Free o 3852bd5b2f216136 by Unknown Page A

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