American Royalty

I was starving. Famished, actually, making my way to the vending machines for a snack or something that would tide me over for the rest of the day so that I wouldn’t have to eat at lunch in fear that I would look like a pig. Sex always made me hungry. Maybe it was the physical exertion, but more than likely it was the emotional exertion. The act of having to put yourself out there in front of someone and pretend that you didn’t care even though more than anything you wish that they would just stay for a while after the sex, even if was just for a few minutes.

With Dallas though, there was no chance that he would ever stick around. As soon as he was finished he would be dressed and out the door quicker than I came down from my high. It had always been this way with him, all of our sex had always gone in this same pattern and because it was what everyone was expecting, I pretended that I didn’t care if he left right away, and once I was actually the one to leave first.

Ever since we first started having sex last year it had always been this way. I knew the rules and I never pushed them or tested them, I knew where his limits started and where mine ended. Of course to the rest of the school, our constant rendezvous would eventually lead to a relationship, maybe one that would even last longer than the sex, and maybe we would get married. I knew that’s what the people around school whispered about, how perfect it would be if the party-girl and the golden boy decided to declare their undying love for each other. Secretly, I had always assumed this too, that one day Dallas would realize that he couldn’t be alone forever, and that it would just make sense if it was us two against the world.

I slunk into the almost empty café. The only people that were in there was the spare loner and two people talking at a table right next to the vending machines. As I approached, the boy stood up to leave and I recognized the homo-hipster sweater again as the nerd who Dallas had beaten up. Next to him I saw a smaller figure, with long, almost stringy hair and dark circles under her eyes. I knew before I got any closer that she would smell of drugs and smoke. There was something about her that seemed familiar, and then I realized that it was yet another person Dallas had gotten into an altercation with today. A girl who had run into him in the hall, the druggie with a boy’s name that I couldn’t remember through my wine-haze, who was now looking at me with both hard and curious eyes. There was something about her that was just rough around the edges, something about just her overall appearance that screamed she was a no bull-shit kind of girl, the kind that spoke her mind even if no one wanted to hear the truth.

I returned her hard eyes as she eventually stood slowly and shuffled out of the room as I drew my money from my pocket to retrieve my food from the machine. I nibbled on the edge of a salty chip as I considered the fact that the girl with the hard eyes would hate me. If she was no bull-shit then I was full of it, even as I tucked my water bottle further into my bag, my fingers clasping around it like a life line even though I knew it was almost empty and I had to resist the urge to chug the rest of it right then and there. Whenever I thought about all the lies and deception that built up my life, there was nothing more than I wanted than to take a long drink and let it burn my throat and my senses. I wanted to drink until I was all laughter and joy and I couldn’t feel anything but lightness instead of the darkness that would replace it once the edge of the alcohol wore off.

I breathed deeply through my nose to stop my thoughts; I made myself release the water bottle from my iron grasp, and I blocked my thoughts from anything that would make me feel the least bit upset, but found that was difficult to do because it seemed as if everything lately made me upset and angry. Angry enough to drink myself into a haze that wouldn’t wear off for days and would have me reeking of alcohol even if I took showers that lasted for hours.

It was then that I spotted Florence through the far windows of the café and I felt a sudden sense of relief. If there was anyone that could prove to be a distraction, it was none other than Florence. I stood quickly and shoved the rest of my chips into my bag next to my booze and made my way somewhat unsteadily to the door of the café to intersect Florence as she passed.

I knew what people thought and said about Florence. Ever since what happened last year, it had nothing but make the rumors about her worse and make her an even more interesting subject. I also knew that the increased talking about her was doing nothing but making her even crazier. That she was no doubt checking over her shoulder every two seconds, and that she would be fiddling with whatever was in her hands so that her mind wouldn’t get too far lost to the point where it would be nothing but blackness for weeks and weeks until it finally cracked and she could see the light again.

No one in the school knew why I was friends with Florence. Not a single person could understand why out of everyone in this school dying to be my best friend, I had chosen her. I myself could barely understand the answer, but I knew that ever since elementary school she had always been loyal to her friends, fiercely honest, and a wonderful distraction from whatever you didn’t want to think about. I also knew though, that she was deeply broken and unstable, she was a baby deer in a room full of tigers and it made me want to reach through all the haze and dizziness that I brought upon myself to offer her a hand and guide her through, even if I did a terrible job. Everything about her screamed out that she needed help, that she was lost and confused.

