The Morning After

In Homeroom

Ted is flabbergasted.

You know this because he came into your room this morning and woke you up, saying, “Ducky, I am flabbergasted.”

You told him you’d be full of flabbergast too if your little brother had totally cleaned the house out of the goodness of his heart, without asking for so much as a dime.

Then he asked where his college jersey was, and why some of your socks ended up in his drawer, and whether or not you threw away his intro biology notes that were probably lying on the living room floor, etc., etc., and soon you felt like you’d done something terribly wrong.

But you didn’t. You were actually able to open the fridge without worrying that something living would crawl out, and you could walk through the house to the front door without tripping over anything. THAT’S progress.

But that was nothing compared to what happened at school, when you saw Bud and Marco and Travis and a couple of other goons standing at the door in their familiar places.

Bud said hi.

Just HI.

No other singsongy voices or snickers or comments about your clothes or imitations of the way you walk—nothing.

So you said hi back.

And you strolled into school feeling about seven feet tall.

You could get used to this.

Today, friend of the Cro Mags. Tomorrow, who knows? Cigarettes, flannel shirts, and muttering with lots of one-syllable words.

Ha.

Ducky, you are SUCH a snob.

Anyway, at your locker, Jay was his usual self. Talking so fast you could barely understand him. He went on and on about Saturday, insisting it’ll be fun, just hanging out, no big deal, etc. Then he asked a question you REALLY didn’t expect.

Did you think ALEX wanted to come?

Alex? To a place where Cro Mags are invited? (To ANY party, for that matter?)

You burst out laughing. You told Jay he was nuts. You reminded him he hates Alex. You reminded him that all the Cro Mags hate Alex.

But Jay was totally serious. He said he’s been getting on the Cro Mags’ cases about the insults and comments. He’s convinced them that Alex and you are good guys, and Bud has backed him up. So now they’ve promised to have open minds.

Then Jay told you that he’s been missing the old days lately. Whenever he sees Alex and you hanging out, it brings back the happy times you three spent together. “Maybe Alex has gone slacker on us, but hey, he’s the same guy inside, right?” Jay said. “Once a friend, always a friend, that’s what I say.”

You couldn’t argue with that. So you said you’d ask Alex if he was interested.

You’ll catch him at lunch.

You KNOW that he’s going to say no. But it’s worth a try.

Sometimes—

Rarely, but Sometimes—

You’re Not as Smart as You Think

You did tell Alex about Jay’s gathering.

He didn’t believe you.

Well, he didn’t believe JAY. He thought the invitation was a trick. But you told him you were CONVINCED that Jay was just being friendly, just trying to bring back the old times, and why not give it a try.

And then Alex—Alex the humor-challenged—told a JOKE.

He said that if Jay was trying to bring back the old times, maybe we should show up with our Darth Vader masks and plastic lightsabers, the way we used to when we were seven.

Not a great joke, but a try. A good try. And it did make you laugh, and you reminded him about the time we all went trick-or-treating and Jay’s bag grew much bigger than ours and we didn’t know why until we figured out that he was stealing our candy while we weren’t looking, and Alex remembered some other crazy thing, and you were both laughing so hard that you almost forgot to ask him again about the “get-together.”

But you did.

And he said yes.

And somehow you avoided fainting from shock.

Mirror, Mirror

On the Wall,

Who Are You Trying to Kid?

Ducky, you are nuts.

Take off the Penn State football jersey. You don’t even know where Penn State is. Well, Pennsylvania, but that’s not the point. Put it back where it belongs, in the closet with all the rest of the Christmas gifts from Uncle Chad, like the football and the metal bat and the ʼ76ers autographed team poster.

YOU ARE NOT A CRO MAG.

YOU WILL NEVER BE A CRO MAG.

DON’T EVEN TRY TO LOOK LIKE ONE.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

In Which Ducky

Takes Hold of His Senses

And Prepares to Leave

I am nervous.

I am scared.

I am very, very, VERY glad that Alex is coming to this party.

