User blog:SodaCat/Millstone - ethereal

e·the·re·al

əˈTHirēəl

extremely delicate, light, not of this world

adjective

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 23 days before

December 9, 2007

Sunday

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Shit, I gotta admit, it took me a long time before I actually mustered up the courage to do one of those, uh… shoot, what are they called? Those meetings? The ones where you round up somebody’s friends and family and talk to them about some aspect of their life, and basically make them feel so shitty and raw about the whole thing that they agree to stop just so that you’ll all cut the sentimental bullshit and let them live their lives in peace? Intervention, yeah. One of those.

The guys were on board for the idea from the day I brought it to them. I got ‘em all (Russell included) to meet me at the school fountain one day after class—a place that Wade wouldn’t ever wander into, given that it was right in rich fairy, jockstrap, and greasebag central. Once they’d all gotten there—some later than others—I told ‘em about what I had seen that day back at the dorm, and how I’d pieced together that Wade had been on shit for a while from what we’d seen after he’d broken up with Lainey. The guys wanted to go find Wade right then and there, hunt him out and make him stop.

But I didn’t let ‘em, I knew that if it was just me and the guys spontaneously barging up to Wade and telling him how to live his life, he would’ve shipped us all halfway to Hell, and he’s still be stuck doing his crap. This had to be done right, or not at all.

I put more than my share of effort into it. I managed to get his sister to gimme five entire minutes of her time, away from Angie, and then faced the challenge of getting her to keep her mouth shut long enough for me to explain the situation to her. It took a couple starters and at least twenty minutes total of hearing about Mandy Wiles’ latest crush (spoiler, not me), I managed to tell her the plan.

“Oh,” she said, looking a lot less interested than I had expected even her to be, considering that I’d just given her solid evidence that her brother was borderline, if not, suicidal.

I remember starin’ at her, my eyes real wide and confused, ‘cause I couldn’t even fathom how I gave more shits about Wade’s well-being than she did. But then she shrugged, looking in the opposite direction. But it was different from all the other times I’d seen her do it. It wasn’t that she was looking away because she wasn’t paying attention, or because she was trying to see some new piece of gossip.

It was because she was uncomfortable as all Hell.

“If you think that’s going to help, Tom, I guess…” she mumbled, and I dropped the act because it was the first time I’d ever heard her voice so quiet and unconfident.

There were a couple more beats of quiet between us before I decided it might be a good idea to speak up again. “Has this happened before or somethin’?”

If it had, I would’ve been shocked outta my ass. If anyone knew about Wade’s going-ons, it was me. Shit, I knew more about Wade’s life than even he did.

But Christy just shrugged, and I could tell that she just really wanted the conversation to end or to find some valid excuse as to why she had to leave it. “No, but you know how things work in my family, Tom. We don’t really do this type of thing. But you’re his best friend, you know him better than I do.”

I did, so I didn’t give it anymore thought, and I nodded to her and headed off knowing full well that I was giving it more thought and that any suggestion that I wasn’t was bullshit, and that what she’d said had really made me uneasy. Because she was right; this approach might be completely meaningless to him, and therefore useless.

The intervention was set for Sunday, real early in December. In the boys’ dorm where the sofa’s placed, it was me and the guys and Christy sittin’ on the couch and the extra chairs, waiting for Wade to show up. All of our noses and cheeks were tinted red from the cold weather outside, and Trent was shivering like a little kid because the idiot had decided to play a prank on Ethan and try to scare him outside. He’d forgotten that Ethan took the whole ninja thing seriously, and had ended up buried in a pile of snow. We wasted twenty minutes digging him out.

There was real light conversation among us, mainly ‘cause we were all thinking the same thing, but nobody wanted to bring any attention to it. Someone real important to Wade was missing, and this fact was just glaring. I’d texted Lainey—I still had her phone saved in my messages from the day that Wade had texted her for the first time ever—but she hadn’t answered. When I tried again a few days later, I got a little message back telling me that the number I was trying to reach had either blocked me, or had been disconnected. I’m shooting for the former.

