Smashed (26 page)

Once, my eyes brush Alec’s face. He looks away.

The day develops a rhythm: “My mom thinks I might have mono,” I say with a sad face. I repeat it every period, to each
of my teachers. My rehearsal with Matt helped, gave me confidence. If Matt sees that I am sick, everyone else will see it, too. Plus, it’s technically not a lie. My mom
does
think I might have mono. I play it to the hilt. I’m the girl with the mysterious illness, the mono victim, the poor kid who can’t get well. My teachers have concerned eyes. They shake their heads.

“You look tired,” they say. “Have you lost weight?”

“About ten pounds.”

“You can’t afford it.”

One says, “Eat chocolate.”

Sympathy is good.

*     *     *

Cassie arrives at school sometime after lunch. She is just back from England the day before. She tries to catch up with me between classes, but I’m elusive, like a cat.

The hall is nearly empty. It’s 2:35 and I’m shuffling through my locker, waiting until everyone is gone. I want to weave my way out to the parking lot alone. I’m drunker than I’d planned, but I have made it through my first day back at school. Perfecting my system will come later, so I think.

Cassie is coming down the hall now, skipping stairs and landing hard on the wooden floor in her snow boots. “Hey, Kay, I’ve been trying to catch up with you. Are you okay? You look terrible.”

“I don’t feel well,” I say into my locker.

When I pull my head out, Cassie is studying me. “Are you mad at me?” She’s puzzled, hurt, something.

I shake my head. “No. Why would I be?”

“I don’t know . . .”

“I’ve been really
sick
.”

“I know. I’m sorry. You don’t look so good. You’ve lost a lot of weight.”

She seems strange to me, standing there with her red hair and bright, curious eyes. She wants to talk, swap vacation stories. She’s looking for her friend.

“You don’t look like yourself. I think you
do
have mono. My mom says it can take six, even eight weeks to get over. When do you get your test back, anyway?”

I shrug. “I haven’t seen my mom for a couple days.”

Cassie’s eyes roll up toward the ceiling. “Can’t she take a day off work? I mean, you’re sick. She’s a nurse for God’s sake.”

“I didn’t say she was working.”

Cassie lets out one short, humorless laugh, but her shoulders relax. “I don’t know about her,” she says.

She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to say something else, crack another mother joke, but I can’t think of anything.

“I gotta go, Cassie. I’m tired.”

“Yeah. Take a nap, girl. I’ll drive you to school tomorrow. You can sleep in the car, okay?”

“Nah, I don’t even know if I’m coming to school. But thanks anyway.” My arms are full of books now, books I’ll never open. Props are important. I drift down the hall away from her, toward the door to the outside.

“I’ll see you,” I say, but I don’t look back.

*     *     *

“I’m worried about you,” Cassie says into the phone. “I think there’s something really wrong with you and your mom doesn’t even seem to care.” She’s been talking to her own mother about it, her mother the MD. I don’t want to talk, but Will has handed me the phone without asking my opinion. He is worried; I suspect he is calling in reinforcements.

“I told you,” I say. “My mother thinks it’s mono.”

What Cassie doesn’t know is that I still haven’t had my blood drawn. I’m supposed to go to the clinic after school, and my mother keeps bugging me about it, but I keep telling her I’m too tired at the end of the school day, and she’s never home to drag me there herself.

“What if it’s not? My mom thinks you should have other tests done.”

“I’m too tired to talk,” I say, and hang up without saying good-bye.

*     *     *

I catch them talking about me.

I’m walking from study hall to the library, where I can hide in a cubicle against the back wall for the entire period. They are in the hallway alone. Cassie’s voice carries.

“Matt, she just doesn’t seem right to me.”

“I know.”

“I don’t mean to freak you out, but I’m going crazy. She looks like a scarecrow—she has those dark circles under her eyes. Her clothes are hanging off her. I mean, I go away for two weeks and
she looks like she’s been in a concentration camp. What if she has cancer or something?”

“I’m here,” I announce, walking past them.

Cassie looks guilty. “I’m sorry, Kay. . . . I just . . .”

“I don’t have cancer.”