I just called. He’s ready and waiting for me to pick him up.

Here goes.

It’ll be fine.

Lots of fun.

And if things get bad, we can always leave.

Late

Maybe Too Late

I don’t know what to do—I’m home—alone—no, not alone—Alex is here too—but I might as well be alone because

What? What? My mind is jumping around and I’m forgetting things and I feel like I’m in shock or something, and it’s so late I should be fast asleep but I can’t sleep because I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING and besides, if I DO sleep what’ll happen to Alex? And I WISH MOM AND DAD WERE HERE or at least Ted, Ted might know what to do, but it’s so late now and I’m worried about HIM too, what if he’s lying in the street somewhere and he has no I.D. and

Stop.

Get it together.

Alex is ASLEEP. BREATHING. Muttering to himself.

Let him be. Decide what to do AFTER he wakes up.

Think it over. Start from the top. You have time. Alex isn’t going anywhere.

Okay.

The top.

7:30. This evening.

You pick up Alex. He’s back to his old self. Not his OLD old self, as in happy Alex of long ago, but his new old self, as in quiet and gloomy. And you don’t know what has caused this to happen, so you make the best of it, joking around and singing to the tape of Maggie’s rock group, Vanish, and have you ever heard them and yada yada yada you’re talking so much you sound like Jay, and Alex is just sitting there looking like something out of a wax museum.

Finally he warms up a little and asks if you “brought anything” to Jay’s, and you figure he means a GIFT or something, so you ask if it’s Jay’s birthday and he cracks up, REALLY laughs, as if you’ve just made a joke, and you’re so relieved he’s coming out of his bad mood that you laugh along with him.

So we get to Euclid Ave. and Jay’s house. You shut off the ignition and look at Alex, and he’s smiling and suddenly you remember what we always used to say to each other when we were kids—“May the force be with you”—and when you say it, he laughs again.

TWO laughs in one day. You high-five, leave the car, head for the party. The music is so loud, the LAWN is vibrating.

Jay greets you at the door with a holler that sounds like the call of a wild boar—not that you KNOW that sound, but that’s the general idea—and he practically pushes you and Alex inside, shouting all his “Duck-Duckman-Duckometer” variations and then slapping Alex on the back and saying how HAPPY he is that they’re BUDS again JUST LIKE THE OLD DAYS, and Alex is smiling away now, but you’re distracted because somebody’s shoving a bottle of beer at you, and you take it only because you don’t want it to drop onto the Adamses’ living room rug, which feels a little moist and squishy already.

And that’s when you notice that the house—the neat Adams house that’s always so perfect-looking, so full of expensive stuff that Mr. and Mrs. Adams loved to show off to Mom and Dad way back when you used to visit, so nice that you always felt awkward just walking in there, like you might bump into the cabinet full of delicate crystal or get mud prints on the Persian rugs—the house is SWARMING. Guys all over the place, shouting and laughing and smoking and drinking beer and eating chips and candy and pretzels, and two guys are leaning against the china cabinet and it’s shaking, and you KNOW the Adamses would be having a coronary if they could somehow see what was going on.

And then, just like that, Alex is gone. He’s not by the door, where you last saw him, but it’s not easy to actually see anybody specifically, because it’s pretty dark and smoky in the living room and everyone’s moving around, jumping to the music—not exactly dancing, because no girls are there—and as you’re scanning the place you notice that Marco is standing in the corner, staring right at you.

You sort of smile, sort of nod, and he comes walking toward you, puffing away on a cigarette, and saying, “Yo, Bambi, what are you drinking?” And you freeze up.

THIS is the new Cro Mag attitude?

THIS is the openmindedness?

Then it’s as if Marco’s reading your mind, because he starts laughing and says, “Yo, guy, just a joke, all right?”—and as he walks toward you, he is weaving, as if the house were a ship on stormy seas.

