Love Drugged Read online

  Like the rest of my grandparents’ apartment, the bathroom was pristinely clean. It looked like a pharmacy—cold white tiles, harsh lights, and dozens of brown plastic bottles lined up along the sink and the window ledge. I liked to examine the bottles one by one, studying their labels. For me, these prescriptions had always represented a mystery: Was sickness a secret? Were some illnesses so awful that they were not even discussed? Maybe these pills kept my grandparents from getting sick in the first place.

  I took a pill bottle from the window ledge. Removing the white cap, I poured the colorful capsules into my palm—purple and green. Lighter than I expected, like cold cereal or sunflower seeds. They didn’t tempt me, not really. I wanted a different medicine.

  five

  On Friday afternoon, students rushed out through the main doors of the Commons. “The Commons” was Maxwell Tech’s fancy name for the main lobby. The décor called to mind a medieval hall that had fallen on hard times. The walls were covered with green-brown tapestries depicting heroics from American history. Near the ceiling hung a row of drab silk flags edged with dusty fringe. Did these represent the noble crests of European royal families? No, they were the mascots of the other teams in our sports conference. In a corner, behind a useless velvet rope, stood a full-scale, not-very-shining suit of armor. Our mascot, of course, was a knight—impossible to draw on spirit posters, and unrecognizable on letterman jackets except to our own trained eyes.

  I waited for Celia, rocking on my heels. I chewed gum like a maniac and tried to imagine things we could talk about. The situation made me think of that old wooden toy—the painted ducks on opposite ends of the log. I wondered what kind of string could pull Celia and me together.

  This is not a date, I reminded myself. This is only designing flower tags.

  If it were a date, what would she expect? Everything I knew about dating came from sitting alone in my bedroom watching movies like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. And those dates usually ended with a meat cleaver in somebody’s neck.

  Fortunately, this was not a date.

  On top of everything else, I dreaded running into Crazy Paul, eager to avoid his beady eyes and pervy tongue. Was he out of my life for good, or would he reappear at regular intervals to torment me, the way, in the Halloween movies, Michael Myers kept returning to hunt down poor Laurie Strode?

  Across the Commons, Celia came into view. When she saw me, her face brightened and she gave a little wave. There was no getting around her easy beauty. Here in the Commons she was like a bright comet in an otherwise dark sky.

  “Howdy,” I said, and remembered to smile.

  “You okay?” she said. “You look like you swallowed a bug.”

  The air outside was freakishly warm for January, and I began to sweat under my heavy coat. Celia didn’t wear a coat at all. To my surprise, she led me to the same bus stop where I waited every day. How had I never seen her there before? A crowded bus was waiting. We didn’t find seats together, and I was grateful to have a few minutes to myself. We rode down Western Avenue for twenty minutes and finally got off the bus in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, a part of town I knew only from annual trips to see my dentist. Funny, I had the same jittery feeling now as when I saw Dr. Connor.

  Celia stretched lazily. “I’m zonked. I need a major dose of caffeine.”

  “Right,” I said, even though I tended to avoid caffeine. It made me lightheaded. But I knew the golden rule of new friendships: When in doubt, simply agree. “My treat,” I added, in a way that seemed appropriately gallant.

  We stopped in front of a sleek-looking storefront. A square painted sign next to the door said, Bound & Ground.

  I peered uneasily through the glass. Not my usual kind of place. At first glance, it was a coffeehouse-bookstore combo that seemed to be lacking in both areas. Ten small tables, mostly empty; a few shelves of bestsellers and travel guides; a rack of luxury magazines. Behind the counter, an attractive older woman with shoulder-length gray hair sat on a stool reading a magazine, holding it in a way that showed off a full forearm of silver bracelets.

  I said to Celia, “Look in, it’s kind of hilarious. I imagine the wife of some investment banker telling her husband she wants to open up a little place, just because she’s seen Julia Roberts do it in a movie. Honey, can I please have my own adorable bookshop café? ”

  “That’s funny.” Celia smiled. “You know what? You have seriously gorgeous eyes. Do people always tell you that?”

