“What the hell are you doing going through my room is a better question!” she replied, dropping her purse on the counter and walking further in to stand in front of him. She was in one of those micro mini skirts he hated her wearing, and a tank top that barely covered what needed to be covered. The boots that clung to her calves seemed to be the only part of her that was covered and somehow even that seemed provocative. “Suddenly you have the right to go through my things? Who gave you the right to search through my room?” She pushed his chest with both her hands.
“Don’t touch me, Bridget,” he warned, waving a finger in her face, “and I’ll go through whatever the hell I want to go through if it’s in my house! And I don’t care how pissed off you are! I want to know what the hell you’re doing with X!”
“It’s none of your business what I’m doing with it! You think I’m taking it? Is that it?”
“I don’t know, B, you tell me! Why else would it be in your room? Why else are you coming home at dawn after going out with Jenny?”
“You’re never going to trust me again, are you?” She lifted her hands up in defeat and turned her head to the side. “Oh my God you’re never going to trust me again!”
“Not when you’re hiding shit like this, no!”
“Why are you going through my room in the first place, Zach? Who gave you the right—”
“I went looking for the fuckin’ dry cleaner, Bridge! I thought you might have the receipt or something and found that,” he pointed to the baggie, “instead, okay? I wasn’t deliberately snooping, although in hindsight, maybe I should be! And you aren’t giving me an answer!”
“It’s from a party I went to!” she yelled. “I have the damn things because I didn’t take them! And I can’t believe you think I’m using again!” The pain slipped through her anger and she could feel her eyes starting to well up with tears. “I can’t wait to move the hell out of here.”
“B, I’m sorry—“ he started, his voice softening. He reached out to her, but she pulled back, stepping quickly away from him. “I’m sorry! What was I supposed to think finding them? Why didn’t you just flush it or something? Why’d you even take it?”
“Because I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, Zach! My God, do you have any idea how many times I’ve been handed a drink at a party? Not everyone knows I’ve been in rehab and I don’t need to broadcast it every time I walk in a room! I take what they offer and put the drink down somewhere else, or shove the damn pills in my pocket and get on with it.”
“But why are they still in your room, B?” he asked, calming his voice trying not to have the panic filter through. He forced himself to take deep breath and but kept his eyes keenly on her, trying to see something, anything, he shouldn’t be missing, quietly thinking ‘not again…please, God, not again…’ “Why keep the temptation so close?”
“I don’t think its temptation!”
He rubbed his hands over his face, his fingertips pressing into his temples for a moment. “That’s not what I’m asking,” he replied, his voice low and calm.
“I don’t have to stand here and be accused—“
“Why won’t you answer me, B?”
“Why won’t you trust me, Z?”
He leaned against the counter with a heavy sigh and pressed his palms together, crossing his thumbs. Lifting them to his mouth for a brief moment, he took another breath and pointed them at her. “Because you do things like this and scare the shit out of me,” he admitted plainly. “That’s why. I hate the lying, B. And right now, that’s exactly what this feel like. When you don’t answer me, it feels like a lie.”
“And when you badger me, I don’t want to tell you what’s happening because you’ve already made up your mind.”
“I have not! If I made up my mind, I wouldn’t have been waiting for you to come home to confront you. I wouldn’t be standing here wanting to talk to you about it. Do you really think Trevor’s going to be okay with you bringing drugs into his house when you move in there? You think he’s not going to call you on it like I do? I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on…what you need.”
“Oh, stop, you’re trying to figure out if anyone saw, and what kind of publicity its going to cause you if they have,” she scoffed angrily, folding her arms defiantly. “And when they ask you, you can say you’ve been the dutiful brother and discussed it with me so they don’t accuse you of not paying attention again.”
He pointed at her. “That’s crap and you know it – you know it!”
“God forbid there be bad publicity for Zachary Angel!” she continued, circling him and the island as she started towards her room. “Someone might think he did something wrong!”
“Bridget! That’s not what this is about!”
“I don’t have to answer to you, or anyone else!” she yelled from the hallway before slamming the bedroom door.
“The hell you don’t!” he called after her, but he couldn’t bring himself to follow her. He was too scared, and his mind was swimming in what he should do, and comparisons to what it was like last time.
When he walked in the room, her clothes were scattered across the floor, leaving a trail to where she slept in the bed. Her make-up was smudged under her eyes, staining the crisp white pillowcase twisted beneath her head. She jumped, scowling at him as the door slammed shut behind him, but she waved him off and dropped back down onto the mattress.
