We Can't Be Friends by Cyndy Etler

Author:Cyndy Etler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2017-07-20T04:00:00+00:00

A tisket

A tasket

Smith College

or

A casket

Then I draw little question marks around the main one, like falling snow. Like a question storm.

21

JUNE 1989

TWO YEARS AND THREE MONTHS OUT

Shane hasn’t called me since I told him about my little sister, but that’s okay. It’s okay! It’s okay because of Prozac. The psychiatrist said I needed a double dosage, eighty milli-somethings a day. She said she’d never seen a teenager as depressed as I was. But was. Past tense. The psychiatrist said it can take a month for Prozac to kick in, but not for me! The first day I took my Prozac, I didn’t need to go to my room and cry for two hours when I got home from school. It was unbelievable.

And, and, and! Speaking of unbelievable, there’s another sober kid at Masuk now! I swear, sometimes I have to suffer awhile to prove something to God. Once I’ve proved it, He gives me everything I’ve ever wanted.

Ms. Grass really knows what she’s doing, ’cause here’s how she introduces us. She sends me a pass fifteen minutes into first period, when there’s nobody left in the hallways. That way I don’t have to walk by the cheerleaders in the popular zone. When I get to her office, she says to me, “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” Then she walks me down the silent, empty halls until we reach the one single person who’s not in class. It’s this girl, standing in front of an open locker.

I swear, it’s like the two halves of a couple meeting for their arranged marriage. Except in our case, we instantly fall in like, rather than love.

Her name’s Deanna Fazzini, and she thinks she went to rehab. I’d never tell her this, but she didn’t go to rehab. She went to preschool. First of all, she was only gone for six weeks. Which she thinks is a long time! Second, she had her own private bathroom. With a door. That locked. Third, she was allowed to read and go outside and be alone and choose her own food in a cafeteria. And nobody ever laid a hand on her. Like, the kids in her rehab went into frigging town on Saturday nights to see a movie!

The only rehabby thing about her program was that she wasn’t around her druggie friends. Well, and she went to AA meetings three times a day. Other than that, the place was actually nice to her. How’s that gonna help a lying, druggie scumbag kick her addiction? But somehow it seems to be working. At least, it’s working so far. She’s been out a month, and she hasn’t talked to any of her druggie friends, and she hasn’t picked up a drink or a drug. I’ve even seen her smile. One month out, and already she can smile. I’ve been out two years, and I still don’t think I’ve smiled yet.

Deanna came back to Masuk at the perfect time, because, man, did I need a friend. So here’s Deanna Fazzini.

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