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.
266
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.
“Give me the glass,” I said.
He closed both hands around it. “Remember when I told you I once talked to Julia? I talked to her about you. It was last spring, the Monday after—after that party in Millertown. I went up to her right before 268
third period. The halls were so crowded. I can still see it, all those people, but I went up to her and I told her—”
If I’d still been holding the glass, I would have dropped it then. He’d talked to Julia, and she’d never told me. I couldn’t believe it.
“She never said anything. You told her about what we . . . you told her what happened?”
He shook his head. “I told her I’d talked to you at the party. That I . . . that I liked you. I thought maybe she’d help me talk to you. That night, you—you just disappeared. I even went into the party looking for you, but you were gone. When we . . . when we were in the basement, it was the only time in I don’t know how long that I hadn’t thought about how screwed up I am. But when I was done talking she—”
I could guess what happened then. Julia hated third period because she hated history, and anyone who tried to talk to her beforehand usually got their ass handed to them. I met her at her locker before and after every class except that one.
“She didn’t say anything, just slammed her locker shut and walked off, right?”
“No,” he said. “She said, ‘She never said anything about you.’ And then she looked at me. It was just for a second, 269
but she had the strangest look on her face. Then she slammed her locker shut and walked away.”
That’s when I knew I was an even worse friend to Julia than I thought I was. That I’d let her down before I made sure she saw Kevin cheat, before I took her hand and led her to her car. When he mentioned the look on her face.
Julia had asked about Patrick. The Monday after that party, we were walking down the hall after fourth period and she said, “Hey, did you meet some guy at the party?”
I’d glanced over at her, and she was looking at me. I couldn’t read the look on her face.
“No,” I said, freaked out by how hard my heart had started pounding from just the mention of that party.
That night. “At least, no one worth mentioning.”
That look stayed on her face. I didn’t get it, but I knew I wanted that guy and that night and the way I’d felt—so unsafe, so raw—gone, so I said something I knew would grab J’s attention. “Hey, I think I see Kevin at the end of the hall.”
It worked, but that strange look on Julia’s face took a while to fade.
She was hurt. That’s what that look was. I’d promised to always tell her everything, the kind of promise little kids make and forget, but she didn’t. She needed it.
270
Julia needed to know there was one person who’d always listen to her. Who she could tell anything, and who’d tell her everything in return. I knew her so well.
How could I not know what that look on her face meant?
Because I was afraid. Not of her, but of me. Of what I felt that night, of how for a moment I felt like myself in a way I hadn’t ever before.
I swallowed, my eyes stinging.
“She did talk to me about it,” I whispered. “She asked me about the party. About a guy. You. And I—I said there wasn’t anyone worth mentioning.”
“Oh,” he said, and took another sip, eyes closing once more.
When he was done, he looked down at the party and then held the glass out toward me. “I fi gured that.
I mean, I knew what happened didn’t mean what I—I knew it wasn’t a big deal. It’s just that the other day, I thought that you—that we . . .” He shook his head.