  My ears burned. “Not really, thanks. You have amazing … hair.” It was the first thing I thought to say. It seemed like a safe compliment. Would other boys have complimented her ass?

  She crossed her eyes and twisted her mouth. “We’re so pretty!” When she pushed through the door, I followed.

  “Celia, my princess!” The woman stretched her arms toward Celia, silver bracelets sliding and colliding in a jangle.

  “Aunt Rita, my queen!”

  They hugged theatrically near the register.

  I had just insulted her aunt. Nice move, Casanova.

  Celia gestured toward me. “This is my friend Jamie, from school. He was telling me how much he likes your café.”

  “Nice to meet you.” She shook my hand, looking me in the eye with a smile, then turned back to Celia. “Tell me, how is your father?”

  “Your brother is the same,” Celia smiled, shaking her head. “Hopeless.”

  “All work, that man,” Rita said. “Like a burro with a plow.”

  Celia laughed. It was clear she adored this woman. “What do you want to drink?” she asked me.

  Weakly, I scanned the chalkboard behind the counter. I didn’t know lattes from lampshades. “Whatever you order is fine.”

  “Two small mochas, then,” Celia said. “To go. We’ve got homework.”

  “Coming right up.” Rita used the fancy stainless steel espresso machine with ease, as if she’d been doing it her whole life. She pulled the shiny knobs, which made a hissing sound, letting the coffee drip into our paper cups. Then she added whipped cream from a can. “On the house, niños,” she said, setting the drinks on the counter. “Celia, say hello to your dad for me.”

  There was a bulletin board near the door filled with band and theater listings, art classes, and such. I hadn’t noticed it when we came in, but on our way out I saw one of my parents’ pale-green signs: We’ll send it! We’ll sign for it! I felt myself blush. Sloppily stapled and faded by the doorway sun … it was like encountering one of my own parents in public.

  As we walked, I sipped through the lid of my cup. To my surprise, I liked the chocolaty taste of it, and the warmth. I hoped it would wake up my mouth so I could speak to Celia more easily.

  We turned at Wilson Avenue and got to a street bridge over the Chicago River. The riverbank was lined with private docks. I had seen plenty of boats at marinas near the lake, closer to the Loop, but I hadn’t known the river passed through neighborhoods on the North Side. We stopped so I could look at the view. Tall bare trees bent over the water from both sides of the riverbank, the branches nearly meeting in the center. Soon it would be dark, but to the south, we could see the tops of the tallest skyscrapers downtown, shimmering with sunlight from the west. I peered down at the brown water. A family of ducks swam in little zigzags across the surface. I thought again of the painted wooden toy.

  Pull the string, dumb-ass.

  “This is romantic.” The word felt odd on my tongue. “I mean, cinematic.”

  “Actually,” she said, “I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve always wanted to stand here and kiss somebody, like people would in a movie.”

  Was this my cue? Or just friendly small talk? I wondered if I could perform the role of her boyfriend if I got cast in the part. Without a script, I didn’t have a line.

  “By the way,” she said, “you’re wrong about my aunt. Her husband didn’t give her a dime to open that place. She divorced him ages ago.”

  “Your aunt seems awesome,” I
said. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “She rocks. The thing is, my dad pays to keep the café open. He pays her mortgage, too. So, in a way, you had the right idea.”

  “What does your dad do?” I asked, although I knew the answer. I wanted to hear Celia’s own version of her life.

  “He’s a doctor.” She didn’t elaborate. “What does your dad do?”

  This was the problem with asking too many questions. At some point, people began to ask questions back. “He’s a …

  he’s always tried … right now he’s starting a new business with my mom. They’re going nuts trying to get things off the ground.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Um, like, package shipping and receiving?” My tongue was in knots again. “For people who aren’t around during the day?” It sounded too stupid to be true, like a high-school fundraising project.

  “That’s cool.”

