And I am going home.
And everything is all right.
47.
THE MORNING AFTER I got home I wake up to the smell of bacon and cooked butter. Away from the psych ward the gray is gone and sunlight, warm and bright, fills the room.
It feels so safe and comforting being back in my own bed—not on a plastic mattress with rubber sheets and a thin, barely there blanket. I want to lie here forever—wrapped in the plush comforter, looking out on the world through my window, the telephone wires stretched across the skyline, with no crows looking back at me.
My hallucinations are gone. My head is clear. And I want to lie here, but breakfast smells too good, so I get up and pee and then wander into the kitchen.
“Milesy!” Jane calls, accentuating every syllable.
“Janey!” I say.
She walks over to me and gives me a hug, and I hug her, and even though I did see her last night, waking up and being with her today makes me feel like I’m really home—and that is good.
“Pancakes and bacon,” she tells me. “Dad made pancakes and bacon.”
“That’s right,” my dad hollers from the table. “Coffee, too.”
“And orange juice,” my mom says, startling me a little since she usually never eats breakfast with us at all. “I squeezed orange juice.”
“Man, thank you, guys, so much,” I tell them, going and making a plate and pouring coffee and orange juice and taking a seat at the table with all three of them.
“Can we work on our comic book today?” Jane asks.
And I tell her, of course, that I want to hang out just me and her all day.
The sun fills the kitchen.
There’s a record playing—not old blues, but John Coltrane, an album called Ascension.
My dad talks about the book he’s reading, and my mom talks about school and asks me how I feel about starting again on Monday.
“Good,” I say—and that’s the truth, though it’ll be awkward seeing Eliza.
Still, I have my friends—Jackie and Preston and now Wanika. We’ve talked on the phone since we left the ward, and I’m actually gonna go get coffee with her in Berkeley tomorrow. Not like in a romantic way—not at all. Just as friends. I need friends right now. And, as great as Preston is, he doesn’t understand what it’s like.
Wanika does.
And, to some extent, Jackie does, too. She struggles with her own . . . darkness? Something like that.
I have two real friends now. And I can talk to them about anything.
It’s the shame and fucking secrets that will kill me. They almost did before. And they totally will again—if I’m not “rigorously honest,” as they kept saying in treatment.
To tell the truth about who I am and what’s going on with me, that is everything. Sharing. Asking for help. I gotta do that shit. I gotta try.
So I eat my breakfast with my family.
My mom, my dad, Jane.
We are all together.
Through everything.
And I have hope.
Real fucking hope.
That I can have a normal life.
And do all the things that normal people do.
If I just hold on.
And I don’t let go.
Epilogue
JACKIE SITS ON THE concrete barrier wall with her legs hanging down.
The sun is bright and hot. The sky is a pale blue color.
The ocean surges. The waves crash down.
We both look out and say nothing for a long while.
There is something about watching the ocean—something pure and calming.
“It’s beautiful,” Jackie finally says.
And she’s right. It is.
She takes off her hat and pushes her hair back. She leans on her elbows.
“There’s a seal,” she tells me, pointing.
I try to see it, but can’t. In the sun, the scars across my wrists reflect white against the blue veins underneath. But they are healed now. And, with time, even the scars will fade.
“There it is,” she says excitedly.
And this time I catch sight of it just as it ducks down beneath the surface of the water.
“Shark bait,” I say.
Jackie laughs.
I take out a cigarette and light it and pass it over to Jackie, then I light one for myself.
I breathe in and out.
The world turns around me.
And, even these months later, most everything is status quo. Jackie and Preston are still together. Eliza and I still don’t talk. My dad’s still writing his book, working freelance. My mom’s still in the Stanyan Hill library. Jane’s still the greatest. And I’m still seeing Dr. Frankel twice a week.
I’m on that Clozaril. And it’s working. It’s all working.
For today.
“What time we meeting Preston at the Castro?” I ask.
She smiles. “Six.” She swings her legs back and forth. “And Wanika’s meeting us, too, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say. “She is.”
“How’s she doing? She had any more . . . whatever you call ’ems?”
“No . . . I don’t think so.”
She smiles over at me. “What about you?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
She laughs. “Should we go then?”
“Yeah.”
I stand.
And the ocean waves crash behind me.
Acknowledgments
THANK YOU,
Jette Newell Sheff
My dad and Karen and Jasper and Daisy
And my mom
Amanda Urban
Kristen Pettit—this book owes everything to you
Hrishi Desai, Hrishi Desai, Hrishi Desai
Shari Goldhagen
Molly Atlas
Barrett Sheff
Mark, Jenny, Becca, Susan, Lucy, Steve
Nancy and Don
Charles Wallace
Nicole and Tim and Julian and Natalie and Cabbage and Matilda and all the birds
Kathy Sherrill
Johnny and Tomoka and Moera and John Wu
Armistead and Chris
Peggy Knickerbocker
Susan and Buddy
Dr. Larissa Mooney
Sue and Nan
Jenny and Jim and Heidi
Bo Feng
Yoko and Sean
Jerry Stahl, Jerry Stahl
Jeremy Kleiner
Brian Geffen
Michael Green
Max Gavron
Andre and Maria Jacquemetton
Powell Weaver
Jamison Monroe
Felix Van Groeningen
Leigh Redman
Shelly Zimmerman
Vin Nucatola
Cameron Crowe
Ramona Guitar Wolf Jackson
Rhett Butler
Cole the cat
Whoever owns that piece of land on Santa Monica Boulevard I sneak my dogs into, I’m sorry I keep cutting your fence
Love
N
About the Author
NIC SHEFF IS A columnist for The Fix and the author of two memoirs about his struggles with addiction, the New York Times bestselling Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines and We All Fall Down. He also a wrote for the hit TV series The Killing. Nic lives in Los Angeles, California.
As a teenager and young adult Nic struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, as well as severe mental illness issues. His first two books were memoirs about his experience battling addiction. For his first novel, he wanted to examine what happens to someone who experiences the symptoms of schizophrenia while still a teenager, someone trying to manage the hardships of mental illness at such a fragile
time of life—the everyday struggles of high school and relationships. Much of the novel is borrowed from his own experience, but it is also a departure. He hopes to show that mental illness is not a death sentence.
Nic Sheff, Schizo
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