Free Nowhere but Up by Pattie Mallette, with A. J. Gregory

years earlier.
    In the big picture, my consequences could have been a lot worse. I could have ended up robbing gas stations myself, or addicted to potent drugs like meth or crack. I’m certainly not trying to be the poster child for a recovering drug addict. I’m thankful I didn’t have to go through the painful process of recovering from alcohol or chemical dependency.

    I eventually moved back home after a few months on my own. The fighting between my mom and me picked up right where it left off without even a moment’s pause. I feel terrible for what I put my mother through when I was a teenager. The anger and pain that had built up in me all those years leaked its venom on her. I didn’t know how to deal with the wrestling match in my soul—hating myself one minute, yearning for love the next; full of rage one minute, indifferent the next. I cringe when I think about how rebellious I was at home, but it also makes me sad because it came from a place of agony. I always say those who are hardest to love need it the most.
    Around the same time, I also fell back into my familiar pattern with Jeremy. We reignited our toxic relationship. Jeremy and I hung out a lot with our mutual friends, either partying or doing stupid things. One time, when I was almost seventeen, we were hanging out with our group of equally troublemaking friends. It was evening but still light outside, and like usual, we were broke and bored. We were loitering around the downtown area when we found an unlocked building. (Is it breaking and entering if the door is open?)
    The empty warehouse was spacious and for the most part empty. We scattered around the perimeter of the room, nosily going through closets and cupboards to find, well, something. We found a bunch of yoga mats and dragged them to the open floor where we had a mini Olympic session complete with sloppy cartwheels and lopsided handsprings. Yeah, we weren’t jocks.
    After a while gymnastics got boring, so we started sneaking around the building. Still in the semi-dark, someone opened a massive cupboard that revealed a staircase. It was the strangest thing, finding a staircase in a cupboard. We starting imagining the horrible things we would find at the end of the stairs, until one of the guys dared another to be a man and check it out.
    One tough guy accepted the challenge. He opened the door and slowly moved down a couple of steps farther and farther into total darkness, but then he freaked out and ran back up. Poor thing. He was teased mercilessly.
    Another guy piped up at that point. With his chest puffed out he said with much confidence, “I’ll do it.” He didn’t even make it halfway down the stairs before he too got spooked and ran back up.
    I thought the whole thing was silly. I mean, seriously, what on earth could we possibly find down there? I straightened up all of my four-foot-six bad self, said, “This is a job for a real woman,” and marched down the staircase. I groped my hand around on the wall, feeling for a light switch, and when I finally found one, I couldn’t believe what I saw.
    I gasped. When my voice echoed up the stairs, my friends started freaking out and ran away from the door. “No, wait!” I shouted. “You guys gotta come down here. This is awesome! You’re not gonna believe this!” Though hesitant, my friends made their way down at my insistence.
    “Whoa,” someone said as they all reached the bottom and looked around. “This is unreal.”
    We all stood paralyzed with disbelief in the middle of a giant room that was the equivalent of a teenagers’ playground. Video games, basketball hoops, a jukebox, and dartboards were all around us. It was like we found ourselves in a whole new world. Then it hit me. This must be the community center called the Bunker that I had read about in the local paper. We’d found it before it even opened. It was a proud moment for all of us.
    For the next few hours, we were in heaven. The arcade games were open so