  “Gift-wrapping, too,” I added, without knowing why.

  “Wow,” she said generously.

  I had never been ashamed of my parents before. Most families I knew were barely getting by. Wesley’s dad worked at the same paper-goods factory as Mimi’s.

  Past the river, the houses were bigger. It was a contrast to my street, where the crowded houses all had dingy lawns, boring bland squares of grass. Here, even in winter, I could tell the gardens were complicated and interesting, designed by professionals, maybe, and maintained by laborers who probably lived close to me. We turned a corner and walked alongside a high rocky wall covered with brown ivy, like the ivy on the walls at school. We stopped at a fancy gate, black wrought iron molded into flowers. There was a security panel, and Celia entered a series of numbers before pushing open the gate. “Crazy warm out today, right?”

  In response, I blurted, “Is it true you live in the biggest house on the North Side?”

  “Complete horseshit. Who told you that?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “I just heard it.”

  She hesitated. “Maybe it’s the biggest house north of Fullerton Avenue. But there are way bigger places down in the Gold Coast.”

  We stepped through the gate and onto a flagstone path. Seeing the house, I stopped. I remembered what Mr. Covici had written on the library wall: Silence is a mansion where dwell my greatest notions. Well, here was a real mansion. Maybe now I’d understand what the hell he was talking about.

  The house looked massive and old, three stories high, made of gray limestone. A green slate roof with two big chimneys. I counted eight windows along the ground floor, four on either side of the entrance, and matching ones above. All the windows reflected the dusk-blue sky.

  Celia turned back to me. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Okay, I just decided. You can never come to my house.”

  I was joking, but her eyes registered an insult. “It looks bigger than it is. It’s wide, but it’s only two rooms deep.”

  Far to the left, the driveway had been expanded into a parking lot. Five cars parked in a row.

  “Are all those cars your dad’s?”

  “Are you high? My dad parks in the garage, which is, like, underground. Those clunkers belong to his assistants. They work for my dad in the lab on the ground floor.”

  “Do his patients park here?”

  “You sure ask a lot of questions.”

  “Sorry.”

  “He’s not that kind of doctor. No patients, I mean. He’s more like a scientist, or an inventor. He develops drugs for pharmaceutical companies. Basically he’s a drug pusher. That’s what my brother and sister always tell him.”

  I realized we hadn’t mentioned her mother yet. I hadn’t asked if the cars belonged to her parents, plural, only her dad. Had I revealed that I already knew about her mother? I wondered when she would raise the subject herself.

  “The thing is, the empty house next door is being rehabbed, so we’ve had bulldozers, dumpsters, tons of contractors hogging the whole block. The parking situation has been wacko the past few months.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “It makes my dad wig out a bit,” she said. “He’s super private. Because of his work, security is a big deal around here—lots of expensive formulas and stuff to protect. As you saw, even I have to punch numbers into a keypad to get in the house.”

  “That’s not messing around.”

  The front door was painted glossy black and surrounded by a border of small square windows. Another security keypad. Celia punched more numbers, and the door unlocked with a short buzz. We walked into a large foyer. An open staircase with a carved banister, all made of earth-colored stone, wound in a giant arc toward the second floor. On the first floor, on either side of the staircase, were sets of double doors, each flanked with small trees in shiny blue pots. It was a place that someone in a musical would dance through, a story set in Morocco or Mexico or some other place I’d never been. Even the air smelled exotic and rich—floral, fruity, and clean. I wasn’t sure if the etiquette called for outright gushing or silent awe.

  “Let’s go out back to work,” Celia said.

  “Uh huh,” I responded, too overwhelmed to form a sentence.

  She led me through the living room, solarium, and study. The furniture throughout the house looked heavy and ornate.

  I had experienced envy before in my life, of course—the sting of not getting what everybody around me had. But this was different. Walking through this fantastic house, being allowed into Celia’s world, I felt happy, as if being here was somehow a reflection of me. For once, it felt like something was opening to me rather than shutting me out. It was a nice change.

