Chapter 1
Donovan was in his room, listening to music while studying for his upcoming math exam. He was on his first year of college, eighteen, and he had always been an honor-roll student. He was one of few to graduate high school with a 4.0 final average. Now his first year of college was almost over, thus he graduated at seventeen. He wasn’t a genius or anything of that sort. He just studied really hard, but he was strange in a way compared to other students because rather than distracting him, music would help him study better. It would transmit him to a zone unknown and set him apart from everything else, where he could only think about what he was studying because it was classical music with no lyrics, and he would play it on a low volume. Unbeknown to him, he had studied for three hours now, and he was really tired. Therefore, he closed his textbook and his three-ring binder with his notes, went out of his room and into the bathroom, took a quick shower, and changed into his pajamas. Minutes later, he went to sleep in his bed, but he forgot to turn the music off. The radio was battery powered now and when the battery would die, it would go off by itself, no problem. Most of his devices were battery-powered for him to save a little energy. He lived in a two-room apartment that, had it been a hotel, it would’ve been considered four-star. His rent was really expensive. He worked as a secretary for a powerful attorney since age sixteen because he’d always been more than a computer freak, and there was nothing about computers he didn’t know. He even knew how to remove malware without the help of any computer programs, take computers apart, repair them, replace parts—everything. He’d been kind of forced to become a computer technician without a license because every time his father would buy a computer, he would destroy it in a matter of months, and tired of watching his father waste his money on computers every six to eight months, when his father was on his third computer in less than a year and a half, Donovan spent his allowance on all sorts of computer manuals to do everything under the sun and he started repairing his father’s computer for him at age ten, and because of that, it had been almost eight years and that damned computer, although old, was still up and running. It was a desktop and Donovan would help his father Daniel upgrade all of his computer’s hardware and software every time that Daniel felt it needed an upgrade, about every two years or so. Donovan didn’t mind spending his money on hardware all in one blow. It was preferable than buying computer after computer every time Father, as he would call Daniel, needed an upgrade. After all, computers weren’t made to last forever, but they sure were meant to last more than two years. Daniel’s computer was old on the outside but new on the inside, and Daniel was thrilled. He had the latest of everything. Every time he told someone how old his computer really was, no one would believe him, unless they saw that same model of computer on eBay. Daniel would keep his computer crisp clean and there were no scratch marks or dents on any of the parts, at all. Even the keyboard was clean as fresh linen.
The phone rang that night. Although Donovan was dead tired, he picked it up. He wasn’t the kind to cut a call or reject it because he was sleeping, and he would always pick up and talk as long as necessary even if it were his dorky best friend, Scott, drunken as a cat, talking utter nonsense. After all, Donovan was always the only one that would listen. But it wasn’t Scott. It was his older sister, twenty-three-year-old Diana. Her husband of three years had just beaten her to a pulp for the zillionth time because she was talking to her cousin, Tony, and stupidly, Langston thought that even though this was her first cousin, with whom she’d grown up and spent most of her days, she was cheating on him with Tony. Diana would never cheat with anyone, much less with kin. That was flat out disgusting, but Langston was so whacked out he just couldn’t see things the way they really were most of the time and there was a good reason for this—Langston was a heavy meth user for many years. Diana thought that by being by his side she could help him rehabilitate. After all, she had helped many people, even total strangers, pull through from the worst life-situations. She just learned the hard way that her husband was literally a lost case. He couldn’t be rehabilitated because he didn’t want to be, and if his parents couldn’t help him get better, what in the world made her think that she could?
“Donovan, oh, God…”
“Let me guess. He beat you up again.”
Hyperventilating, she said, “Yep!”
“What was it this time?”
“He saw me talking to my cousin Tony and he thought I was starting something with him. He thinks that I am having an affair with my cousin, Donovan. That’s not cool. He’s crazy.”
“And you’ve figured that out just now. I know I was only thirteen at the time, but I’ve always told you not to marry him, not to even have a relationship with him. I told you that he was bad news from the start. I guess you were thinking with your heart and not with your head.”
“Donovan you’ve never really fallen in love, and by that, I mean you’ve never had a relationship, not even a fling, so you don’t understand.”
