Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola Read Free Book Online Page A

was 16 and working at an arcade so epic it was called Star World. Dark rooms lit by neon, full of clinking machines and 25-cent shots at redemption. A bar for people who can’t drink yet.
    My self-consciousness had become overpowering by then. I couldn’t stop dreaming about those shaggy-haired boys playing Galaga, but words were staple-gunned to the back of my throat. I hung around the arcade all day, but I never said a word. Someone actually asked Kimberley, “Is your cousin mute?”
    The staff of Star World threw an end-of-summer party in a house by the lake. For the first two hours, I stayed in my usual spot on the sidelines. Teenagers played quarters on the table and drank potions I understood to be off-limits: peach schnapps and orange juice, rum and Coke.
    But then the pudgy assistant manager handed me a beer. He must have felt sorry for me: Kimberley’s little cousin, watching from the benches again. Or maybe he had reached the euphoric point in your buzz when stupid ideas seem brilliant. Let’s pee our names in the snow. Let’s get the dog drunk. He grabbed a Budweiser out of the fridge and handed it to me, like he was sliding me a winning lottery ticket.
Hey, you’re cool, right?
    I was two weeks shy of my twelfth birthday, but I had been practicing for this moment for years. I knew how to pop open the can with a gratifying
pfffffft
that sprayed like the lightest afternoon shower on my face. I knew how to tolerate the zap on my tongue and the way my glands squeezed like a fist. I knew how to sip, and I knew how to glug. Yes, sir. I was cool.
    I drank the beer. Then I drank another. And the evening began to glow in my veins. Words rolled out to me on red carpets. The perfect comeback. The fastest burn. And I kept drinking: a syrupy mixed drink, a shot of clear liquor like a grenade down my gullet. That shit tasted awful, but who cared? I was transformed. Pierced by divine light. Filled by a happiness I’d longed for all my life.
    I threw up seven times. Hunched over the toilet, Kimberley at my side. The Star World manager tucked me into bed in a room upstairs. “You’re too young to be drinking like this,” he said. He was a sweet guy, with a hangdog face, and I nodded in agreement. He was wise and ancient, twice as old as me. He was 22.
    The next morning I was so shaky I could barely force blueberry yogurt in my mouth. And Kimberley was asking me weird questions. “Do you remember when you took your pants off last night?” And I laughed, because I knew that couldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t even undress in Kimberley’s room when she was there. I sure as hell didn’t strip off my clothes at a Star World party.
    But she had the unsmiling voice of a state’s witness. “You sat at the bottom of the steps, crying, and you said everyone loved me more than you. You don’t remember that?”
    I did not.
    It’s such a savage thing, to lose your memory, but the crazy part is, it doesn’t hurt one bit. A blackout doesn’t sting, or stab, or leave a scar when it robs you. Close your eyes and open them again. That’s what a blackout feels like.
    The blackout scattered whatever pixie dust still remained from the night before, and I was spooked by the lost time. I had no idea this could happen. You could be present and not thereat all. Those first few drinks gave me hope for escape. But I knew from Stephen King stories how hope could boomerang on a person and what looked like an exit door turned out to be the mouth of a more dangerous maze.
    So I swore I’d never drink like that again. And I kept the promise for many years. I kept drinking, but not
like that
. Never
like that
. I assured myself it was a first-time drinker’s mistake. Instead, it was a blueprint.

STARVED
    O ne of the curious aspects of middle school is how extraordinary the pain feels, even when the affliction is quite mundane. The wrong pair of jeans, your unpronounceable last name, a paper wad thrown by a popular boy that hit your back