“Florence!” I called as she passed a few feet away from me and I pushed out into the thinning crowd to meet her side.

She jumped a little actually, even though no one else would notice, I did, the way her fists clenched suddenly at her side, that she stood up even straighter but her face was calm when she glanced over her shoulder to meet my eyes.

“Oh, it’s you Andy,” She said, a smile that would never fully appear played at her lips as I closed the distance between us and clasped my hand around her wrist because I knew she liked to be anchored like that.

“Where have you been all day? I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” I said, which was a half-lie because I spent a good ten minutes in the closet going at it with Dallas and not even caring where she was at the moment.

She shrugged like she was being carefree, but the movement was too controlled to really come across that way, “I was at my appointment,” she said. She always called it that, her ‘appointment’, as if it could be anything in the world to any wandering ears that she was convinced were listening to us every moment that we were in a public place, and sometimes in the worst of cases, even in the privacy of our homes.

“How did that go?” I asked earnestly, I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, hoping to see any sign that maybe she would be getting better after going to see this doctor, but I knew that probably wouldn’t happen.

“Good,” she lied, her voice getting too light and sounding almost squeaky.

“Okay,” I let the subject drop because I knew that if I pushed it anymore she would shut down and then all the point of a distraction would be proven useless.

“How was your day?” She asked, her eyes quickly sweeping around us, as if it would catch anything that was thought to be dangerous.

“Fine,” I also lied, but I was much better at it than she was and she didn’t detect any hint of untruthfulness in my tone.

She smiled, “That’s good, I have to get to class Andy, will you call me tonight?” She asked, her eyes getting worried for a fraction of a second before I answered and I rushed to put an end to it.

“Of course I’ll call you Florence,” I said, patting her shoulder lightly and giving her a warm smile trying to tell her that everything was okay and that she was safe.

She nodded firmly, “Good,” she said, spinning on her heel and taking off alone into the abyss of students who would no doubt whisper as she passed them, whispers loud enough to reach her keen ear and set her on edge and I felt my heart sink a little as I scuffed my feet against the floor and kept moving in the hallway to get to my next class.

I arrived just as the bell was ringing and as soon as the teacher had her back to me, my hand frantically found its way down into my bag and gripped my bottle, hastily bringing it up to my lips to calm my pumping nerves and fear for Florence. Mostly though, they retreated there when I had caught a glance of the druggie-girl outside of one of the windows, smoking against one of the dumpsters with that same hard look in her eyes that I was sure could see right through me and into what a pathetic loser I really was.

My heart didn’t calm until the liquid was safely inside my stomach and the world began to dull again so that I could block it out. I shut my eyes against the haze and the alcohol swirled there, behind my eyelids in the darkness. It was beautiful and terrifying, but most of all, it was honest, and it called me a pathetic liar. The alcohol of course, knew me too well; it knew my faults and my weaknesses and called me out on them, but I ignored it because it was better than the rest of the world finding it all out, too.

-----

The house was quiet when I opened the door, but it still smelt slightly of alcohol and the TV light was flickering in the hallway. I could hear my sister’s faint voice coming from upstairs where she was no doubt still on the phone with Jordan, the boyfriend she left behind in New York City who was no doubt cheating on her whenever she allowed him to get off the phone.

I flung my backpack across the floor and watched it run into the end of the kitchen counters with a thud. As soon as that happened though, my mother’s face appeared around the corner of the den room, her face drawn and weary looking and I was surprise to actually see her home so early.

“You’re early,” I stated, moving slowly closer to the kitchen and cursing my bad luck, because I had been praying for a few minutes of peace so that I could fill up my bottle again, but this time with something stronger and that would possibly knock me out for the rest of the night.

“I took the day off work,” she said, her face firm and disproving as I stumbled slightly over my own feet as I moved to where she was. Sometimes, I was certain that my mother knew about my drinking, but she never admitted to it or would acknowledge it out loud, so I figured that she just didn’t have the energy to care anymore.

“Why?” I asked, steadying myself against the kitchen wall and glancing quickly into the living room past her where the couch was surprisingly empty of my father.

She sighed and ran a hand through her short, light hair that looked like mine and motioned for me to take a seat at one of the stools we had against the counter that no one really ever used anyway, unless we were in a surprising family mood or we had company over.

