Tweaked

//Tweaked// by Katherine Holubitsky
Booktalk by Chris MacLennan

My name is Gordie. I am in grade 11. I used to have an absolutely normal family. Used to. That is the operative word. Now my family is so screwed up it would take me hours to tell you all the reasons why. However I will tell you in two words what started it all. Chase and Crystal Meth. Chase is my older brother. He always had a dangerous side to his personality. The scarier it was, the more he wanted to do it. It pretty much started one weekend when my parents were on a trip. Chase had this wild party at our house. That’s the night he first smoked ice. That was 2 years ago. First he started skipping school. I knew he was high, but my parents refused to see it. They thought he was depressed and a school trip to France would cheer him up. They gave him a $1500 money order to take to school to pay for the trip. Chase disappeared for 3 weeks. He went on this huge bender with his druggie friends. He was the iceman. They all had a high time on my parent’s money. My parents were frantic, as they had no idea where he was. Then the police arrived at our door. Chase had been hauled out of a Meth house and had been charged with possession. My parent dealt with the charge in court and brought him home. He looked like death. His face was all broken out in crank craters and he had lice. Believe it or not things got even worse. Chase stole all the time to support his habit. Jewelry, small appliances, money, bank cards, credit cards, you name it, he stole it. My parents paid big money and put him in Rehab. That didn’t work. One night he went to my grandma’s house and threatened to hurt her if she didn’t give him money. Finally my dad kicked him out of the house. That’s when the arguing started between my mom and dad. My mom did not agree with my dad. She thought they could help him more if he was still at home. Chase now lives on the street. The police are at our house again. Chase hit a young father over the head trying to rob him. The young father is in intensive care. Chase is in jail. My parents put up their house to get him out on bail. The last 2 years have put them in the poor house. Once Chase is out of Detox he will be staying with us until his court case. I am just dreading it. I have a job at a hardware store. It is the one place where things seem sane. Here is what happens to me one night when I am walking home from work.

Read page 30 “It’s raining… to page 31 “You tell your brother DC and Ratchet came calling.”

Then I make a really stupid decision. I decide to use the money I have saved to pay off these guys. My parents have enough to worry about. Chase comes with me and we go the drug dealer’s house. Chase tells me that he has to make the payment, because they won’t trust me. He tells me to wait for him in the car. After 10 minutes I know that something is wrong. I go into the house. It’s a Meth house. Chase has scored and has taken off. My mom and dad are going to kill me. I was supposed to watch him. They will lose their house if we can’t find him. I am frantic. What am I going to do?

Will Gordie be able to find Chase? Will the man Chase has injured live or die? Will the drug dealers come after Gordie for the money Chase has stolen from him? What will Chase do when he starts tweaking? (Tweaking means the compulsion an addict has after 4 or 5 days of being pumped up on Meth and now wants nothing more than his next hit) To find out read Tweaked by Katherine Holubitsky



Booktalk by Rhonda Wills

Gordie Jessup is a typical teenager who has grown up in a happy, loving home. His father is a college professor and his mother works as a secretary at an old folks' home. He plays in a rock band with his best friend Jack and they have entered The Pogos, as they call themselves, in a high school battle of the bands contest. Gordie has a part-time job at Barnes Hardware store and he is beginning to develop more than a friendship with his co-worker, Jade.

Gordie's family life is anything but typical, however. It has become a nightmare. His older brother, Chase, is addicted to crystal meth and, like a tornado, this has torn their life apart. Over a two-year period, Gordie has watched Chase descend into the life of a junkie, his parents not wanting to see what was happening, believing Chase's excuses for missing school, failing grades, losing weight and needing money. They were in denial until the night Chase was brought home by the police, dragged out of a meth house and charged with possession. He had been gone for three weeks. His parents had been frantic. The emaciated teen brought to their door looked like he had been living in a trench. "His face was all broken out in crank cankers, and he even had lice." (p. 20) They were hopeful when Chase completed a detox program but when he returned home, the lying, excuses and stealing continued. Gordie and his parents had to lock everything of value away so that Chase didn't steal it to pay for his next hit. When Chase forged documents for a credit card and managed to clear out his parents' bank accounts, the debt that they faced forced them to put their house up for sale. Worst of all, Chase attacked a meter man one night when he was "tweaking", looking for his next hit. The young father was left in critical condition, in a coma from a head injury. Running from the police, owing money to drug dealers and fearing they are going to kill him, Chase disappeared. When Gordie saw him again, he hardly recognized his brother.

"It's around three o'clock when I hear the jingle of the bell attached to the door. I am moving boxes in the storeroom. Wiping my hands on my jeans, I walk through the doorway to the front of the store. At first, I think I am seeing things. A ghost is coming toward the counter. It's running toward me: a skeleton covered in jaundiced skin. Quick and spastic, it has started talking before I realize it's my brother. Still, I can't stop staring at this weird and jerky marionette. There are deep hollows where his cheeks used to be and his arms - dangling from the sleeves of his T-shirt - are freakishly thin. A ripe odor makes me take a step back when he comes up close. "Gordie, I need money. Five hundred." As he speaks, his eyes sweep the store in a paranoid way…"They're going to kill me if they don't get it." (p. 155-156)

Gordie has to make a decision fast. How can he support his brother but escape the wasted vortex that he has become?