Free Intoxicated by Alicia Renee Kline Page B

handing me the binder. “I’m
sorry,” she whispered.
    The binder felt heavy in my hands. I rested
it upon my lap for a moment, willing myself to open it. With a deep
breath, I lifted the cover. Beside me, Blake twirled the blue
portion of her hair nervously. She winced as I looked down at the
first page.
    Upon first glance, it was an innocent
scrapbook of newspaper clippings. In my nervousness, the headlines
and articles blurred together, and I was only able to focus on the
pictures. A black and white photo of a teenaged Matthew, clad in a
high school football uniform stared back at me. Further down the
page was another picture of Matthew, this time dressed in a suit,
his expression solemn, his hands folded behind his back. As I
looked closer, I realized that he wasn’t standing in this awkward
position by choice. His wrists were restrained by handcuffs. The
gentleman that stood in the background appeared to be a
sheriff.
    I closed my eyes, willing my vision to clear.
When I reopened them, I trained my sight on the headlines. Written
in bold black typeface in a large font were the words “Fallen From
Grace”. I flipped through the pages in the binder, focusing on
certain words and phrases in the accompanying articles.
    From what I did read, I found out that their
father was a prominent attorney in the area. Matthew had been
arrested. His college football scholarship had been revoked. He had
been sentenced to six months in jail. It was a felony charge.
    My head spun. I ran my fingers over the slick
pages, wondering why Blake would have put together a binder of all
this hurtful information. Scrapbooks were typically full of things
to treasure, not nightmares. It made no sense.
    I looked up, meeting her gaze. Nowhere had I
noticed where the articles had mentioned what exactly he had done.
Perhaps she had done that on purpose. Wordlessly, I pleaded for her
to continue.
    “When we were growing up,” she began, “Life
was pretty good. We lived in a big house, dad made a lot of money
and mom stayed at home. Matthew was on the football team and I was
a cheerleader. We were popular and everyone wanted to be like
us.”
    The way she presented this background sounded
less like boasting and more like regret.
    “His senior year, Matthew got caught drinking
and driving. He was obviously underage, and he was arrested. His
license got suspended for a while, and he lost his football
scholarship. Of course, our parents were pissed off. But it was
nothing we couldn’t deal with, right?”
    Her voice cracked on the last word, and a
solitary tear trickled down her cheek. I slid the binder off of my
lap, placing it on the table in front of us. I wanted to hear the
story from her anyway.
    “We weren’t really close until about this
time in our lives anyway. He was a senior; I was a sophomore. I
started dating his best friend, but that’s another story. Because
of this, we started spending quite a bit of time together. Because
he lost the scholarship, our parents refused to pay to send him
anywhere but the local college. It wasn’t a huge disappointment for
him, since that was where his friend was going anyway.”
    She cleared her throat.
    “So fast forward a couple of years. Matthew
got a pretty decent job, and he moved out on his own. I was still
dating his best friend. We were all going to school together, just
kind of hanging out and having fun. Matthew was kind of a player;
he dated a lot of girls. At the time, he was dating this chick and
things were kind of stormy in their relationship. All four of us
went to this party, and things got kind of wild. One of those deals
where they take your keys from you as you enter the house. We were
all drinking. Matthew and the girl got into this huge fight, and
she ended up leaving. He found the keys to his best friend’s car
and went after her.”
    I released a breath I didn’t realize I had
been holding.
    “He had no business driving. But we didn’t
know what to do. I mean, he took my