“Oh god, did he get in another bar fight?” I asked, my head feeling heavy as the alcohol began to wear off. “Or did he get caught drunk driving?”

My mother shook her head and moved farther into the kitchen, leaning against the counter opposite of me. “Your father won’t be coming home for a while,” she said. I hated when she called him “Your father”, like he was just some stranger to her that happened to be sharing a bed with her.

“What did he do this time?” I said, it was my turn to sigh as I thought about the embarrassment that my father was surely causing our family this very moment.

There is something you must understand here. If I liked to drink then my father loved it. When he lost his job a few months ago all he did was sit at home on the couch and drink all day into the early hours of the morning. Of course, this displeased my mother to no end and she would nag him every day to get another job or to at least take a shower and he would just grunt and drink his beer. My father used to be this really great dad, he would take us fishing and tell hilarious stories and he had a bunch of friends that would come over and play poker on the weekends. He was handsome too, with darker sandy hair and stunning green eyes that my sister inherited and he was tall and built from years of doing factory work with strong calloused hands that used to pick me up when I was little and spin me around until I felt slightly wobbly.

“He’s not in trouble Andy,” she said, and this is when I got really worried because my drunk mind began to spin out wild fantasies.

“Did he leave?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

My mother stilled for a second, “Oh God, no Andy, he didn’t leave us,” she said, her hand sliding across the counter to clasp one of mine and rub soothing circles in it with her thumb like she used to do all the time.

“Then what’s wrong? Where is he?” I asked, not understanding why my father would ever leave us here alone without him. Even drunk, it was better than having no father at all.

“Andy this morning I took your father to White Pine and I enrolled him in rehabilitation for alcoholism,” my mother said, her voice entirely too formal and it made me uncomfortable until the meaning of her words hit me after a few moments.

“He’s what?” I asked, my voice raising an octave and I realized that upstairs my sisters voice had stilled.

“Calm down Andy, this is a good thing, okay? He’s getting the help that he needs,” she said, her voice level and steady against my pitchy and wavering one.

“He’s in rehab? Don’t you think that’s a little bit overboard mom? Just because he drinks sometimes doesn’t mean he has some sort of a problem,” I said, my voice harsh but still shrill and I realized for the first time that the sinking feeling in my gut was actually fear.

If there was one thing that my father and I still had in common it was the fact that we both drank. Every day he would grumble around incoherently at the rest of us and my mother and sister would be disgusted, but instead of that I just felt compassion for the man. If there was one thing in the world that I could understand, it was the urge to drink; the complete and total need to reach out and have a drink at the tip of my fingers and be able to know that it would always be there like a safety net. I pictured my father then sitting in a clean, white room with no alcohol in sight, and then suddenly it was not my father there, but me and all my thoughts were consumed with the fact that I couldn’t drink, not even if I needed to. No matter how scary things got or how honest everyone was or how pathetic I got, there would be no alcohol there to save me, nothing there to catch me if I would slip up and fall. The idea itself had my head reeling slightly, my heart pumping loud in my ears frantically and it had my hands clasping around my empty bottle that I knew would offer me no salvation right now, but it nonetheless was still there for me.

It was then that I noticed the sift in the room, the presence of my sister at the bottom of the stairs, my mother’s voice going from comforting to firm, the kind of voice she used when she was angry at my father. “Andy, there’s something else, too.”

“What?” I asked my voice hoarse and my head still swimming from the terrifying daydreams of my father at a rehab facility somewhere.

“I know that we’ve never talked about this before and that it might upset you but you have to hear me out,” she paused then, taking a deep breath as if to brace herself. “Have you ever considered the possibility that you’re an alcoholic Andrea?” she said, a question that wasn’t really a question, and she called me by my actual name, the one that I was so seldom called.

Her words stopped me in my tracks, mostly because I hadn’t been expecting this conversation to turn on me so suddenly and now my sister was only a few feet behind me, pulled in by the tension that alcohol had created in our family.

I didn’t know how to react, my whole body was buzzing with fear, the fear of me being shipped off to some rehab place with white walls and fake smiles and people who didn’t really care about you but pretended they did. I could hear my sister’s breathing behind me, I remembered when I so desperately wanted to be exactly like her and I felt sick to my stomach, the drink working its way back out of my throat and I fought to keep it down there.

I was aware of my mother’s eyes on me, gauging my reaction, testing me, and I did the only thing I could think of at that moment.

I laughed.