Heavy footsteps behind us put out all the conversation, and when we looked, there was Wade wearing a black beanie and this ratty green army coat I’d never seen him wear before, ever. And we’re talking about a kid who shared a damn closet with me.

“Woah,” he said when he saw all of us gathered like some sort of Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, “what’s going on?”

His voice was off. Raspy, deeper. Kind of light, as if he were slowly floating away from us. He’d probably been smoking something before he showed up, and when I got hit by the wave of an herbal scent, I knew he had been.

“We’re worried about you,” Trent shot out instantly, standing up, but he sat back down as soon as I shot one look at him. I’d worked too hard to throw this thing together just to have Trent start blubbering two seconds in and ruin it.

Standing up, I made my way over to Wade real carefully, kinda like how most people would when walking by a sleeping rottweiler. “Hey man,” I greeted softly.

Wade just stared blankly at me, one eyebrow raised, his dark blue eyes searching mine. “What’s going on, Tom?”

Just like that, when he said my name, I flashbacked to when I’d first found him high as all Hell when he had stretched my name out, and it was enough to make me yank him by the shoulders, shove him to the couch, and toss him down between Russell and Davis. Russell, instantly catching my drift, threw an arm around Wade and held him in place.

“You need to get your shit together, dude,” I yelled at him, hands on knees, getting real in his face. I had decided that it was time to cut the mopey shit and get real.

It pissed him off, fast. He tried to stand up but, luckily, Russell’s grip was way too strong for him. “Oh yeah? You gonna give me life lessons, Tommy?”

And I gotta admit, that pissed me off real fast, too. “Better me than those bums you’ve been hanging around with. You’re killing yourself, Wade. Over some stupid fuckin’ girl you dated for what, two months? Open your eyes, buddy. The world’s still turning. The sun’s still rising.”

“I told you not to talk about her, asswipe!” Wade screamed at me, still resisting Russell’s grip. Realizing it was hopeless, he started throwing kicks my way, but I managed to jump outta the way.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Wade!” Davis moaned to him, standing and joining me with this real pained look on his face, “Tom’s right! You’re gonna fucking kill yourself!”

Wade just rolled his eyes at that, unimpressed, but it knocked the rest of the guys into a frenzy. They went wild, some of them looking as if they were one push away from breaking into sobs.

“Don’t let her get in your head like this, dude! Get her out of your brain!” Troy cried, getting up and pacing behind the couch like he only did when he was muttering to himself about shit that he never revealed to us. His hands were on his head, tight, as if they were the only thing that was holding him together.

“You’ve still got all of us by your side!” Ethan insisted, talking to Wade as level and calm as he could, but the way his hands shook I could tell he was terrified. They trapped me, I couldn’t look away, even when Trent started actually bawling on Wade, begging him not to “high himself” to death. Ethan’s shaking hands woke me up. When I looked up everything was more colorful; brighter. This was real. Wade was in real danger. More than I had imagined.

“I suppose you have something to say, too?”

The activity in the room all dropped at that, those eight words uttered by none other than Wade. But he wasn’t looking at any of us; instead his eyes were stone cold and focused on Christy, sitting in a stray chair next to the T.V.

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat as if his gaze were heating it up or something. Her green eyes met each of ours for a moment, lingering accusingly on mine, before finally resting themselves on Wade’s. For a second, I didn’t think she would speak, but then she opened her mouth.

“Wade, if something happens to you, I don’t know what I’ll—…”

And she stopped as abruptly as she’d begun, took a big gulp of breath, got up, and ran out of the dorm. We heard the front door slam shut seconds later.

A new stillness was set over us, broken only by Russell, who’d been quiet up until that moment. He let out a cry before throwing both his arms around Wade, breaking into sobs. Between them,he screamed about how much he didn’t want to lose his ‘little buddy’ and begged Wade to quit the drugs and to get clean.

“I’ll stop,” Wade assured him, awkwardly patting Russell’s armpit ‘cause he couldn’t reach all the way to his back, “I’ll get clean.”

It seemed to be enough for the guys, who kind of relaxed a little and backed off once he’d said that. But his eyes were fixed on mine, and I could see something in them, something I never thought in a million years that I’d see coming from Wade to me.

He looked at me like he hated me.