K.D.'s Crash

         I used to be happy, back when things made sense. High school was simple. Everything was blocked out for us. We knew what was expected, and we knew how to break the rules. Monday to Friday was a mix of cutting class and falling asleep. Afternoons were for getting high, or hitting on chicks at the mall. Weekends meant sleep, booze, and parties.

            That’s all gone now. If I’d done things different—if I had finished high school—I might be happy now. But no. Now I’m stuck. The school I dropped out of is now the hell where I work as a janitor. Now my Monday to Friday routine is cleaning. Most days I want to beat the shit out of these punk-ass kids. I’m sure I could’ve found another job somewhere if I had tried hard enough. There was one thing though that I liked about the school, but maybe I was wrong about that too.

            I was never really a bright kid. I repeated a couple grades in primary school before my teachers decided that they needed to pass me so they wouldn’t have to see me again. Dad always worked day shift, leaving me to fend for myself. The only thing that I ever actually got good at was fixing up my bike—it was a piece of shit Suzuki dirt-bike, but my granddad had given it to me when my mom died. He hoped it would help me cope, or something.

            That bike was what eventually led me to meet my first good friends. Dom and Tiff. I was testing the new brakes I’d put on the bike when I nearly ran Dom down. He thought it was funny, and we became friends from there. He liked to think he was a gear head like me, but he was usually too baked to wrap his head around rebuilding an engine. He was the one who got me into pot and booze. We used to shoot the shit every night, cruising around and doing nothing in town. We would talk about girls, and how we’d get the hell out of that shit hole one day.

And then along came Tiff. She wasn’t really hot—in fact, she was plain. She had short-cropped brown hair, and wore overalls. I never thought I’d see a girl in a shop class, but then Tiff came along and showed everyone how it was done. I met her after class one day and told her about my bike. She thought it sounded cool, and even followed me home to see it. And that’s how she met Dom. I should’ve made a move on Tiff earlier, but I ended up losing her to Dom. I don’t know what it was she saw in him. I guess she just wanted to try to “fix him.” He sure needed it.

I lost my chance. Dom and I managed to stay friends for a while, but after the accident, I was never able to face him again. I loved Tiff, and because of him I would never get my chance with her. There’s a memorial outside my school where they list the names of students who died while attending; the closest I can get to Tiff now is when I polish it.

Now I’m a janitor and there’s only one chick I know who’s willing to stick by a loser like me. Kendra Dawkins. K.D. She’s like me: shitty family, shitty home, shitty choices. K.D. is the type of girl who’d take what she could get. Not like Tiff—well…not exactly. It’s not that she isn’t pretty. She’s one of those psycho punk girls: unstable. One day she’s your best friend, and the next she’s stealing from your wallet for her next fix. Crazy bitch….

            I met her last year, after I’d dropped out and I was putzin’ around, looking for a job. We met in the waiting room of T.H. Mitchlin where we were both applying for something—I forget what. I remember her looking across the room at me. I followed her down the hall. I remember our hot sweat and the pounding of my chest against hers, our shadows close in the dangling bathroom light. We were on fire: ablaze, with racing hearts. I could feel the drive between us. I pressed my mouth to hers and she pressed herself to me. Looking into her eyes, I saw. I saw the truth. In that moment—two souls joined—I knew the truth. In her eyes I could see how right this was. I knew I had lied to myself: Tiff wasn’t the end. We never did make it for our interviews that day. Of course, after we fucked up their bathroom, I’d have been surprised if they’d hired us.

            We started seeing each other about once a week. Then twice a week. Then it became a regular thing. I finally caved and took the job at the high school, because she thought it was a good idea. With a salary, I managed to start renting a room off of East Main. It was shit—barely big enough for a bed, but that’s really all I needed. K.D. had a place too, but she never let me see it. We’d usually just find an alley or do it in my single-bed palace.

            My Monday to Friday school routine blurred. Some weeks K.D. would disappear, so I’d find some other easy chick. It wasn’t like K.D. and I were ever exclusive. I’d catch myself thinkin’ about her, though. I’d be in bed with Tina from Walmart, or Lizzy from the Seven Eleven, and my thoughts would always jump back to K.D.’s thin, wiry frame. She reminded me a bit of Tiff in the way that she would care for me. I mean, even though she was usually shooting up when she came around, she still seemed genuinely interested in how I got along with my job, and how I was feeling. She pushed me to make some good changes in my life. She cared about me, but I had to learn to see lies.