You try to laugh along. You watch Marco flick his cigarette ashes into a coffee cup at the edge of the piano top—only it’s NOT a normal coffee cup, because you remember the collection it came from, the BONE CHINA collection that Mr. and Mrs. Adams used to brag about. And you notice that this expensive bone china cup is full of a liquid that is definitely NOT coffee, definitely STRONGER than coffee—and you realize that Jay will be in the DOGHOUSE if the cup breaks. So you pick it up, ashes and all, in front of Marco, and he laughs and says, “Oh, sorry to mess up your drink, har har!” So you pretend to laugh too, and you head toward the kitchen.

On the way, you pass by guys you don’t know very well, guys you don’t WANT to know, and a couple of guys you’ve never seen before.

Quickly you wash out the cup, dry it, and put it back in the china closet. And from behind you, someone reaches in and grabs a delicate little glass thimble from Mrs. Adams’s collection, and she ALWAYS used to talk about how valuable THAT is too, so you grab it back, and you realize you’ve just taken something from Mad Moose Machover.

You have never been face-to-face with Mad Moose. You have never wanted to be. And now that you are, you see your life pass before your eyes.

He accuses you of stealing his “shot glass.” You explain, “That’s Mrs. Adams’s thimble,” and immediately you cringe because the words sound so dorky, and sure enough, Mad Moose thunders, “SO WHAT, SWEETHEART?” and repeats his clever joke to everyone around him, and now you’re standing there, with everyone laughing at you, and it’s even WORSE THAN SCHOOL because there’s no place to run to, and you realize that Jay is a total rotten betraying creep for inviting you here, and that you NEVER should have even THOUGHT of coming, and you look around again for Alex so you can SPLIT.

And then, out of nowhere, Jay appears. He puts his arm around you and tells Mad Moose, “If you’re going to insult my friend, you’re out of here”—and Bud’s with him too, backing him up.

My heroes.

Anyway, Mad Moose mumbles something and walks away. You’re happy to escape with your life.

Meanwhile, you’re looking around for Alex again and he’s NOWHERE, and Jay is ANNOUNCING stuff to Bud—ol’ Duckmeister and I were like bros, we did EVERYTHING together, like the time we broke the basement window yada yada yada…

And then, like a shot, Jay is off chasing Sam, who is heading out the back door with a large, expensive-looking liquor bottle.

You and Bud follow. The coolness of the night air feels great. The quietness does too, except that Jay’s over by the garage, yelling at Sam for stealing his dad’s scotch.

Another group of guys is sitting on the blacktop below the basketball hoop—and you notice that THEY have bottles too. And Jay starts yelling at them, but they’re saying, hey, take it easy, we BROUGHT these, and it’s only BEER, and besides, we’re not in your house, are we?

That’s when you spot Alex again. He’s alone, lurking in the shadows near the house.

You call his name, but he just walks inside without answering you.

You run in after him. You search the house. He’s nowhere. Vanished.

You duck out the front. You see someone far down the street, walking away. You can’t tell for sure that it’s Alex, but you guess it is. You figure he’s doing the smart thing, leaving.

Which YOU should do too, but you can’t, because your car is wedged in by a double-parked Jeep Cherokee.

So you go inside to find out whose car it is, but you’re too chicken to ask around, so you end up watching a horror movie on the VCR in the den, which only makes you tired and bored and wastes an hour and a half.

In retrospect, THIS was your big mistake.

After the movie you walk out of the den, and the first thing you see is that the living room is no longer a living room. It’s a mosh pit. Guys are ramming into each other, hollering. Someone has moved the furniture off to the sides, but not the stuff ON it. So you run around the room, closing the piano top, putting Mrs. Adams’s Steuben glass figurines in safer places—because SOMEONE’S GOING TO HAVE TO ANSWER FOR THIS.

Then you notice the liquor cabinet. It’s open. Guys are pouring drinks, and Jay is nowhere in sight.

But Alex is. He’s slumped in an armchair, a bottle in his hand, just staring at everyone with this weird smile.

You run over to him. You kneel down and talk. You ask if he’s okay. He keeps saying, fine, fine, don’t worry, everything’s great. But he’s slurring his words, and his eyes are red, and he seems to be in a whole other world.

