The Choices We Make
Kristine Hampton
I Chose Three Moments
There are moments in your life when you make a bad decision, when you mess up.
Sometimes the mistake is small; forgetting an assignment or sleeping through an appointment.
Sometimes the mistake is a bit bigger; overlooking an anniversary or accidentally sharing an
important secret. Sometimes the mistake is catastrophic; a moment where you hang in the
balance and you make the wrong choice.
Small Mistakes are Just Funny Stories
No one likes to pee in front of other people. I believe it’s driven by the fear of not
knowing if you pee correctly. People don’t really teach you how to pee; you’re just given a potty
trainer and set loose on it. So when that inevitable day comes that you have a broken leg, no
crutches and need to pee, you will stay silent, unwilling to ask for help. That day came for me
when I was six years old.
Pain. All I felt was pain. They launched me into the air again, the trampoline throwing
my body up one last time only for me to scream out. Stop, please stop. They stopped. I laid on
the trampoline. I cried.
The first night was torture. My father told me it was a sprain, it would heal in a few days.
He carried me home and I was put to bed in my parents’ room. I did not sleep. I cried. I wailed. I
screeched. No one slept that night. By morning they knew it had to be more than a sprain.
My father was at work. My mother was taking care of my siblings. I needed to pee. My
voice was hoarse from crying the night before; my call for help went nowhere. I still needed to
pee. I pulled my body to the edge of the daybed and gently laid my hurt leg on the ground. I was
crying. I threw my body off the bed to meet my leg on the floor. I was sobbing. I began to pull
myself forward using only my arms; I was a Navy Seal at the peak of my physical fitness. Every
tug on the carpet was agony.
Time became a blur. The bathroom was only twelve feet away but every moment felt like
a hundred. By the time I was in front of the toilet all I could do was breathe and cry.
I don’t know how I made it back to the daybed. Perhaps my mother found me, passed out
on her bedroom floor, and carried me back. Perhaps I was able to pull myself all the way back
over. I can’t remember. I only remember my mother waking me up to go to the doctor.
She carried me to and from doctors all day. She had to cradle me against her chest, my
face resting on her shoulder while my legs were pressed against her body. If she held me in any
other position I would scream in pain, bang on her chest. It was agonizing for me, for her.
Our family doctor recommended going to the hospital and coming to see him after. The
second doctor needed us to get an x-ray and come back later. The third doctor kindly informed us
that he couldn’t give me an x-ray because he just couldn’t. It took us all day to get the x-ray then
to return to the second doctor and finally back to the first only to be sent to the hospital again. A
cast was prepared and I was wrapped to the point of immobility. My leg was broken. I was given
crutches as a consolation prize but had no clue what to do with them. My mother continued to
carry me.
That brings us to my dilemma. I had been back in class for one day. My teacher had
given me her rolling chair to sit in. My friends had surrounded me with stuffed animals from
their personal collections. My classmates had signed every available spot on my cast. I needed to
pee.
I had avoided asking my teacher to wheel me to the bathroom all day. She had said she
would be happy to at any moment, she would simply lift me out of the chair, set me on the toilet,
turn around and wait. I decided to just hold it instead.
It was time for group prayer circle. We were gathered to share our thoughts about the
Lord, what we were thankful for, how God was positively impacting our lives. I just really
needed to pee, I had been holding it for hours now. So when we began to chant the Lord’s Prayer
I was the loudest voice, practically screaming with apparent passion. In reality I was trying to
cover the sound of urine hitting the floor. I was peeing during prayer circle.
Pee was running down my uniform, spilling out of the plaid dress. I could hear the
distinctive drop, drop, drop as it left the chair and hit the ground. The floor was slanted and the
urine followed gravity, pooling around a boy’s, Johnny’s, feet across from me. My dress was
covered in pee, the stuffed animals that were going home with my friends at the end of the day
were covered in pee, my teacher’s chair was covered in pee, Johnny’s shoes were covered in pee.
It wasn’t long before we started smelling it. The stench permeated throughout the room,
there was no mistaking what it could be. People were beginning to look around, to speculate. I
knew of only one solution. So even as my teacher wheeled me out of the room towards the
Principal’s office I continued to shout one thing.
“Johnny did it!”