  We passed a door that stood out from the rest, a white metal door with another security panel. It looked important and impassable. Without Celia saying so, I knew it led to her father’s lab. Despite her claim, the house seemed every bit as gigantic on the inside as it did on the outside. It felt like too much space for only Celia and her dad. Maybe this explained the self-contained expression Celia often wore, as if she was used to moving through her life on her own, sitting in these large comfortable rooms by herself. I wondered if her home life was mostly quiet, like mine.

  She led me into an enormous kitchen. The counter displayed photographs of Celia and her family, a cluster of black-haired, handsome people posed in outdoor settings—around a rose trellis, brandishing ski poles, waving from the prow of a yacht. I recalled Mimi telling us that Celia had two older siblings, and here they were, along with the mother. In each of the photos, the mother had a wide-open, full-lipped smile. She drew the eye, effortlessly stealing the attention from her children. She was the source of Celia’s beauty. The father had a large head, handsome, with intelligent eyes. His gray hair, the color of steel, was combed back away from his face. He did not smile for photographs, which made him seem serious and intimidating.

  We took our mochas and went through a set of French doors into the backyard. When Celia paused to flip a switch, floodlights suddenly revealed the garden, casting long shadows onto the brown winter grass. An evergreen hedge, high as my shoulder, circled a brick patio. There were two breaks in the hedge—one that made way for the brick path, the other to provide a view of the dark river passing by. Clay planters were set around, and I could imagine them spilling over with vines and flowers in summer. It was as if an artist had taken the amazing natural landscape and improved it.

  In the center of the brick circle was an iron table and four chairs. Celia set down her coffee. “Can you draw?”

  “Sure,” I said, eager to impress. “As long as it’s nothing too complicated.”

  She sank onto one of the metal chairs. “Trust me, I have no artistic talent whatsoever. Once you’ve got the design down, we’ll use the scanner inside to make the flower tags.”

  I almost sat across from her. Sit next to her, you first-grade Romeo. Awkwardly, I moved to the closer chair. The metal seat felt cold through my blue jeans. I dug out a sheet of computer paper from my bag. “Should I draw a
Valentine’s heart?”

  “Too obvious. Covici wants a smidgen of creativity, please! ” Her eyes searched mine for inspiration. “How about using our mascot—the chivalrous knight holding a bouquet of flowers?”

  I pounded on the table in mock protest. “Way too difficult!” But she had a point, since the medieval theme would please Covici. I recalled something I had learned in my English class. I said, “In the Middle Ages, they sometimes used pictures of a deer to represent love. The old word for a male deer is hart.”

  She nodded. “And people still say dear to people they love.”

  “Right, it works both ways.”

  “Perfect. Draw a deer, and we’ll be done with it.”

  “Okay.” I tried to draw one. It looked like a squirrel with long legs. “Yikes, it’s not so easy.”

  “Put antlers on its head,” she said. “It’ll be clear then.”

  I tried another one—shorter legs, but the thick neck made it look like a Frankenstein deer. I wasn’t confident I could ever get the body right, but I kept at it. My fingers were cold, and I blamed the caffeine for making my hand tremble. “What about a caption?” I said. “People will want to write their own messages inside. But on the outside, beneath the deer, it should say something.”

  Celia smiled. “How about, You’re a deer! ”

  We both groaned.

  Then she said, “What about using two deer, gazing at each other lovingly, nose to nose? From hart to hart.”

  My shoulders collapsed. “Who knows if I can even draw one deer?”

  “I got it.” She took one of the drawings I’d started and sketched something fast. “You’ll have to redo it, but this could be easier.” The shaky sketch showed the head of a deer, with enormous antlers, peering around a wide tree trunk. The tree concealed the deer’s body. Underneath, Celia had written, Don’t hide your hart from me. “What do you think? I think it’s sweet.”

  The concept was perfect: clever and simple to draw. “I love it,” I said. “I know I can get the head right. And the tree is easy.”