When Damon first got to rehab, he was amped. It looked more like a resort hotel than a place to get punished. But as soon as he saw what he’d be doing all day, he thought the jail time woulda been better. At least in juvie he’d just hang out in the yard in his orange jumpsuit or whatever—and the people there would expect him to be what he was, they wouldn’t be all up in his face about changing.
At rehab, his counselor was this big, bald black dude named Lance, and it took him a minute just to stop laughing about that. But Lance must have known how faggy his name was, because he didn’t get heated about it, just sat back in his swivel chair with one tree-trunk leg crossed wide over the other and scribbled on this yellow notepad he liked to carry around. He must’ve been writing shit about Damon, but Damon didn’t mind. He was used to being sized up—assessed. He’d been assessed so many times his mom had a file cabinet full of little papers all tryna explain to her what her own son was like. She must’ve read them, but it didn’t make a difference. The years kept passing and everything kept going on the same.
Lance told Damon about these Four Steps to Recovery that they were gonna do.
“Aren’t there supposed to be like twelve of those?” Damon asked, and Lance grinned.
“Different program,” he said. “But it’s great you know about that.”
Lance said the Four Steps were Building Awareness, Finding Support, Learning Vigilance, and Taking Accountability. It sounded like the usual bullshit. Lance said he really believed that Damon could change his life for the better.
Lance didn’t try to bond with Damon over sports. He didn’t try to impress him with how hard things had been when he was in high school a million years ago. He didn’t ask dumbass questions like most adults did: What’s your favorite subject in school? Aren’t you excited to be a senior next year? Where are you applying to college? Lance didn’t care about that shit. They just talked about whatever. How Tyler, the Creator, was the best emcee since Hova, and how Damon was gonna flip if someone didn’t give him his iPhone and headphones back soon. How the sheets in this place were some common, two-hundred-thread-count shit that chafed your ass at night. How all the food was bunk except the frozen yogurt they brought in every Friday, which, Damon admitted, was pretty bomb.
“I don’t know, man, I’ve never been much into fro-yo,” Lance said. “It just doesn’t compare to the real stuff.”
“Jaws!” Damon protested. “That shit is creamalicious, yo.”
Lance laughed. He told Damon his way of talking was hella inventive, kinda like Shakespeare, which his English teacher tried to make him read sophomore year, like on purpose tryna confuse him.
“What can’t that dude just talk in fuckin’ English?” Damon said. He waited for Lance’s reaction, thinking maybe he liked Shakespeare and was gonna get pissed off, but Lance just laughed and shook his head, like he didn’t get it either.
Lance started asking Damon all these questions no one else ever had—not Why couldn’t he keep still? but What did he care about? and What did he want his life to be? He wanted to know other things too, like what Damon liked to smoke and what he liked to drink and what was happening in his life, and in his head, in the instant before he decided to take a hit. He wanted to know how Damon felt at school, what he thought when teachers yelled at him, and why he’d chosen Ryan and Nick as his crew. How he felt about getting arrested while his best friend got off.
“That’s just Nick,” Damon insisted. “He’s always doing some cutty James Bond shit like that. It’s not personal.”
Finally, Lance asked how Damon felt about his family. His brother, Max, six years older, who’d left the house at age eighteen and promised never to come back. His mom. His dad.
“Why do you gotta know about that asshole?” Damon said, and plucked a Bic pen off the desk and pried its little plastic handle till it broke.