The Devil's Pupil: Convicted Killer, Notorious Gangster, Diagnosed Sociopath, Drug Addict - Prodigal Son

By Bates Cody

Only God can bring a dead man back to life.

On the outside, Cody Bates appeared as any other normal kid on the playground. But abuse, prescription drugs, and bullying had produced anything but a normal human being. Before long, his preteen drug addiction and young offender incarcerations transitioned into narcotic trafficking, gangs, murder, and life in a maximum-security prison.

Organized crime, counter-surveillance, and violent stiff-arm tactics became Cody’s way of life as he fought desperately for the things of this world—money, power, women, and drugs. To counter the crippling emptiness that consumed him day after day, he resorted to the only solution he had: cocaine.

As his health deteriorated and his addiction worsened, he fell deeper into psychosis where he encountered the demonic faces, whispers, and sirens no one but him could see and hear. The future appeared bleak as he fell deeper into the devil’s hands. It seemed obvious to everyone that there was only one way this could all end.

But there are things far worse than death for a man intent on destroying everything and everyone in his path.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Word Alive Press
• Release date: Nov 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781486618125

Book preview

Word

A Special Thanks

To Stephanie Erdt

Your passion and flame for the lost is beyond any inferno capable of being set by man, and your encouragement has been a true blessing. God has given you some very special assignments. I can’t wait to see where your ministry takes you.

To Jeff Smith

It’s been an honour and a privilege to serve with you, my friend. Thank you for believing in me.

Foreword

The Devil’s Pupil is unique in many ways, just like its author, Cody Bates. Just when you think his story can’t get any worse, it can and does.

When Cody came to the Adult & Teen Challenge Okanagan Men’s Centre in early 2018, he spoke in chapel and immediately won over the hearts of all the staff and students. What Cody didn’t know, but which God had already ordained, was that while Cody was feeling the call to evangelism, we were praying as a leadership team for an evangelist to bring on staff.

That day, when Adult & Teen Challenge and Cody Bates came together, arrived after a season of praying for Cody. We hadn’t even known it was him we were praying for.

When the regional director called me and told me about Cody, I couldn’t help but be intrigued. I looked him up on social media and saw a picture of Cody, tattooed from his neck down, wearing earrings, and his hair had frosted tips. I soon found out that he was also a highly motivated man, with an infectious personality, who loved Jesus more than anything.

There isn’t any particular mould or type of person you have to be to be used by God, since all He needs is a willing heart. Cody certainly fit into the willingness category. He was asking to be a part of Adult & Teen Challenge, and he wanted to start an evangelism ministry. We were, as Cody described it, drinking in Jesus through a fire hose and he wanted to be under our covering.

Cody came on as an intern at first. He wanted to immerse himself totally into the Adult & Teen Challenge culture and get a real sense of its DNA. He lived as a student for a month, then moved into a staff role.

We know that God has big things for Cody Bates to accomplish and we are honoured and privileged that God has asked us to go on this ride with him.

Since starting at Adult & Teen Challenge, Cody has taken on students from the Okanagan Men’s Centre and groups of volunteers who just want to be a part of what God is doing. Together, they minister to people in downtown Kelowna who are affected by homelessness and drug use. They hand out snacks, pray with people, and distribute Bibles.

While obeying the Great Commission, Cody is always the first to encourage new believers to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I have personally seen him get into zero-degree lake waters to baptize a fellow brother.

When I began reading Cody’s book, The Devil’s Pupil, I was captured by this story of a man who seemed to be at the end of his rope. Then, in a moment of clarity, he was completely and forever changed!

How does that happen? In the middle of hell on earth, can someone hear the voice of God so clearly? It’s unmistakable.

Cody is able to write in such a way that he takes you on this journey with him. He has a way of making you feel like you are in every chapter, walking alongside him through every valley and over every mountaintop. You will feel the utter devastation of what it’s like to live a life separated from one’s Maker. You will also feel the over-the-top joy of being snatched from the pit of hell in a split second.

Cody has had a miraculous transformation, to say the least. Our very real and present enemy, the devil, would have liked nothing more than to carry Cody off to hell at any one of the points when he stood at death’s door. But Cody often describes those brushes with death as failures, because death wouldn’t take him. He knew without a doubt that there was a reason.

