Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas Read Free Book Online Page B

Other days, she wears tight black leggings under an oversized sweater with thumbholes cut into the cuffs. I love the
    days that Billie wears T-shirts that say things like to die for ,
    phrases that are provocative but too ambiguous for the dress code to ban outright.
    Our English teacher, Mr. Coffee, hates Billie because she’s quick to pick fights with him, and not about late assignments and absences, the inconsequential things. No, Billie’s fights are the kind where she stands up during a discussion of The Great Gatsby and says, “This is stupid, Daisy is stupid, all the girls in all the books we read are brain dead,” and then storms down the hall in a flutter of black chiffon. When she’s gone, Mr. Coffee apologizes for the interruption, and I’m left wondering what I am missing. I’ve been thinking I’d like to be Daisy; I’d like to have someone like Gatsby stare at my house for whole years and never stop dreaming of me.
    One day during English, Billie spots the spine of a fat spell-book poking out of my backpack, and I want to hide my face behind my hands. In the absence of alcohol, I’ve resorted to the power of real magic to transform my life. I’ve been lolling in the library during lunch period, combing the card catalog for Charms, Spells, and Formulas and Practical Candle Burning Ritu-
    als. I’ve been tying ribbons on fence posts for happiness, sticking pins through candlewicks for friendship, and sleeping with a glass of water under my bed for love.
    I take a deep breath because I know what is coming. I know Billie is going to say “Spells are stupid, that book is stupid, and you must be brain damaged.”
    Instead, she leans in and whispers, “I love that shit.”
    I feel a rupture of joy for the first time in months. I can’t stop from widening my eyes.

    Billie lives in the bordering town of Clinton. Though our towns share a school, a wildlife reserve, and a waste-disposal cen-ter, their commonalities end there. Whereas my town is rural and secluded, the type of place where you can live seven years and never catch a glimpse of your neighbors, Clinton is the kind of old mill town that is common in Massachusetts. It is spotted with vinyl-sided duplexes, pool halls, Dairy Queens, and auto-body re-pair shops. The boys from Clinton ride dirt bikes and smoke Marlboros, and if they take you out to look at the stars, they drop the r, with the accent that most people attribute to the Bay State— stahs. To me, everything about the place sounds like freedom.
    Billie lives with her divorced mother, a position that fills me with envy. I know that is stupid, that I should be grateful that my parents are still happily wed, both of them tuned into my every ballet recital or parent-teacher conference like it’s Super Bowl Sunday. And I am. But our nuclear nest also makes divorce look exotic, like the stuff that art is made of. After all, this is shortly after Newsweek declared, “Grunge is what happens when children of divorce get their hands on guitars.”* Divorce

    * Newsweek —April 18, 1994, “The Poet of Alienation” by Jeff Giles.

    36 INITIATION | First Waste
    seems like a beautiful truth, a stark contrast to my own two-parent household, which at times feels stickier, more deceptive. What’s more, divorce creates the possibility of independence, for which I am desperate. The dissolution means train rides and plane rides alone, en route to Mommy’s house or Daddy’s condo. And keys. I long for house keys; I want to wear them on a satin string around my neck. After school, I want to unlock the door
    to a quiet house and, consequently, a quiet mind.
    Billie’s house is like an Egyptian tomb, like it ought to be named Valley of the Queens. It is still and soundless when we take the bus there on Friday afternoons. Snapshots hang on the walls: There’s one of Billie and her sister carving a pumpkin, another of Billie and her mom wearing pointed party hats. The medicine cabinets are lined with