Hey Good Luck Out There

  Copyright © 2022 Georgia Toews

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher— or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency— is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Hey, good luck out there / Georgia Toews.

  Names: Toews, Georgia, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210380586 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210380594 | ISBN 9780385696715 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780385696722 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8639.O386 H49 2022 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Emma Dolan

  Cover illustration based on a photo by Cordelia Molloy/Science Photo Library/Getty Images

  Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada,

  a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  a_prh_6.0_140114141_c0_r0

  For my mom.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I

  Part II

  Acknowledgements

  Part I

  “Will she run?” asked the counsellor.

  The question startled my mother. She looked at me. I shook my head.

  “Don’t run,” said the counsellor. “You’re going to be happy you didn’t.”

  We all smiled at each other, politely. A silent agreement: nobody runs, everyone gets out of here alive.

  But after that? What happens then?

  The counsellor, whose name was Barb, according to the name tag on the lanyard that hung around her neck, asked me to take a seat in the hall. I listened to Barb and my mother sort out my future.

  “It works if she works the program,” said Barb.

  They came into the hall. My mother was obviously trying to think of something encouraging to say, but fell short.

  “I love you so much.”

  She leaned over and hugged me, then quickly straightened and walked towards the door. I looked at her at the end of the beige hall, she was trying not to cry, smiling at me.

  “It’s like you’re going off to war.”

  “You think they allow guns in here?”

  “You’re gonna be okay.”

  I wanted to finish the stupid joke, I was gonna say, “ ’Cause I’m packing two!” But she was crying now, and then I was crying. I stood and she came back and hugged me again and told me my father would drop off some books. And then she was gone.

  * * *

  —

  Barb took me to a small room. There was a circular table with a few chairs, a microwave and a pale green couch with pink flowers. Two large plants were dying in the corner, which I found a bit ominous, especially since they were leaning against a poster for “Living Well! A Woman’s Guide to Taking Back Her Power!” I couldn’t read the fine print on how a woman was supposed to do that, maybe I would learn later on in my stay.

  Barb brought out a large stack of paperwork and started ticking boxes.

  “You’re here for alcohol, any other substances?”

  “Not like, consistently.”

  “Do you use other substances?”

  “I’ve tried um, other stuff. I guess mostly cocaine, I used to smoke weed—”

  “Opiates?”

  I had only tried heroin once. At first I thought it was great, then I puked all over the floor of a popular Irish pub. I stood outside the bar for a while trying to see straight, and I remember a young, attractive man complimenting my boots. I looked up and saw he was with a girl I went to high school with. She was drunk and laughing, they were mocking me, they didn’t like my boots.

  “My dad gave me Percocets when I got gum surgery.”

  “They weren’t prescribed?”

  “No. But I was in a lot of pain.”

  “We hear that a lot.”

  I watched her tick more boxes.

  “Um, is there a place to exercise? Or work out if we have free time and we’re bored?”

  “No, we can’t encourage that. It’s not fair to offer activities that can’t be inclusive.”

  “But aren’t endorphins good for you?”

  “You can go for short walks.”

  “I just thought it would be nice to do sit-ups or lunges, or…something.”

  “Do you have an eating disorder?”

  I felt the waistband of my jean shorts digging into my stomach. They’d been given to me by a friend in high school shortly before she tried, unsuccessfully, to kill herself. It occurred to me that maybe these shorts were cursed and I should get rid of them.

  “No, I don’t have an eating disorder.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I had tried to have an eating disorder. In junior high and high school I would hold out as long as I could through the days, just drinking water. Then I would get home and feel guilty about not eating dinner. I didn’t want my father to feel as though I didn’t value his cooking, or my mother to worry that my abstention from family dinners was somehow her fault.

  “I’m very sure.”

  “You’re going to be very busy. You won’t have time to exercise.”

  “My dad’s gonna drop off books.”

  “As long as they’re appropriate. I have an eating disorder, bulimia,” said Barb. “I can tell when it’s a problem.”

  I’d never been able to throw up soberly. I’d tried, I’d spent a terrifying few hours scrolling through pro-ana websites when I was fifteen. I’d kind of hoped I’d just fall into some sort of disordered thinking and come out of it a week or two later thinner, more beautiful, happier. I didn’t like the idea of joining an online forum in hopes of instigating it though. They seemed militant in what they expected: total starvation and/or constant purging.

  I watched as Barb rifled through the things my father had packed for me, which included, for some reason, all of my fanciest underwear. I could’ve been more embarrassed, but I just watched, numb, as she pulled out lacy blue and green thongs. I worried for a moment when she went through my wallet. I was quite certain I still had a flap of cocaine hidden in one of the compartments, but she found nothing.