As the Mistake Gets Bigger, the Story Gets Darker
The rock was expanding in front of me, begging me to try. I watched my boyfriend
disappear around the corner, tossing back a teasing warning. He thought I wasn’t going to do it.
The first time I tried rock climbing I was okay at it, average. I was awful compared to
anyone with experience but not too bad compared to the other beginners. With that confidence
boost I stopped climbing, sure that my skills would improve if I just kept thinking about them.
They didn’t.
After an initial failed ascent, I sat in the gravel and looked at my bare feet. If I was going
to climb up the face of the rock, I needed my climbing shoes. I slid my feet in to them. Well, I
wiggled and pulled and tugged and shoved and all but cut my toes off until I got my feet in.
Climbing shoes are meant to be tight. In March, my boyfriend took me to REI to buy my
first pair. The store attendant helped fit me for the proper size, two sizes down from the shoes I
normally wear. He told me they would stretch slightly but should stay fairly tight. They were
almost unbearable to wear, pinching my toes together and squeezing the blood from my feet.
He had narrowed it down to the proper size for me but not the brand. I had no clue which
one to buy, so I naturally gravitated towards the least expensive pair. They were a good deal but
still an investment. My boyfriend took control and chose the proper pair for a beginner, not too
expensive but not too cheap either. I bought them under the condition he not break up with me in
the next three months; they had to pay themselves off and it would take at least three months’
worth of dates. He agreed and, once we had paid for them, promptly pretended to break up with
me.
I stood in front of the rock wall and tried to plan my route. There were no taped holds
here, I wasn’t sure how to start. In the gym they marked out every route, giving you a difficulty
grade and a bright color to search for to plan your next move. Here there was only rock. I
stretched my arms up, like I had seen climbers do countless times, and pretended I was actually
on the rock.
The first time I saw my boyfriend climb was on this same rock wall, almost five months
before. His childhood friend was visiting with a new college friend, a boy who seemed to
perpetually have a joint in his pocket, and we were goofing around as we explored. My
boyfriend, not that we were dating yet, reached his arms up and began to mime movements. It
was silent, bar a few mocking taunts from us watching, and then he flawlessly executed each of
his planned moves. I was mesmerized.
The first step was easy and, before I knew it, I was more than ten feet off the ground. The
next few moves were more difficult. I was high enough up that falling could hurt but not too high
that I was scared. I just wanted to be careful. I moved my feet first, keeping my hips close to the
wall like I had been told. I managed another five feet before I had to stop again. I was well over
halfway to the top, almost there. I could make it. I definitely could…I probably could. What if I
couldn’t? What if I fell? I could only imagine the angry lecture I would receive if I hurt myself,
if I had made the stupid choice. I decided to play it safe. I decided to climb down.
There are nights when I’m falling asleep that I suddenly feel as if I’m on a boat, tumbling
towards the sea in a wild storm. My body always jerks itself awake before I can hit the water,
often at the expense of me falling to the floor. I’ve become accustomed to falling over the years.
Climbing down is a lot harder than climbing up. The moment you look down to see
where you can place your foot you suddenly realize just how high up you are. I took only two
steps down before I knew what was going to happen. Just like when I fall asleep on that rocking
boat, I felt my body jerk itself and I began to fall. This fall was longer than the others. My hands
tried to cling to the wall but they were burned away. My body was hitting every jagged edge,
catching itself inside every crevice it could find.
I hit the ground with a series of cracks. It could have been my body. It could have been
the gravel moving. I know one crack was my left foot.
I laid, looking up at the sky, thinking about my life. A plane flew overhead, oblivious to
my pain. How many planes crash every year? How many millions of people still fly, even though
they know the risk? If you were in a plane crash, but survived, would you ever fly again? I
would.
I got to my feet, well foot as my left foot could support no weight, and steeled myself for
the pain. I shook out my body, put on a smile and began to walk back to my friends, all of whom
were oblivious to what had happened. No one needed to know of my fall, of the searing pain in
my left foot; they only needed to know I had almost reached the top.
I found out many months later that my toe was broken, it had been since that fateful day.
Your Biggest Mistakes Should Be Taken to the Grave
I was dead. My neck was broken and I had died. My two friends stood above me, coaxing
me into the afterlife.
“Everything will be all right.”
