o 3852bd5b2f216136 (8 page)

weren’t for Alex, if he weren’t in such bad shape.

And you start to beat yourself up, because you know that YOU’RE the reason Alex is so drunk.

If YOU hadn’t insisted on taking him to the party, if YOU hadn’t left him right at the beginning, if YOU hadn’t gone off and watched a stupid grade-Z movie — if you hadn’t NEGLECTED

your friend WHO WAS DEPRESSED TO BEGIN WITH — none of this would have happened.

So you sit there, grinding your teeth, waiting and waiting as the water runs inside.

And then you notice something.

The running water is not the sound of a SINK.

It’s louder. It’s a SHOWER.

You knock. Everything okay? you ask.

Alex says yeah, fine.

So you sit back and wait.

The shower lasts a long time. Too long. In Alex’s state, you realize he’s liable to fall asleep standing up. And if he falls on the tiles, he could break a bone, hit his head …

You knock again.

No answer.

You call his name.

You yell his name.

Nothing.

You turn the doorknob.

It’s locked.

Now you’re panicked. You bang on the door with your fist. You push with your shoulder, but the door won’t budge.

You need help. You need a key.

The last person IN THE WORLD you want to talk to is Jay, but you have to. You have no choice.

You race downstairs. Jay is in the kitchen, raiding his own refrigerator.

You grab him by the arm and tell him what happened.

For a moment a strange expression plays across his face, like he doesn’t know what to do, yell at you, apologize, what?

But he catches on. He runs upstairs, and you follow close behind, asking WHERE HE KEEPS

THE KEY.

WHAT KEY? he asks. WHO EVER KNOWS WHERE THE BATHROOM KEY IS?

You get to the bathroom, and now you see a stain seeping under the door and onto the hallway carpet, growing in a dark semicircle.

Jay yells — OPEN THE DOOR, YOU’RE FLOODING THE BATHROOM — and bangs hard,

but still all you can hear is the running water, splashing onto the floor tiles inside.

Together the two of you charge the door. Your shoulders hit with a loud thud.

You step back and try again.

The third time, the door cracks. The wood splits down the middle.

You kneel to charge again, but Jay stops you. He says if we break the door, we’ll hurt ourselves.

Instead, he steps back and gives the door a karate kick.

His shoe goes right through. So does half his leg. He yells in pain, and you kick like crazy, and soon a big chunk of the door gives way, and Jay pulls his leg out and you’re able to reach in and turn the knob from the inside.

You push the door open and run in.

The air is thick with steam. The room smells faintly of alcohol. Alex’s bottle is on the floor, floating in the bathwater that has spilled over the side of the tub.

The shower curtain is drawn shut.

You splash through the water and pull the curtain aside. Alex is sprawled out in the tub, the water almost covering his face. He is fully clothed.

And unconscious.

You turn off the water. Jay is reaching into the water, hooking his arms under Alex’s shoulders.

You grab Alex’s feet, and the two of you pull him out.

Alex is groaning now, moving his head from side to side. You manage to set him on the closed toilet, and he’s blinking and looking from you to Jay. “What are you doing?” he asks.

Which seems like THE strangest question he can ask in this situation, so you say the only thing you can: “What are YOU doing?”

Jay is kneeling beside him, his arm still tightly around Alex’s shoulder. You have NEVER seen the expression that’s on Jay’s face. He looks wild-eyed, totally freaked out.

Jay’s voice is pitched about an octave higher than normal. What are you, STUPID? he yells.

Who said you could DO this? Can’t you wait until you’re HOME?

Alex mumbles something about getting drunk and wanting to take a shower to sober up — but Jay keeps scolding him, telling him AT LEAST he could have left the DRAIN open like a

NORMAL person — and despite this, Jay is wiping tears from his cheeks. Or maybe it’s not tears. Maybe it’s the humidity in the room.

You’re a basket case yourself. You’re in total shock. All you want to do is get Alex out of there.

You and Jay stand him up. Alex can barely walk, so you stand on either side of him and prop him up.

Slowly, carefully, you make your way to the landing and down the stairs. Alex is dripping water, and it’s hard to hold onto him, but you manage to do it, across the living room and out the front door.

