Rx – Tracey Lynn

Thyme Gilcrest is one of The Twenty – the students with the school’s best GPAs. Without her academic track, Thyme is nothing, but she’s just scraping by. She finds it hard to concentrate, keeping up her grade point takes a lot of study, and she doesn’t feel secure. She’s seen the ads and read the internet literature. If only her parents would accept that she has ADHD and let her take Ritalin she’d be able to concentrate on school and not feel so precarious. After all, everyone takes prescription meds.
Thyme’s best friends are Lida – a stoner – and Suze – who hasn’t met a guy she didn’t like. Neither of them understands what Thyme’s life is like. Even going to the movies reinforces that it’s inevitable Thyme will fail – fellow Twenty Will can explain plot points in The Life Aquatic that Thyme completely missed, which is why she never does well in English lit.
Even though he gets great grades while being a slacker, Will’s life isn’t perfect, though – he has anger management issues, and his parents have decided he has a social adjustment disorder. It’s so unfair! Will has a bottle of Ritalin he doesn’t want, and Thyme needs it to succeed. If she can distract him, he’ll never notice that it’s gone…
The Ritalin given Thyme the edge she needs, and she aces an exam. At a party that weekend one of the guys asks how she did so well – mellow from the beer she shows Dave her ‘study aids’; on Monday Genevieve, one of the Twenty, asks her what was going on with Dave, then asks is she has any “’sleep aids’… or like ‘anxiety aids’?” Thyme’s mom has Xanax, and Genevieve’s brother has ADHD.
Which is how Thyme manages to be an honors student, be on student council, and become Ashbury High’s latest drug dealer – strictly prescription meds. As Thyme self-medicates, goes through Ritalin withdrawal, and juggles the intricacies of how best to score from Peter to trade with Paul, she diagnoses most of her fellow students. Will’s “bipolar or developmental anger or something. Paxil or Zoloft, not Ritalin;” Dorianne’s a bipolar depressant; Hal, Dave and Renny have ADHD; Genevieve has social anxiety disorder; while Michael has social anxiety disorder and ADHD.
I liked Lynn’s style. Each chapter has a song title and opens with a couple of lines of lyrics (eg Foo Fighters: Ritalin is easy/Ritalin is good). She combines first person narration from Thyme with snatches of overhead (near the senior lockers, at Genevieve’s, at Lida’s party) conversations about drugs and drug use. Misplaced parental concerns (about which friends are undesirable, avoiding illicit drugs, an information session Thyme attends educating parents about the dangers of prescription drug abuse) are beautifully contrasted with Thyme’s parent’s casual attitude to prescription drugs.
Rx had the potential to be a preachy ‘after school special’ novel, but Lynn manages to maintain a realistic and believable world. Thyme is convincingly portrayed; her denial is subtle and her realisation about what she’s doing (and the consequences of her dealing) is convincing. I also found myself thinking quite a lot about The Third Child – maybe it was something about the lack of parental connection. I think I’d like to read more of her work, but not until I’ve worked through my book backlog. – Alex