The first thing I notice is how bright it is. Not hot, but bright. The grass has also browned, along with the leaves on the trees. It’s managed to turn from summer to fall during my two-month stay here and somehow I didn’t even notice. I’ve been outside and everything, but not outside with freedom. It makes things feel different. Me feel different. Nervous. Unsteady. Like I’m about to fall down.
“Quinton, are you okay?” My father asks, assessing me as he removes his glasses, like that’ll help him see what’s going on inside my head or something. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”
“I’m fine.” I squint at the general brightness of being outdoors. “It just feels a little weird being outside.”
He offers me another tight smile, then looks away and starts toward the parking lot at the side of the building. I trail behind him, grasping the handle of my bag slung over my shoulder, the wind grazing my cheeks, and I note how unnatural it feels. Just like the cars driving up and down the highway that seem way too loud. Everything seems extremely intense, even the fresh air that fills my lungs.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, I make it to the car and get my seat belt secured over my shoulder. It grows quiet as my father turns on the ignition and the engine rumbles to life. Then we’re driving up the gravel path toward the highway, leaving the rehab center behind in the distance, the place that for the last couple of months protected me from the world and the pain linked to it.
I stay quiet for most of the drive home and my dad seems pretty at ease with that at first, but then abruptly he starts slamming me with simple questions like if the heat is up enough or too much, and am I hungry, because he can stop and get me something to eat if I need him to.
I shake my head, picking at a hole in the knee of my jeans. “Dad, I promise I’m okay. You don’t need to keep checking on me.”
“Yeah, but…” He struggles for what to say as he grips the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening. “But you always said you were okay in the past but then after talking to you with Charles… it just seems like you needed to talk to me but you didn’t.”
He’s probably thinking about how I told him, during one of our sessions, that I felt sort of responsible for my mother’s death because he never seemed to want to have anything to do with me. He was shocked by my revelation and I was equally shocked that he didn’t seem to have realized that’s how I felt—at how differently we saw things.
“But I promise I’m okay right now.” I ball my hands more tightly into fists the closer we get to the house. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. I can do this. The scary part is over, right? I’m sober now. “I just ate before we left and I’m warm, not hot or cold. Everything’s good. I’m good.” Which I am, for the most part.
He nods, satisfied, as he concentrates on the road. “Well, let me know if you need anything.”
“Okay, I will.” I direct my attention to the side window and watch the landscape blur by, gradually changing from trees to a field, then ultimately to houses as we pass through the outskirts of the city. Before I know it, we’re entering my old neighborhood made up of cul-de-sacs and modest homes. It’s where everything started, where everything changed, where I grew up and where I decided I was going to slowly kill myself with drugs. Each house I’ve passed a thousand times on foot, on bike, in the car, yet the surroundings feel so foreign to me and I feel so off-balance. The feeling only intensifies when we pass one of the houses I used to buy drugs from. I start wondering if they still deal or if that’s changed. What if they do? What if I have drugs right on hand? Right there? Just blocks away from where I’m living? Can I handle it? I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything at the moment, because I can’t see five minutes into the future.
My adrenaline starts pumping relentlessly and no matter how hard I try to get my heart to settle down, I can’t. It only beats faster when we pull into the driveway of my two-story home with blue shutters and white siding. I’ve been in this house more times than anywhere else in the world, yet it feels like I’ve never been here before. I’m not even sure that it ever really was my home, though, more simply a roof over my head. I’m not sure about anything anymore. Where I belong. What I should feel. Who I am.
Reborn.
But what am I going to be reborn into?
“Welcome home,” my dad says, again with a taut smile. He parks the car in front of the shut garage and silences the engine.
“Thanks.” I return his forced smile, hoping we’re not going to pretend that everything is okay to each other all the time because it’s going to drive me crazy.
He takes the keys out of the ignition while I get my bag out of the backseat, then we get out of the car and walk up the path to the front door, where he unlocks it and we step into the foyer. It hits me like a bag of bricks, slamming against my chest and knocking the wind out of me. This is bad. So bad. I needed more preparation for this. The memories, swirling in torturous circles inside my head. The good ones. The bad ones. The ones connected to my childhood. Lexi. It’s too much and I want to run out the door and track down one of my old pothead friends, see if they’re still into drugs, and if I can get something—anything—to take away the emotions swirling around inside me.
Need.
Want.
Need.
Now.
I suck in a sharp breath and then turn for the stairs, telling myself to be stronger than this. “I’m going to go unpack,” I say as I head up the stairs.
“Okay.” My dad drops the keys down on the table by the front door, below a picture hanging on the wall of my mother and him on their wedding day. He looks happy in it, an emotion I’ve rarely seen from him. “Do you want anything in particular for dinner?”
“Anything sounds good.” I remember how many days I could go without eating dinner when I was fueling my body with crystal and smack. Getting healthy was actually part of my recovery over the last two months. Exercising. Eating. Thinking healthy. I actually chose to get some tests done just to see how bad my health was, if I’d done any permanent damage to my body with the use of needles. Like HIV or hepatitis. Everything came up negative and I guess I’m grateful for it now, but at the time I felt upset because disease seemed like the easy ticket out of the hellhole coming off of heroin and meth created. I’d hoped that maybe I’d have something deadly and it’d kill me. Then I wouldn’t have to face the world and my future. My guilt. The decision between going back to a world full of drugs and living.