God is using Cody Bates, through his life and this book, to showcase how much power He has. The reason Cody lives, breathes, and writes is to lift Jesus high, and it’s all for the glory of God.

—Janalyn Martin

Provincial Director

Adult & Teen Challenge Society of BC

Introduction

January 4, 2017

As I sit bleeding from the wrist on my grungy bedroom floor, I’m perplexed by a question: how does a man come to the point in his young life where he’s ready to die? I watch, intrigued by my bright red blood as it washes away the ash that covers my hand. The ash represents the junkie I have become and the blood represents the end of my pain.

It’s taking too long. My heart is crushing itself inside my chest and my eyes are blurry with tears. The cut wasn’t deep enough; the next one will be better. The next one will find the vein that releases me from this unbearable anguish.

I take a second to gather my thoughts so I may bundle all my hurt feelings and visions and deliver one last fatal blow to my left wrist. In my right hand I hold the bloody instrument of my destruction—a large butcher knife. I put my head back against the wall and close my eyes.

How did it come to this?

I open my eyes and look back on the grisly scene. My feet rest atop the box spring mattress I sleep on and my butt is on the floor, my back against the wall. The bedroom window is right above my head, early morning sunshine engulfing my room. It’s extremely bright. My TV plays the music from my Xbox 360 console; it’s too jovial for my current situation, but it’s quiet enough that it doesn’t distract from the task at hand.

I need to kill myself.

My whole body is marked with battle scars: ash, blood, and tattoos from years in the Calgary underworld. My tattoos mostly have no meaning to me. They are all products of circumstance from my time in a maximum security penitentiary. I was in jail for six years for orchestrating a turf war homicide. Just as I had on the street, I made money in jail by capitalizing on addicts. I viewed them as hopeless and futile. I also made a profitable living as a bookie, running an opportunistic gambling line.

I lived as well as anyone could while subjected to a twenty-three-hour lockdown for six straight years. Looking at it now, the experience was comparable to gerbils fighting over the only wheel in a tiny cage. But I held my own. There was nothing but hustling and murder plots all day in the Max. Only the worst of the worst went there.

I, for one, was lucky, because I was a member of a notorious gang. As the frontrunners in a vicious gang war, my crew was responsible for painting the streets of Calgary red with blood. The war claimed too many lives, including the lives of innocent people caught in the crossfire. For twenty months, I called the shots for all my gang’s members in prison—while in solitary confinement. During that time, we went to war with the largest Native prison gang in Alberta.

As I ponder gang life and my time in the Max, my vision snaps into focus. I stare at my filthy carpet, marred with cigarette burns and ash stains, and want to puke. I come to the realization that I have never seen a room so disgusting, so junkie-ravaged. All I can see are crack pipes cut in half, empty bottles of alcohol, crumpled beer cans, empty cocaine bags, scales, bits of tinfoil, knives, spoons, empty lighters, and baking soda.

This would send anyone’s nasal passages into complete revolt, but not mine. After all, I have a $1,500 per day cocaine habit; simple math says that I’d spent in the range of a million dollars in two years. The habit had long robbed me of my sense of smell. You could have literally crapped in my hand and I wouldn’t have been able to smell it.

By the front door is a poster I really hate—the picture of a woman sitting on the ground, in trippy purples and pinks, her long legs showing and a joint in her mouth. This poster is a 24/7 reminder of my despair and hopelessness. When I moved into this house three months ago, I unrolled that poster after a box had been sitting right on top of it, so parts of it are still flattened and protruding from the wall. I hung it with a single tack, letting it hang crooked. I’m always so fixated on my next hit, so consumed with pain and disconnected from reality, that the poster has remained crooked all these months. I can’t even spare a minute to fix it, because I have to take a hit instead, to make me forget all the torment of the world.

My attention returns to my slashed wrists.

Why is killing myself so hard? I feel like a coward that I haven’t done it yet. Why is it that I can plan a homicide so easily, but suicide is so evasive? I’ve wanted to die for so long, have tried countless methods of suicide only to fall short. It’s becoming another bad habit.

Know that I’ve never been a fan of hurting other people—or myself. Naturally, I’m a really nice guy. Very loyal, genuine, and kind.

However, I’m also a diagnosed sociopath.

I started earning a psychology degree in the Max because I wanted to learn more about my diagnosis. I always thought that if I could put a label to what was wrong with me, I would be able to either change it or embrace it.

