Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride. Brian Sweany

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      Chapter ten

      Dad was cool about the dent, although I lied and told him I backed into a tree at the 7-Eleven. Monday at school was unbearable. I couldn’t handle seeing Laura in the hallways—trading bronzed smiles and inside jokes with her girlfriends, all of them wearing their matching white hemp bracelets and airbrushed T-shirts reminding us all to “Never Forget Room two-oh-four.” So, I got Mom to let me skip class on Tuesday.

      No big deal. She’ll walk into the office today and tell one of the deans, “Hank’s not feeling well,” and they’ll mark me down as absent, no questions asked. She’ll run into one of my teachers later and say, “I think he has that flu bug that’s going around.” Never mind we’re a good three months beyond flu season. Mom has lied for me my whole life.

      I’m so depressed I didn’t even have the heart to masturbate this morning. I tried. I pulled the big guns out of my father’s Playboy stash—the January Holiday Anniversary issue with Kimberly Conrad, the just opened April “Star-Studded Spring Spectacular” issue with Vanity. But nothing. Flaccid city.

      I sit at the kitchen table. The smells wafting up from my stained white undershirt and torn jeans beg me in vain for a shower. I yawn, scratch my face. I’ve already started into Dad’s Maker’s Mark. I pick at the red wax on the bottleneck. I haven’t eaten since Sunday, so I’m buzzing three drinks in. After about a dozen shots, I get bored with whiskey. My balls itch, so I scratch them. I unscrew the cap off the Popov, an inexpensive vodka packaged in a plastic half-gallon bottle. Evidently I’m not too drunk to get disgusted by cheap vodka. I gag after one shot. With nothing but an unopened bottle of vermouth left in my parents’ liquor cabinet, my options are limited.

      I remember the bottle under my bed.

      I’m back at the kitchen table. I remove the family-size bottle of cough syrup from the plastic bag. I had bought it a couple weekends ago. Someone told me that drinking a whole bottle had the same effect on you as dropping acid. I figured I was still a couple years away from my serious experimentation phase, so I went to the drugstore and scored me some cough syrup.

      I struggle with the top of the box for a few seconds before I rip the box in half. An empty bottle of whisky and a full bottle of vermouth bear witness to my inebriated struggle. I remove the bottle from the box. I push down and rotate the childproof cap with the palm of my hand and remove it. I notice my nails need trimming. Ten crescents of dirt work to pull back the childproof seal.

      Improved taste promises the label on the bottle. I doubt the manufacturer anticipated someone drinking a full twelve ounces in one sitting when they were touting its palatability. My first swallow is a big one. I gag a little. The taste of so much cough syrup in my mouth is just as I imagined—stale maraschino cherries mixed with Listerine, only not as pleasant. The cough syrup is thick and warm on my throat.

      My second swallow is almost as big. I already feel a little drunk from the alcohol. It takes me three more pulls at the bottle to finish the entire twelve ounces. I think about raiding the medicine cabinet, but I’ve heard a cough syrup buzz takes about a half hour to kick in. That gives me time to think about her. Too much time. My heart races. My chest hurts.

      I stumble down the upstairs hallway. How long has it been? A half hour? An hour, maybe? I feel like I’m rolling along the side of a wall. Did I chase that last swallow of cough syrup with vermouth? My mouth has a dry sweetness to it. Yep, vermouth. Definitely vermouth. I’m in Dad’s closet now. I know where he keeps his gun.

      The gun is on the top shelf to the left, beneath a stack of sweaters. I reach under the sweaters, feel the cold steel of the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. I bring the gun down to eye level, look at myself in the mirror as I hold the revolver to my head.

      The gun isn’t loaded. It’s never loaded. Except for maybe once. That one time in Louisville when the basketball rolled into the log pile and a copperhead snake had coiled itself around the ball. Dad ran upstairs to his bedroom. It took him at least five minutes to find the bullets and load the gun. He came outside and blasted the snake—and the basketball—into oblivion.

      I’ve pulled the gun out and looked at myself in the mirror holding it easily a hundred times. I don’t even know where Dad keeps the bullets. I’m not angry. Just sad. Just thinking about what it would be like to pull the trigger for real. But not acting on it. I just want to be somewhere else.

      Mom wakes me up. My head is in a pool of saliva and bile on the kitchen table. “I’m fine, Mom.” At least that’s what I think I say. Judging by the look on Mom’s face, my diction is less than precise.

      Mom is no toastmaster herself. I can’t understand a word she’s saying. I giggle. “Whatever.”

      Mom leaves the room. Wait a second. Am I in a hospital? What the fuck? I thought I was in my kitchen. What happened to Dad’s gun? I’m confused.

      I hear voices outside the drawn curtain around my bed, bits and pieces of a conversation:

      “His pupils are still very dilated…”

      “He ingested a tremendous amount of alcohol…”

      “…no telling what it’s doing to his system.”

      “…stomach pumped.”

      “…stupid.”