“You’re almost done, you’ll be happier soon.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve already gone through this. You’re so close.”
My journey across the river Styx began almost a lifetime ago, at the beginning of a
friendship.
It was cold. As two of us struggled to set up the tent, another went to hang up our food to
protect it from bears. It was raining or it had been raining or it was about to rain, it’s difficult to
remember now. Sleeping pads were filled with air, sleeping bags unrolled and clothes packed
into every open corner. Set up took twenty minutes. We had taken the drug twenty minutes ago.
We should have started feeling the effects thirty minutes in. We were confident we were
immune to the drug, why weren’t we feeling anything yet? It was probably a fake, a bust. Fifteen
minutes later you could find me half clothed, hanging from a tree as I declared myself a warrior
queen of the forest.
I was one with nature. The wind blew with me and I stood firm in it. It did not go around
me, it did not go through me, I was a part of it and it was a part of me. People were calling my
name; they were trying to pull me away from my new sister and I would not allow it. I ignored
all calls for my human body, I was evolving into a higher being of Gaia. I was brought back to
reality by a boy, caught in a haze of drugs but worry evident on his face; my feet had turned into
a sickly white with purple undertones. I was going to get hypothermia if I didn’t put warmer
clothes on. For every sock and jacket he put on me, I took one off. The clothes were stopping me
from feeling the environment, Mother Nature. I would not go back to an ignorant life.
Two weeks later I was sitting in the darkness of my room, surrounded by leaking glow
sticks. Everything was covered, everything was glowing. We shined brighter than the stars and I
felt as if I was speaking to the universe.
In the midst of November, after a harrowing fight with my sister, I was in a coma of
drugs. I could not move. I could not open my eyes. I could only watch as my life was destroyed
around me, uncertain if it was truly happening or not.
We were walking in the darkness when suddenly a police officer was in front of us. I felt
my heart stop. My friend guided me in a new direction, tonight was not the night to be arrested.
His knuckles were bloody, not that he could feel the pain, cut from trying to grate cheese
without being able to feel his hands. We ate the quesadillas anyway, the red was just hot sauce, it
had to be.
The cabin was going to light up in flames, none of us should be operating a stove right
now, especially not one requiring matches. The heat was becoming unbearable, I could smell the
unlit gas filling the room from the bed. I voiced my concerns…at least I tried to. My vocal
chords weren’t working so I resigned myself to my fate.
I wasn’t going to do anything that night. I hadn’t eaten, I told them. I was sick. I had
homework to do. I couldn’t dedicate sixteen hours of my life to this right now. But I took it
anyway and then took a little more.
I was dying. My neck was broken and I was going to die. My two friends were standing
above me, trying to bring me back to life.
There are moments in your life when you make a bad decision, when you mess up.
Sometimes the mistake is small, sometimes the mistake is a bit bigger and sometimes the mistake
is catastrophic. But in the end, everything is fine, until the day it isn’t.
I Chose To Be Cool
There’s a certain “cool factor” to being a rebel. It was something that I craved deeply as a
child. My brother Max was a rebel; he let kids shave tic-tac-toe games into his hair during class
(although he always fully shaved his head later). My brother Sam was a rebel; he skipped class
almost every week and had empty alcohol bottles lining his window (although he got permission
from our mom and the bottles were hidden behind a curtain). My sister Katy was a rebel; she had
“acquired” a key ring with a key to every door in her school, including the entrance (although
she never used it). They were ten, five and four years older than me; they wanted nothing to do
with me (and wouldn’t for a number of years). The solution was obvious to me, to be accepted I
had to become cool and to become cool I had to become a rebel.
It was a misguided quest but I was a misguided youth hanging out with a group of kids
far more dangerous than I. I was desperate to fit in. And so when the chance was offered to me, I
decided to start smoking. It wasn’t so much a thought out decision as a spur of the moment heythat-would-be-cool-of-me decision.
“Look, I got it from my mom.”
She showed me a cigarette, crushed and twisted, having clearly been lit before, smoked
and then put out. It was barely more than a butt, it couldn’t have had more than five puffs left in
it, but I was eager to try it, we all were. She had an Altoid tin full of these partial cigarettes,
having collected them from her mother’s ash tray. She seemed cool and I wanted to be like her,
for her to want to be like me.