So I’m a diagnosed sociopath, but belittling others and getting enjoyment from their torment doesn’t tickle my pleasure centres. Mass manipulation and charismatic administration? That’s my forte.

In my first year out of the Max, I got a job as a car salesman. That year, I sold thirty-nine cars in a single month. All the salesmen were seeing the same number of customers and the average sales were between three and ten cars per month. I consistently sold twenty. I knew nothing about cars and yet sold two hundred forty my first year. In fact, I was honoured by the City of Calgary at a banquet for being one of the top salesmen in the city.

The only explanation I could draw was that it was because of my sociopathy. A man with a normal brain would have been psychologically stunted after being locked up so long in a six-by-nine room. Yet for some reason I prospered.

During my reign at the top of the struggling car industry, I succeeded most when I gave thanks to the God of my own understanding. I was three years clean and sober and living in His love. It was a fantastic feeling. I began every single day with prayers and worship in the form of reading, singing, and fist pumping the Big Guy. This was followed by daily Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, volunteering at treatment centres, and sharing my experience, strength, and hope with others. I had the world in my calm, collected hands.

I also met a woman the likes of which I have yet to encounter since. Anna was gorgeous, genuine, loving, kind, and compassionate—the girl of my dreams, with a French accent to boot. She and I had built a life together and I’d dreamed of being with her forever.

After almost four years sober, though, I fell victim to my own self-pity. I walked away from God and began playing for the other team. My precious gifts from God—passion, gab, and the ability to evoke emotion in others—became tools of the devil. I quickly rose to the top of the underworld.

I built a massive dial-a-dope operation in south Calgary, controlling everything from my couch and watching it unfold through surveillance cameras. Paranoia became my only true companion. My ottoman held at least six phones, each with a specific counter-surveillance purpose. I had a CB radio, a bug detector, a frequency jammer, and my own personal cocaine book with lines of high-grade cocaine. I also had a machete and a fully loaded Ruger with an extended clip complete with twenty-four hollow-point bullets—always one in the chamber.

In front of the ottoman was a large TV equipped with surveillance monitor feeds. I stared at them for days at a time, only getting up for bathroom breaks, to pull more cocaine out of the safe, or to remove the barricade from my door so my runners could bring me money.

I did my best to keep as little cocaine in the house as possible, even hiring a guy at one point to keep it all in a safe at his house. I also paid him to do all the bagging for me. I would message him in codes, and he was under strict orders to never talk on the phone because then his voice could be recorded by a tap. I had a phone meant only for conversations with him. It was imperative that no one ever know who he was, and that only I deal with him.

The only problem was he couldn’t keep up with the product, which eventually resulted in me needing to keep an abundance of cocaine at home.

The people who worked for me all had crotch-rocket motorcycles with out-of-country licence plates, CB radios strapped to their waists, and phones always busy with impatient customers. I understood the market and knew that the largest profits were produced in small sales, so I networked, marketed, and advertised my empire like a business. I sent mass shoutouts, raffled giveaways, and created referral programs.

And I had the best cocaine you could find, the stuff dreams were made of.

I would give out free blow and meet every one of our customers personally, nominally so I could break bread with them, but also so I could conduct a screening process to protect the unstoppable money train I had built. On the days I left the house, I strapped on a bulletproof vest and placed at least ten grams of high-grade cocaine in a vial around my neck, so I could snort it easily.

My life was nonstop criminality for three years straight.

My work ethic and unrivalled passion for cocaine led me to the top, but also to my own demise. After three years of snorting, then smoking, and eventually shooting cocaine, my health problems got out of control. I suffered multiple heart attacks, liver problems, and stomach ulcers. I only slept for a short few hours every six days. At the age of thirty-one, my heart was failing—the end result of the drug I had so passionately sermonized.

When I found out I was going to die, I felt a strange sense of freedom from knowing it was going to be over soon. I pushed everyone out of my life and secluded myself so I could stay high until the fateful day when I would be released from the prison I had created.

But that day never came.

A physician explained to me that the sheer amount of cocaine I was doing probably was the only thing keeping my heart beating. I had gotten the promise of death only to be told that the same thing that was killing me was also keeping me alive!

I reached a point of loneliness few could understand. I just wanted to disappear.