And then someone JACKS UP THE MUSIC. You’re right near the speakers, and you feel like someone is punching you in the ear.

You jump away. You run to turn it down.

And there’s Jay, standing by the stereo, a beer in hand, SINGING ALONG!

You turn the volume down, and everyone starts screaming at you. You try to explain to Jay that Alex is in bad shape and you need to talk to him—but Jay doesn’t even listen. He just says, “Lighten up, Duckman,” and jacks the volume back up.

Louder.

Calmly you turn it back down, to medium-loud.

You are standing toe to toe with Jay now. In each other’s faces. You smell the alcohol on his breath. He looks furious. You know he’s NOT REALLY LIKE THIS. Deep inside, he’s not an obnoxious Cro Mag. He’s just a little drunk. But you’re also losing patience. You suggest in a firm voice that maybe HE’S lightened up a little TOO MUCH.

Mistake. Jay slams his drink down on the stereo cabinet. He starts SPEWING. Loud. So everybody can hear: “That’s it, Ducky, mess up my party! Make EVERYBODY mad! You can’t change, can you? I think of ways to HELP you, I fix you up with BABES, I tell all these guys what a DUDE you are, I invite you to my party, I STICK UP FOR YOU against Mad Moose, who could probably kill me—and what do YOU do? What kind of friend are YOU? THIS is how you thank me?”

You try to speak. You try to calm him down. Fat chance.

Jay is practically spitting in your face: “I give you all these chances to be a NORMAL GUY, and what do you do? Act like a WIMP. Maybe that’s the way you ARE, huh? Maybe there’s a REASON you can’t meet girls! Maybe I’m wasting my breath and all these guys are RIGHT about you—”

That does it. You see stars. You want to grab his bottle and hit him over the head.

You raise your fists.

Come on, Jay says.

Fight! Yells the pack behind you.

You almost do it. You almost jump on him.

But you don’t. You can’t. Your eyes are filling with tears.

So you do the only thing you CAN do.

You LEAVE.

You don’t care if the Jeep is still blocking your car. You’ll drive onto the sidewalk if you have to.

Jay doesn’t try to hold you back. As you walk through the living room, the volume shoots back up to ear-splitting.

You expect to see Alex still in the same chair, but he’s not.

Part of you wants to go without him, but that wouldn’t be right, so you go outside and walk around the house, looking. Then in through the back door again for a quick check inside, but you don’t see him at all and you hate being here and you are LOSING PATIENCE with the amazing disappearing friend, so you decide to check upstairs and if he’s not there, tough, you are GONE.

And that is where you finally see him. At the bathroom door. Struggling to turn the knob. In one hand he is holding the bottle of gin. It is almost empty.

You ask: Did you drink ALL of that?

Alex spins around, like you shocked him. He mutters something about having to go to the bathroom.

You can barely understand him. It’s only been a few minutes since you last spoke to him, but he seems drunker.

You reach for the knob. It’s a little tight, but you can turn it.

As you open the door, you explain that after he’s done, you are driving him home.

He says nothing, goes inside, and slams the door behind him.

You listen for retching noises, but all you hear is running water. You sink to the carpet outside the door. No one else is upstairs. Now that you’re alone, now that you can THINK and not feel like people are STARING at you and wondering how you could have been invited, you realize how tightly you are wound up. You want to cry, but you CANNOT give Jay the satisfaction of finding you in tears. You SHOULDN’T be here anyway, and you WOULDN’T be here if it weren’t for Alex, if he weren’t in such bad shape.

And you start to beat yourself up, because you know that YOU’RE the reason Alex is so drunk. If YOU hadn’t insisted on taking him to the party, if YOU hadn’t left him right at the beginning, if YOU hadn’t gone off and watched a stupid grade-Z movie—if you hadn’t NEGLECTED your friend WHO WAS DEPRESSED TO BEGIN WITH—none of this would have happened.

So you sit there, grinding your teeth, waiting and waiting as the water runs inside.