She placed it in her mouth, lit it quickly, inhaled, exhaled, inhaled and then handed it to
me. I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I let the cigarette dangle between my lips before
closing my mouth, breathing in and passing it on to the next girl.
Smoke. Ash. Tar. Disgusting….No wait, nothing. It tasted like air with the faintest hint of
sweetness, of tobacco. I wasn’t sure what I was meant to do next. Should I swallow the smoke?
Was anyone else swallowing smoke? Do I blow it out? Why was everyone exhaling so slowly?
That must be how smokers exhale. I breathed out slowly. I was a smoker now.
As it turned out, the cigarette wasn’t lit properly; the end had only quickly been burned.
None of us knew this, none of us had smoked before. So we stood there in a tight huddle, half a
dozen middle school students, fervently hiding a burned out cigarette. We puffed on it
desperately, thinking we were smoking, thinking we were cool.
“Can you feel it?”
I only nodded in response, what was I mean to be feeling?
We went to class acting as if we were the Kings and Queens of our school. I was on top
of the world. I was at the peak of my popularity. I was unstoppable. I was being called to the
Principal’s office, my name ringing out from the speaker.
The Principal’s office was at the end of a long hallway, hidden in a corner of a turn. With
each step, my fear grew. What if someone had seen us smoking, I could be expelled because of
this. What if they knew I was the weak link, and that given enough, really any, incentive I would
rat out my friends? Would I really? I would. I was a coward. But what if I wasn’t? What if today
I chose to be brave, to lie instead of being a snitch, to be cool? I could do that, I would do that. It
was decided, I would fib my way out of consequence. I had taken an acting class, how hard
could it be? But what if I still smelled like smoke? None of my excuses would work if I smelled
like I had been smoking; my claims of injustice would go unheard, my perfectly crafted story
would be rendered useless. I quickly gargled some water and washed my hands. Perfect.
There was a line in front of me at the office, each kid looking as nervous as I felt. I would
be better than them, I would lie better than them. I reached the front of the queue, the office door
waiting ominously to my left, distressed students sitting with angry parents next to it, when the
secretary handed me a sheet of paper. I had an unexcused absence, she explained, and my mother
needed to sign off on it. No mention of the cigarette, of expulsion or even of suspension. I
swallowed my story and darted back to my class, filled with adrenaline. I had gotten away with
it.
I decided that night to try one more time, to smoke again to celebrate my victory. I knew
that Sam had a pack of cigarettes hidden in a sock drawer in his room. As soon as I arrived
home, I snuck into his room, stole a cigarette, stashed it in my desk drawer and began to wait. I
waited through dinner and I waited through Jeopardy and Law and Order. I waited until the
house was silent and everyone had retired to their rooms. Then I sprang into action.
I opened my window, stuck my head out and tried to light my newly acquired cigarette. It
could have taken seconds or minutes or hours but, eventually, I did it. And then I inhaled.
Smoke. Ash. Tar. Disgusting. It was disgusting.
I began to cough violently, repeatedly hitting the window frame. I couldn’t do this. I went
to put out the cigarette but couldn’t find a spot. Not my skin, not my clothes, not the window. I
could leave it, still lit, on my windowsill while I left to find a glass of water. But what if my
neighbors got up for a glass of water or woke up to pee and looked out the window and saw a lit
cigarette on my windowsill? What if they told my parents? Of course they would tell my parents.
I threw the cigarette onto my desk, no one would see it there.
I ran to the bathroom with a coffee mug, filled it with water, grabbed a roll of toilet paper
and ran back to my room. The cigarette, smoldering and staining my wooden desk, was thrown
into the water and smothered in toilet paper before it was ceremonially flushed. The deed was
done, I could relax once again.
But then I smelled smoke. My room stank of it, the hall stank of it, the bathroom stank of
it, my mouth stank of it; the entire house stank of smoke. It permeated our home, flowing out
from my room. I would be caught red handed if I didn’t fix this. I grabbed a can of air freshener
and ran throughout our home, down the hall and around the bathroom and through my room until
the can began to stutter, almost empty.
The smoke smell was gone, replaced by an overwhelming chemical flower stench that,
hopefully, would fade in the next few hours if I left all of the windows open. The smoke was
gone from everything. No, the smoke was gone from everything but my mouth. So I turned the
air freshener towards myself, prayed enough was left in the can to cover the stench and sprayed.
