It is an honor to post an excerpt from the book Straightling, by Cyndy Drew Etler. Etler was Author Options' first-ever client, back when we were just a pipedream of a company who wasn't even thinking of a beta launch at that point. We were incredibly grateful to be allowed to be a part of Etler's book, and are thrilled that she agreed to let us share a sample of a very compelling chapter in her memoir of the sixteen months she spent in a juvenile drug rehab facility, a fate worse than death and one that she truly didn't deserve.
from Chapter Nine of Straightling
NO GETTING OUT OF SEAT WITHOUT PERMISSION
The beige room gets even smaller when more people cram in. The door guys alone take up half the
space, plus now another guy and girl are in here, too. Barrette Chick calls them “staff” when they walk
in.
The “staff” guy says they’re gonna see if I’m carrying. Then he says, “Drop your pants and underwear;
bend over.” And I bend. Do I have a choice?
They’re behind me now, and I can feel them all looking at me. My fingers are on my toes and my face,
red and slimy, is the size of a beachball. I’ve used tears today that’ve been in storage for fourteen
years.
I don’t know who’s doing this, the guy or the girl “staff,” but I hear the snap of a rubber glove. Two
hands peel my butt apart, harder and farther than it wants to get peeled. It hurts, but I don’t say ow.
Some words cut through the swirl in my head.
“Clean?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘clean.’ But drug free.”
There’s laughter, and another rubber snap.
“Cyndy, your intake’s over. Bring her to the group.”
Then it’s Barrette Chick’s voice, but with an edge around it. “Pull your pants up, Cyndy.”
I pull my stuff up without a word, like I’ve been following orders all my life. I’m still buttoning when a
hand scrapes down my back again; I throw my arms out to steady myself as I’m dragged toward the
door. My top button stays undone.
The fist in my spine pushes me into the hall, where my stupid heart chips itself up again. Some little girl
fantasy thinks my mother will be standing out here. Arms open, face stained, unable to leave me. Like
jackrabbits, my eyes flick to the right- and nothing. Just a row of closed doors. The crumbling of my
hope kills something in me, something important. But the hand in my pants doesn’t pause. It steers me
left, away from the front office.
Coming down the hall toward us is that kid with the badge. RUNNER. God, if You’re there, don’t let
RUNNER see the hand in my pants.
At the end of the hall the silent girl leans on an industrial door, then shoves me into a massive room.
And it makes no sense. No sense. In front of me is a heaving beast made of hundreds of human
bodies. The only sound coming from this beast is its thrushy breathing and this weird, fleshy clicking.
The body of the beast is fighting itself.
The top half of it is arms, and arms and arms. Waving and bending, snapping toward the ceiling. And
hundreds of heads, shaking and nodding, but not saying yes or no. Just back and forth, up and down,
nodding hard like the devil told em, “Nod.” The bottom half of it, the bodies under the heads, are
pogo-stick straight, bouncing up and down in rows of blue plastic chairs. It’s a photograph of hell.
I’m pushed across a huge empty half of the room, closer to the rattling mass of chairs. Hundreds of
backs are to me, but a few faces twist around and look. Their pistoning arms keep going, up over their
heads; the eyes go on forever, like the Land O’ Lakes Indian picture. There’s nothing in those eyes to
connect with.
We stop two feet from the last row of chairs. The beast’s energy pings all over me, Pop Rocks dumped
on a tongue. It’s bad, but no kind of bad I’ve felt before. It’s terror, pretending to be tough.
The spine of the beast is an aisle down the middle of the chairs. At the tip of the spine is the head: two
more teens on side-by-side barstools. From the right stool, a blond girl smiles at me. It’s a hungry kind
of smile. From the left one, a guy looks across the bashing sea of heads.
“STOP!” he goes, and the beast falls flat. Every hand, every arm and head. They all collapse at once.
“INCOMING!” he says.
The million-headed beast turns its blackhole eyes on me. On the left are boys; on the right are girls that
look like boys. No makeup, no long hair. And many- way too many- third-eyebrow barrettes.
The barstool-guy does a tiny, frowning nod, and an intercom blares out of the silent girl.
“This is Cyndy. She went to Masuk High School in Connecticut. She says she’s done pot and
alcohol.”
My jeans are shanked farther up my ass as the beast makes its voice heard.
“Hiiiiii, CYNDY! Love ya, CYNDY!”