“Oh, my dear, I do understand. I understand that if I saw one sign of my girlfriend being physically abusive, I would dump her. If I notice that she is possessive, jealous, sees me talking to a woman, just talking, like I would one of my friends or a relative, and she’s jealous about that, I would dump her quicker than it would take you to say my name.”
“You don’t know what it’s like to be in love.”
“And that’s why you accept this nonsense, because you’re ‘in love’. Nice. If I help you out, promise me that you’re going to leave his ass. I can’t stand this crap anymore.”
“Fine, I promise I will walk out of here to never come back. Now, please come get me and take me to the hospital.”
“I’ll do better than that. I will just call 911. I’m afraid that when he comes back and sees you there he’s going to finish you off. If he damaged your lungs this time rather than just slapping you, this time he means business. He is going to kill you, my dear. I am hanging up and calling 911 before he can even get there.”
Donovan did as promised and a few minutes later, the ambulance arrived at Langston and Diana’s house. Just then, Langston got back home because he’d snapped out of his meth-induced madness and he came back to apologize and try to provide his wife with the medical attention that she needed. This time, he made a promise to himself, he would stop using meth. He noticed, having flashbacks of all the times he’d attacked Diana, that he would only put his hands on her when he was high on meth, and when he was not under the influence of the drug he was normal and he behaved the way he was supposed to. Perhaps this was the reason why Diana wouldn’t leave him no matter how many times he would slap her or punch her in the face. She understood his situation. She loved him. He had to do something, otherwise he would lose her forever. One good thing about Langston was that when he would promise something to himself or someone else, he would keep that promise, no matter what. That’s why so many people in town loved him and trusted him. They didn’t know about his problem. When he would go to work as the PRESIDENT of a preeminent computer company, he would be cheerful and positive. His employees always referred to him as the best boss ever, and not even the ones with the lowest positions in that company would quit their jobs. They thought they wouldn’t find a better boss than Langston. When they would ask for an advance, he would give it to them and not get it back until three months after giving it. He would deduct one third of the advance every month until it was paid in full. He would always compliment his employees just for being there. He would never penalize those who came to work late. He would never even ask them why they came to work late, he would just let them work like nothing, and to compensate for this, they would stay and work for the time that they were late. Everything was good everywhere Langston went except home. The reason why Langston would binge on meth was because his mother died seven years before, they’d never gotten along, and she had a heart attack after an argument they had. He felt guilty for his mother’s death and he wanted to punish himself in some way. He had no idea that he had put his foot down and decided not to use any more meth just in time. A few more hits would’ve killed him, and he wouldn’t have had the chance to try to fix everything he’d done wrong and be a good husband and father to the child he and Diana were expecting. Thinking that Diana had lost her child, he went up to the paramedics as they were putting her on the gurney and connecting her to the respirator, without saying anything to the paramedic, he checked Diana’s pants to see if there was any blood between her legs. As crazy as he was, he didn’t strike her in the belly or in the back, which would’ve caused the miscarriage. Then he said, to the paramedics, shocking them, “I know my brother in law only sent the ambulance here, but I need the police here. I need to report myself for domestic violence and aggravated assault. I almost killed my wife and I deserve to be locked up. Maybe then I will learn my lesson. It’s been going on all throughout our marriage, and it’s got to stop.”
* * * *
Hours later, Langston was at the police station while his wife was being cared for at the hospital. He couldn’t stop crying.
“I must say this is a first in the twenty-three years of my career as a police officer and detective,” Detective Martin said. “Never have I seen a criminal reporting him or herself for his or her offense. I’ve seen them give in, but never report themselves, much less a husband for beating on his wife. I’m stunned.”
“It was all because of the stupid meth! I thought I could never stop using it and being an asshole. I strangely don’t feel addicted to it because it makes me feel good, but because of what it does to my body. I wanted to self terminate since my mother died. I wanted a slow, painful death. I figured a simple gunshot to the head or in the mouth, a stab or an overdose of pills wouldn’t do. I wanted to make me suffer.”