            It was during a stretch of one of her absences that I really started to worry about her. She didn’t have a job, as far as I knew, and she had always been hitting me up for some Jacksons. That’s how I knew she’d be back. I almost got fired for thinking about her. I would often take breaks by the school memorial; where I one thought about Tiff, I now thought about K.D. Fatass McGrass, my boss, kept yelling shit at me one day about how I was never ‘round when he needed me and that I needed to quit takin’ smoke breaks there because it encouraged the kids. I swear the man should’ve been a prison warden rather than a principal. I ended up turning around and walking away that day. Fatass said if I ever pulled that shit again, I’d be fired. I tried to just get her out of my head, but then I found myself seeing K.D. everywhere. I hadn’t felt this way since Tiff…

            I really needed to get her out of my head. The feeling of loss was so bad, that I even turned back to working on my bike. I hadn’t touched it since I dropped out of school. It was bad back then. I was a wreck after what happened with Tiff and Dom, and then I learned that my old man had racked up some more gambling debts. That’s when I made the decision to get out of my dad’s place and drop out of school. My plan was to sell the bike and take a bus; I could’ve gone anywhere and started from scratch. But I couldn’t get a buyer, so I just hid it away behind dad’s place. I stole some of mom’s old jewelry that dad left lying around and sold it so I could start myself off. I didn’t do so hot in the beginning, though, so I spent the first couple months doing the homeless bit before I got caught. Cops kept me overnight the first time, but they wouldn’t keep a vagrant like me for too long. With no place to stay, I finally started trying to apply to some jobs. Stupidly, I went back to my old high school, but I kept looking for something else. Meeting K.D. made things…click, somehow.

            Dammit… K.D—I couldn’t get her out of my head. I needed her back in my life. I felt like something was wrong, that something had happened. But days went by and my hopes began to dwindle away. Days became weeks and months until finally I saw her again.

There was a light, misty sort of rain, and she was crouched against the Latimer building next door to my apartment, shivering and coughing into that over-sized coat of hers that carried everything she owned. I almost missed her. She didn’t move when I called her name, so I gave her a shake, then scooped her up and carried her quickly back to my room. She was shaking like crazy, and she was sweating from a fever. When she looked up at me, her eyes were sunken and wrong. Her life had finally caught up with her. She looked at me and whispered my name.

            “Craig… I—I need—I need—get Dom…”

            She could barely stay conscious, but if she was asking for Dom, I knew what was wrong. I grabbed some cash from the shoe box under the bed, and bolted out the door. Although I hated him, I knew where Dom would be—he’d been dealing behind the Sheetz for months.

The thought of seeing him again after these past couple of years…it made my head explode with vivid memories of the wreck. It had been one of those warm summer nights—the kind that feels like it’ll last forever. Dom had just used a blotter of LSD. We had been out riding around—I was following their car on my bike—when the selfish bastard ran off the road. Tiff didn’t stand a chance in his car. I jumped off the bike as fast as I could. When I got there he was laughing his head off beside her. The front of his car was splattered red. The moonlight reflected red in the spears of windshield around her. She was on the ground gasping for air—a blade of glass in her neck. She died that night to the sounds of Dom’s mad laughter. He later called it an accident, but no one laughs at an accident like that. No matter how high he was.

            Dom managed to weasel his way out of jail time thanks to his dad, the lawyer, who then kicked him out of the house. Last I heard about him, he was dealing down West Third by the old Sheetz. I had to pass by the school to get to Third, so I had to take out the bike. I hadn’t touched the thing since the night Dom’s car went off the road, but I knew time was an issue. K.D. couldn’t last long...

            I could see the Sheetz as I rounded the next corner. I looked around. Dom would be in the alley, high or dealing. Somewhere.  I parked the bike by the store. He had to have customers. But I didn’t see him. I was going crazy. I asked inside the Sheetz, but he was nowhere. Nowhere. I crouched beside a wall in the alley, and pulled my knees up to my chest.

            It began to drizzle. Water ran down my face. What was I doing? I was losing it. Here I was, trying to get a gram of heroin for a girl who had disappeared for months, then only came back to find me when she needed to get high. That’s all she wanted. Why was I putting myself through all of this? A crack of thunder and then I looked up. The rain began to fall harder. I sat there soaking it up, getting drenched. My body was numbed out, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold, or from the shock. I shivered and realized that I had been crying. I knew I should just get out of town. I should just leave—pack up my few belongings, hop on the Suzuki, and get out. But I couldn’t.

            I stood up and ran back to my bike. The engine growled, then sprang forward. It seemed like I went even faster this time. The rain was darts. I tore off down the street, swerving through traffic. I rode through a back-lot short cut, throwing up mud in my wake. I got back to the room, and jumped up the stairs.