All around you, guys are yelling and cheering. “Way to go, ALEX!” shouts one. “First casualty of the night!” shouts another.

They have no clue. They think this is FUN.

You and Jay drag Alex across the lawn to your car. The double-parked Jeep, fortunately, is gone.

You dump Alex in the backseat. He tries to say something but immediately keels over and closes his eyes.

Jay mutters a few choice angry words, the nicest of which is JERK. But as you climb in and start the car, he says, “Take care of him. And call me, okay?”

You nod and drive off.

Your hands are a little shaky. Your shoes are wet and slippery on the accelerator. You have to concentrate like crazy just to drive, and you go REALLY slowly.

Your mind is racing. Where do you take him now — Home? [sic] Out for a cup of coffee? Isn’t coffee supposed to be good for drunkenness? Can you walk into a restaurant soaking wet?

You can’t decide. You drive around the block. Then you drive in the direction of Las Palmas.

You follow the edge of the park, just cruising, thinking.

And soon you hear sniffling from the backseat. You figure Alex is getting a cold, but that’s not it.

He’s crying.

You realize you are too. You ask if he’s okay.

He says he’s sort for getting your car wet.

You tell him that’s okay, the seats are vinyl, and worse has happened to them.

You look at him through the rearview mirror, but he’s looking away. He’s sobbing now, apologizing for being drunk and for using the shower. He keeps insisting that he only wanted to sober up, that’s all — saying it over and over, as if you wouldn’t believe him.

You keep reassuring him and soon you both fall silent. The cars whiz by outside, and you hear someone’s car stereo booming away, and it all feels very eerie and uncomfortable, the two of you driving aimlessly, and you can’t help feeling that Alex wants to say something but he’s not saying it.

You ask him if he wants to go home, but he says no. So you decide to take him to your house.

By the time you arrive, Alex’s face is bone-white. That’s when he gets sick, in the flower bed by the side of the house.

As you lead him into the house, he is moaning, stumbling, making these dry licking noises with his throat. You sit him down on the living room sofa and place an empty wastebasket nearby, just in case. Then you fetch some clothing from upstairs.

As he changes, he apologizes again and again — I shouldn’t have done it, I didn’t know what I was doing, I was drunk, I didn’t mean it — and you calm him down, shushing him, saying don’t worry, no one at the party even noticed, it’s only water, just try to sleep, etc.

The clock chimes 11 and you realize Mrs. Snyder must be freaking out. You mention this to Alex and he says he doesn’t want to go home, so you offer him a place to stay for the night if he contacts his mom and lets her know.

You bring in your cordless phone. He calls her and she agrees, but you notice that while he’s talking to her, his voice is quivering — and after he hangs up, he starts sobbing. WAILING.

Like a little boy.

Don’t EVER tell anybody what happened tonight, he says. Promise me, Ducky. It has to be a secret. It doesn’t go past you and me. And tell that to Jay too.

Sure, sure, I say.

Scout’s honor?

Scout’s honor.

And then he looks at you with these wet, wet eyes, and tells you that YOU’RE the only person he can talk to about this stuff. YOU’RE the only person he can trust. You and Dr. Welsch — you two are like EXTENSIONS of himself, he says.

You didn’t realize you MEANT that much, so now all of the things you’ve done — sitting with him at lunch when no one else would, stopping to talk to him at the bridge in Las Palmas, sticking with him through this whole horrible episode — all of it seems worth it, in some strange way.

He’s lying on the sofa now, his voice slurring and fading, and he’s complaining about a headache, so you go get some aspirin, and by the time you’re back, he’s fast asleep.

So you sit, watching. Listening to him breathe. Trying to figure out WHAT ON EARTH JUST

HAPPENED.

You have had some weird nights in your life. Driving the girls home when the upperclassmen trashed Ms. Krueger’s house and framed the 8th-graders. Tracking down Sunny on Venice Beach the night she ran away from home.

This is weirder somehow.

You don’t know why, it just is.

So you sit and write.

And here you are, still at it.

Scared and exhausted. Worried.

Why did he DO that? Why did he get so drunk? Alex doesn’t drink. And WHY would he

TAKE A SHOWER — with his clothes on — with the drain closed?