And then you notice something.

The running water is not the sound of a SINK.

It’s louder. It’s a SHOWER.

You knock. Everything okay? You ask.

Alex says yeah, fine.

So you sit back and wait.

The shower lasts a long time. Too long. In Alex’s state, you realize he’s liable to fall asleep standing up. And if he falls on the tiles, he could break a bone, hit his head…

You knock again.

No answer.

You call his name.

You yell his name.

Nothing.

You turn the doorknob.

It’s locked.

Now you’re panicked. You bang on the door with your fist. You push with your shoulder, but the door won’t budge.

You need help. You need a key.

The last person IN THE WORLD you want to talk to is Jay, but you have to. You have no choice.

You race downstairs. Jay is in the kitchen, raiding his own refrigerator.

You grab him by the arm and tell him what happened.

For a moment a strange expression plays across his face, like he doesn’t know what to do, yell at you, apologize, what?

But he catches on. He runs upstairs, and you follow close behind, asking WHERE HE KEEPS THE KEY.

WHAT KEY? He asks. WHO EVER KNOWS WHERE THE BATHROOM KEY IS?

You get to the bathroom, and now you see a stain seeping under the door and onto the hallway carpet, growing in a dark semicircle.

Jay yells—OPEN THE DOOR, YOU’RE FLOODING THE BATHROOM—and bangs hard, but still all you can hear is the running water, splashing onto the floor tiles inside.

Together the two of you charge the door. Your shoulders hit with a loud thud.

You step back and try again.

The third time, the door cracks. The wood splits down the middle.

You kneel to charge again, but Jay stops you. He says if we break the door, we’ll hurt ourselves. Instead, he steps back and gives the door a karate kick.

His shoe goes right through. So does half his leg. He yells in pain, and you kick like crazy, and soon a big chunk of the door gives way, and Jay pulls his leg out and you’re able to reach in and turn the knob from the inside.

You push the door open and run in.

The air is thick with steam. The room smells faintly of alcohol. Alex’s bottle is on the floor, floating in the bathwater that has spilled over the side of the tub.

The shower curtain is drawn shut.

You splash through the water and pull the curtain aside.

Alex is sprawled out in the tub, the water almost covering his face. He is fully clothed.

And unconscious.

You turn off the water. Jay is reaching into the water, hooking his arms under Alex’s shoulders. You grab Alex’s feet, and the two of you pull him out.

Alex is groaning now, moving his head from side to side. You manage to set him on the closed toilet, and he’s blinking and looking from you to Jay. “What are you doing?” he asks.

Which seems like the strangest question he can ask in this situation, so you say the only thing you can: “What are you doing?”

Jay is kneeling beside him, his arm still tightly around Alex’s shoulder. You have NEVER seen the expression that’s on Jay’s face. He looks wild-eyed, totally freaked out.

Jay’s voice is pitched about an octave higher than normal. What are you, STUPID? he yells. Who said you could DO this? Can’t you wait until you’re HOME?

Alex mumbles something about getting drunk and wanting to take a shower to sober up—but Jay keeps scolding him, telling him AT LEAST he could have left the DRAIN open like a NORMAL person—and despite this, Jay is wiping tears from his cheeks. Or maybe it’s not tears. Maybe it’s the humidity in the room.

You’re a basket case yourself. You’re in total shock. All you want to do is get Alex out of here.

You and Jay stand him up. Alex can barely walk, so you stand on either side of him and prop him up.

Slowly, carefully, you make your way to the landing and down the stairs. Alex is dripping water, and it’s hard to hold onto him, but you manage to do it, across the living room and out the front door.

All around you, guys are yelling and cheering. “Way to go, ALEX!” shouts one. “First casualty of the night!” shouts another.

They have no clue. They think this is FUN.

You and Jay drag Alex across the lawn to your car. The double-parked Jeep, fortunately, is gone.

You dump Alex in the backseat. He tries to say something but immediately keels over and closes his eyes.