“Man, you really need help. You know we’re dropping the charges because your wife’s the victim and she said she didn’t want to press charges, right? We’re giving you another chance. You’re going to go to a rehabilitation center, get the help you need, rid you of your addiction and at the same time get you some professional help to take from you the desire of killing yourself and making yourself suffer. Withdrawal is a bitch. You’re going to regret deciding to stop using that stupid drug during that period of withdrawal. When meth grabs a hold of its user, most times it won’t let go until the victim dies. I’m warning you right now. It’s not going to be that easy. You’re going to be in this program for as long as the judge decides, depending on how severe your addiction is, and then you’ll take it from there, I guess, but the next time you lay your hand on your wife, even under the influence of any drug, you’re going to be incarcerated for the next five years. Second offense after this one, ten years, and then the third offense after this one, it’s the big three-o. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, I understand. I will comply fully with the program.”
Two hours later, around six o’clock in the morning, while Donovan was getting ready to go to school, Langston was visiting his wife at the hospital. Unless she would visit him at the rehab center, she wouldn’t see him again in a while. He held his hand and said, “Sweetie, I’m going away for a while.”
“What, you want to separate?”
“No! I am going to rehab, and I am going to get help with my mental issues, too.”
“Oh. I thought you wanted to leave me.”
“No, you’re the one who should leave me. If you didn’t want to put me in jail you should’ve divorced me, but you dropped the charges and you stayed with me. You didn’t even attempt to leave.”
“That’s because I made a vow, ‘til death do us part.”
“That vow can be broken if one of the parties doesn’t comply with his or her vows of respect, honoring your wife…”
“Yes, that may be true, but I chose to give you another chance.”
“I didn’t deserve it, but thank you. You don’t have to come visit me.”
“Langston, there’s a huge reason why I didn’t file for divorce or separation, and that reason is the baby. I can’t let this baby be born without a father because we know that a child born outside of a marriage is an illegitimate child, and then we’re going to have to make arrangements to change that.”
“I didn’t know that. You don’t have to stay married or together because of the baby. I will claim paternity and do what I have to do now that you’ve dropped the charges and my career didn’t get ruined. I am going to support that child and be there for the child…”
“It’s better for us to do all that together, Langston.”
They hugged. “Thank you. I will see you again if you can visit me, after you recover.”
Langston was taken away. As unbelievable as it may sound, Diana started crying. She’d never been away from him. She’d only gotten slapped and her face had gotten bruised, but he’d never gone beyond that. She would always forgive him and give him another chance. And another. And another. Until she called her brother for help and her brother decided not to give him a chance. Diana thought that Donovan was going to be angry and he wouldn’t speak to her again for a long time. She didn’t know Donovan as well as she thought. Donovan could be angry as the devil defeated, but he would never turn his back on his family and friends, and to prove that, when Donovan’s school day was over, he went to visit Langston. He brought him a whopper meal, his favorite, just to show there were no hard feelings.
They hugged. “How are you doing, man?” Langston said. “This is a surprise. I thought you hated me.”
“I am mad at you, yes. Very mad. That I can’t deny. Nevertheless I don’t hate you. Never have, never will. I can’t. I could punch you out right now and knock you out like you’ve done my sister so many times.” He placed his hand on Langston’ shoulder. “But I can’t do that no matter how much I am burning to. The day you married my sister, you became part of my family. Your family loves us, and if I hurt you, I’ll be hurting all of them. Your mama died, but she left your father and your brothers and sisters behind. I couldn’t hurt your family like that. I love them. I couldn’t possibly hurt you in any way after all they’ve done for us.”
“My family is also very disappointed in me, and just because you love my family that doesn’t mean you should put up with my shit. From now on nothing’s going to be the same. I am never going to come back here.”
“How’s withdrawal?”
“No withdrawal for me. I am sick of this shit. When you have withdrawal it’s because you yearn for something you know you shouldn’t get any of. I don’t want any more meth. I’ve been praying, meditating ever since I was on my way here, and I really think God hasn’t stopped loving me and though I’ve been a total asshole, He’s still there for me and He’s going to help me. I know He is. Otherwise I’d be in freaking withdrawal right now.” He still wasn’t done unpacking his stuff, and he went right back to that. He then placed his food on the nightstand. “I’m going to eat this in a minute. Thanks for bringing it over, spending your money on this prick.”
“You really hate yourself, don’t you, Langston Abel?”