  “And when was the last time you used?”

  “Um, shit— shoot, sorry. I did one line last night. It was like, cheap though. It didn’t do anything.”

  She stared at me, snapping her gum. It was the first time I had done cocaine sober, and it hadn’t had much of an effect. Maybe it blurred my judgment a little? My older brother had flown in from New York a week ago, under the guise of attending a work conference that never seemed to materialize. Last night, before my surprise intervention, organized on the sly and attended by my entire family, my brother had said he just wanted to hang out, so we went to a movie, but it was sold out and we ended up watching this arthouse film, Enter the Void. I didn’t really get it and found the ending to be especially awkward. My brother cried the whole time. I probably should have picked up on his sadness and made light of the film, but…I apparently was high off one shitty line of cocaine.

  I tried to make a joke. “Shoulda had a Red Bull instead.”

  “Should we be sending you to detox?” said Barb. “When was your last drink?”

  “Detox? I think I’m good? I don’t feel physically like…My last drink was, I think, three days ago?”

  It was a bit of a lie, but three days ago I was tremendously drunk, and I’d had to sober up in a hospital room with a big camera pointed at the bed I was told to stay in, so the doctors could watch to make sure I wasn’t dead or self-harming after my mother had begged them to put me on a twenty-four-hour psych hold. They only kept me for twelve, they were short on beds. When I got out, my mother let me back into my apartment one last time, alone, to grab a few things before sweeping me off to her home in Peterborough. She must have thought she’d removed all the alcohol and drugs (I had kept my cocaine hidden in my wallet), but I remembered I had a half-drunk orange soda spiked with vodka sitting in the bottom of my garbage in a McDonald’s cup. Most of it had leaked out and been watered down by the day-old melted ice, so…the amount I managed to drink seemed negligible.

  “Any withdrawal symptoms— hot flashes, nausea, seizures?”

  I had been terrified of my mother smelling the booze on me, either driving me right back to the hospital or, even worse, just driving away. After the McDonald’s cup, I pried the little plastic stopper off a small bottle of oregano oil and drank that. I had diarrhea for the next twenty-four hours, which was awful but also made the other hangover symptoms seem, again, negligible.

  “No. Guess I’m not that bad, right?”

  “Why do you think you’re here then?”

&nbs
p; I shrugged, trying to appear brave, like I truly wasn’t “bad.”

  “Your life has become unmanageable because of your addiction to alcohol and substances.”

  I felt compelled to nod, hoping my compliance would expedite this one on one. The room was starting to feel even smaller.

  “Here is our schedule, and your welcome package.”

  In the package there was a new toothbrush, toothpaste, a few stickers, along with an agenda like the kind I had in elementary school.

  “Routine is important.”

  “I have an appointment booked—”

  “Your mother told us on the phone; you can’t cancel?

  “No…I can’t like, I can’t cancel it.”

  “Well, we can’t keep you from going to medical appointments if they are absolutely necessary.”

  She looked at me, waiting for confirmation it was absolutely necessary, in response I burst into tears, realizing I was the villain here, not the victim, not that I wanted to be either. I was so hungry and tired and pissed off and sorry for myself and I hated the shitty breakroom and Barb’s bulimia. Her bulimia had nothing to do with it actually. I just wanted to attack her and that was the only thing I really knew about her other than she was from Sweden or Switzerland or maybe Montreal, I wasn’t listening well.

  “You won’t have chores until Monday, and technically your program doesn’t start until then, so tonight you don’t have to go to a meeting, but tomorrow you will have to.”

  “But tomorrow doesn’t count.”

  “Right. It’s good timing though. Dinner is about to start, I can introduce you.”

  I nodded and in a terrible moment reached for her hand, to hold, to guide me. She looked at my outstretched palm. I swiftly jerked it towards the door, hoping it came across as an “after you” gesture.

  * * *

  —

  I was loudly snorting up snot and wiping away my self-pitying tears as she led me into the dining area. There were six round tables, and then a larger rectangular one where the counsellors, all wearing lanyards, sat. There was also a couch, a TV, and a few bookcases with games I recognized from dentists’ waiting rooms.

  “This is the dining area, and you can have your free time here. That’s one of two payphones— you’re all set with a calling card?”

  I nodded.

  “Hi, ladies, just wanted to take a quick sec, we have a new intake with us—”

  The rest of her words were a blur. Some women stared back at me as I looked around the room; some into their food, bored; a few smiled politely; one smirked and bared her teeth at me, laughing as she gurgled her water. I followed the counsellor, who sat me down at a table and placed a plate of macaroni and ham casserole, with a small side of deflated green beans, in front of me.

