LITMIR.BIZ

      Sitting in my aunt’s living room in a house atop a beautiful bluff overlooking the water, I begin to shiver while waiting for someone to bring me a towel. No one brings one. I’m fourteen and begging God, in whom I suddenly believe, to let my back be okay. I rock back and forth, trying to comfort myself, and then let out a deep guttural moan, like a woman in labor.

      Aunt Tracey calls to me, “Your mother wants you to walk home, so it’s time for you to go.” Her son, my cousin Jay, six years older than me, looks at me and I realize I’m no longer welcome. His piercing eyes say, Get lost. There isn’t much to do in the remote place where we summer and Jay is the only person ever available to me, but he’s clearly reached his limit with me. He warns me that I better stop coming over and says he doesn’t want me playing his drum set anymore. It’s hot and sticky outside, a typical Wisconsin summer day, and no one is in a good mood. In fact, just a little while earlier, Jay and his friends had decided to do whatever it took to get rid of me.

      A few years earlier, while staying at my parents’ beach house, I had learned how to wakeboard with Jay and his buddies, and earlier today I’d wandered over to see what they were up to and spend some time on the water with them. Except for the outdoors, Jay’s house seemed the only place to go to in the remote area my parents dragged us out to each summer, Shore Acres, near Dyckesville, Wisconsin, less than an hour outside our hometown of Green Bay.

      Out on the water, with the rope coiling around me like a snake, I had the eerie, panicked feeling that some sort of immense, deep-sea, slithering, sharp-toothed creature was lurking just beneath me. Still, I hurriedly grasped the triangular rubber-gripped handle as the boat rounded me and the instant the rope was taut, I bellowed, “Hit it!” Jay rammed the throttle forward with such fist-pounding force that the gas throttle on the 240-horsepower V6 engine of the bombardier jet boat jerked wide open. The craft pulled me forward with such force that I was thrust up and out on top of the water and then flung vertically into the air. Somehow I managed to flex my abdomen muscles tightly and pull my legs and the wakeboard back underneath my feet before I rebounded down into the water.

      Landing about ten feet in front of where I was launched, I struggled to maintain my balance and control my hyper-light wakeboard as I accelerated at full throttle behind the high-powered jet boat. Jay wouldn’t . . . was all I managed to think before my board caught a diagonal front-right edge on a rift in the water at high speed, separating me from my board and careening my body like a flying superman headlong into an approaching wave at about 45 miles per hour. I felt my spine crunch so violently that I could actually hear it snapping in my eardrums as I plunged and folded in half, face first into the water.

      After the initial shock, I turned around and floated on my back, slowly letting out gasps of air as the cool water and wind stroked my face with soft comfort. I tried but failed to move my legs, which had gone completely numb. Panicked yet frozen, helpless after having had the wind knocked out of me, I looked up at the sky and focused on keeping calm. I don’t remember it, but I was pulled into the boat by Jay’s friend Keth, who closely resembled a miniature Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a certified lifeguard, and always had to correct people on his name, “Keth, not Keith, you runt.” I also don’t remember being sped to shore and carried in the sitting position, with Jay and Keth supporting my legs and back on both sides. They took me up the beach steps and into my aunt’s house.

      Your mother wants you to walk home. I replay the words in my mind as I slowly balance the weight of my body on my tingling legs. Letting out a deep breath, I put one foot forward and painfully start the mile-long journey up the beach to my parents’ summerhouse, regaining my full range of movement by the time I walk through the front door. I decide not to tell anyone what happened. I know why Jay did what he did, and I know what he would do if I told anyone the truth about what happened, so I keep my mouth shut. Among us kids, both on the street and at home, there is a code of silence intended to keep adults at a distance. My parents wouldn’t be helpful anyway. When they pay attention to us, it’s geared toward taking things away or making snide remarks. I can already hear it, Well, what did you expect?

      The lesson I return to with increasing frequency in the coming years is that no one is looking out for you but yourself, nobody. I have to be someone who can hold his own in any situation. Besides, all that matters to me is that I haven’t hurt my back so badly that I won’t be able to play football in the coming season.

      When I get home, I search around for Tylenol or something that will numb the pain. In the medicine cabinet is a bottle of Vicodin. I’ve never taken a prescription painkiller before, but I decide to give it a shot. It works, and over the next week, I finish the bottle. Each of my parents has a prescription for the drug, so a bottle or two is usually floating around their bathroom, inside a cabinet or sink drawer; they don’t even notice it’s gone.

      I’m not much of an academic; sports, drums, and getting the hell out of my house and away

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