“What’re you doing?” he asked, walking to the bed and pulling the pillow out from under her. “We’re supposed to be on the bus half an hour ago.”
“Go ahead,” she mumbled. “I’ll catch a ride.”
“With who?” He hit the back of her head with the pillow. “Everyone is going to the next venue, Bridget. There isn’t anyone to ‘catch a ride’ with. What the hell is going on?”
“I overslept,” she moaned, waving a hand over her head as if to ward him off. “I’ll find a way.”
“Like hell! You’re freakin’ sixteen years old! What the hell is going on, B? Where’d you go last night?”
She lifted her head and squinted at him. “What do you mean? I didn’t go anywhere.”
“You’re a wreck. You didn’t get a wreck by sitting alone in your hotel room.” She moaned again as he went over to the window and pulled the curtains open, flooding the room with light. “What happened?”
“I have a headache, Zach. People do get headaches, you know.”
“Yeah? When did it start?”
“Last night. About 10:00. I was just hanging out in Jana’s room and it hit, so I came up here and went to bed.”
“Yeah?” he asked, studying her face. She did look pale, and he didn’t smell any lingering alcohol stench like he usually did on Tred when he was hung over from partying. “Did you take anything for it?”
“Whatever they had at the front desk, aspirin or some such thing. Now, can you give me a break? Please? It’s a headache, Zach.”
“So, it started about 10? You sure about that?”
She pulled another pillow over her head and moaned again. “Is it really that important, Zach? Yes—about 10.”
“Because Jana was with me last night. From about 8:30 on.” He pulled the pillow away to stare at her. “Want to try again?”
Had she just gotten better at lying at him? Is that what this was? How long had she been going to parties and been handed things? And what had she really done with them? What had he missed this time?
He knew Trevor didn’t go to parties like that anymore. Before rehab, he and Trevor were at every party Hollywood hosted. It wasn’t considered a party unless they showed up. Which is what confused Zach so when Trevor announced his alcoholism. How could they have both gone to those parties, doing God knows what, and he not be an alcoholic too? How could he could walk away, and Tred couldn’t stop? Why couldn’t his sister? How could he have thought that being exposed to all that wouldn’t have some kind of damage? He didn’t feel damaged by it, but somehow, it still managed to screw up his life by touching everyone he loved. His entire life became sobriety, although he wasn’t the one with the problem.
And on days like today, he resented having to be the grown up. He didn’t ask to be father, mother and brother to his sister. He didn’t really know what he was doing when he signed the papers becoming her legal guardian. All he knew was that his thirteen-year-old sister wasn’t going into foster care when he could more than provide for them. He’d managed just fine having a tutor for his schoolwork and being on the road. There were plenty of people to look out for her when he had to work. She had been on the road with him all along, anyway. Why would it suddenly become an issue just because their mother wasn’t supervising?
He just had no idea what she turned to when she closed her door at night, though. He figured she was watching TV, doing her schoolwork, sleeping, like he’d done when he was tutored on the road. He would go out with Trevor, hang with the rest of the band, watch TV in his room and his sister was silently getting drunk in the room right next to him. While he went on thinking nothing had changed, everything had. He wasn’t watching out for her. He wasn’t paying attention. He wasn’t offering any kind of guidance. She was finding it though, everywhere she shouldn’t have, in the bottom of a bottle, in a mixture of pills and weed—in someone’s bed. He wanted to vomit when he thought of that last act.
How many people knew what she was doing and never bothered to mention it to him? How many people, besides Trevor, had she slept with before he found out what she was doing? Coming off the road that last tour, she couldn’t handle the solitude, or the reality of living in one place for more than two weeks. She couldn’t hide the abuse as easily because suddenly, their surroundings weren’t changing constantly, and the chaos of traveling ended. He noticed the empty vodka and rum bottles. He noticed the phone calls she was making, and sneaking out of the house. He noticed she came home from her friends wasted, and stoned. He noticed it all, they fought about it, but still he didn’t think there was problem. Hadn’t he drank too much at a young age? Hadn’t he experimented with drugs on occasion?
When did it become a problem for her? When did she decide she needed it? Why wouldn’t he stop asking questions that had no answers?
He heard her door open and moments later she was in the doorway, tossing a slip of paper at him. “There’s your receipt!” She turned, her long hair flipping over her shoulders in a wave, and she went back to her room, door slamming behind her.
