Generation Wasted
by
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“Hi, Mr. de Luna,” I said, holding up a hand. I watched her dancing He smiled sadly at me. “Keira’s in the house. She’ll be glad to see you.” God, I didn’t want to see her. I had failed her. I walked up to the house and felt Keira’s cousins’ eyes on my back—they knew they knew they knew. The little girls stopped and waved at me, remembering me from Keira’s birthday parties. Did they know why they were here? Did they know why their cousin was leaving this morning? I opened the door and went in. Women and men were swarming the place, speaking Spanish, carrying more things outside. Drogas, drogas, they kept saying, and the guilt was eating away at me. “Jordan,” Keira whispered, stepping out of the kitchen and coming over to me. We stood there awkwardly standing in front of each other, me with my head down staring at her bare feet, her breathing heavily above me. Then she said, “We should go to my room.” I followed her up to her room and sat down on her bed. There were clothes on the floor and the closets and drawers were open. “I see you’re leaving.” “Yeah.” “To rehab.” She took a deep breath and sat down next to me. I looked at her hands; they were shaking. Withdrawal, I thought. Or maybe just fear. “Are you scared?” I asked her. “No. Just…don’t know what to expect. I guess, um, it’s like going to a new school except worse.” She put one of her hands over her eyes. “God, I already feel like crap and it’s only been eight hours...” “I’m sorry.” Tears were coming to my eyes. “I’m sorry for not doing anything.” “Oh, Jordan.” She hugged me. “What could you have done?” I pressed my face into her sweet-smelling blouse. “Something. Anything.” She squeezed me tighter. “I’m going to miss you so bad.” I rubbed my eyes and nodded into her shoulder and tried not to cry. When her father called her to come downstairs because it was time for them to go and we all stood outside as the car moved out of the driveway and she opened the window to look back at me, all I could say to her was, “Be well,” across the distance between us.
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About the Book
What is the world to Jordan Vianney? Keira de Luna. Her laughter when for once it isn’t fake, her love of written words, the way her hair falls over her face when she’s trying to look into your eyes. That was the Jordan from freshman year. Sixteen-year-old Jordan’s had a serious reality check—from finding pills in Keira’s pockets, to arguments in the school parking lot and too many broken promises, along with 1,001 different warning signs. Worst of all, everyone keeps advising him to break up with her, as if that’s what you do when the person you love needs you the most. They’re wrong, aren’t they? They’re all so wrong. That’s what sixteen-year-old Jordan thinks. Seventeen-year-old Jordan isn’t so sure anymore. Told in the form of therapy sessions, phone calls, journal entries, and flashbacks, Generation Wasted combines substance abuse with the emotional turbulence of adolescence and shoves addiction into the spotlight by focusing on those who may be suffering even more than the addict: mothers, fathers, siblings, and in this case, boyfriends.
About the Author
Iriowen Thea Ojo is a first-generation Nigerian American who wrote her first novel, So You Think You’re American, when she was in ninth grade. She finished writing Generation Wasted when she was sixteen and has also published many poems. When she’s not hunched over a computer screen, typing away on a Word document, she’s eating out with friends, learning new languages, and coming up with new projects for her community service organization, Youth Halo. She lives in Long Island, New York, and will graduate from high school in 2015.