            The room was quiet when I returned. I opened the door and lit a candle to see that she was still there. I felt for a heartbeat. Nothing. Her body was on fire though. I started shaking in fear. What happened? I wasn’t gone that long… I tried to remember everything I knew about CPR. I pulled K.D. close and was overcome with the most vivid sense of déjà vu.

Like that first night we met, I felt her hot sweat mixed with my pounding chill. Our shadows were close in the candle’s light. I was on fire now. I pressed my mouth to hers and pushed. I did all I could. Then, looking into her eyes, I saw. I saw lies. In that moment—two souls split—I knew the truth. She didn’t need me to get drugs. In her dilated eyes I could see how wrong this was. I knew I had lied to myself. This night…everything I’d forced myself to believe… it made me sick. Her eyes were deep pools of black and in their depth, I saw the way she had pulled me in. She had played me a fool from that very first day at T.H. Mitchlin’s. She wasn’t the one I’d love—she was just one more tragedy in my life.

But there was nothing I could do now. I had tried so hard to convince myself that I hadn’t loved this girl. I tried to force myself to leave—to forget. But I couldn’t. This was just like Tiff all over again. K.D. was dead, and now I’d never be able to tell her –she would never know that I loved her. I pulled her tight. My eyes were dry by the time I pulled away.

The light was growing dim. The sun had descended, and the candle’s wick had almost burned down. I pulled the coat off of K.D. and tossed it on the floor. When it landed I heard shattering glass. I dug into her pockets, and recovered a needle and spoon. I stared in my hands.  She had done this to herself. She’d overdosed. Surely she came here for my help. Right? But why did she send me to get Dom if she already had her smack?

Empty is a good word. I was emptiness. I stood up, letting the diary fall to the floor. I looked around at the mess I was living in. The mud I had tracked in was everywhere. Garbage was strewn on the floor. In fury, I grabbed the keys to my bike, and ran out the door. The rain had stopped again. I jumped back on the bike and everything began to blur. I felt a sick nausea. Tiff kept popping in my head, but she was actually K.D. I kept seeing Dom; kept seeing myself, and us. Everything was wrong. My whole life was wrong.

Dusk, now. I stopped my bike a couple blocks away. I could see Dom, leaning against the wall of the Sheetz, smoking. I watched for a while. It must have been a busy night—I saw two deals go down within thirty minutes. I couldn’t remember why I had come here, but I saw myself in Dom’s place. I was leaning against the wall like he was. I could see his life—our life—my life: day after day, pushing my wares. I come home at night to find Tiff—not Tiff…K.D.—in bed waiting for me. I’m making money: real money. I’m not washing bathrooms or scraping gum off desks. I’m my own boss. My work schedule is flexible. And if I get tired of a girl—tired of Tiff…of K.D—I get rid of her and move on. My life—no, his life—is perfect.

It wasn’t as if I envied his life, though. I just found it all unfair. Everything Dom had done, these two dead girls, his drug dealing, everything…. And yet he was still doing well for himself. He doesn’t deserve to live this way. I heard K.D.’s command echo in my head: “get Dom…” Get Dom. Get him. With a newfound purpose, I moved forward. I’d get him, alright. I felt all the pain—Tiff’s, K.D.’s…mine. It was pumping me up.

Dom saw me as I approached, but he made no attempt to move. As though he had accepted his fate and punishment, he allowed me to do what must be done. Even with my fists connecting with his face, rising bloody each time, we both knew this was right. He heard me now as I laughed, mad. His screams—the ones he must’ve meant for Tiff those years ago—they finally sounded now. His wails of pain were loud, but I could hear acceptance and personal blame in his cries. And then there was silence.

All was still. There were no sounds. No cars. No sirens. No rain. Just silence.

I stepped back from the scene. Dom was limp. I could no longer tell if he was breathing. My knuckles were sore and dripping red. My breathing was hard and heavy, my eyes blurred with tears. What had I done? I ran back to my bike, hopped on and took off. I had no idea where I was going. I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t stay here. I had to leave.

When I peeled out of that alley and left the town behind me, I knew I was never going back. That was when my life would have begun. I could have hidden myself away, and gotten a real job. Maybe started a family with someone who would have actually cared about me. I could have been a success. I could have been any number of things, but now I was free of all those dreams.

Disaster Boy

        I once knew a kid who was his own greatest threat.

        When I say this, I mean it. Throughout his life, it seemed like he was invincible. Accidents often happened near him. Catastrophe followed him around, creeping close, but never quite touching him. When things did happen to him, he would walk away, barely injured. This Disaster Boy was either the luckiest guy in the world, or the unluckiest. But he never thought anything of it.

