We Can't Be Friends Read online

  ALSO BY CYNDY ETLER

  The Dead Inside

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  Copyright © 2017 by Cyndy Etler

  Cover and internal design © 2017 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover image © Rekha Garton/Arcangel

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  This book is a memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollections of her experiences over a period of years. Some names and characteristics have been changed, some events have been compressed, and some dialogue has been re-created.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Etler, Cyndy, author.

  Title: We can’t be friends / Cyndy Etler.

  Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Fire, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017013495 | (hardcover : alk. paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Drug addicts--Rehabilitation--United States--Juvenile literature. | Problem youth--United States--Juvenile literature. | High school girls--United States--Juvenile literature.

  Classification: LCC HV5825 .E843 2017 | DDC 363.2092 [B] --dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017013495

  CONTENTS

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note to Reader

  June 1990—Three Years and Three Months Out

  1: November 1985

  2: January 1986—March 1987

  3: May 1987—Two Months Out

  4: June 1987—Three Months Out

  5: July 1987—Four Months Out

  6: October 1987—Seven Months Out

  7: February 1988—Eleven Months Out

  8: April 1988—One Year and One Month Out

  9: July 1988—One Year and Four Months Out

  10: August 1988—One Year and Five Months Out

  11: October 1988—One Year and Seven Months Out

  12: November 1988—One Year and Eight Months Out

  13: December 1988—One Year and Nine Months Out

  14: March 1989—Two Years Out

  15: Still March 1989—Two Years and One Week Out

  16: April 1989—Two Years and One Month Out

  17: Still April 1989—Two Years, One Month, and Three Hours Out

  18: May 1989—Two Years and Two Months Out

  19: Still May 1989—Two Years, Two Months, and One Week Out

  20: Still May 1989—Two Years, Two Months, One Week, and Three Days Out

  21: June 1989—Two Years and Three Months Out

  22: July 1989—Two Years and Four Months Out

  23: September 1989—Two Years and Six Months Out

  24: Still September 1989—Two Years, Six Months, and One Week Out

  25: October 1989—Two Years and Seven Months Out

  26: Still October 1989—Two Years, Seven Months, and Two Weeks Out

  27: January 1990—Two Years and Ten Months Out

  28: February 1990—Two Years and Eleven Months Out

  29: Still February 1990—Two Years, Eleven Months, and Three Weeks Out

  30: March 1990—Three Years Out

  31: Still March 1990—Three Years and Two Weeks Out

  32: Still March 1990—Three Years and Three Weeks Out

  33: April 1990—Three Years and One Month Out

  34: Still April 1990—Three Years, One Month, and One Week Out

  35: Still April 1990—Three Years, One Month, One Week, and One Day Out

  36: Still April 1990—Three Years, One Month, One Week, and Three Days Out

  37: May 1990—Three Years and Two Months Out

  38: June 1990—Three Years and Three Months Out

  39: Still June 1990—Three Years, Three Months, and Fifteen Hours Out

  A Note from the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  This book’s for you, Rich. You carried that weight a long time. Through the darkness you couldn’t see it, but you were everyone’s light.

  NOTE TO READER

  High school sucks for a lot of people. High school extra-sucks when you believe, deep in your soul, that every kid in school is out to get you.

  I wasn’t popular before I got locked up in Straight, Inc., the notorious “tough love” program for troubled teens. So it’s not like I was walking around thinking everyone liked me. But when you’re trapped in a warehouse for sixteen months with no distractions—no books or friends or TV; no stepping outside; no school, even—your mind gets a little crazy. When you’re psychologically beaten for sixteen months, you start to absorb the lessons. The lessons in Straight were: You are evil. Your peers are evil. Everything is evil except Straight, Inc.

  Before long, you’re a true believer.

  When you’re finally released and sent back out into the world—to your high school full of evil peers and dangerous influences—you need to be back where it’s safe. To be back in the warehouse. And if you can’t be there, you’d rather be dead.

  This is the story of my return to my high school. This is the story of the kids there who seemed evil, and the adults who seemed nice. This is the true story of how I didn’t die.

  JUNE 1990

  THREE YEARS AND THREE MONTHS OUT

  I’m sitting on the roof next to Doug Bianchi. Yes, that Doug Bianchi. Short little muscle guy. Popular kid. His Rabbit is in the driveway with the windows down. I can smell his stack of pine tree air fresheners from here. Doug’s car is the only one parked right, with four wheels on pavement and the emergency brake pulled up. His best friend, Brent Riga, left his Rabbit on the street at a “hit me, I dare ya” angle. Zack Fox’s Jeep has two wheels in his house’s front flower bed. Ty Norse’s Jeep is the bull’s-eye in the middle of Zack’s front lawn.

  I am at a two-Jeep party. Me. I’m on the roof of the pool house in Zack’s side yard, looking down at the cool guys’ parking jobs. Their cars graph out the social order. Doug gives too much of a fuck—seventeen air fresheners—and Zack gives zero.

