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Marah is not here. At one o’clock in the morning. She lied to me about being home and in bed.
“What do I do?” I am talking to myself now, or maybe to Kate, as I rush from room to room, flinging open doors.
I call her phone. There is no answer. I text: Where are you??? and hit send.
Should I call Johnny? Or the police?
It is one-ten now. I am shaking as I pick up the phone. I have dialed 9-1 when I hear a key jiggling in the lock on my front door.
Marah comes in as if she is a cat burglar, trying to tiptoe, but even from here I can see that she is off balance, and she keeps giggling and shushing herself.
“Marah. ” My voice is so sharp I sound like a mother for the first time in my life.
She turns, trips, hits the door hard, and starts to laugh. Then she clamps a hand over her mouth and mumbles, “Shorry. Thass not funny. ”
I take her by the arm and lead her into her bedroom. She stumbles along beside me, trying not to laugh.
“So,” I say when she collapses onto her bed. “You’re drunk. ”
“I only had two beersh,” she says.
“Uh-huh. ” I help her get undressed and then guide her into the bathroom. When she sees the toilet, she moans, “I’m gonna be shick—” and I barely have time to hold back her hair before the vomit flies.
When she is done puking, I put toothpaste on her toothbrush and hand it to her. She is pale now, and as weak as a rag doll. I can feel her trembling as I guide her into bed.
I crawl into bed beside her and put an arm around her. She leans against me and sighs. “I feel terrible. ”
“Consider this a life lesson. This is not two beers, by the way. So what were you really drinking?”
“Absinthe. ”
“Absinthe. ” That is not what I expected. “Is that even legal?”
She giggles.
“In my day girls like Ashley and Lindsey and Coral drank rum and Cokes,” I say, frowning. Am I really so old that I don’t know what kids are drinking these days? “I am going to call Ashley and—”
“No!” she cries.
“No, what?”
“I, uh … wasn’t with them,” she says.
Another lie. “Who were you with?”
She looks at me. “A bunch of kids from my therapy group. ”
I frown. “Oh. ”
“They’re cooler than I thought,” she says quickly. “And really, Tully, it’s just drinking. Everyone does it. ”
That’s true. And she’s definitely drunk; I can smell it on her breath. Drugs would be different. What eighteen-year-old doesn’t come home drunk at least once?
“I remember the first time I got drunk. I was with your mom, of course. We got caught, too. It wasn’t pretty. ” I smile at the memory. It was 1977, on the day I was supposed to go in foster care. Instead, I’d run away—straight to Kate’s house—and convinced her to go to a party with me. We’d gotten busted by the cops and been put in separate interrogation rooms.
Margie had come for me, in the middle of the night.
A girl who lived with us would have to follow the rules. That was what she said to me. After that, I got to see what a family was, even if I was on the outside, looking in.