I need to get high, I think to myself. Not for the rush of finding euphoric bliss, but for the agonizing pain of coming down. That’s how I will kill myself. I’ll scrape together what pitiful tease of drugs I have left and deliver one last, liberating slash to my arm.

I can only describe the ferocious process of coming down by comparing it to the dying will of a man being drowned in a bathtub filled only halfway with water, his lips only inches away from the air he needs to survive. All the strength and tenacity in the world won’t propel his mouth to the oh-so close salvation.

Only for an addict, it’s even worse. An addict feels like he’s holding himself underwater.

I can’t take it anymore. I hold the end of the pipe to my mouth, my eyes filling with tears as I tap the lighter against the crack and watch it melt into the ash. I steady my lips while circling the lighter in a spiral toward the middle of the bowl. Then I suck back, as I’ve done a thousand times before. I pull the pipe away from my mouth, praying for even a small rush of bliss.

As expected, it doesn’t come. These few scraps of blow aren’t enough to get the monster high I crave.

Cody Bates, everybody. Take a good look.

A massive rush of pain sweeps over me as I drop the pipe. Ash and charcoal litter the carpet. I grab the knife and push the tip through the skin of my wrist. I remain still for a second, not moving the knife. A sense of calm sweeps over me. There are no more tears, only purpose.

It’s time to die.

It’s time to claim my place in hell.

Say goodbye to Cody Bates.

PART

I

Chapter One

Playful Spirit

I was born almost three weeks late on April 4, 1985, at 3:41 a.m. to my unprepared parents. Holding the little bundle of joy, they gave me the name Cody William Bates. Bates was my mother’s maiden name; she wouldn’t let me carry the last name of my father.

My parents had met at Smuggler’s Inn in Calgary. My father had always been a very soft, gentle, kind man. He never lost his temper and was excellent at being the compassionate introvert. He turned out to be the most positive and influential role model in my life. My mother was a headstrong woman—hard-working, beautiful, and intelligent. At the age of nineteen, she decided to raise me herself.

My parents were ill prepared to have a baby, yet they made the best of a bad situation. Their relationship ended before I was even born.

I cannot recall much of my early childhood, but my earliest memory was also my first encounter with death. I was three years old. My mother and new stepfather, George, the second person I called Dad, had married and brought my baby sister into the world. One day, they took me to a public swimming pool. I don’t really know how it happened, how my parents could forget their three-year-old at a large swimming pool while one went to change and the other went to return my water wings, but I was left alone. I don’t remember anything up to the point when someone found me floating face down in the hot tub, lifeless for only God knows how long.

I try to imagine the horrific scene as lifeguards worked tirelessly to pump air back into my tiny lungs. I try to imagine how my mother must have felt as she rushed to see what the commotion was about, only to be met with the horror of seeing her own precious blond-haired boy on the tile floor.

While onlookers watched, my mother got down on her knees and screamed, reaching out for her unconscious child. No mother or father should have to watch their child die.

Luckily for them, this day was not one of sorrow but rather joyful reckoning. I don’t know how long I floated in that hot tub, but God decided to spare me.

My first memory is actually the dreams I had while floating in the hot tub. In the dream, I stood at the edge of the wave pool, the water lapping against my toes. There was a rope in front of me, but it was too far to reach. In my steadfast determination, I wasn’t about to be thwarted by this. I remember reaching for the rope, experiencing a rush of elation as I grasped it with my willful hands and used it to swing into the water.

It has occurred to me that this might not actually have been a dream, not entirely, and yet I know there were no ropes hanging over either the hot tub or the wave pool that day. Did this really happen? Maybe the rope represented something evil enticing my playful spirit while my unsuspecting parents were nowhere to be seen.

I woke up in a hospital bed just as George walked into the room with a big smile. I had unusual apparatuses all over me, and one was even plugged into my nostrils; I understood that it was helping me breathe even though my mind was still very young and immature. I recognized George though the plastic sheet draped around my bed, and I noticed that he carried something in his hand—a toy from the hospital gift shop.

This is a nice memory. I don’t remember my mom being there, but I’m sure she was. For some reason, my mind has completely abolished her.

* * *

My baby sister was the centre of my attention during my three-year-old delinquency. I would wake up in the morning, before my parents got up, and wheel my sister’s crib into the middle of her room. I would then proceed to spray her with my water gun, taking her poop-filled diaper off and making her wear her spoils, and even one day accidentally knocking out her front teeth by dropping her face-first against the stairs. My poor little sister.

