I picked up the assignment and read:
The Catcher in the Rye – Teen Age Angst
Written Component: One page typed MLA format. Describe a scene from your teen life that demonstrates “angst”
Then I skimmed my son’s scrawled paragraph in the blank section below the instructions – a rough draft, I supposed.
My thought that day was, it’s not a big deal there’s nothing else to do…so there can’t be a downside. I put a straw in my nose and breathed through my nostril. It felt smooth yet sharp. In less than five seconds it hit me. I passed for a while screaming to myself in my head how awesome this is how cool it felt how alive I was at that moment. My whole nose was numb and so were my teeth and my throat. I did it for another three days then decided I had to stop for a while. A week later I was snorting and bumping it and it felt great. I did my best to try to break it up and not blow coke. I started to dream about blowing coke, it’s the same dream too. I’m in a truck and there’s a glass plate with a line on it. I hesitate but then give in and jump out of the truck and go run around. Then it started to affect my home style because my mom started to tell me that my company was unenjoyably and started asking if everything was ok. I told her it was nothing that I’m fine and everything is ok, or that I was just having a bad week. I wanted to stop but didn’t all at the same time.
The paper rattled in my hands. Move. Act. Do Something. I mustered the motivation to slouch into the chair, the nearest one, and stare at the wall in front of me, watching the crisp lines of my vision blur then sharpen and blur again. I remembered my son, so pure, so clean, a morsel of perfection. How I savored beholding every bit of his delicious existence. My boy of summer with blond highlights curling at the back of his neck, and eyes the color of summer – chlorine and sunscreen and smoking charcoal. He never feared the water. All certain he could swim, he’d sink, bubbles slipping from his smiling mouth, deeper and deeper – the depth of water barely clouding the vision of his eyes, wide open and locked into mine without a trace of fear. Never realizing it was I who pulled him again and again to the surface.
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Serena Cavanaugh was born and raised in the SF Bay Area where she lives with her two kids and their poodle. A graduate of Santa Clara University, she enjoys reading, writing, cooking… and of course eating. www.serenajcavanaugh.com
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