“But how do you know?”

“I
know
,” I say, and keep walking.

*     *     *

I don’t know how many days have passed now. I’m not interested in the passing of time. Life is a game, a performance for the hell of it. See how long they can be fooled. This isn’t hard. I have nearly convinced myself that my illness is real. I half expect the mono test that I still haven’t taken to come back positive. Say something enough times and it becomes real. Just like that.

After that: nothing.

At lunch I stand on the sidewalk, watch the cars speed past the school, and think about stepping in front of one. I watch them and bide my time.

I float through the halls in school on a plane of perfect intoxication. I know just how much it will take to get me through each period without going so far as to get caught, and whether I have enough time to get to my locker and the bathroom between certain classes. My history teacher allows “drinks,” so I can sip screwdrivers from my water bottle all through his class.

A tip for the wasted and overtired: Avoid answering questions unless called on, and just shake your head if you are. Dark circles under the eyes can make a person look pathetic, and
teachers may take pity on you and leave you alone. My teachers think it’s heroic that I’m sitting in class at all since it looks like I am dying. They have no idea how right they are.

Once, when we were thirteen, Cassie’s mother drove us to a mall in Massachusetts where there was a glass elevator. Riding up and down in it was like moving through space: You could see everything but couldn’t touch it; the people out there could see you but couldn’t reach you. That is how I feel now, like I am in a glass capsule floating through school. Even Alec can’t touch me. In English and history class he is invisible to me; he does not exist. He doesn’t try to catch my eye or talk to me after class. It’s a tacit agreement between us: We have both disappeared so far as the other is concerned.

Megan is providing me with very potent weed via her sister, and I’m grateful. It helps when my stomach can’t handle the booze, and it gives me a little appetite. My throat is raw. When I drink it feels like a fire I can’t put out. One day I throw up blood. This scares me. I plan to die
fast
.

*     *     *

Coach Riley asks to talk to me. She’s heard I’ve been sick and she’s worried about me. I know this already because she called my house, left a message for my mother.

“Your mother never called me back,” she says. Coach Riley’s face is concerned. She’s like an older version of Cassie.

“That’s my mom,” I say. But I know it’s because I deleted her message before my mother heard it.

“Has Coach Hollyhock called?”

“Yes.”

“She says you two haven’t talked in a while.” This is exhausting. She’s grilling me like she did at the beginning of hockey season.

“She’s left messages.”

“Your contract isn’t final until you sign it in February.”

“I have to get back to class,” I say, and turn and walk away.

*     *     *

I splash more water on my face, then look in the mirror. It’s fifth period. How can my bottle be empty? I need a second water bottle, a backup. There’s one in my brother’s room at home, I think. But what about the rest of
this
day? My heart flutters, a large bird trapped in my chest. Panic.

Then I see her step into view behind me. She tosses her white-blond hair to one side and starts brushing. Marcy still hasn’t spoken to me since the state championship game. Hating me gives her something to do. She doesn’t say a word, just watches me as I bend down, swaying slightly, to get my backpack off the floor. Its weight throws me off balance for a moment when I pick it up. I take a deep breath to steady myself, then come up and turn—

She’s looking directly into my eyes. “Oh my God,” she says, and her lips curl into a smile. “It’s true. You’re wasted.”

I’m busted.

It is the next morning and things are moving too fast. They’ve hauled me into the guidance counselor’s office before my first class—snatched me away the second I walked through the school’s main door. I’ve been in here ever since, quarantined like I’m contagious and they don’t want the other kids to catch what I have.

“Your mother tells me your father had a drinking problem,” the guidance counselor says from behind her desk. Mrs. Bradford is a short, square woman with big, square glasses that cover too much of her face.

It is too early in the morning for this.

“Where’s Mr. Hanley?” I ask. He is my guidance counselor. He is the one who helped me with my school applications and made sure the universities had all my eligibility stuff on time. This woman doesn’t even know me.

The office is quiet and hot and steam is rising from the ancient radiator under the window. Once in a while it whistles
or hisses at us. Sweat drips from under my arms onto my back and stomach. It is eight thirty now and I am desperate. The shaking is bad and it’s her fault. I’ve been in here too long and they’ve taken my bag. She must see how much I need it.
Bitch.