She was such a sweetheart growing up. Despite my early tortures, we became inseparable for many years. We adored each other.

The third man I called Dad was named Gary, and he loved me as his own son. He was handsome, charming, and witty. He was everything a child could ask for in a father figure. I’ve referred to him as my dad for as long as I can remember, a label he still carries today.

My life during the years when Gary was around is full of happy memories. He taught me to love hockey, took me for rides on his Harley, and let me watch wrestling even though my mother preferred my mind not be polluted with such rubbish. He was an amazing father.

I’ve struggled to decide how to describe my mom. I can’t say I’ve ever felt an abundance of love from her. I have a hard time recalling many big hugs. I don’t remember hearing her say I love you, nor do I remember receiving special treats from her.

When I was four, I went to my friend Sheena’s house. My mom had instructed me to be home for dinner at five o’clock, but Sheena’s mom accidentally sent me home about a half-hour late. For some reason, my mom didn’t believe my story and accused me of playing on the nearby highway. This was a strange accusation because it would never have occurred to me to play in traffic.

I didn’t understand why my mom dragged me by my little arm up the stairs to the bathroom, but I was to receive a harsh punishment for my supposed lies. I vividly remember crying as she forced a bar of soap into my dirty mouth. She then shoved me into my room and slammed the door shut. I cried and screamed in agony as my mother left the house to get to the bottom of this.

I hid under the desk in my room, desperate to get away from my maniacal twenty-three-year-old mother. I remember hiccupping, crying, and feeling confused.

When my mom came back into the room, I recoiled from her. She apologized for what had happened, remorse and shame taking the place of her hate and anger. It turned out I wasn’t a liar; Sheena’s mom had indeed just lost track of time.

But the hands of time could not be turned back. My innocence was permanently stained that afternoon. The damage was done. My mother had given me a reason to fear her.

Chapter Two

King of the Playground

As my five-year-old mind developed, I played with my dad on the regular and finally enjoyed a somewhat stable family life. But for some reason I had an insatiable appetite for danger, always putting myself and other children in harm’s way. I remember fitting myself into a box and having other kids push me around our neighbourhood, a public housing project, on a skateboard. I relished the feeling of not knowing where I was being pushed, knowing that I could fall or run into something at any time. It was a thrill.

I also remember having a strong desire to fly. I would strap a kite to my back and jump completely horizontally off the tallest fence I could find. Needless to say, I didn’t fly around the neighbourhood like Peter Pan; instead I learned my first lesson about gravity. I hit the ground astonishingly hard.

My fascination with sex also emerged at the age of five. All the neighbourhood girls would show me theirs if I showed them mine. I was the cool kid on the block, inquisitively seeking out girls who would bare their privates. I taught everyone I knew my conception of sex!

I started going to a daycare close to my mother’s work, and it was way better than playing in the public housing parking lot. It had unlimited toys, a playground, tricycles, and musical instruments. I was king of this particular playground. I played with all the best toys, developed a close circle of followers, and had my pick of the girls. I would have my friends stand guard by the playhouse window, inside of which were the best toys and one chair: the king’s throne. As I sat, the girls would reveal themselves to me. I felt supreme in my perverted childish ventures.

One day, the daycare took us on a field trip to a local swimming pool. Instead of us changing in the gender-appropriate bathrooms, the staff put us all together in a group change room. A weird feeling came over me as I watched everyone change. I proudly displayed my erection to the other kids like a five-year-old stallion, only to be quickly hustled out of view by the daycare staff. This should have raised a red flag. Nonetheless, this made it clear to all the kids who the alpha male was. I was the lion king, all four feet of me.

Crystal was the only girl in daycare to have enough self-respect and maturity to know this was wrong. She wouldn’t show me her goodies.

Another day, the daycare staff took us all to a playground down the street and paired everyone up. When Crystal and I were paired off and told to hold hands, she squeezed so hard that she almost popped my fingers off. But I didn’t care; she was my great white buffalo, the only girl not cowed by my provocative flirtations.

I put up with her torture that day without saying a word.

Back at the daycare afterward, I went with my friends into the band room, which held all the instruments. It was a small room with a curtain for a door.

Suddenly, Crystal walked through the curtain like a five-year-old princess, bent down, and whispered in my ear, ‘Do you want to have sex?