        To this day, Disaster Boy has been hit by a car on three separate occasions. The first was a suburban backing out of a driveway as he walked by—it knocked him a few feet, but he got back to his feet and kept going. The second was a side-swipe from a Durango hauling ass down a residential street—a few bruises and a cut down his arm, but nothing serious and no charges pressed. The most recent time was on purpose; Disaster Boy made many careless friends who could goad him into doing some seriously dumb things—the truck hit him square on at 15 mph. 15 miles per hour doesn’t sound bad, but it’s enough to knock a boy a couple yards to the ground. In addition to this, he has been inside a car that ended up underneath a truck. He even managed to flip his own car—a worn down 1988 Subaru—off of a 50 foot embankment: he survived without a scratch and his car was running again the following day.

        Disaster Boy has avoided being struck by lightning as many times as he’s been hit by cars. Each strike is a little closer. The first struck a few yards from him, demolishing a tree nearby. The second hit a car he was riding in (a car which no longer runs). Most recently, the lightning struck mere feet from where he had just been setting up audio equipment for a concert—the storm came from nowhere, and people called it a miracle that he escaped unscathed.

        Disaster Boy has been pushed through a window by his older sister. He has jumped off of houses to the ground without injury. He has been stung by a swarm of poisonous jellyfish. He has nearly drowned on two separate occasions. He survived pediatric pneumonia. No, the world may want to hurt Disaster Boy, but something protects him.

        Disaster Boy does have a weakness, though: himself. It started out as shyness. He was always a “shy” boy growing up. He’d shrink in fear from meeting new people, and often couldn’t operate well in classes. Everyone wrote it off as typical childish behavior, though, so Disaster Boy was pushed over and over until he had to get over it. Disaster Boy managed to become more attuned to operating in public, but even to this day he has a fear of newness. It would be many years before he would search for answers or for a cure. It wasn’t a real issue, though. He could—as his parents would tell him—get over it.

        It was in High School that the real problems started. Disaster Boy would find himself spacing out in class. He would find that words on paper would shake violently and fly away, leaving him unable to read. He would find gaps of his memory disappearing. He’d wake up and be ready to leave for school, only to find that he’d actually just returned from school that day. Despite his crowd of friends, he found himself sad and alone. He thought dark thoughts—the darkest thoughts—and sought escape.

        Disaster Boy became his own tragedy. The cars and lightning of the world may not be able to hurt him, but he could hurt himself. His acknowledgement of his own worthlessness drove him to make bad decisions. His poor self-image became the subconscious cause of his anorexia nervosa. His issues consumed him, dragging him into darkness until he sought escapes through knives, drugs, and guns. He very nearly found his way out, but a light finally saved him: a counselor.

        It was a sickness, she told him. That’s not true, though. Disaster Boy knew that sadness was an emotion, not a sickness. Sicknesses make people cough or throw up. A disorder, then, if you prefer. A disorder? What was wrong with Disaster Boy?

        After several counseling sessions, his counselor found the cause to be obvious: Bipolar II disorder. Bipolar II disorder is characterized by cycling moods. Unlike Bipolar I disorder, Bipolar II disorder cycles between “normal phases”, “hypomanic phases”, and “manic depression.” What Disaster Boy had just survived was a “manic depression”: the disorder is triggered by chemicals in his brain becoming misbalanced, resulting in slower functioning—other symptoms, such as the ones Disaster Boy exhibited, include low energy, loss of pleasure, depressed mood, feelings of worthlessness, and thoughts of suicide.

        It wasn’t all terrible, though. The counselor explained that his hypomanic episodes seem much more frequent, and overall his “normal phases” would be dominant. In a hypomanic state, Disaster Boy would find his brain running too fast: his thoughts and speech may blur together, he may feel hyper-energized, and—in all likelihood—people would find him hilarious to be around.

        Disaster Boy was given mood stabilizers to help his problems. Lithium, Lamictal, Zoloft: none helped, though. Since they were having no effect, he was taken off of the medications, and was given exercises to practice for when he entered one of his “moods”. Ultimately, he found a balance, but it wasn’t long before other problems arose.

        Disaster Boy graduated from high school, all prepared for college. That summer, he went on vacation to a foreign town, though, and quickly found himself lost and separated from his family. All around him there were new faces. No one he knew could help him. He perceived the people around him as hostile elements. If one of them attacked, there would be no way of getting help. He remembered his chest growing tight. He remembered the choking feeling, the dizziness, and the nausea. He trembled as he sought out his family, separated only moments before. But then he blinked and found himself in their hotel room.

