Nowhere but Up by Pattie Mallette, with A. J. Gregory Read Free Book Online Page A

ignoring the guilt, so much so that it eventually faded to an inaudible lull. I kept telling myself that what I was doing wasn’t wrong, and I slowly began to desensitize my conscience.
    Though I kept pushing boundaries with authority figures, picking fights with teachers and spending most of my after school hours in detention, I moved on to bigger and badder things. I started vandalizing school property; one time I even got suspended for starting a fire in a bathroom.
    Then came the drugs and alcohol.
    I started drinking alcohol and smoking pot when I was fourteen. There were more parties than I knew what to do with, and every one of them featured some type of mind-numbing substance. I can’t remember the first time I drank or smoked pot. It must not have been that interesting of an experience. Since all of my friends were drinking and drugging, it was easy to get sucked in with the crowd, and no one needed to twist my arm to try anything at least once. Besides, Stratford was such a small city. It’s easy to get bored when there’s not much to do. Drugs and alcohol were like an extracurricular activity. It seemed harmless at first—just feeling loopy and doing stupid things. Getting high made life more interesting.

    Around the same time I started experimenting with drugs and alcohol, an old ghost came back into town. It had been about four years since anyone had touched me inappropriately. Four years that I had successfully kept most of the remnants of the abuse swept under the proverbial rug. But now the phantom was back for more.
    I was fourteen years old, it was summer, and I was hanging out with my best friend, one of the infamous Chipettes. We had become fast friends in kindergarten and lived across the street from one another. We were inseparable. When we got old enough to have phones in our rooms, we’d call each other right when we woke up, even before meeting in front of my house to walk together to school.
    “How are you?”
    “What are you doing?”
    “What’s new?”
    And as our heads hit the pillow at night, we’d dial each other and end the evening with more meaningless BFF conversation.
    “How are you?”
    “What are you doing?”
    “Anything new?”
    We were like sisters, and I often spent time with her family. That summer we spent a week in the great outdoors on a camping adventure with her grandfather and sister. I had seen him around a lot and always felt comfortable with him. He was the kind of grandfather everyone loved—super cuddly and soft, like a big teddy bear you just wanted to wrap your arms around.
    Because I didn’t get as much affection as I needed at home (my love languages are physical touch and words of affirmation), I craved physical attention. It was how I felt loved. Adored. Accepted.
    So I loved hanging out with my friend’s grandfather. He was warm and caring, and he loved to give hugs. Because I was so tiny—only four foot six and maybe seventy pounds at the time—there were even times I’d curl up in his lap. It was easy for me to sit on this man’s lap without it feeling physically awkward.
    My friend and I spent the first few days of our vacation enjoying nature. We rode bikes, took long hikes, and swam in the campground pool. At night we sat around an inviting fire roasting marshmallows and listening to music.
    One afternoon I saw my friend’s grandfather sitting on a huge lawn chair, staring into the sky and enjoying the warm breeze. He looked so peaceful. Content. Just breathing in the summer without a care in the world. I wanted to be a part of that beautiful picture, part of the equation of peaceful nothingness.
    I climbed onto his lap and rested my head in the crook of his leathery neck. He smiled, eyes still closed, and patted my head reassuringly. It wasn’t long before I started drifting off to sleep.
    And then I felt it—the heat from his warm hand. The movement startled me, and my reverie came to a grinding halt.
    It was happening again.
    I was