Chapter Nine: Man I Used To Be Part Two

Chapter Nine: Man I Used To Be Part Two

DISCLAIMER: I only own the character of Shelby. Everything else is Degrassi's, not mine.

Pulling over, Sean was an empty kind of silent. He knew he didn't have a concrete answer to give to her and he honestly didn't actually have a clue what to say. He just sucked on the little amount of air he letting through his lips and tightened his grip on his steering wheel.

"Em, I don't know." He mumbled.

That wasn't what she wanted to hear. She felt like an idiot because she really wanted a magical television scene where he was heroic and poetic and she just melted inside of his arms, but she should've known better by now. Sean was never going to be like any leading man on the popular shows that she and Manny gushed over.

"Well, that's not good enough." Combing her hair between her ears with her fingers, Emma stared out of the car window. "I'll get out here." She spoke very softly. Her words floated quietly through the car.

"No, I'll drive you home."

"No, just drop me off." She insisted.

"Emma, I want to be with you. I'm not part of that business anymore."

"You and Jay didn't take over?" She finally gave him eye contact back. This was all news to her.

"No. I couldn't do and Jay decided if Shelby wanted a fair shot at sobriety that wasn't going to help."

"Look at that, you are capable of making wise decisions."

"I'm not proud of what I did, but I was totally desperate. I'm in a lot of debt and I have many expenses. I needed out."

"Are you out now?" She went back to staring with wandering eyes out the car window. The rain was slowing down and the sun seemed to have found holes in the clouds to peek out and shower down.

"Yeah. Things at the shop have picked up, so I'm really good in the line of right now."

Emma didn't say a word, but she was happy to hear that.

"Are you and I good?" He checked. He hadn't a clue what she would tell him about that.

Emma searched her mind filled with scattered thoughts. Of course, she loved Sean and she wasn't a stranger to his mistakes and flaws. Usually, she loved him more for them, but she had morale and her morale was against drugs completely.

"Maybe." Slipped out of her mouth.

Sean's lips broke out of their permanent frown and a teeth exposing smile spread over his face. That was better than what he had been expecting and was preparing himself for.

"Em." He breathed out and grinned. "Let's make this work." He reached for her knee and gave it a small squeeze.

"You have to talk to me when you're in a jam though, okay?" She said while feeling his arms with her shaking cold hands. Sean had yet to turn on the heat in his car. "Because you can't do something stupid like that again and I can't keep forgiving you." She warned with a seriousness that nobody could taint pushing out her eyes and her voice.

"I swear. It's you and me, Em. I swear, I won't screw up this time." He said while embracing her. She tilted her head on his shoulder and wondered to herself how many times he'd told her that. She had lost count completely.

X

It wasn't without Emma's approval that Sean joined Jay late Monday afternoon at the rehab facility. Jay liked to stay out of Shelby's life because that way, he wouldn't have to worry so much, that's why he hadn't visited her in the hundred and twenty-two days she'd been inside the blindingly white building.

The two boys were still and quiet as they signed in as visitors.

"Do you want me stay here?" Sean finally said as he watched Jay sigh and slide his hands into his jeans. Clearly, he was uncomfortable. "Give you guys some alone time."

"Nah, it's fine." Jay shrugged and waited.

Sean played with his hair that he'd left messy and down over his shoulders as a large nurse with silver eye shadow on led them down the long hallway, a different one than Emma had gone through when she met with Shelby months ago. The nurse told he and Jay how they make the patients exercise and eat a lot to help them along with their recovery. Internally, that pissed Jay off because he was well aware of how his little sister deeply hated both those activities.

Both Sean and Jay felt a rush of anxiety as they walked into the common room that had sun burnt wall paper that was peeling and a few plaques to inspire adorn on them. Shelby sat across from the both of them at a small plastic table in the corner of the room. They had very rarely had an occasion where they would stare directly at one another. Shelby was instantly uneasy. She tugged at the bitten sleeves of her worn out sweatshirt. Every now and then, she'd venture away from her chair and stare out the window that was quite low to the ground. Jay figured that the two of them should say important things to each other but seeing his sister in the state she was in only took away any self-esteem he had and he felt incapable of actually saying anything significant. He looked at her without having to look into her eyes.

Both Jay and Sean noticed that Shelby had lost a lot more weight and was skinny like a prepubescent boy. She crossed her legs courteously like they were on a first date. In the middle of the table was a plastic sandwich bag that had cigarettes inside of it and it took Sean a minute before noticing that Shelby was chain smoking them. He checked down under the table as Shelby shook her leg harder and he saw one of her baby toes sticking out of her gym sock and pointing right at him.

