Melanie is skeptical.

She’s skeptical of her group leader’s cheerful optimism, the earnestness of the other addicts on her ward, the empathy the nurses ooze every time one them asks if there’s anything they can do. You can get out of my face with that fake bullshit, she thinks almost constantly during her first week at Evergreen, but then she grows skeptical of that, too.

She is skeptical of the florescent lights, the high-traffic carpet, the thrift store sofas. She’s skeptical of the institutional coffee and sugary sheet cake doled out to celebrate milestones that are as insubstantial as the pink frosting she scrapes off the top but eats anyway. She’s seen it all so many times before, and she doesn’t need to see it again. Besides, she isn’t going to be here long.

She’s skeptical of Lauren, who is too pretty to be so insecure. She’s skeptical of Jeremy and his white-boy dreads and declarative tattoos. She’s skeptical of Shanna’s homelessness, of which she seems a little too proud. And she doesn’t feel bad about any of it. The second you stop being skeptical around junkies they’ve got you.

She’s skeptical of the urge to underline passages in the material Shalanda passes out during group. She’s skeptical of the compulsion to write her feelings down in the journal with Evergreen Medical Center stamped on the cover. She’s skeptical of the searching questions she poses to the constellation of glow-in-the-dark stickers a previous rehabee had affixed to the ceiling above her bed in the women’s dormitory.

She’s skeptical of the war stories people tell during group. She’s skeptical of their highs. She’s even more skeptical of their lows. She’s skeptical of the words that tumble out of her own fool mouth when she swore she wasn’t going to say anything. She’s skeptical of the tears that spill down her cheeks after an intense share, the hugs that convulse her.

She’s skeptical of her diminishing skepticism. What happened to the cynical chick that strolled in here mad dogging anyone who tried to make eye contact with her? 

She’s skeptical of laughter. She’s skeptical of sleep. She’s skeptical of the pleasure she takes from pancakes drowning in syrup (and not just because she’s skeptical of the syrup). She’s skeptical of the hours that go by without thinking about Make It Stop.

She’s skeptical of Trevor and all of his excuses. She’s skeptical of Doyle and his bluster about the dangers of the assignment. She’s skeptical of Bill’s willingness to help.

But mostly she’s skeptical about God.

After two nights in detox, Melanie was taken to a mandatory group session. Still exhausted from her rampage at the beach, she drilled holes in the floor with her eyes, arms crossed, giving off her best don’t-fuck-with-me vibe when someone started talking about God. The guy spoke in a voice so tender she thought it had to be a put-on. This was precisely the kind of corny-ass shit she would have laughed at the last time she went to rehab for real. She looked up to see which one of these lame asses was getting heavy with the God trip, and there was this tall, skinny Native kid looking right through her sneering condemnation like she wasn’t even there.

This was Morris. He wore big goofy glasses and a sawed-off leather jacket studded with so many buttons, patches, and spikes it looked like armor. He had long hair that he wore in a braid. When he talked during group, he got a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes that didn’t seem to fix on anything.

Morris was always going on about God. Only he didn’t say God. He said Creator. The first time she heard him say it something clicked in Melanie’s brain or maybe someplace even deeper than that.

When Perry, the group discussion leader, pushed Morris to explain what he meant, Morris smiled and said, “The light behind the sun,” and Melanie nearly keeled over. The word “God” came with too much baggage. And “higher power” was too accommodating to really mean anything. It was just so played out. But “the light behind the sun?” The bang at the beginning of time? The primal spark in the universe?

She could get down with that.

That night, when the lights clicked off in the dorm, the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling lit up with unusual potency. She’d had stickers like these when she was a kid. She was fascinated with the sky, how dramatically it changed from night to day. After a rare sleepover at the house of a friend whose parents had set up a tent in the backyard, Melanie wanted to do the same thing when she got home: spend the night outside gazing up at the stars. Her mom was vehemently opposed to the idea but compromised by buying Melanie the stickers with her employee discount at the drug store where she sometimes worked. Melanie pestered her for weeks to put them up, and when her mom finally got around to doing it, she ignored the constellation map that came with the package and arranged the stars according to her own design. Melanie could still see her mother perched on a step ladder, wine glass in hand, mapping out the cosmos according to her own drunken whim. Melanie was too young to know the difference. But it worked. When the lights went off at night the stars ignited, pouring cosmic light into the room.  

That’s what Morris’s words do for her: they let light into a very dark place.

She decides to keep an eye on him. See what he’s all about.

Even though she isn’t going to be here long.