It's a cool summer night. Late August 1991. I've been swimming in the pool for a couple of hours, dodging the swooping bats and mosqitos. I hear crickets chirp unseperate to the volume of my double decked boom box. I pull myself up onto the cement and I am startled by a giant June bug. I tiptoe over to a beach chair where my beer logoed towel is lying in a heap. I shake it off and then wrap it around myself, thinking about the next beer I'M going to drink.
Suspiciously, i walk indoors and head straight up to my room. I lock the door behind me and open my pin-up covered closet door. I dig through some boxes until i find an old t-shirt wrapped around a pint of Spearmint Snapps, hiding it from my mother or anyone else who might go snooping through my closet. I put the bottle between my towel and my body, and I head into the hall bathroom.
Once the door is securely locked, I run some water in the sink to cover any noise that the bottle might make as i open it. Once it is open, I gulp down the minty pint and feel it burn in my throat. Although it hurts and tastes like I am drinking Listereen, it comforts me in a way that nothing else in the world does.
When I finish the pint, i run hot water in the tub, rinse out the bottle and climb into a steaming hot shower. I oversoap myself to try to cover up the smell, and when I get out of the shower i brush my teeth severely.
Returning to my room, I keep the bottle hidden again. My mother is coming up the stairs as I pass them and she asked what I'm up to. "Nothing" I tell her calmly as I can, and add, "I'm just goona listen to some music and try to write." She looks at me with question in her eyes, but she never asks the question, so I slip safely into my room and lock the door behind again.
I open my sock drawer immidiately after locking the door and set the empty bottle into it where i hope it will go unnoticed until I can dispose of it later. I close the drawer and press the power button on my dusty black stereo. The radio is set to 107.3, and Liz Wild the Cream Cheese Bitch DJ is counting down the top nine at nine.
I throw a giant red Mickey Mouse shirt over my body, quietly open my bedroom window, and climb out onto my roof. From there I watch across the yard where I see my elderly neighbors inside their house, flipping through the channels on their TV. Further behind my house I can hear my teenaged neighbors throwing a summer kegger and their radio is blasting the same station as mine, creating an interesting stereo like sound.
I reach back into my room, for the little jewlery box where I keep 3 cigarettes lined up in a row. I take one and light it with a wooden match. With my other hand I reach in and grab my Swatch Twin Phone to dial a 900 chat number. I put the phone to my ear and listen to strangers talk to one another, looking up at the stars and enjoying one of the last great nights of the summer, before school starts back up. All that is left of the summer is a trip to Marshalls for back to school clothes and CVS for notebooks, pens and planners I never use. I know that the 8th grade is important academically, so I tell myself I'll try to quit drinking and do my homework. Maybe I'll even join a sports team. I look back up at the stars as I blow out the last drag off my stolen cigarette, and for one of the last times ever, I really believe that change is possible, and that will-power is real.