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The first time Dot gets drunk, like, actually drunk, she’s 13 outside a hospital. It’s shitty bourbon, and she picked it up when she went home to get her dad’s insurance card. The cop that drove her home and back didn’t notice, he waited outside while she gathered some of her dad’s things to take back to the hospital. While she was rooting through a cabinet looking for a water bottle, she found it stashed behind a pile of tupperware and grabbed it on impulse. Her dad was in the hospital, she reasoned. He had collapsed at work and he was all she had. She deserved a drink.
She waited until he fell asleep. The IV fluids that dripped into his arm dimming his pain as well as his consciousness until his eyes drifted shut. She waited until he was asleep, then she took her backpack and left the hospital and walked until she couldn’t see anyone and no one could see her. Then she dug into her bag until her fingers met the cool glass and before she even realized what she was doing, the bourbon was filling her mouth, hot and sharp and burning. She choked on the first swig, coughed it back up onto the pavement and heaved until the burning flavor left her tongue. Then she steeled herself and took another sip. And another. And another and another and another until her head felt fuzzy and her father’s cancer diagnosis felt like a bad dream instead of a burning hole in her heart.
When she stumbles back inside, the empty bottle discarded on the pavement, the orderly at the front desk barely spares her a glance. Dot makes her way back to the third floor, and winds her way through the identical hallways until she reaches her father’s room and collapsed in his bed. He groans slightly in his sleep and Dot is too drunk to care that she’s crushing his arm. All she can process is that the doctors said her dad has maybe 3 good years, and that she doesn’t want to lose him. She whimpers into his shoulder, the taste of alcohol still bitter on her tongue, and cries herself to sleep, muttering variations of “I’m sorry” and “please Daddy” until she can no longer keep her eyes open.
When she wakes up, the TV across from her dad’s bed is turned onto a news channel and her dad is rubbing her back. Her head didn’t throb like the older kids said, she didn’t even feel sick. All she felt was a combination of overwhelming sadness and relief, because her dad was dying, but he wasn’t dead yet. He was there, holding her and whispering his commentary on the news softly into her ear. He was still there.
…
The next time she got drunk was 3 days later, when her dad quit his job. They weren’t doing well before, and Dot knew enough to understand that no income meant nothing good. Of course her dad told her that everything would be fine, but Dot wasn’t stupid, no matter what her teachers said. She knew that cancer treatments cost money, and she knew that she and her dad didn’t have money to spare. His job was keeping them afloat, and now he didn’t have one. What he did have was months of upcoming chemo and medicine and hospital visits.
That night, she dug into her piggy bank and walked to the nearest liquor store and bought the cheapest bottle she could find. The teen behind the counter was too high and too tired to care that she was almost 10 years too young for the vodka clasped tightly in her left hand, and sold it to her anyway. She drank it while walking home, and tried to brainstorm a way to keep her dad and her afloat. She couldn’t come up with anything, instead letting the liquor overtake her mind until all she could remember was that survivor was on tonight and it was the first Wednesday in years that the couch had been empty.
…
After that, Dot became well acquainted with the feeling of floating. Nights spent stressing over essays and tests turned into nights spent cleaning her dad’s vomit off the floor and then getting drunk as she tried to forget his pale face, the tears dancing in his eyes and the smell of puke and blood. The alcohol made it easier. It made everything fade to the background and it made her body feel feather-light, a beautiful contrast from the lead that always sat in the pit of her stomach.
Dot just drank and drank and drank. She drank after her dad’s scans inevitably came back worse, she drank after getting her first F, she drank just to drink.
One night, the first time she had to clean her father’s piss off the sheets, Dot got too drunk. When she woke up in the ER, her throat sore and her head woozy, her dad holding her hand beside her bed, she cried. She just cried, she cried and her sobs mixed with her dad’s sobs until his sobs turned into coughs and she had to pat his back until he could breathe again. It was then that Dot realized she needed a new vice. Alcohol wasn’t going to cut it if she ended up in the emergency room again. ER visits cost money they didn’t have, and so Dot tried something new.
