The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(60)

Lance told Damon about these Four Steps to Recovery that they were gonna do.

“Aren’t there supposed to be like twelve of those?” Damon asked, and Lance grinned.

“Different program,” he said. “But it’s great you know about that.”

Lance said the Four Steps were Building Awareness, Finding Support, Learning Vigilance, and Taking Accountability. It sounded like the usual bullshit. Lance said he really believed that Damon could change his life for the better.

Lance didn’t try to bond with Damon over sports. He didn’t try to impress him with how hard things had been when he was in high school a million years ago. He didn’t ask dumbass questions like most adults did: What’s your favorite subject in school? Aren’t you excited to be a senior next year? Where are you applying to college? Lance didn’t care about that shit. They just talked about whatever. How Tyler, the Creator, was the best emcee since Hova, and how Damon was gonna flip if someone didn’t give him his iPhone and headphones back soon. How the sheets in this place were some common, two-hundred-thread-count shit that chafed your ass at night. How all the food was bunk except the frozen yogurt they brought in every Friday, which, Damon admitted, was pretty bomb.

“I don’t know, man, I’ve never been much into fro-yo,” Lance said. “It just doesn’t compare to the real stuff.”

“Jaws!” Damon protested. “That shit is creamalicious, yo.”

Lance laughed. He told Damon his way of talking was hella inventive, kinda like Shakespeare, which his English teacher tried to make him read sophomore year, like on purpose tryna confuse him.

“What can’t that dude just talk in fuckin’ English?” Damon said. He waited for Lance’s reaction, thinking maybe he liked Shakespeare and was gonna get pissed off, but Lance just laughed and shook his head, like he didn’t get it either.

Lance started asking Damon all these questions no one else ever had—not Why couldn’t he keep still? but What did he care about? and What did he want his life to be? He wanted to know other things too, like what Damon liked to smoke and what he liked to drink and what was happening in his life, and in his head, in the instant before he decided to take a hit. He wanted to know how Damon felt at school, what he thought when teachers yelled at him, and why he’d chosen Ryan and Nick as his crew. How he felt about getting arrested while his best friend got off.

“That’s just Nick,” Damon insisted. “He’s always doing some cutty James Bond shit like that. It’s not personal.”

Finally, Lance asked how Damon felt about his family. His brother, Max, six years older, who’d left the house at age eighteen and promised never to come back. His mom. His dad.

“Why do you gotta know about that asshole?” Damon said, and plucked a Bic pen off the desk and pried its little plastic handle till it broke.

After a few weeks, him and Lance went outside to hike in the hills around the center. It felt good, after being stuck inside all those beige rooms. It was kinda crazy and Damon wasn’t about to admit it out loud, but by that point Lance was his boy. He liked the way Lance laughed big and loud when Damon said something funny, how Lance leaned back in his chair and rubbed his palm over his shiny bald head like he was tryna get a genie to pop out. He liked how Lance’s voice was this low, rumbly drawl that vibrated over the airwaves to Damon and made him chill. How he was built like a NFL lineman but didn’t need to talk about it. How he didn’t give a fuck if Damon messed with the little office shit on his desk, the paper clips or staples or whatever that those teachers were always so worried about. And when he asked Damon questions, he actually cared to listen to the answers.

They hiked along a trail that humped over round hills covered with tall yellow grass. Trees popped up along the edges of the hills, and beyond them a few thin clouds stretched over the San Francisco Bay. The pale blue sky was everywhere. It made him squint and bow his head. His blue nylon basketball shorts hung past his knees and the sun hit the brown-blond hairs on his shins and made them shine. As he stomped down the trail of packed brown dirt, dry grasses slapped his legs. The Timberland boots Lance had loaned him laced up to his ankles and made his feet look bigger than they were and basically he was cool with that. There were no girls there, anyway, so it didn’t really matter how he looked.

When the trail narrowed, Lance told Damon to go ahead. As they walked, the air was so quiet he could hear Lance breathing behind him. Their feet beat a rhythm on the dirt. Damon’s thumb twitched for his iPhone, but his iPhone wasn’t there.

Birds talked to each other over the sky and the wind rustled all the dried-up spears of yellow grass and whispered through the leaves and branches of the green trees ahead. Every now and then something invisible shivered the grass—a snake or a mouse or whatever. The hills looked all meadow-like and still up on the surface, but there was all kinds of shit going on underneath, down in the dirt and the roots, that most people never bothered to know.

All that quiet was starting to fuck with his head. “Man, I’m not built for this exercise shit. Think it’s time for some Doritos,” he said, glancing back to grin at his boy.

Lance smiled but stayed quiet, letting Damon know to do the same. So Damon cracked his knuckles and kept going. He was hot and sweaty now, T-shirt sticking to his chest, sweat in his eyebrows and dripping down the back of his bare neck, where the glossy tag of his shirt flooded and became a cool square pressing on his skin. The muscles of his legs and ass were burning. His feet ached in the arches. His mind buzzed with boredom. In a minute, this endless trail and these invisible bugs humming in his ears and these little grasses swatting his legs were going to start pissing him off.