He was in a hurry? He was too drunk to know what he was doing? He flipped the drain switch by accident?

WEIRD.

TOO weird.

Have to stop thinking about this.

Have to stop WRITING.

Fatigued.

Need sleep.

Good n

It Is Two A.M.

Do You Know Where Your Sanity Is?

The drain.

It’s down the drain.

It MUST be, to have the dream you just had.

You have switched places with Alex. You are inside him, at Jay’s party. You’re feeling depressed and you don’t like anyone there, and everyone’s drinking and it seems like a good thing to do, at least SOMETHING to do, so you grab a bottle and start swigging. And suddenly everything seems less loud, less obnoxious — just LESS — and you like the feeling for awhile

[sic] until it takes you over, and now you’re starting to feel worse and worse, because, like they tell you in school, alcohol is a DEPRESSANT and what could be worse for DEPRESSION than that? So you sink and sink, but you’re already at rock bottom, so what happens?

You go below, you go under, you question why you’re at the party, you question why you’re even ALIVE, and what’s worse, you desperately have to go to the bathroom, but the one downstairs is being used, so you trudge to the one upstairs, and all you want to do is relieve yourself, but you’re in there, and the lights are bright and you see yourself in the mirror — PASTY and TIRED and STRINGY-HAIRED and SAD — an you see the shower and the gleaming tub and

you decide THAT’S what you need, so you turn on the water and step in but you’re not thinking, you’re not SOBER enough to take your clothes off, and the next thing you know you’re sitting down, tired and soothed by the warmth, and you know you’re going to fall asleep, slip

downward, downward — and your hand reaches for the drain because you WANT the tub to fill, because maybe if you sink far enough, if you sleep deep enough, you won’t have to come back.

IT’S A DREAM!

A nightmare.

It’s CRAZY to even think that Alex did that.

You are wired, McCrae. You are crazed and disturbed. And you watch too many horror films.

First of all, even if Alex had CONSIDERED what you were dreaming about, he would have just run the BATHWATER. What’s the point of putting the shower on? Besides, HE COULDN’T

EVEN TURN THE DOORKNOB when you first found him. How could he have closed the

drain ON PURPOSE?

Forget it.

Put it out of your mind.

2:15

Still.

Still, it doesn’t hang together.

WHY did Alex say “What are you doing?” when he woke up in the bathroom? As if we were stopping him from DOING something?

Why was he SO UPSET? So ASHAMED? Apologizing SO MUCH? Insisting on keeping this

all a secret.

It doesn’t make sense.

I want to talk to him, but he’s out like a light.

Okay. He couldn’t have been THAT desperate. If he was, he would have told me.

He said I’m the only one he talks to.

Me and Dr. Welsch.

Dr. Welsch might know what’s going on in Alex’s mind.

He DEFINITELY should know about what happened tonight.

But I can’t call him.

I TOLD Alex I’d keep his secret.

I promised.

He trusts me. He says I’m an EXTENSION of himself. I have to live up to that.

2:23

Thought:

Dr. Welsch is an extension too.

So telling him would NOT be breaking the promise.

Would it?

Think, McCrae.

Do what you have to do.

DO

THE

RIGHT

THING

What Seems Like

A Lifetime Later

Did you?

Did you do the right thing?

Who knows?

You’re in no shape to decide that now. It’s still dark out, and you can barely stand up, but you can’t sleep, you can’t THINK of sleeping yet. Your mind is screaming at you, your thoughts are slamming against the sides of your brain, and you have to find RELIEF somehow.

Now.

Here.

Write.

SEE what happened. Step by step.

You called Dr. Welsch on the kitchen phone. His answer machine picked up — WHAT DID

YOU EXPECT? It was after two in the morning! — and you left a whispered message that

probably didn’t make much sense but you left your number and tried to make it clear that Alex needed help.

Then you went back into the living room, figuring Dr. Welsch would call in the morning, hoping the FACT that you called would calm you down, make you sleep better.

And you might have fallen asleep, it was hard to tell — but when the phone rang and you jumped out of the armchair to answer it, you noticed only ten minutes had passed.