  “We do plate checks. I would eat. After dinner, come on back to the office and we’ll get you into a room.”

  I nodded at her, and she went to get her own dinner and then joined the counsellors at the far table. I watched her as she tentatively picked at her food, maybe she wanted me to have an eating disorder so we could talk about it together. Maybe she’d go home later to eat a better meal. The rest of the counsellors seemed to pick at their food as well, but when the chef came out from the kitchen they all thanked her for another great meal and she bowed in gratitude, smiling at all of us women, proud of her work.

  “I’m Steph. It sucks here, but it’s better than some programs.”

  Steph had a deep, raspy voice for someone who looked barely five feet tall. Her dark hair was badly bleached into a patchy orange, and wild curls were pulled back tightly to a ponytail at the top of her head, which gave her an extra couple of inches. She resembled a pineapple I used to learn French from in elementary school. She had smudged mascara around her wide-set large brown eyes. When she smiled at me, I noticed her two front teeth crossed over on another, and her face was scabbed and slightly picked at. She was so young, you could almost chalk it up to a rough day on the playground. She must have been just eighteen, but just.

  “Least you can smoke here.”

  That was Madison. I recognized her but couldn’t remember from where. She had glossy blond hair extensions that clung to dark roots, and small blue eyes that, opposite to Steph’s, crowded her large pointed nose and thick puffy lips that looked manufactured. She stared into a compact and plucked her eyebrows instead of eating. She was probably only in her mid-twenties. Despite the deep lines around her eyes and her gaunt cheeks, a swath of baby fat still clung to her jaw.

  “Where couldn’t you smoke?” Steph asked, pulling her fraying sweater down over her palms.

  “Up in Uxbridge, I was there last year.”

  “This is Mad’s fourth time,” Steph said to me.

  I gathered that Steph and Madison were friends, despite Madison being older and much more glamorous. She put down her tweezers dramatically and cocked her head to look at me.

  “Some people are sicker than others.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. She made it seem like she had a cancer that kept coming back despite aggressive treatment. I nodded and turned back to Steph. Madison turned back to the tweezers.

  “Is it your first time?”

  I saw Madison roll her eyes, but Steph smiled warmly at me again.

  “I’m what you call a frequent flyer,” Steph said. If she felt any shame, she covered it up with a shrug, pulling at her sleeves again.

  “Is that normal?”

  It was the wrong thing to ask. What was normal? I looked at the cast of women sitting around me, some making small talk, some picking at their shitty food, and they all looked like normal fucking women in some bleak cafeteria, even the gurgler who intimidated me. I didn’t know what I’d expected, more physical cues of suffering, track marks and missing teeth, women shivering and screaming in corners, bloodshot eyes.

  Steph was scratching her forearms under the table, still smiling at me. “You hope not, right? Least you got a family that loves you, or you’re rich.”

  “I’m not rich,” I said.

  “You’re coming in on a Saturday, which means you paid or came from jail.”

  Madison looked offended. “I didn’t come from jail.”

  “ ’Cause you came in on Monday, bitch.”

  “I came in on Tuesday ’cause detox was a bitch, bitch.”

  Steph looked at me. “You didn’t do detox, right?”

  “No, they said—”

  “Alcoholics like, never have to detox, it’s a fucking joke.” Madison clicked her teeth at me.

  “It’s like, a thing,” Steph intervened, I could tell she was trying to diffuse the situation. “Like, alcoholics get McDonald’s and addicts get methadone. We’re both here for heroin.”

  “I’m just an addict, period.” Madison said defiantly. She seemed angry with me.

  I started sweating. “Sometimes I do drugs,” I said, trying to impress her.

  Madison snapped her compact mirror shut and cocked her head at me once more.

  “Like I said, some people are sicker than others.”

  “Do you wanna smoke with us?”

  Steph was so kind, and I felt embarrassed not to be as far gone as the beautifully mean Madison. I just wanted to find somewhere to cry again. Plus I didn’t smoke. Another failed addiction. I imagined trying to light a cigarette, fumbling with the lighter, promising Madison that “sometimes I smoke too!” I shook my head and they promptly left without me. I thought about calling my mother, asking her if maybe we could just bank this whole rehab experience. I’d come back when I was an industry professional like Steph and Madison, a full-blown addict on whatever they’re pumping out on the streets. She would have to believe I wasn’t that bad. Not comparatively.

  * * *

  —

  I found my counsellor and she led me to my room. It was in the corner of the third floor, there weren’t many rooms that high up. She paused at a chalkboard and told me if I felt inspired I could write a nice message. I looked at the chalkboard: someone had drawn a flower and the anarchy sign, which the counsellor erased before showing me a boardroom across the hall from my new abode.