  I couldn’t find this place again if I tried. It’s on one of those tiny fake streets Monroe’s founding fathers penciled onto the map just to fuck with us. There’re two houses, three, tops. There’s not even a street sign. But Doug got here lickety-split, like a homing pigeon. Doug belongs.

  When we first got here, Doug checked his alignment in the rearview mirror, grabbed the six-pack I didn’t know was behin
d my seat, pushed his door open, and said, “Stay here.” Then he walked in Zack’s front door, no doorbell, no knock. Doug belongs like that.

  For a while I’m the only girl at a two-Jeep party, which probably makes you wonder, “Where are the parents?!” But that’s because you don’t know Zack Fox. He’s not a kid like us. He’s from frigging Canada, for one thing. His two front teeth are removable, from a hockey incident. His eyes are green and his hair covers one of them and he drives a Jeep. Kids like Zack? They don’t have parents or bowel movements or weird shit from their past they don’t talk about. They just are, and they’re perfect.

  Zack is sitting up on the roof with us, on the other side of Doug. He’s one Doug away from me, with his tan bare feet and his fray-bottomed Levi’s. He’s so cool even popular Doug, in his purple-flowered Jams, looks like a clown next to him. Doug sounds like a clown too. He’s talking wicked fast about some rude thing his brother did and how he’s gonna join the marines and show his brother, who’s only in the navy.

  “ShaddAP, Dougie,” yells Ty.

  I can’t believe Ty talked. Legends don’t talk. They do shit like float around the pool in a Styrofoam armchair, with their eyes closed and their paw gripping an uncracked beer. Doug, the un-legend, keeps yammering.

  “Jeezus, kid. What’re you, on coke?” Ty yells, which makes Zack laugh, and Brent laugh, and Doug turn bright, bright red. I kinda laugh too, even though I’m not supposed to. I mean, I came here with Doug. Without him, I wouldn’t be within a trillion miles of this place.

  Doug gets me back though, when the pink Buick pulls up with the popular girls. Wendi Rosini gets out and looks up at me, first thing.

  “Cyndy Etler?” she says, hard, and Doug just shrugs.

  Kathy Radcliff gets out of the driver’s side, and Tiffani Malta gets out of the back. They start talking in voices I can’t hear. I get really interested in the roof tiles.

  “I’m going inside, Zack,” Wendi says. This time Zack shrugs.

  “Okay thanks, Wendi,” Brent says back to her, and cannonballs off the diving board onto Ty.

  I’m here. At a popular party. Laughing at a joke about cocaine. If the people at Straight could see me now, I’d be on the firing line. Three hundred ex-druggies would be gearing up to spit on me, screeching, Sobriety! Slippery slope!

  You’d have to live it to understand. Straight doesn’t give a single fuck if nobody likes you, if the whole school stops talking and stares when you walk in the room. Straight doesn’t care if being at a real, live, popular kid’s party is the moment you’ve been waiting for your whole life. Straight only cares about one thing: your piece-of-shit druggie ass staying sober. And I am the ultimate Straightling. At least, I was for the sixteen months I spent in Straight. And when I first got out, three years ago. But…now I’m here. I rode in a car with a six-pack of beer. And I laughed at a cocaine joke.

  Wendi, of course, is Zack’s girlfriend. You’ve never seen anyone shine so hard. She’s got muscle legs and her cut-offs are an un-tight size eight. In all the years we’ve had classes together, I’ve talked to her once—that day we had English outside and I was feeling really good about myself. As she walked back inside ahead of me, I said, “I love your hair. Where do you get it done?” and she just said, “Thanks” with, like, her sneeze face on. As if saying that one syllable was so painful.

  Doug has stopped talking now, and Zack never talks, and of course, I’m not saying a frigging word. We’re all in some mystical land in our heads, picturing how Wendi is gonna look in her, no doubt, fucking string bikini.

  I hear the crack of the opening can at the same second Brent starts yelling. It sounds like the crack of a—

  “Doug! Douggieee! Jump, Dougie! Jump!”

  He’s splashing in the shallow end, curling his arms, to show Doug the path from roof to pool. There’s another crack, and Zack passes Doug one of the beers he must have had in his Levi’s back pockets. That’s twice today that beer has been within three feet of me. And I laughed at a cocaine joke. Who the fuck am I?

  “Dougie baby! Come to mama!” goes Brent.

  The popular girls cross the driveway in little tank tops with their bikini straps showing. They’re gonna take off their tops and be all laughy and beautiful. And Doug’s gonna jump off this roof into the pool. And Ty and Brent are gonna fuck around trying to drown each other, and Zack will be silent and golden, surveying his domain. And I’ll be the clean and sober black hole, all covered up in mom shorts and sneakers. I’ll be tongue-tied and quivering—slippery slope!—because somebody smells like a beer. Cyndy Etlerrr.