        Another trip to the doctors revealed the second of the internal threats to Disaster Boy’s invincibility: Panic disorder. Disaster Boy, as it turned out, wasn’t just shy or afraid of newness. As it should so happen, he was agoraphobic: physically and mentally afraid of being in situations where escape is impossible or help may not be available. Years of suppressing his fears had only aggravated his symptoms, pushing him to the point of blacking out in the streets of Gatlinburg, TN. Agoraphobics often find themselves physically immobilized by their irrational fears—you may find them frozen on bridges or in a crowd.

        To help Disaster Boy prepare for college, he underwent cognitive-behavioral therapy. He met with a counselor several times a week all summer. He learned ways to cope with the situation. He was taught that his paranoid fears were ungrounded. He took trips to the mall, and mingled with crowds to get used to the atmosphere. When things got to be too much, Disaster Boy learned how to “draw lines” between himself and others: he could picture an imaginary boundary between himself and others—something like the lip of a stage or a desk in the front of a room—and put it between himself and his “foes.”

        College would present entirely new issues for Disaster Boy. A new disorder peeked its head: anxiety. Perhaps one of the most common illnesses that college students encounter, Anxiety disorders revolve around stress levels and feelings of fear, unease, and worry. Disaster Boy’s anxiety attacks caused hyperventilation and more memory gaps. He was fighting a losing battle, and had no idea what he could do to be saved.

        Throughout his college career, Disaster Boy would continue to see therapists and counselors, doctors and physicians, but no one gave him much in way of a cure. He tried not to bother his parents with his problems: they had money issues, and they had never been very receptive in the past. His new college friends were there, but Disaster Boy was too scared to tell them about his problems—if he scared off these new friends, he would have no one. He was able to gentle his disturbing thoughts to an extent, but he found himself losing hope.

        Something sparked in him, though. One day, he went to a Wal-Mart. Part of his training to ward off his agoraphobia is to expose himself to crowds as often as possible. To do this, he’d often just go and walk around shopping centers. While in Wal-Mart on one particular day, he happened past the office supplies section and found a journal. It was just a simple, leather journal. Empty. The pages were waiting for him to fill it.

        And he did. Disaster Boy started pouring words upon words into this journal. He wrote down everything that he was thinking. He wrote about people he met, things that troubled him. He wrote about his classes, his friends, his family. He wrote about games he played or trips that he took. All of this writing helped him to focus away from his issues, and soon it began to feel like he didn’t have them. Now that Disaster Boy had something to focus on, he worried less about his issues.

        The problems didn’t go away, though. His newfound love for writing helped him discover things about himself that he had never known. He actively pursued answers to the questions that had never been answered for him. The most important question for his search though, was Why me?

        And so he looked and looked for the causes to his mental distresses. He learned that it is most likely genetic. His mother suffers from depression, like her mother before her. His mother’s father suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder—a result of seeing his shipmates blown to bits in an attack during Vietnam. He learned that, on his father’s side, he could have much worse coming for me. Early-onset Alzheimer’s syndrome may very well await him in the near future. In addition, the men of his family are genetically at high risk for Von Hippel-Lindau disease, which (on top of spawning outburst of rage) can cause tumors in the eyes, ears, pancreas, kidney, brain, and spine. 

        The truth is… I am Disaster Boy. You probably saw that coming. When I look at my past and all the complications that plagued me growing up, it seems like I am someone else, entirely. I’m no longer that same boy who starved himself so that he wouldn’t be fat. I’m not that same guy who lay in bed dying of swine-flu for three days because his stress levels destroyed his immune system. No—I’m informed now. I understand most of what I’ve gone through. It seems funny to me that so many things could’ve killed me—all that lightning, the car wrecks, the drowning—but they didn’t; instead, the closest thing that has come to killing me is something locked inside my DNA—the thing that has come closest to killing me is something that I can’t avoid, no matter how hard I might try.

        I often wonder where I should go from here. My disease is incurable. It’s treatable, but it is never going to go away. In a sense, it is what has made me who I am today: a disaster waiting to happen. I’m persevering, though. There are days when I wake up and realize how much work I still have to do. This triggers my stress disorder, which off-balances my hormones, which trigger my bipolar depression, which slows my immune system, which makes me more susceptible to sicknesses like my re-occurring bouts of mono which keeps me from working, which makes me realize how much more work I have to do—and then the cycle repeats. Yes, I have considered many times that I am in an endless rut, and that there is no hope. But there really is hope. That day back at Wal-Mart, when I picked up that journal, I knew that someday I would write about the boy I used to be—that boy who was ready for disaster to strike. But no more. I’ve made it this far, and I’ll be damned if I’m giving up without a fight!