She never told me I was going to rehab outright. What she said was “lets go eat”. And off to Surry Square Mall’s Pizza Hut we went. What else she said was “I know you smoke so go ahead”. And I did. And I started to cry. 
  She handed me the pack of cigarettes and that’s when I knew for sure. I suspected something when I came home and she said “lets go eat”. ‘Family dinner’ was and oddity. We NEVER did that, NEVER. That should have been the bigger tip off. But it was the cigarettes. Handing me the pack. The lighter. Acknowledging what she already knew. I knew she knew. How could she not know? I’d been stealing her cigarettes and she knew that, after all she changed where she kept them in response to that.
  At the gas station she had Jared go in with her and sent him home on foot. It was only a few blocks from home. She came back out without him and with cigarettes for me. I knew then. Knew for sure. And I contemplated running. I had places I could go. People I could stay with. The thought crossed my mind. Just hopping out before she could take off and running away. But I stayed. I had stayed through dinner. I had known, on some level even before I went home, what was coming. Hadn’t I?
  I’d been in a summer drug counseling program and was failing at it. Not showing up for the van to pick me up. Smelling of alcohol. Hung over. Now it was the end of summer. I knew something was coming. I hadn’t been home in some time. Three days. Although I hadn’t spent a night at home in about three weeks. I hadn’t needed to. There were other places to sleep, and who needed sleep anyway. So I knew something was coming. That was why I went home. The counselor told me to go see my mom. So I did.
  I suspected it was the counselor who told her to send me to rehab. I later found out I was right. She told my mom to take me to a different place, but my mom didn’t like that one. She called around and found Glennmore CareUnit. Drug Treatment for Adolescents.  Except the youngest they took was ten, I believe. Imagine that. A ten year old in drug rehab. It happens.
  I cried all the way there. She got lost. When we did get there we didn’t go in right away. We sat and cried and smoked. I smoked my cigarettes. Just a few. Hard to smoke and cry at the same time. Mom needed a joint. She cried too. I cried more. I didn’t need drug rehab. She should take me home. This was all wrong. She stayed. Finished her joint. Smoked a regular cigarette and told me all the reasons I needed to be there. Then she smoked another joint. There’s an irony to this that I don’t believe she was able to grasp at the time. I don’t believe I could either. I sure do now. I drank her alcohol and stole her pot that she was too busy out partying to notice and she put me in rehab. Seriously. Not all the stuff I did, drank or smoked was hers, but some of it. I started with hers, and in a pinch hers was always around. So I cried some more. And so did she.  By the time I was admitted I was exhausted and didn’t fight it.
  There was no way at fourteen to express the unreality of sitting in the car with a parent who is getting high in the parking lot of the drug rehab they are about to admit you to. I don’t think I can now, at thirty four. But I have a better understanding of it.
  One week after I was admitted to drug rehab my mother was arrested for her second DUI.