"Some patients aren't allowed to wear shoes." She told them before Sean had brought his head back up. "It makes the possibility of an escape less possible." As soon as she had explained that to them, he remembered she had a presents for the two boys. The she reached onto the ground next to her chair and planted the first one in the middle of the table. It was a pot he had decorated with pipe cleaners and different colored felt shapes with a small rose bush planted inside. Jay pictured mentally one of the nurses actually chaining Shelby up to her chair to create this because Michelle had never had any concentration to do something artsy when they were growing up. Then she put down a paper bag with seven paper cranes inside and told them about how they put on some workshop to teach them the art of origami.

"You're welcome to them, if you'd like."

Jay and Sean just nodded.

"I brought you a present, too." Jay reached into the pocket of the jacket he was wearing and then pushed a cassette of The Doors to Shelby.

"Thanks, but no thanks." She just shook her head and stared out the window from her chair.

Jay was silent and very muddled by what she had just told him. One thing he thought he knew for sure about his extravagantly temperamental sister was that she loved The Doors. He loved them too. He remembered Shelby once tried to get her high school friends into them but they just looked at her like she was the biggest loser to ever walk the halls. They both figured you had to be a kid with a history of tragedy to understand that kind of music. You had to watch your father get arrested to enjoy that kind of music. Shelby used to like to picture Jim Morrison singing the way he did, the way you write valentine cards, in a tuxedo and with a cat named Diamond on your table.

Jay had his tee shirt with a backwards sketch of a pirate ship on under the jacket which he made sure was peeking out. He had put it on because he knew Shelby loved it but, she didn't comment on it once. It seemed like she tried her best not to look at it. That's when Jay realized that a lot of the therapy was probably letting go of your personality but, he crossed his fingers over his knee cap that the therapy wasn't helping Shelby let go of her interest and love for him.

"What do you do here all day?" Sean asked as soon as he saw the sad expression forming on Jay's face.

"We talk a lot. I think I finally know what it's like to be a rock star, constantly talking about yourself and being interviewed. Tell me about yourself. What do you want to do next year? What motivates you? It's never an actual discussion." She explained.

"Do you exercise?" Sean said to change the subject and Shelby was happy to comply even though the question shocked him. It was as if Sean knew something she didn't think he did.

"When I first got here they tried to make me run laps but I told the nurse I was an infirm and so they made a doctor check my lungs where he told them I needed a feather pillow and a coffin because just bending over to touch my toes would kill me."

"Is it difficult to stay off drugs?"

"Yeah, man." She scoffed while exhaling a puff. "There's a drug dealer named Weibe who comes by the gate and sells dope."

"You don't buy any, do you?" Jay finally spoke up. Very concerned.

"I don't have a cent, man."

The brother and sister sunk right back into silence which was new to them but, then a young man sauntered into the room. He pulled up a wooden chair and sat between all three of them and handed Shelby a large mug of coffee. All the sudden, Shelby appeared much more at home and comfortable. The guy introduced himself to Jay and Sean as Evan. Unlike Shelby, Evan was fully dressed out of his pajamas. He was barefoot, too. His hair was the same color as both the Sean's only with a thick bleach blonde streak in it. He looked even younger than Shelby, seventeen, maybe. His fingers were all bitten down too; Jay and Sean had never seen anybody's fingers so chewed up like that. He had a large scab on the top of one hand like he'd been picking at it constantly. Evan grinned like he was in kindergarten and getting his picture taken. It was his trademark smile and Jay hated anybody who had a trademark anything. He was only able to take so much of Evan in because Evan didn't really pay that much attention to Jay. He stared at Shelby a lot. He acted like Shelby's interpreter. They were both grinning largely but neither Jay nor Sean realized there was something to smile about.

"I was telling Sean and my brother what it's like here." Shelby leaned back in her chair and informed Evan.

"When I first got here," Evan told Shelby, not the guys. "I kept thinking my skin was shrinking. It was getting so tight on me; I thought they were putting me in the dryer when I was asleep."

Evan's tale made Shelby laugh and Evan began to slosh salvia and water inside his mouth. Shelby usually did or used to do. It was disconcerting to Jay to witness somebody else do it the exact same way but, that's what happened in any rehabilitation center. People would rip other people off. People always told Jay and Sean growing up that they yawned the same and slept the same. If Shelby's personality was being stolen by Evan, so was his, he figured. Michelle frowned at both the boys and wished privately that Shelby would be more cautious around this guy and see through him.

"Have you seen any angel babies yet?" Excitedly, Evan asked Shelby. "Carla says, you know, Carla, right?" He checked before continuing. "She says after three weeks, because of all the Haldol and whatever they give you, you start to see angel babies."
"I'm going to start to go to church once I get out, that's for sure." Shelby simply said.