Jay mutters a few choice angry words, the nicest of which is jerk. But as you climb in and start the car, he says, “Take care of him. And call me, okay?”

You nod and drive off.

Your hands are a little shaky. Your shoes are wet and slippery on the accelerator. You have to concentrate like crazy just to drive, and you go REALLY slowly.

Your mind is racing. Where do you take him now—home? Out for a cup of coffee? Isn’t coffee supposed to be good for drunkenness? Can you walk into a restaurant soaking wet?

You can’t decide. You drive around the block. Then you drive in the direction of Las Palmas. You follow the edge of the park, just cruising, thinking.

And soon you hear sniffling from the backseat. You figure Alex is getting a cold, but that’s not it.

He’s crying.

You realize you are too. You ask if he’s okay.

He says he’s sorry for getting your car wet.

You tell him that’s okay, the seats are vinyl, and worse has happened to them.

You look at him through the rearview mirror, but he’s looking away. He’s sobbing now, apologizing for being drunk and for using the shower. He keeps insisting that he only wanted to sober up, that’s all—saying it over and over, as if you wouldn’t believe him.

You keep reassuring him and soon you both fall silent. The cars whiz by outside, and you hear someone’s car stereo booming away, and it all feels very eerie and uncomfortable, the two of you driving aimlessly, and you can’t help feeling that Alex wants to say something but he’s not saying it.

You ask him if he wants to go home, but he says no. So you decide to take him to your house.

By the time you arrive, Alex’s face is bone-white. That’s when he gets sick, in the flower bed by the side of the house.

As you lead him into the house, he is moaning, stumbling, making these dry clicking noises with his throat. You sit him down on the living room sofa and place an empty wastebasket nearby, just in case. Then you fetch some clothing from upstairs.

As he changes, he apologizes again and again—I shouldn’t have done it, I didn’t know what I was doing, I was drunk, I didn’t mean it—and you calm him down, shushing him, saying don’t worry, no one at the party even noticed, it’s only water, just try to sleep, etc.

The clock chimes II and you realize Mrs. Snyder must be freaking out. You mention this to Alex and he says he doesn’t want to go home, so you offer him a place to stay for the night if he contacts his mom and lets her know.

You bring in your cordless phone. He calls her and she agrees, but you notice that while he’s talking to her, his voice is quivering—and after he hangs up, he starts sobbing. WAILING. Like a little boy.

Don’t EVER tell anybody what happened tonight, he says. Promise me, Ducky. It has to be a secret. It doesn’t go past you and me. And tell that to Jay too.

Sure, sure, I say.

Scout’s honor?

Scout’s honor.

And then he looks at you with these wet, wet eyes, and tells you that YOU’RE the only person he can talk to about this stuff. YOU’RE the only person he can trust. You and Dr. Welsch—you two are like EXTENSIONS of himself, he says.

You didn’t realize you MEANT that much, so now all of the things you’ve done—sitting with him at lunch when no one else would, stopping to talk to him at the bridge in Las Palmas, sticking with him through this whole horrible episode—all of it seems worth it, in some strange way.

He’s lying on the sofa now, his voice slurring and fading, and he’s complaining about a headache, so you go get some aspirin, and by the time you’re back, he’s fast asleep.

So you sit, watching. Listening to him breathe. Trying to figure out WHAT ON EARTH JUST HAPPENED.

You have had some weird nights in your life. Driving the girls home when the upperclassmen trashed Ms. Krueger’s house and framed the 8th-graders. Tracking down Sunny on Venice Beach the night she ran away from home.

This is weirder somehow.

You don’t know why, it just is.

So you sit and write.

And here you are, still at it.

Scared and exhausted. Worried.

Why did he DO that? Why did he get so drunk? Alex doesn’t drink. And WHY would he TAKE A SHOWER—with his clothes on—with the drain closed?

He was in a hurry? He was too drunk to know what he was doing? He flipped the drain switch by accident?

WEIRD.

TOO weird.

Have to stop thinking about this.

Have to stop WRITING.

Fatigued.

Need sleep.

Good n