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Boy Wonder (Cont.)

IF YOU COULD GET a hekka-strong microscope and take a picture of a single molecule of methamphetamine, you would think that it looked a little bit like a tadpole. There's a ring of six carbon atoms at the head, then a tail made of four other carbons and a nitrogen, the whole thing buzzing with energy. And that's the way it works in the body—it buzzes through the blood up to the brain, and when it gets there the drug plays a trick. It tricks the brain into releasing dopamine, which is the stuff that makes you feel pleasure and allows you to concentrate.

If you were a baby and you had a lot of methamphetamine in your blood (and the doctors said that Roger had a lot), your brain might be different afterward. Researchers aren't yet sure exactly how or why, but methamphetamine exposure seems to be associated with a number of conditions, including paralysis, cerebral palsy, seizures, short-term memory loss, social problems, attention disorders, and hyperactivity.

One theory is that methamphetamine reduces the brain's ability to produce dopamine on its own. Without enough dopamine, the world seems dull. You get bored, and because you're bored you do crazy things, like yelling or jumping up and down or not keeping your hands to yourself. "The pleasure you or I would get out of lying in bed reading a good book, they get by jumping off a bridge," says Paul Brethen, director of the Matrix Institute, a drug-treatment-and-research organization near Los Angeles. "They need to be out on that cutting edge because it's the only thing that makes them feel alive. Or they take pills."

Roger takes blue pills called Adderall, which are amphetamines, and white pills called clonidine to help him sleep. He takes two blues when he wakes up, two more at noon, and one and a half whites before bed. Taking the pills makes him feel good. But so does not taking them.

"I feel more energized right away," Roger says. "It makes me feel like...'Take the chance.' Take the chance—like, raising my hand or yelling or something. Like I'm not choosing it, but I am, automatically. I don't like it, either. I get in trouble for it and it's not cool and everybody thinks I'm a bad person."

But right now, Roger is feeling OK. It's a perfectly blue May afternoon, and he's in his front yard. Standing still. This is worth noting because it doesn't happen very often. You can sense the effort behind it in the tensed way he holds his arms, in the silent brushing of his sneaker against the dirt, and mostly in his eyes, those feline, slightly hooded blue eyes, which flicker as if he has a secret he can't wait to tell.

"Come on," he says. "I'll show you some things."

If possible, Roger looks skinnier up close than he does from a distance. His shoulders seem broader, his arms more dangly, his neck more fluted. His body resembles that of a basketball player who has unexpectedly shrunk to half size, an impression reinforced by his wardrobe of loose T-shirts and shorts. The T-shirt fits well enough, but the shorts are held up with a belt, the end of which hangs below Roger's knees like a vestigial tail. This puzzles Roger, who's positive he's been gaining weight.

"See?" he says, pulling up his shirt and gathering a half-inch of skin between his fingers. "I'm starting to get a belly."

"Right," says his friend Cody, who has come over to skateboard.

"No, really," Roger persists. "It's true."

Roger lives with his parents in a modest one-story cedar- shingled house on the hilly outskirts of Placerville, population 10,000. It's a hobbity, fifties-era house with plywood countertops and a hammock chair and four wild-eyed Boston terriers that patrol the living room. It is small, which is fine, because the Carvers spend most of their time outside, either in the garden or by the fire pit or sometimes, on hot summer nights, sleeping on the trampoline. Privacy is no problem—their six acres are bristly with trees and bordered on the north by a tall wooden fence. To Roger, the best part about home is the skate park, a vast, curvilinear moonscape of concrete. No one else Roger knows has a skate park in his yard—never mind one built by his father. His eyes dwell on the half bowl, the rails, the pyramid. He looks at it so intently that he doesn't hear his mother approach, her sandals crunching on the pale gravel.

"Did you take your pills today?" Terrie wants to know.

"Yes!"

"Did you pick up your fishing rod?" his father, Dave, calls from the workshop. "I thought I saw it out there on the grass."

"I did!"

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