The Residue Years Read Online Free

themselves—who at mealtimes serve just enough to keep us alive and no more, which must be why a good few residents look the victim of third world hunger. We are victims of the morning’s longest line, heirs of cooled oats, shriveled links, and shallow juice in cups the size they use for urinalysis.
    We find seats and right off she asks me if I heard about the girl who got out last week and relapsed so fast she was back by morning group the next day—sad, sad, yes, but not outside our fates. We come and go. We come and go: the timid ones, the stubborn ones, the worried. Girlfriend sips at what’s left in her cup, which, as I said, wasn’t much to start.
    Your boys. You must be about to bust, she says.
    Explode. Yes, I say.
    Now’s the time for those plans, she says.
    That’s the thing, I say. I’ve had them, changed them, and changed the ones I changed.
    We watch the latecomers drag in—their eyes full of blood and hair tight-napped at the neck or spun around their head—and catch the last scrapes from the pots and pans. She and I don’t say much else. We are not the last to leave but close, and she walks me to my room. There’s a note under my door that says for me to report to the nurse.
    Should’ve known they’d hit you with that last UA, she says. I’ll leave you to it.
    What they won’t say here is how we can never know, when we get this close to leaving, if someone would rather see us stay. What they won’t say is what they’ll do to keep you if they choose: botch exit papers, switch UA results, quiz you to tears on a false report from the staff. They keep secret the ploys they use to stretch your days into months, tricks that will send us to places we escaped to serve suspended time, to serve new time, reason why when you reach the end it’s nerves, nerves, nerves.
    The UA line stretches far down the hall and I shuffle to the end of it behind a girl from my floor with gobs of white glue caked between the tracks of her weave. You can hear someone curse inside the restroom—what might be a scheme gone bad which wouldn’t surprise me. I once saw a so-called slickster’s balloon of prepackaged urine fall from his armpit, burst, and soak a fussy nurse’s brand new white shoes. Down the line the counselor gapes at us from her office—the wall of champions looming behind her—while the nurse moseys out bearing gifts: twist-cap prelabeled sample cups, and here and there packets of pills.
    Which of us experts believes themself a bootleg chemist? Who’s ready to bet against the odds, will hedge against the time it takes to pee clean; against whether they test our urine, or our hair, or our blood.
    The counselor slinks out, a wrist noisy from a sleeve of gold bracelets rubbed half-silver. She works her way along the wall frisking us each with just her gaze, waiting for an eye to rove, for a nerve to spark in someone’s balled fist or leg. She reaches me and takes my hand in her hand till my heart slows. Come see me, she says. You be sure to come see me soon.
    My turn comes and I hover over the toilet and catch a weak stream in the cup and twist the cap tight. I stand in the dank for a time, braced against the sink, listening to the voices float in through the door. When I come out, I see a new resident, too young for this life, carrying her intake issue—blankets, sheets, a flat pillow—with arms so thin you could rub them for fire. Below bangs hacked to a slant across her face she gives me meek eye-to-eye and slugs up a flight of stairs. She could be me years back my first time in a place like this, though let’s hope she arrives at the truth sooner than I:
    It’s no use trying to fool ourselves.
    Sometimes fooling ourselves is the only strength that counts.

Chapter 2
    But time has taught me my options (who knows about the
next man’s?),
my
options, are full of fast-twitch muscles.
—Champ
    Here