"I don't believe in God, dude." Evan pushed out of his mouth. "You believe in the big J, I didn't know that about you." He nodded away.

It was killing Jay inside to not interrupt. He wanted to remind Shelby of the reason they stopped going to chapel when they were little. It was because there used to be a couple that lived a floor under them that had incredibly loud sex and they would always talk about Jesus and now that's what Shelby and Jay associated Jesus with.

Still, he couldn't find the best way to interject because the conversation didn't include him.

"Trust me, man," Shelby started up. "I want to believe in Jesus as much as everybody else but, that's not why I want to go to church. I got to open my lungs up, so I'll join their choir. I like singing."

"You're a good singer, too." Like a panting dog, Evan spoke quickly. "All smooth and deep. You should put out a record. You're good at that kind of shit. Me, I'm not, I got too much compressed energy in me."

"No way." Shelby shook her head. "I could never be a real singer."

"Didn't you hear Tracy in this mornings meeting, dude?" His eyes fell right out of his face they got so big when he asked Shelby that. "She was saying we have to reinvent ourselves. As if you're sitting with blank pages and you're about to write your own story. You and me, we could start a band."

That's when Jay sighed loudly which managed to grab his little sister's attention. He didn't like people who wanted to be famous. A lot of Sean and Jay's friends wanted to be famous as soon as they came out of rehab. Since they were no longer heroin addicts or anything, they wanted to be something exquisite like a bestselling author or a movie star.

"What's new with you, Jay?" Shelby asked her brother.

"I think I'm getting a little cold." He chose to tell her. "I asked Sean to pick me up some cough syrup a few days ago but he accidentally bought Nyquil and I got pretty drunk off it. I don't really remember."

Neither Shelby or Evan reacted to his story. He felt like an idiot for telling them. He should've told them about his business plans or how he'd shagged some like an animal the day before on a cold concrete floor.

Jay hated that Evan had a thousand things to tell Shelby, he acted like he knew his sister better than he did. He wasn't used to this; even though he'd never been close to Shelby, they had always had some kind of sibling connection. If Shelby was broke, Jay was broke. If you were telling Shelby's story, you had tell Jay's, he felt like he had been erased from his sister's world.

When their time together was over, Shelby walked Jay down the long and dimly lit hallway to the waiting room. Sean made sure to keep a distance between them and he silently fumbled behind them. The siblings didn't say a single word to one another as they walked. Once they reached the lobby of the rehab center, Shelby froze and forced a smile on her face. She then waved off both of them. She didn't want to touch them or hug them. Shelby looked like she didn't like looking at them, it made her squeamish. She turned around quickly like she felt inclined to read over how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on the bulletin board.

Jay climbed into the driver's seat of his car and sighed deeply before slamming his hand against the wheel.

"What's the deal?" Very concerned and worrisome, Sean watched over Jay.

Jay was devastated with himself. Why had he been so careless and so inconsiderate his whole life? He'd never spent enough time with Shelby. Maybe, if he had Shelby would've never become the person she had and ended up in rehab to begin with. Jay couldn't believe that he used to love the perks of Shelby's job and boast about how she was the best in her business. Now, Shelby had to lose her to become an empty shell because when she was full, she was incapable of properly functioning. Jay hated himself. He tried to explain it to Sean, but he might as well have been speaking a different language. He drove like a maniac out of the parking lot and down the busy streets of their city.

Sean crawled into bed next to Emma when he got home to his apartment. She was using the key he had made for her a lot more as she adjusted to trusting him again. He let his arm hang over her and she held it with both her little hands. She smiled to herself, happy that they were getting back on track. It was eleven o'clock at night and Sean was home, just like he said he'd be.

"How'd it go?" She asked quietly.

"Alright. Jay's in pretty bad shape."

'Why?"

"Shelby's really changed."

"Really?" Emma hadn't seen her in months and Shelby was pretty fresh to sobriety back then. "That's good. Good for her."

"I think it's hard for Jay to adjust that. He's feeling guilty."

'This is good, though. It's the right thing." Kissing his arm, Emma tried to reassure her boyfriend.

Sean was pleased to see Shelby make progress. He truly was, he just wasn't sure if he'd be able to keep his own life of peace up. He liked bringing in over a thousand dollars extra every two weeks. He kind of missed the old Shelby. He had an itch that he needed to scratch. He hoped silently that he'd be able to ignore it, but he wasn't sure.

XXX

Long overdue, I know. I'm sorry. I just didn't know for the longest time what I was going to do with this. I know this chapter is long and kind of dull. I think I know what I've got planned for what's coming up, but ideas and suggestions are always appreciated. Let me know what you think!!