blazing confidence. I’d always admired her brazenness, how her charisma was so infectious it was impossible to ignore.
I lost my sister that night. And if telling her that her bedroom was no longer there for her would bring back my best friend, then maybe I should do it, but I could not yet make myself believe that wouldn’t make things worse.
“Ada called me last week asking for money, which isn’t anything new. I told her she can come back to our apartment. I give her safety, and she refuses. I’ve attended a dozen groups like this before to figure out how to get her to realize she needs to live. And that’s why I’m here. I need someone to tell me how to make it happen.”
I clasped my shaking hands and pushed my elbows into my thighs to stop my bobbing legs. “I-I want her back. I need her back.”
The therapist nodded like she was unpacking what she’d heard. “We’re all here because we care, and it’s not a one-way journey. But I challenge each of you to remember that the person you’re trying to speak to is not who you believe they are. You’ll end up disappointed if you think they’re someone else when you talk to them. And one way to help with the disappointment is to stop talking.”
“Don’t you get it? If I stop talking to her, she dies. My parents are having a wedding renewal coming up, and if she tried, they’d probably talk to her again.” I covered my wrist with my other hand and squeezed it, my pulse pounding against my fingertips as anger floated up from my belly into my throat, the pressure making it hard to breathe. “What are we supposed to learn from coming to these meetings? Are we supposed to just let the people we love wither away and fucking die?”
I couldn’t hold back, my voice growing with the surge of fury rising inside of me. The sensation of everyone’s eyes on me and the room’s stillness clawed at my throat, paralyzing it. I swallowed through the unbearable pressure, preparing for the quiver that would happen once I gained my voice again.
My cheeks puffed as I exhaled a long breath and wiggled out the tightness in my jaw. With a throat now raw from suppressing the urge to scream, I cleared my throat and trudged on.
“I wish I could go back in time and make sure she didn’t get behind the wheel. I want—” I closed my eyes, held back the sudden blur of tears, and clenched my wrist harder. “I want her to come home.”
“Sometimes you just need to let someone hurt without telling them how to deal with their pain,” the therapist said from my left. “You can keep the line of connection open with her, allow her a place to stay, or help her get to rehab if she wants that, but you can’t force sobriety onto someone. They have to choose it for themselves.”
It was an impossibility for me to not try to help Ada, especially when she didn’t even have the will to survive anymore. For the last two years, she’d toed the line between life and death. I couldn’t just sit idly and let her make the mistake again and again.
I rested my elbows on my knees and stared at the floor. I’d witnessed what happened to Ada when my parents cut her off, how quickly she spiraled.
Each day, I carried the burden of guilt as I slowly began to understand that my unwavering trust in the special connection between Ada and myself made me oblivious to the early indications of her addiction.
I’d end up waking up to a phone call worse than the night she totaled her car—she’d be gone forever.
After the support group ended, everyone walked out into the buzz of people involved in various activities both inside and outside. On Sunday afternoons, the Collective hosted an afternoon potluck event to help with community building.
I had a hard time getting into the laughter, music, and conversation, so I slid on a pair of dark-lensed glasses to hide my bloodshot eyes. I managed to get through the crowd without drawing any attention.
That was interrupted when someone called my name. I looked over my shoulder as Leon Walker, one of the founding directors, waved at me and headed my direction. I’d seen him around, but we’d never spoken to each other. I wondered what he wanted to say.
“Hey there,” Leon said, offering a hand to shake. “Been seeing you here on Sundays, and I haven’t introduced myself to you yet.”
The smile I had forced through made my lips ache. For someone who ran a whole-ass community center, it was a little jarring that Leon reached out individually. This place saw a ton of people, but somehow the three founders—Leon, Toryn, and Mariah—always made an effort to befriend everyone and make them feel welcome.
“Hey, how’re you doing?”
“Ah, you know, busy as always. Scheduling summer programs always get hectic. Gonna have a full house for the next few weeks,” Leon said, nodding toward the crowd of kids running around in the background. “Wanted to know if you were interested in hanging around for the potluck. We got a wonderful local barbecue place hosting, and it is out of this world.”
“Unfortunately, that won’t work out today,” I said, affecting my voice with regret as I nodded my head to my car. “Maybe next time.”
