[TonyPerry] Now It's Your Turn To Run

Uno.

When I was younger, I wanted to make my father proud. I wasn’t allowed to be a businesswoman, and until I was older, about sixteen, I knew exactly what kind of businesswoman I wasn’t allowed to be. It was when some senior came up to me, one of the most good-looking guys in the entire school, and foolish me thought that he had noticed me in our gym class; no, he wanted to know if my father had any more of the methamphetamine he had just gotten in.

From then on, it was tense in the house. I've seen all the videos in health class by then, and had numerous assemblies about addictions and such. It wasn’t that normal, back then, when I was in high school, and that’s why my father thought that I was still naïve, still innocent and clueless to what drugs were. For whatever reason, I didn’t pick up on it: the smell, the looks, the deterioration, the silence, the twitching.

Deep down, I knew it wasn’t just a simple social gathering. But, then again, as I grew older, they stopped coming to the house and my dad wasn’t around much, always gone, going out to work. Honestly, I don’t even think that he told me a lie about where he worked or what he did for money – he just never told me, it was always a secret.

“The dumbass kids came yesterday.”

Looking up at him, knitting my eyebrows together, I place the pen down on the metal table in front of me, cocking my head to the side. “You finally decided to participate in the inmate stories?” It’s how I see him now, face to face, without a thick slate of glass in between the two of us and phones in our hands. He told me to become a counselor, and I did that, somewhat, I did, I specialize in drug and alcohol counseling.

Shrugging his shoulders, he runs a hand through his thinning hair, and sometimes I wonder why he won’t just go bald, he should just go bald, he really should, his hair is so thin now. “They’re so, so, the word, what’s it?” When I was little, he had the best grammar in the world, he really did, I would never be able to say something incorrect, but the drugs eventually took over and I'm left biting my tongue to stop myself from correcting him.

Rolling my eyes, I lean back in the chair, crossing my right leg over my right. It took me a year to get the prison to agree to this, to agree to therapy for the inmates who aren’t in here for life, who eventually go back out into the real world, because that’s important. He’s here for thirteen more years, twenty in total, I just wonder if it’s worth it, and he says that it isn't, it wasn’t worth it to see me standing in the back of the courtroom, watching him get handcuffed after the judge confirmed his sentence.

“Did they not listen to you? Is that why they were dumbasses? I know that you don’t like being ignored, but do you honestly think that they give a shit if they end up here?” For a really long time, I didn’t tell anyone about my father. I actually helped him. Well, I mean, I didn’t sell anything, I wasn’t allowed; I wasn’t allowed near the drugs. For all of the bad things that he’s done, he’s always been an amazing father, he really has.

After I knew about it, knew that he was a drug dealer, a notorious one at that, he didn’t hide it from me. Sixteen years went by and he never let me know; I was oblivious for sixteen years. But, I kept my promise, I became someone who helps people, that’s what I do, and that’s how I get to see my father so often, that’s my life.

Furrowing his eyebrows, angry, he shakes his head, knowing that I guessed it, knowing that it was simply because he was being ignored that he didn’t like the kids. “That got nothing to do with it. Dumbass kids don’t wanna listen then screw ‘em.” That has nothing to do with it. If those dumbass kids don’t want to listen then screw them. If you didn’t do so many drugs, you wouldn’t be talking like we lived the lives of gang members.

A knock on the door stops me from correcting him, stops me from telling him that he’s so full of himself. “Dr. Matthews, you have a phone call.” Pete calls in, peeking his head through the crack in the door that he just opened. “I don’t know why either. You have a cell phone, but you have a call.” Shrugging his shoulders, he smiles, reading my mind almost, knowing that I'm not truly an employee here, they pay me, so I guess I am, but I'm not a corrections officer or anything like that, just a counselor, therapist, whatever they all call me here.

“Did you happen to ask who was calling?”

“Some guy named Jaime. He said something about his friend needing help and you being the person everyone told him ask.”