…
Cigarettes were the cruelest form of irony. The man behind her in line at the gas station reproached her for buying ‘cancer sticks’. She didn’t say anything. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Her first drag, like her first sip, burned like hell. Her throat was still raw from having her stomach pumped, and the warm smoke hit her like a truck. This time, though, she was prepared. She didn’t panic like she had with the bourbon. Dot held the smoke in her mouth as long as she would have held a normal breath, then exhaled slowly, watching the smoke float away, dancing in the air like breath on a cold day.
Cigarettes worked. The buzz was nice enough that Dot didn’t feel all the emotions that came with her father dying. They were easier to sneak into school, too, and easier to buy. The fact that they were carcinogenic never left her mind, but Dot knew that cancer would take her father long before it took her, and that made the smoking ok. She just needed to stick around long enough to take care of her Dad. He was the one that really mattered. After he was gone, Dot reasoned, no one would care what happened to her. Why should she?
…
Even though Dot knew that her father’s death was nearing, nothing could have prepared her for the way it would feel. Dot’s world was torn to shreds. His bed lay abandoned in the living room, still messed up from the coroners coming to take him- no to take his body, he was gone- away. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing his tear stained face staring up at her, asking her to let him die. No music could drown out the sound of his breaths rattling alongside ‘Oh Holy Night’ for the last time. Dot couldn’t forget, as hard as she tried. As much as she knew that she had things to do, all Dot could do was sit and pray to forget.
After her trip to the ER years ago, Dot had vowed not to touch alcohol again. It was too dangerous, and she couldn’t risk it. The night her father was placed into the ground, Dot walked to the same liquor store she did all those years ago, and bought two bottles.
Neither of the bottles were anywhere close to full the next morning when Dot woke up, her head throbbing just like how it throbbed when she woke up in the ER. Except this time, there was no one there to hold her hand. No one cried along with her while she sobbed, and it truly sunk in. There was no one left in the world who cared about her. Dot was truly on her own.
The remaining liquor in the bottles didn’t stay there for long.
…
The plane going down felt right. Of course it was terrifying, but a part of Dot was relieved that she was right. Nothing this good could happen to her. Maybe she was the reason the plane went down. Her dad’s death, an impending plane crash, there was only one common denominator: Dot. Dot almost wanted to apologize to the other girls on the plane. It wasn’t fair for them to die because of her. Dot had let one too many people die in her life. She didn’t want to feel responsible for anymore. Her last comfort was a cigarette, stashed in her pocket along with a lighter. She figured that a little smoke wouldn’t hurt anything.
Though nothing was alright, the cigarette felt familiar. The burning in her throat, the bitter scent, the slow release of air, all of it made her last moments feel alright. She closed her eyes tight, imagined that she was blowing bubbles with her dad in their backyard instead of exhaling possibly her last breath. When the world went dark, she was smiling slightly. The sun on her skin felt so real.
…
Though Dot was glad to find the suitcase and the Diet Cokes, she was even happier to find the tiny bottles of fireball littering the shore. If there was anything Dot needed to get through a real-life Survivor episode with a bunch of teenage girls, it was a drink. Out of the bottles she found, she stashed about half of them in some tall grass away from where everyone was gathered, thinking that they might need them later, and she distributed the other half among the group. She didn’t know any of these girls very well, but Dot would bet good money that they all needed to dim the harsh reality of the situation they were facing, and 9 tiny bottles of Fireball Whiskey seemed as good a way as any.
It did help that night, to create a sense of normalcy. For a moment, they weren’t stranded. For a moment, they hadn’t just buried Jeanette. For a moment, they were 8 teenage girls, playing Never Have I Ever, and things were normal.
…
Things were far from normal. They had been on the island for 16 days, and they were going home. It was the best kind of abnormal. It was the kind of abnormal that meant everything was going to be ok again, and most of them leaned into it. Jeanette’s bag had proved a veritable treasure trove of substances, and everyone agreed that it seemed fitting to indulge. After all, things were probably going to be taken as evidence, and who were they to let some good edibles go to waste?
It was incredible. For all her forays into substances, Dot had never gotten her hands on weed. It was the most delightful thing she had ever experienced. Simultaneously she was a kid, playing in the creek with her dad and some neighborhood boys, and an adult, her trauma long forgotten, frolicing on the beach with her best friends. Nothing mattered except the cool waves against her calves, the steady weight of Rachel on her shoulders, and the laughter coming from her friends. Finally, finally, Dot was free.
