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I poured myself a cup and then put the bottles back, my sweet little secret.
I was never labeled an alcoholic. Not even at Pinewood.
Why? Because I didn’t drink all the time. I drank too much, too often, but I didn’t drink every day. I could stop, and had.
Binge drinking, I was told over and over again. It’s dangerous, but common in teenagers, especially girls.
What I did wasn’t a sickness, wasn’t a disease, and one day, when I was of legal age and much more sound mind, I would be able to drink normally. I think hearing that was supposed to make me feel better.
It’s bullshit. It’s so easy to label people, to look at a list of symptoms and say, “This is who you are. This is what you are.” Everyone—teachers, J’s mother, even people at school—they did that to Julia. She lived life fast and loud and fun. She didn’t listen when people who were used to being listened to talked. She had sex. She took drugs.
Sometimes she drank. Checklist marked, she was trouble.
Except she wasn’t. She had a huge laugh, an even larger heart, and just needed to live in a world where it was okay to be under eighteen and have a mind of your own.
I will never be able to drink normally. I don’t want to. When I think about drinking, it’s release from myself I crave. I don’t need to drink to get through the day, 265
to smooth over problems, or because I want the drink itself.
I want to drink because I don’t want to be who I am.
My problem, my disease, is myself, and I stopped drinking because Julia was dead and I wanted to feel exactly who I am. I wanted to remember what I did.
I knew I should put the drink down. Thanks to Pinewood and Laurie, I knew I was supposed to stop and think about what led me here. That I needed to think about what trying to outrun myself gave me. What it had cost.
I knew I should put the drink down because of Julia.
Because she was gone, and even if I hadn’t made it happen, even if driving was her choice, I was still living with mine.
I didn’t put it down. I drank. I didn’t even notice the taste of the vodka. I didn’t care about it. I never have.
I drank, feeling that familiar heat on my tongue, in my throat, warming my stomach, a sign that soon I’d stop feeling so small, so stupid, so me. I drank and then walked back toward the stairs, ready to face the party.
I knew it wasn’t a big deal. I knew it because I could walk back upstairs whenever I wanted and fi ll the glass I held over and over again.
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Patrick was sitting at the top of the stairs. He was looking down at the party through the railing, watching everyone below us. I knew the look on his face. The
“why” look: Why can’t I have fun like they are? Why can’t I just be normal? Why am I here?
When he turned and looked at me I froze. There he was, right in front of me, and everything—that night in the basement, all the things he’d said to me, that afternoon in his room—came rushing in all at once, fi lling my head.
I tightened my grip on the glass. I saw him see it. Saw him look at it, then me.
I was able to move then. I lifted the glass for another sip.
He didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. I drank.
He watched me. I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see him. When I opened them, my mouth and throat on fire, my closed eyes stinging, he spoke.
“Can I have some?”
I stared at him. Fifteen days and what he said, it wasn’t—it wasn’t what I expected him to say. But then, he never said what I thought he would.
The thing is, deep down in a part of me I wish I didn’t have, a strange stupid soft spot full of hopes I try so hard 267
to pretend away, I’d thought maybe he’d say something else. That maybe he could be someone to me. That I could be someone to him.
Deep down I thought I created the same spark in him that he did in me.
I held the glass out to him. He took it, careful not to let our hands touch. I wish I hadn’t noticed that, but I did and it stung.
He closed his eyes when he drank too.
“God, that tastes like shit,” he said when he was done.
“Are you sure you want it back?”
I didn’t say a word, just held out one hand for the glass. He didn’t give it to me, but that was okay. I was going to take it and march back to the bathroom for a refill—no, the whole bottle. I was going to take it and then ignore Patrick like he was a bad dream, go down to the party and . . . nothing.
I didn’t want to go to the party. There was nowhere I wanted to go. No one I wanted to see. My hands were shaking again.