She’s looking at me from behind her giant, cluttered desk. “You’ve been drinking in school. Can we agree on that?”

Why would I agree to that?

“Shouldn’t I have a lawyer or something if you’re going to interrogate me?”

She smiles faintly. “You’re not under arrest, Katie.”

Could’ve fooled me. I’ve been a prisoner in her overheated office for an hour now. She tells me my life story, says my father is an alcoholic, then tries to get me to confess. I’m just waiting for the cops to show up with handcuffs.

“Then can I leave?”

“A number of people have noticed it, Katie. Both other students and a teacher.”

“Marcy Mattison hates me.”

“Matt Fletcher does not.” She looks me dead in the eye. “Neither does Coach Riley.”

“You lie.” My voice trembles.

“We called your mother yesterday. She searched your house and found empty bottles in your closet.”

“She went through my
stuff
?” A wave of heat sweeps up my neck, flushing my cheeks.

“I asked her to when I called her yesterday. She didn’t want to believe me when I told her what was going on.”

“She’ll tell you I’m fine. I’m
sick
. She’s taking me for a mono test.”

“Your mother will be here shortly. Then we can all talk together.”

“She’s going to work.”

“No, she’s coming here.”

The radiator hisses and sighs.

*     *     *

My mother looks small in this big office with its big desk and tall window and high ceiling. I’m afraid she’s going to cry. Her long, thick hair is loose and she looks like she’s seventeen. It feels like we’re both in trouble. Maybe we are.

“I’m not like my father,” I say to Mrs. Bradford.

I look at my mother for backup. She knows. I stack the wood. I come home. I put down the storm windows and watch out for my brother. Like my
father
? It’s the most wicked thing she could say. But my mother is silent. She’s biting a nail.

“You’re right, you’re not,” Bradford says. “You’re younger. You still have choices.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t walk out on my wife and kids.”

“
Katie
,” my mother says. I’m embarrassing her, being rude.

“You have a choice right now. If you don’t drink, you can’t end up like him. So by not drinking, you’d be making a choice to take your life in a different direction. If you do choose to drink, you take a big risk. You live with a big question mark. Alcoholism, as I’ve said, runs in families.”

She’s looking me right in the eye. The woman cannot be
stared down. It doesn’t help that my whole body is trembling. That my shirt is half soaked and she can see that it is. I’m not going to last in here. My nerves are shot. I feel jumpy as hell.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“I guess I shouldn’t drink,” I say quickly.

Mrs. Bradford draws a deep breath and stands up. “I’m glad you feel that way,” she says, but she’s not convinced. She rubs her arms, looks out the window behind her. Gray clouds hang heavy and low over the playing fields. A mixture of snow and freezing rain is piling up on the windowsill.

All I can see in my head is my backpack, just outside the door, with two full bottles in it. I need to get to them. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I say.

“In a minute.” She turns back to face me. “Your mother and I have talked about this, Katie. And we think that, in light of all that’s happened, it would be best if you went away for a while.”

“Away
where
?”

“There’s a place for teenagers who have this kind of problem.”

Would that be the rape problem or the father-who-disappeared problem? Or the chance-of-becoming-the-father-who-disappeared problem? I feel like picking up the jar of pens on her desk and throwing them at her.

“Just for a couple months,” she is saying. “You’d be back in plenty of time for graduation. In time to run track, even. You were All-Conference last year, weren’t you?” She offers this up like bait to hook me.

A couple months?

“I don’t want to.” I want to stay home and sleep. Cassie and Matt can come visit me in the afternoons and play cards. Did Matt really know? Did he really turn me in? I don’t trust this woman. She’s making things up.

“I’ll do all my work at home.” There is an awful pitch to my voice, like I am begging.

She looks at me with something resembling pity. “I don’t think that would take care of the problem, Katie.” She sighs, like she’s the one who’s exhausted. “It’s all been worked out. Your mother made the decision, and the school supports her. You can’t do what you’ve been doing here.”