I left my friends behind as Crystal and I walked outside to the playhouse. I ordered a couple of other kids to stand guard and put pillows in the window to keep us out of view.

Once inside, I whipped out the goods.

What are you doing? she asked.

Confused, I replied, Sex…

No, no. You need to lie on top of me.

Realizing I might be over my head on this one, I cooperatively lay down on top of her with my pants on.

Now you need to move around, she said.

I did as my tutor told.

As we were collaborating on our idea of sex, a woman poked her head through the pillows in the window.

Crystal, are you in here? the woman asked.

It was Crystal’s mom.

Busted, I jumped off the lady’s daughter and ran away without looking back. This was my very first run from the law, and it was thwarted by a four-foot chainlink fence.

Unfortunately for me, my booty house was now a crime scene.

After this, I still managed to continue my reign, but I noticed that a strange phenomenon was beginning to take place in all the girls. Their sense of morality and dignity was maturing to the point where they could distinguish right from wrong. With this change, my toddler sex life came to an abrupt end.

My mom soon took me out and put me in another daycare only a few blocks from my house. I don’t remember liking or disliking the new daycare, but one thing was sure: I wasn’t king there. As one of the youngest kids, I just tried to have fun and adjust to my new surroundings. But I didn’t like being at the bottom of the hierarchy.

My stint there was cut short when I pushed a kid into a steel-barred fence. His leg got caught in the bars and ended up getting severely mangled. The skin from his kneecap to his lower leg had unrolled. It was disgusting, and for the first time I had really hurt somebody. I didn’t like that feeling.

Well, I got the boot. Bye-bye, daycare!

I soon started Grade One at Lake Bonavista Elementary. I was hyperactive and not a great student. It was the same school my cousin was attending, so I got to spend a lot of time with her, which made me happy. I don’t remember any friends from this school, but for some reason bullies took a liking to me—and not in a good way. It was my first experience of getting picked on, and it made me want to disappear.

One day, the bullies came at me and my cousin on the playground. She protected me, making them all cry. Under her watchful eye, I continued through the rest of Grade One bully-free.

Because of hyperactivity, my teacher came up with a program designed to meet my special needs. I had a daily journal in which my teacher filled out a daily progress report; my mom had to read and sign it every night.

At home, my failure to behave at school resulted in getting grounded, losing my TV privileges, and being deprived of precious toys. On some occasions, I was even sent to bed on arrival from school at four o’clock in the afternoon. Those were sorrowful times. I would cry and sob, pleading for my punishment to come to an end, but for some reason I always repeated the actions that had gotten me there in the first place.

Unbeknownst to me, these experiences were paving the way for far more malevolent and destructive patterns of behaviour.

Chapter Three

Stained

In Grade Two, my mom and Gary moved us to the Ranchlands, a suburb north of Calgary. It wasn’t quite as fun as subsidized housing, but we had our own house and the school was just a short block away.

My best friend Glen lived just up the street and we went to school together at St. Rita’s Elementary. Glen was very intelligent, and he wasn’t much for trouble. He and I were inseparable at that age.

His dad once took us to see the movie Cliffhanger. It was awesome. I was awestruck by the foul language falling out of the movie stars’ mouths. F-bombs filled my eardrums like music. Glen’s and my language took an odd turn that day. We went to school the next day dropping F-bombs like we were in a race to see who could say the most. The rest of the kids marvelled. After that, swearing became the way the cool kids interacted. I became quite popular at St. Rita’s.

My first experience with crime came when I was seven. My dad took me and my friends Caleb and Heather to see the movie Hook. When we got home, my dad and I walked Caleb home. On our way back, my dad suddenly broke into a run, and I did my best to keep up. It turned out that our home had been the victim of a burglary. I remember my confusion as I walked into the house. All of our valuables had been stacked by the door; the culprits had been thwarted just in time. If we would have been twenty minutes later, all our stuff would have been gone.

It had never occurred to me that you could take something that wasn’t yours. I felt thrilled to be in the vicinity of a crime. Although I had seen this kind of thing in the movies, I hadn’t realized it actually happened in real life. If it was so easy to get away with theft, why didn’t everyone steal?

In the coming years, I thought back often to that night. I wondered if those burglars had ended up in jail or if I would ever know who they were.