He picked the slip up on his way to her room, slowly, forcing every fiber in his body to be calm and rational. He tapped lightly, calling her name and opened the door. She had her back to him, standing in the middle of the room with her arms folded. “Can we pretend to be grown-ups?” he asked, but she didn’t move or respond. “Come on, B, talk to me.”
“Fuck off.”
“Would you have preferred I call Trevor and asked him to ask you?” She at least spun around to glare at him. “The fact that you don’t want Tred knowing kinda proves my point. If it was no big deal, you wouldn’t be scared of him finding out.”
“I don’t want you telling him anything because you’d blow it completely out of proportion! This whole thing is completely blown out of proportion!”
“Then why won’t you answer me, B?” He sat on the foot of her bed with another sigh, watching her seethe angrily. Stay calm. Just stay calm. “I’m just trying to do the right thing, okay? I’m trying to be here for you.”
“By snooping?”
“I told you…” he protested, opening his palm helplessly. “If I wanted to snoop, I’d have kept looking to see if there was anything more.”
“Oh, right, like I’m going to believe you didn’t?”
“I didn’t find anything more if I did, so what’s the big deal? Would you prefer to talk to your sponsor? Maybe he’ll know what to do better than I do. I’m just scared, B. This shit scares me. You know that. Have you been to a meeting lately?”
“Oh my God, Zach! Would you leave it alone already and get out of my room?”
He rested his arms down on his elbows and shrugged slightly. “I need an answer to one of my questions, Bridge.”
“What do you want me to say?” She looked expectantly at him, still defiant.
“The truth,” he answered, trying desperately to back down and keep a level head.
She scoffed and rolled her eyes, heading over to her closet and kicked her shoes off. “Like you’d believe that. I already answered your question and you want me to say ‘yeah, Zach, I’m using again’ because that’s what you believe. But I’m not. Regardless of how much I am dying to, I’m not. Now, can you get the hell out of my room?”
“Why do you want to?”
“Why is the sky blue?” She pointed to the door. “Out.”
He stood up, but didn’t take any steps. “I thought it was getting easier.”
“You know, I don’t have to stay here anymore, Zach.” She looked around her closet, trying desperately to avoid him anyway she could.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, just that. I don’t have to stay here and get accused of this crap. I can move in with Jenny until Tred’s place is ready.”
“Since when are you friends with Jenny?” He sat back down, petrified. “Is that why you’re going to those stupid ass parties again?”
“I go to those stupid ass parties because we live in LA and that’s the only stupid ass thing to do,” she answered, reaching behind to unzip her skirt. “So, if you don’t mind?” She waved her hand, motioning towards the door.
“I mind, Bridget. I don’t like this, any of it, at all. I don’t like finding drugs in your room, I certainly don’t like you hanging out with Jenny again. You’re not talking, your avoiding me which just sends red flags up in every direction. I want to know what the hell is going on because I’m not going to turn my head and pretend I don’t see it this time!”
“You didn’t see it last time, there was no pretending,” she corrected him snidely. “And trust me, Zach, if I wanted to, I could hide it again. So, can you just go?”
He knew it was pointless. She was going to be stubborn and merely taunt him if he stuck around anyway. He’d probably get more answers calling her sponsor and finding out what this meant now. Was this a step backwards? Did he really find something, or was he making more out of this than he should?
“She’s uh, seventeen,” he stammered, looking at the paramedics as they shifted her body onto the gurney. He wasn’t even really sure who he was talking to, just that there were sirens and red and blue flashing lights moving around the walls of his living room from the squad cars parked in front. The rest of the house was still basically in the dark except for the hall light and all the lights in her room and bathroom. But the living room was still dark, flashing blue, then red, then blue….
She was crying and curled into a ball, but the only thing he heard was her tears and the tiny sound of her voice stuck in the back of his head. Why’d you have to come home?
Where was the grown up? Where was the adult? He couldn’t handle this. This wasn’t something he could handle on his own. Clearly!
“Is she going to be alright?” he asked, looking past the officer to Bridget being put into the ambulance.
He jumped into the back of the ambulance and sat beside her. She still cried softly and he could only slip his hand into hers and smooth her hair back off her face gently. It wasn’t until she went into treatment in the ER that he realized his hand was covered in her blood. She must have smoothed her hair back after she cut her wrist. He stood just outside the waiting room in the hallway staring at his hand for what felt like hours.
Why’d you have to come home?
What would he have done if he didn’t?