Where It Began(47)

And then I think, big revelation, giant whoop, silent You Go Girl from the helpful helping professionals who sent me to this godforsaken pastry smorgasbord and confession-fest: John is the alcoholic. Not me, John. Why isn’t he here?

But it doesn’t seem as if it would go over too well to explain that I just drink at parties a couple of times a week, not unlike everybody else at the parties except for the people who just blaze their way into oblivion with weed, and if I belong at this so-called meeting, then we might just as well sink the church into the ground under the sheer weight of the gazillion other kids who all get plowed at the same parties as me and, hello, they aren’t alcoholics either.

So maybe there are a couple of other places where I drink, such as at lunch in the Class of 1920 Garden, such as at meals other than breakfast where, give me a break, you really do have to be a drunk to drink anything other than a mimosa, which is at least appropriate with eggs. So send for more chairs. Enough so, say, the entire population of France (where they do drink wine with breakfast; I have personally witnessed this) will have someplace to sit in the Brentwood Unitarian Church.

But I don’t say this. Not to people who drink Stoli out of their thermoses in study hall at Paul Revere Middle School. I wish them well. All I want in life is to find some nice way to get out of there without anyone noticing.

Except, of course, that everyone is looking me over, waiting for an opportunity to spring out of their chairs and sidle up to me and make me feel all welcome.

I figure that hanging out in the ladies’ room for the next hour and a half would be a bit obvious and somewhat insulting, so I just sit there in my folding chair leaning as far back as possible without tipping over, not making eye contact with anybody, pretending to listen.

Every time another one of them starts talking, I glance up, very fast, and every time they stop, I wonder if this is when they’re going to shout out a big Kid AA howdy to all the new people—or for all I know, just me, for all I know, I am the only new person—and force us or just me or whoever to stand up and say something.

I just slink down further in my chair, sliding my eyes over every corner of the room, checking out the emergency exits just in case.

When it is over, I run out of there, not saying hi to anybody, just jumping into Vivian’s car and closing my eyes, light-headed and completely clammy.





XXXV


gabs123: i cannot go to AA anymore. get me out of AA. i mean it.



pologuy: shit aa. this is not good



gabs123: kill me now. i’m supposed to go all the time. i mean constantly. daily. i am not going to stand around and talk about myself. did u have to go?



pologuy: long time ago. tiny tot fake aa. i think i got kicked out



gabs123: how does a person get kicked out of tiny tot fake AA?



pologuy: i think i hit someone. doofus buddy geiss. hate that kid



gabs123: buddy geiss!!! wait. isn’t this supposed to b alcoholics ANONYMOUS? thus the second a.



pologuy: ok some doofus kid identical to buddy geiss. not hit. knocked over his chair when he was in it



gabs123: y?



pologuy: who the hell remembers back to tiny tot aa? maybe he took my donut



gabs123: i don’t know if i’m up for knocking over a doofus to get out of this. what do i do? i’m not a sharing caring gabfest kind of girl.



pologuy: and that is what we love about u





What we LOVE about you?!?!?!?!





gabs123: ?



pologuy: ok just tell ur social worker u can’t do it



gabs123: right. that’ll make her happy. frost is the one who’s making me go and she reports to my lawyer. it’s supposed to impress the hell out of probation. remember probation?



pologuy: think of something else to impress them. it’s not that hard. like i told u before. boo hoo and dig in ur heels. boo hoo queen frostine I can’t go to aa because . . .



gabs123: because y?



pologuy: it could b anything. b creative. try again. boo hoo queen frostine i can’t go to aa because . . .



gabs123: if anyone sees me there my name will be mud all over candyland? did u know mudd was some guy who supposedly helped john wilkes booth shoot abraham lincoln?



pologuy: thnx for the fun fact. will it b on SAT 2’s? i’m being forced to memorize all words in english language. and an all purpose essay



gabs123: u wrote an all purpose SAT essay?





Even though it isn’t too hard to figure out that life is going on without me in it, the idea that Billy was sitting around writing an all-purpose SAT essay while I was out in the Valley getting mug shots taken is somehow mind-boggling. The idea that he could just sit there and concentrate and write essays about his most emotional moment and his most inspirational hero and his most compelling hope, dream, or extracurricular activity, and soon I am going to have to write about how getting past my Problem made me a Better Person to try to get everyone in some sub-regular college admissions office to love me. The idea that I’ve wandered into this horrible, alternate world and have to do all this weird stuff to get back, but everybody else is still sitting there in the real world writing their SAT essays and memorizing the Latin roots of SAT words.