With the burglary incident still fresh in my head, I went into my mother’s purse one day and took a twenty-dollar bill. The thrill of taking it was exhilarating. Do you know how much candy twenty dollars can buy? It felt like I had the whole world in my hands. I could do anything!

My mother realized the money was missing and came up with a pretty clever trick to make me confess. Because I had just received an invitation to Glen’s birthday party, my mom claimed that she had no money for a birthday present. Therefore, I was to attend my best friend’s party empty-handed.

Well, I couldn’t go without a present! I presented the twenty dollars into her hand, unknowingly walking right into her trap. I tried to explain that I’d been saving that money for some time… I know, stupid. That was my first lie. Unless you’re the Wayne Gretzky of deception, I’m pretty sure no seven-year-old would stand a chance in a battle of intellect with an adult.

Surprisingly enough, my mom wasn’t mad. She lovingly told me that it was wrong and then gave me my punishment: I couldn’t go to the birthday party. I was pissed. It was my best friend!

Getting through that punishment was fairly easy. The next time, I wasn’t so lucky.

I got sent home from school one day because I had the flu. I had learned the trick that if you hold your tummy and say It hurts, you would get sent home from school to watch TV and play with toys. My mom had caught on, though, and my plan to relax was rudely upended by my mother coming home early and sending me to bed at one o’clock in the afternoon.

For some strange reason, she soon roused me to head to the store for milk. My mom gave me a five-dollar bill and said over and over again that she knew how much a carton of milk cost; she would know if any change was missing. I was to go straight there and back.

Looking back at it now, I can only figure that she was trying to goad me into stealing. Why else would she send me to the store for milk at two in the afternoon, making me walk directly past the school that had just sent me home sick? I think she was pissed that she had to miss work because of me, so she concocted a plan to make me never want to come home from school early again.

So I walked to the store, passing by the school. I remember thinking it would be a great idea to walk up to my classroom window and gloat to my classmates about how clever I had been. Looking back at it now, my mother probably walked outside the house to watch me head toward the school. Plan in motion. Surely I would come back short on change in order to be taught the lesson I clearly needed.

When I eventually arrived at the store, I easily acquired the milk my mother asked me to get. But as I was paying for milk, something else caught my attention: some twenty-five-cent Mr. Big chocolate bars, strategically placed to entice hungry change-carrying customers such as myself. With my mother’s words ringing in my head, I figured that I could just tell her that I had dropped a quarter on the way home. That sounded plausible.

I walked through the door of my house, where I was met by my mother, her hand out, asking for the change.

Where’s the rest? she questioned calmly when she saw that I was short. Where’s the rest of it, Cody?

Her composure quickly left her, replaced with deafening screams. Before I knew what was happening, I was being punched and kicked into the corner. My mother beat me mercilessly. She pulled my arms away from my face, demanding that I put my hands down so she could have a clear shot of my face. When I finally cooperated, I was met with blows to my young mug. Terrified, I put my arms back up. This enraged my mother. She grabbed my boots and ripped them off my feet, turning them into weapons. She hit me over and over with them, screaming in a blind rage.

I remember trying to get to my feet, protecting my face as I ran, but my mother caught up with me as I crossed the kitchen. I tried to stop before falling down the stairs into the basement, but she seized the opportunity to inflict more pain, shoving me down the eight-step flight of stairs. I crashed to the carpeted floor below. Surprisingly enough, nothing was broken.

I scrambled up on shaking hands and knees, hurtling toward my bedroom door, my mother kicking me hard in the butt as I crawled. With a surge of adrenaline, I thrust myself through the bedroom door and into the corner of my room. The punishment not quite drawn to a conclusion, she picked up one my hard plastic toys and threw it at me as hard as she could. It smashed into the wall above my head and shattered.

The carnage finally came to an end with her slamming the door. I sobbed as I picked up my broken toys. One thing had been made clear: I was a bad boy. My mom had gotten her point across without having to say it.

Chapter Four

Your Son’s Tears

My drug addiction began at the ripe age of eight, when I was given Ritalin in school. At the time, the drug was very effective in counterbalancing my hyperactivity. My grades improved and my behaviour became easier to control.

But no one considered the drug’s long-term effects. If someone who doesn’t have attention deficit disorder (ADD) takes Ritalin, that person will feel stimulated. Years later, cocaine had the same effect on me. I felt invincible whether I was on Ritalin or cocaine.

