I enter and stalk down the hall like prey trying to hide. There’s music somewhere, loud and too much right now. The lounge door is open, and people spill out in flannel pajamas and glitter tops, the mash-up of a weeknight party. Every reason to leave walks past me. Every reason to stay crowds my throat. If I go back out there, he could be anywhere. In here, people are loud, oblivious, happy. I remember how easy it is to hide in a place like this where no one is looking for you.
I slip fully inside.
It takes three seconds to disappear. The lights are low, the TV is blasting a game no one’s watching, and someone is pouring shots into plastic cups like a trained bartender. I move automatically to the counter because that’s what my body remembers to do. It’s what I always did. A cup gets pressed into my hand. The girl pouring does the universal chin-lift. Everyone around me yells something in unison and tosses their heads back. I just stand there, stunned, watching their throats work. I look down at my hand, at the tiny cup.It’s just alcohol, my old voice says reasonably.Not drugs. You’re not addicted to alcohol. One won’t hurt. You deserve to calm down right now.
I hold the cup like it’s a wild animal in my hand, scared I’ll actually do it.
I think about Bash reading poetry that isn’t poetry into the phone last week, about how Isaiah said the waters won’t drown me—but I feel like I’m drowning…like I’m in some pretty deep water right now with bricks tied to my feet.And then I think about hands on my arms pinning me down and taking away my control, and I think about a kitchen from my childhood and a bottle breaking, and I am so tired of trying to be brave. Healing is fucking exhausting.
“Screw it,” I hear myself say from a distance, and I tip the cup back.
It burns. Of course it burns. The burn is a harsh reality and also pure relief. It takes up all the space for a second—in my throat, in my chest, in my head, at the back of my nose. Someone shoves another cup toward the cluster, and my hand reaches out before my brain can argue that’s enough. It goes down, and I let it feel good and not shameful at first.
Then numb comes along and writesdo not disturbon the metaphorical door, then slams it shut on every other thought trying to come through.
A couple of six-packs appear, and hands start grabbing. Mine does too. I wander to the back corner, where an old couch has probably seen too much around here. I sit on the arm, and I drink. Then I drink some more. The edges of the room kindly blur. The reasons I cut out alcohol fade farther and farther away.This is fun, the voice says.This is relaxing. See? Not so bad.
My phone buzzes against my thigh, and I don’t even look at who it is.
A guy in a beanie sits on the coffee table and tries to talk to me. Does the little ‘chin nod’ that people who sell always do. “You need anything?” he asks, casually, like he’s offering a refill because he sees how obviously fucked up I am.
I’m far away from myself when I answer.
“Yeah,” I say. The answer is a prayer begging to be answered. “Anything.”
“What do you like?” he says, eyes scanning me.
“Everything,” I say. It feels more like a dare to see what I can get my hands on.
He slips something small into my palm. It’s anonymous, so I can’t tell what it is exactly, and I don’t even care. I look at it for a beat, then tilt my head and swallow it with a sip of beer. The decision lands in my stomach like a door closing with the lock on the outside.
Two girls I used to party with wobble over on broken ankles. “Lydia!” one squeals, with wine-stained teeth flashing in what little light is back here. They sling their arms around me and pull me into a tangled mess of hair and perfume. “We haven’t seen you in forever. Where’ve you been hiding?”
Rehab, I say in my head like a joke. Out loud, I say, “Just…around.”
They laugh and scream-sing the chorus of a song that doesn’t make any logical or lyrical sense. They twirl and dance together in front of me. I feel it hit—slow, then all at once, my body starts untying the panicked knots. The room becomes a dream I’m inside of and also watching at the same time, like I’m outside my body. Somewhere between the cotton mouth and the spinning of the floor I’m standing on, guilt kicks in.
You just messed up. You broke sobriety. You’re exactly who you always feared. But the voice gets lazy, drunk, slurs itself into a corner.It’s already too late, I tell it. Might as well ride it out. It’s not like I expected myself to be better forever. Let’s face it, I’ll always be a fuckup.
I do a couple of lines with the girls, and my phone won’t stop buzzing. I drop it into my tote bag and let the music pull me under. For a little while, nothing hurts. For a little while, I don’t have to be the scared little girl in the kitchen, or the girl holding onto her dead sister, or the girl fighting off a boy trying to hurt her in a foster home where nobody cares about you, or the girl about to get raped, or the girl begging a boy notto shoot himself in the head, or the girl who doesn’t know how to accept love anymore.
I close my eyes and just float away.
Somewhere far away, I’m still the person I was before I walked in here. Somewhere far away, I don’t make bad decisions. Somewhere far away from where I am, I’m better than this. But I’m not in that place. I’m here—eyes closed, head tipped back, with the world blissfully out of focus.
I tell myself I’ll figure it all out tomorrow. I tell myself I’ll wake up and make it right. I tell myself this is just one night, one mistake, one slip.
The lies go down easy when you’re numb. They always do. But they’re going to hurt like a bitch coming back up tomorrow.
74
Bash
I can’t remember the last time I went a whole day without hearing from Lydia. And as much as I love talking to her and hearing how her day is going…right now, I’m not even thinking about those things. I just can’t stop worrying if she’s okay. So I do the only thing I can think to do.
Bash: Hey, man. Did you see Lydia at all yesterday or today?
Sandro: Nah, I didn’t even talk to my sister yesterday. What’s going on?