  “Here,” Doug says, shoving his—his beer into my hand.

  I hold it by two fingers like it burns. “Wait, I—”

  “Go ahead,” Doug says. “Take a sip.”

  “Do it, Cyn,” Zack says.

  “Douggieee!” Brent yells.

  “Doug-ie! Doug-ie!” says Ty, Brent, and those girls, muffled by the tank tops they’re pulling over their heads. “Doug-ie! Doug-ie!”

  “You take a sip, and I jump,” Doug says to me.

  My stomach dips like I jumped off the roof because SOBRIETY!

  The elite-level popular kids are all watching.

  “One sip,” Doug says. “I jump. Ready, set, go.”

  FOUR YEARS AND SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER

  1

  NOVEMBER 1985

  Straight Warehouse, Intake Room

  FIRST DAY IN

  “No, you don’t get it. I don’t need frigging rehab!” I say. “I only tried pot. Tried. Like, three times.” I’m looking at his badge. It says STAFF.

  “That’s the insanity of your disease, Cyndy. You believe you have control over your drug use.” STAFF guy’s voice is a flat monotone. “If you had control over your drug use, your parents wouldn’t have brought you to an intensive drug treatment program like Straight, Inc.” He’s a robot repeating a memorized script.

  “But I don’t even know how to smoke pot. I’ve never even seen another drug!”

  “That’s called denial. Mark that on her intake form.”

  Group Room, Facing Hundreds of Straightlings

  TWO DAYS IN

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not like you all,” I say to the hundreds of them. “I don’t do drugs. I only tried smoking pot a couple times. I’m—”

  “Dry druggie! You’re a dry druggie!” It’s a girl, screaming at me. “You belong here just as much as I do, as we all do! You’re going to sit in that blue chair and rot until you admit it!”

  Open Meeting: Hundreds of Parents & Straightlings

  TWO DAYS IN

  STAFF guy picks up the microphone. “Where are the parents who signed their kids into Straight this week? Will all of you please stand up?”

  *APPLAUSE*

  “You are brave, moms and dads. Very brave. You signed your child into Straight, Inc., knowing you won’t see him or her for a good long time. You proved your commitment to your child’s sobriety by writing that first check.”

  My mother stands across the warehouse from me. She’s one of twelve, smiling like the applause is hers, all hers. Her eyes are on STAFF, hungry. Some of the other moms scan the group of Straightlings—hundreds of oldcomers, who’ve been here forever, plus us twelve newcomers, who’ve been here a day or two—looking for their kids. But not my mother. She’s not looking for me.

  “And you are wise, moms and dads. You know that, underneath all of the pain your kid caused you, underneath all that druggie behavior, there’s a life-threatening disease. Whether your child is just getting started on their druggie career or is knee deep in it, you know that, without Straight, he or she would be dead, and soon. You are such a loving parent, you will sacrifice everything to save your child’s life.”

  *APPLAUSE*

  “Welcome to your new life, moms and dads,” STAFF guy tells them. “We love you.”


  My mother looks at the parents sitting around her. She wants a hug, to start her new life.

  “Now, Straightlings,” STAFF guy snaps. “Let’s have a song! How about ‘We Love You Straight’?”

  The hundreds of zombies lurch into song.

  We love you Straight

  Oh, yes we do

  We love you Straight

  And we’ll be true…

  I sit and move my lips in the shape of, “Mom. Please. Mom.”

  Group Room

  THREE DAYS IN

  My mother is gone. Home. She’s three hundred miles away, sipping herbal tea.

  I’m standing in front of the Straightlings. A cute boy is spitting on me.

  “You think this group is buying your act, Cyndy? Little Miss Priss? ‘Wah! I’ve only smoked pot! I’m a virgin! My daddy hit me! Poor me!’ Bullshit! You’re a druggie whore, like every other girl in this group. You leave here, you’ll be dead or in jail within a month. Quit whining and face your reality. You’re here! You’re an addict! Deal with it!”

  U.S. Route 50, Dodge Minivan with My Oldcomer, Her Mother, and Her Father

  FOUR DAYS IN

  I’m staring at the Caravan’s digital clock. It’s 10:17 p.m. My oldcomer’s finger started jabbing toward my breastbone at 10:14. It made contact at 10:15.

  “You better get honest with the group, Little Cyndy Cries-a-Lot. You better admit to your addiction. You see me? I’m nineteen years old. I don’t have to be here. I choose to be at Straight because Straight saved my life. I got signed in when I was seventeen, when I’d ‘only smoked pot and drank beer.’ Sound familiar? I didn’t have a drug problem. No way! Day I turned eighteen? I signed myself out. Three days later I was snorting coke off the floor of a truck stop men’s room. I fucked a guy as old as my father to get it. Doesn’t that sound fun? That’s your future, little Cyndy, if you don’t admit to your addiction. You need to thank God that your parents found Straight before your druggie ass found cocaine.”