It didn’t last long though.
She found Shelby hidden away from the group, sitting by an outcropping of rocks staring down a bottle of vodka. Dot couldn’t tell exactly what was going on with her, but she didn’t need to know the specifics to see how much pain Shelby was in. Dot tried her best to comfort Shelby, to no avail. A part of her wanted to rip the bottle from Shelby’s hands and guide her back to the fire, hold her and tell her that it was ok to cry. Another part of Dot was done being a caretaker. That part of Dot knew the pain, knew the allure of not thinking, knew how good it would feel to just drift away. She let Shelby drift away. After what all of them had gone through, Shelby deserved release as much as anyone.
…
It nearly killed Dot to pour what was left of the vodka onto what remained of Rachel’s arm. Logically, she knew that her mangled flesh needed to be sterilized so that she didn’t die from infection, but Dot wanted that last drink. Dot needed that last drink.
Still, she let the last of the vodka spill from the bottle and mix with Rachel’s blood (oh god there was so much blood. Even when she butchered the goat, Dot didn’t think she had ever seen more blood. Maybe it was just that it was one of her best friend’s blood, but Dot thought that the amount of blood spilling onto the sand was unrealistic. There was never this much blood on TV.) and pool on the sand.
She wanted the drink even more when Toni handed her the axe.
The sound that the axe made when it hit Rachel’s bone was sickening. A harsh crack, like a gunshot. The only reason Dot didn’t run was the fact that Rachel was already unconscious. She can’t feel it, Dot told herself. This is to save her life. Still, when Rachel’s arm was clean and bandaged and her wound sewn shut, Dot stumbled far away from camp, into the woods, and vomited. She didn’t care that it could kill her, wasting all that precious goat. All she felt was sick.
She could’ve cried when she remembered the 8 bottles of Fireball she had left in the tall grass that first night. When she finally found them again, she unscrewed 2 and drank them before she had a chance to register what she was doing. She drank the next 2 in a similar haze, and sat on the beach, nursing one more until the sun went down and she was cold. She left the remaining three there in case of emergency and stumbled back to camp, where only Fatin lay awake. She had Rachel’s head in her lap, gently smoothing the hair back from her sweaty brow. When she saw Dot stumble back to camp, she wiped her eyes hastily and stood up, careful not to jostle Rachel’s head too much. Silently, Fatin walked up to Dot.
“You bitch!” She whisper-shouted. “I was worried sick. Where the fuck were you?” Her voice never raised above a whisper, but Dot flinched away anyways. When Dot failed to answer, Fatin shoved her lightly with both hands. Though she barely touched her, Dot fell flat on her ass. She didn’t move to get up. Dot just sat there, and stared at Fatin. “Huh? Where were you?”
Dot burst into tears. It felt unfamiliar, crying like that. When she saw the look of shame and realization cross Fatin’s face, Dot only began to cry harder. Quickly, Fatin knelt to her level and wrapped Dot in her arms.
“Shh, shh, it’s ok. I’m sorry Dot, I’m sorry. Shh, it’s ok, let it out.” Fatin continued to whisper gentle, placating phrases into Dot’s ear as she rocked her back and forth, just like she had done with Leah. When Dot continued to cry, Fatin started to hum. A simple melody, one that Dot had heard a thousand times and never before, that softened the sharp edges of Dot’s world. Fatin adjusted so Dot’s head was in her lap, and carefully carded her fingers through Dot’s hair. The gentle humming and the nimble fingers dancing across her scalp calmed Dot, and eventually she found herself drifting off to sleep, floating pleasantly once again.
When she woke up, her head was pounding and she felt like she had been hit by a semi-truck. This time, though, instead of waking up alone, her head was still pillowed in Fatin’s lap. When Fatin felt Dot stir, she let out a small huff, and Dot could practically see the smug grin on Fatin’s face. And though Dot knew that these next few days or weeks or months- however long they all survived- were going to suck, she knew that she wouldn’t be facing them alone.
“So what’d you get that drunk off of? Do you have a secret stash you aren’t telling us about?”
Dot groaned. Fatin was never going to let this go.