I moved to a small town called Turner Valley when I was nine. My mom and Gary had just found out they were going to have another child, so they decided to leave the hectic pace of the city. Turner Valley was quiet and budding with the promise of happiness.

At first I loved the small town atmosphere. Turner Valley was full of great things to do, like cliff-jumping, rock-climbing, hiking, swimming in the river, snake-hunting, and hockey. This place gave me the freedom to do what I pleased.

My grandparents on my stepfather’s side took me shopping for school clothes, and I was determined to get Power Rangers stuff—to make a statement on my first day at school. Power Rangers was the big thing at the time. In Grade Three, I spent every single lunch hour playing make-believe battles between good and evil. I was always the Red Ranger, the lead ranger of the pack. Once again I was the boss, and I planned to keep it that way.

My first day at Turner Valley Elementary was interesting. I recall standing with my mom at the front desk by the principal’s office. I was wearing my new Power Rangers sweat suit, picked out by my wonderful grandparents. I watched the kids walk by and felt determined to make my mark here. As the other children passed, though, I began to notice I wasn’t getting the response my sweat suit had been meant to evoke. The kids were snickering at me.

What is he wearing? one girl said to her friend.

The girl had obviously been living under a rock.

It turned out that Power Rangers weren’t cool in Turner Valley. What the heck was wrong with these people? They were just a bunch of rednecks not watching the best show on the planet! I would need to find another way to win these hicks over.

Unfortunately for me, that day never came. I never ended up fitting in with my new town.

It didn’t help when my mom’s rage was put on display for the first time for all to see. I had cleverly snuck a Pepsi out of the fridge one morning despite strict instructions not to drink pop because of my hyperactive nature. I don’t know what else was going on in my mom’s world that day, but she met me in the school hallway and grabbed me by the neck, slamming me into the lockers in front of all my teachers and friends. She held me by my throat and squeezed, cutting off my airway.

Finally, a teacher intervened and my mother tried to act as if manhandling her kid was completely normal. Before storming off, she made sure everyone knew I was a thief.

Tears swelled in my eyes from pain and embarrassment. I dropped my head and walked away, my stare glued to the floor. If I didn’t look at them, maybe they wouldn’t see me.

I kept asking myself why no one helped me, and my conclusion was that I deserved it. After all, I had stolen the Pepsi.

I pretty much only hung out with one friend, Kent, who lived with his grandparents down the alley from my house. We were truly the best of friends, hanging out all day and every day. Kent was a couple years younger than me, but he ended up being the first true friend I ever had. Our bond was a brotherhood.

One night, my mom came into my bedroom and asked me if I wanted to sleep over at Kent’s house. Getting her to agree to a sleepover was usually a battle royale, so I was suspicious at this request. That’s when she told me that Kent’s dad had died that evening in a car accident.

I had never known anyone who had died. I just didn’t understand. My young mind couldn’t quite wrap itself around the idea of never seeing someone you love ever again. Although I didn’t understand death, one thing was clear: I needed to be there for my best friend in his time of need.

I didn’t ask questions when I visited Kent that night. Instead we tried to play as if nothing was wrong—but something was wrong. His family all wore the same pain-stricken expression. They cried and hugged. I watched this amazing family come together in a time of great need and noted that my family never joined together for anything other than celebration and drink. I witnessed a family carrying each other’s burdens.

This helped me to grasp a deeper understanding of compassion. I was grateful to be a part of something so cherished.

* * *

My struggles at school continued as I tried to find my place in Turner Valley. I was tight with all the guys after school, but during school I had a different personality due to my medication. It killed me inside. I couldn’t fit in, and the more I tried the more I felt separated from the pack. I yearned for my glory days at daycare and St. Rita’s Elementary.

The further down the popularity scale I slid, the more I tried to compensate by acting out, which only pushed my cohorts away. I began to focus on instant gratification, which kicked off a destructive cycle that would last for decades.

While standing in the library one day, I noticed another boy my age. Since I had been struggling to make friends, I decided to say hi to him before someone else tried to influence his opinion of me.

Hi man, I said. I’m Cody.

I’m Alex.

I can confidently state that Alex has been the most influential friend I’ve ever had. I loved Alex with all my heart. He exuded confidence the likes of which I hadn’t seen in anyone else. He managed to accomplish in a few short days what I had