“How could I not? I keep fucking up. I keep being given chances and fucking up again, like a three year old, totally unable to learn from his mistakes. I am twenty-six, damn it! It’s damn time I grew up and became a real man!”
Donovan hugged him again. “You know what?” he said, still holding him. “I didn’t know you were this ill. I’m not angry with you anymore. You just concentrate on getting better, all right?” Donovan let go of Langston. “Become the father your son’s going to be proud of for the rest of his life, and teach your son that one can learn from his or her mistakes and become a better person.”
“Son?”
“That’s right, your son. Di just found out that it’s a healthy boy. Congratulations, papa.” They shook hands. “Get well soon, man. Di and I will visit you often. She loves you more than ever now that she knows you’re doing everything in your power to right your wrongs and make a real change instead of making empty promises. There’s nothing better than trying to fix your mistakes.” Donovan walked away, closed the bedroom door behind him, and left Langston sitting in his bed, shedding tears of happiness for the first time in his life.
That night, Langston ate his whopper meal in a slow manner, like he would always do with his food, chewing it until it would disappear from his mouth, just for fear of his stomach getting too full too soon and him getting a big stomach ache. He didn’t know that was the reason why he would only earn ten pounds per year, and when he exercised the way he did, he would lose all those pounds. He just now started going to the gym. He was always big-boned, so within the next year, he would become as big as a wrestler or a body builder. Right now, in the month that he’d been going to the gym, he was getting quite muscular, and although Diana fell in love with him because of his beautiful face and his stunning aquamarine eyes, he wanted to look great for her, look great and be great. As soon as he finished his meal he got out of his room and joined all of the other people that were in rehab. It was time for the new people to introduce themselves and tell everybody why they were here. After the first twenty newcomers did just this, Langston left everyone speechless with his speech. “I am Langston Abel Ainsworth and I am a meth addict. My addiction started when my mother died seven years before. We’d never had a good mother and son relationship. She loved me, but I hated her because she would rarely give me what I wanted, and then my little brother got sick and she paid more attention to him and gave him more affection and more care…” He gave a sigh of pain. Then he continued. “So resentment grew and grew until she and I couldn’t even stand being in the same room. We would argue and scream at one another all the time. My father would always intervene but then one day when we went at it again he knew there was nothing he could do and he let us battle it out. I said something to her, don’t remember what it was, and she slapped me. I started screaming louder. Said things that got more and more horrendous by the minute. I guess I literally broke her heart because she started feeling pain in her arm and her chest. She was having a heart attack.”
Some of the people that were present shed thick tears and the others simply looked down, reflecting on their own relationships with their parents. Some had lost their parents and others weren’t getting along with them so well. That gave them an overwhelming desire to call them and apologize for everything they’d done to their parents before it would be too late, so they got up, left the meeting, excusing themselves one by one and the nurses took them straight to the phone. The ones that stayed there listening were awed.
“I thought she was faking it.” He started to cry silently and his voice got more broken by the minute. “I thought she was trying to manipulate me into leaving her alone or into apologizing. Then she collapsed. I got on my knees and checked her pulse. It was almost nonexistent. I called 911. They took her in the ambulance. She died before arriving at the hospital. You guys have no clue how I felt when I received that phone call.” He repeated word by word what that nurse told him that day. She said, ‘Mr. Langston Ainsworth, I am sorry but your mother has just passed away’. I dropped the phone and I collapsed, too. Next thing I knew I was at the hospital, same hospital my mother had been taken to. I was disconnected from the world in a matter of minutes and spent the next year of my life in a psychiatric hospital. I couldn’t handle losing her and not having the chance to say goodbye or tell her how sorry I was.” He broke down crying and the male nurse had to console him, but Langston just couldn’t calm down. The nurse had him sit down on a chair and minutes later, Langston continued summarizing his story. “That’s when I started getting high on meth. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what it does to people and as ludicrous as it sounds, that’s precisely why I started using it because I wanted it to destroy me. Sure enough I got my wish. Meth would never make me feel good. It would make me feel miserable as it destroyed my brain, and the more I suffered, the more meth I wanted. Like I told a police officer the other day, I wanted to die a slow and painful death and then have no one at my wake or funeral, absolutely no one. Die alone, lonely, and die like a worthless animal, like a pig. That’s what I deserved. Then I met Diana and I decided to change. We married. It was the happiest day of our lives. I wish I could show you my wedding pictures. You see me right here? On my wedding day I didn’t look like this. I used to be handsome, incredibly handsome, everyone would tell me. Now I look like a bum. A bum looks better than me right now. I couldn’t change. I couldn’t stop. I was so hooked, despite the fact that it didn’t make me feel good. Didn’t help me deal with the pain but by the time I got married it had its claws so deep in my skin that I couldn’t let go. I became uglier and uglier every year that passed and my wife still wouldn’t fall out of love with me. All the while I would slap her, but my hands were so big and strong that I bruised her face so bad it looked like I’d hit her with a freaking baseball bat. She wouldn’t go to work until she would recover, but her boss cares about her so much that to this day my wife still has her job. Mrs. Stevenson never fired her. I don’t think she ever will because I know that Mrs. Stevenson knows what’s really going on. She knows that Diana is a victim of abuse, and she’d never fire her no matter how many days of work she would miss. I don’t understand how no one reported me, not even my neighbors when they heard her screaming, how no one did anything to stop it. That’s beyond me. I think that everybody thinks that Diana is so used to it that she likes it. I am a…well, I can’t say that because I can’t insult my mother more than I already have after apologizing to her after her death so many times. I am an asshole. I don’t think I deserve to live, but I am going to keep trying, and I am going to get better. I am not going to leave my unborn son without his father. I know I will have to get plastic surgery. Just cross your fingers, if you feel any sympathy for me, so that the procedures will help me become the man that I used to be on the outside. I’ve never been that eye-pleasing on the inside, but I am going to try. That’s all for my speech. I wish you the best in your endeavors, and may you all get better and be useful to society, make your loved ones proud. You can do this, so don’t give up.”
He left the center of the room and everyone applauded him. They didn’t say anything because they were so shaken. Most of them dared to go after him and surround him in a group hug, showing him their sympathy and their support. One by one, they promised to be there for him and stay close to him even after leaving rehab. From that day forward, Langston got a lot of friends and now he had all their phone numbers, home and email addresses in his big, book-style phonebook. For the next three weeks, all of his family members, including Diana and her entire family, visited him. The most impacting visit was Tony’s visit. Tony looked saddened, depressed. He didn’t want to lose his sibling-like relationship with Diana because of Langston’ unjustified jealousy, so he just had to talk to Langston and tell Langston how he felt. “Look, man, I know it’s going to be hard for you to believe this, but there’s no romantic relationship between my first cousin and me. Family’s sacred to the Garcia family. I just hope you can get that through your thick head someday. I am sorry if I sent the wrong message, if I hugged her the wrong way, or…”
“You don’t have to say these things. I can see it all crystal-clear now. You never hugged her the wrong way or did anything that might suggest there was incest between the two of you. It was the meth talking and acting, not you. I know I was wrong, and I am sorry. I was crazy, out of my mind. Dr. Rivers said I might need anti-psychotic medication, that just quitting the meth might not be enough to keep me living reality. I am sorry that I was a threat to the relationship between you and your cousin. No husband or wife should ever come between his or her spouse and the spouse’s family. Family’s sacred, that’s absolutely right. I hope we can finally be friends after five years.”
“Man, what do you think?” Tony said, hugging Langston, patting him on the back, like hugging his brother. “If everyone else is willing to put the past behind them, give you another chance and let you back into their lives, start over, why should I not do the same?”
“You are an amazing person, you know that?”
“So are you. It’s just that you’ve let resentment toward others and self-loathing get in the way. When you love yourself, you can love everybody else. When you hate yourself, you hate everybody else. I hope that you get better and have a real relationship with us. You don’t know what you’re missing. It’s a thrill being around the Garcia family. You just never hang out with us.” As he and Langston laughed together, Tony added, “What’s wrong with you, man?” They were hysterical. “Oh, and one of your peers commented to me that you talked about having plastic surgery done?” Looking at him closely, Tony said, “Well, you might not need as many procedures as you think. I think botox and new teeth would do the trick.”
Langston laughed even harder.
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