Disgusting.
I Chose to Get into the Car, I Chose to Drink
The moment I sat in my seat I knew I had made a mistake. I should have realized earlier;
perhaps when he began to stumble around the room or when my aunt insisted he stop drinking
but he had just a couple more or even when other family members refused the ride home that I
had so readily accepted. But I hadn’t realized earlier.
It took my cousin thirty-five steps to walk to the other side, three botched attempts to
open the door and a full minute of laughter and hiccups to compose himself. I was silent,
watching him, uncertain if I should be frightened or not. He smiled at me, a smile I had known
for years and that comforted me deeply; a smile that begged for my trust. I gave it to him and he
started the car.
My mother decided very early on to marry my father. It wasn’t a formal engagement, she
told me, only a decision. He had offered to help her with a school project and she had decided
marriage was in their future. They went to a party together, not dating yet but certainly,
hopefully, on their way. It was at the party that my mother’s childhood friend tried to kiss my
then teenage father. My mother stormed away, furious, knowing that Marybeth would let him go
all the way if he wanted to; she wasn’t the most pious of girls. The next day my father showed up
to my mother’s house, armed to the teeth with supplies to finish her project and she knew she
had caught him. They would be married, he just had to realize it first.
I was distinctly aware of our speed as we accelerated through the neighborhood.
Roundabouts became jerks of the wheel in some random direction, throwing me into the car door
and back again. Many plants did not survive our turns.
He stopped the car at some point to run out onto the street and scream at a man’s house
that had gravely insulted him in some way. As I waited for him, the radio blared songs of love, of
romance, and I was painfully reminded of the fact I had kissed only two boys. If I were to die in
this car no man would mourn me and write poems of our long lost love. My brothers would cry
for me but I was no novelty, they had two sisters. I found myself wishing I had been more like
Marybeth for I was going to die a virgin.
Our family has always been too tolerant of weird behavior. My siblings and I learned it
from our mother and she in turn learned it from her mother as a young girl. Her mother would
spend nights divulging to my mother every family secret. My mother was the middle child, too
young to be her mother’s therapist but not young enough to think the secrets could be shared
with anyone else. So each night she silently tolerated her mother and told no one the next day,
not knowing what else to do.
He was singing along to the radio, throwing his body side to side, swerving the car. With
each commercial break he would shout, closing his eyes and accelerating and throwing his arms
in the air as we drifted closer and closer to a collision. So at the end of each song I would switch
to a new station and a new song. He would slow down once again to sing, swerving the car with
the beat. It was nauseating but the alternative was deadly, and so I helplessly played the part of
Every morning as my mother awoke, her house icy with a constant draft, she would dash
to the heater to get changed. You could pull the bedroom and closet doors towards one another
and the wall to form a triangle around the heater and yourself. Changing inside that spot was like
heaven, she told me, warm and secluded from her six siblings. No one ever took off their clothes
away from a heater for no one wanted to catch a chill and get sick.
He had rolled down the windows in an attempt to combat his oncoming nausea with the
crisp night air. As I began to shake he turned on the heater. Air was blasting at me from all
directions, superheating my face but freezing the right side of my body to numbness. My eyes
were watering and my nose was stuffed up, forcing me to pant to breathe. I didn’t know if my
tears were from sickness or fear.
Cold mornings are best combated with warm food. My mother and her siblings learned
this early on for they always ate piping hot Minestrone soup on chilly mornings. Her mother
would make eggs and bacon and pancakes and toast while they ate, scooping the food into a dog
bowl for the stray dog she had found the day before. My grandmother never ate with her
children. She ate only one meal a day, halfway between lunch and dinner, as part of a strict diet
she had created for herself.
I found myself wishing I had eaten more at my aunt’s house. It was a Monday and the
Seahawks were playing and, as such, our family had all gathered at her house to watch football
and eat dinner together. She had made a delectable spread of chilies and cornbread and slow
roasted meats and salsas for dinner with an entire table filled with sweets for dessert. I had taken
a modest, polite helping, mentally calculating how many beers I could drink if I only ate a little
bit before I went over my allotted number of carbs for the day.
Perhaps if I had eaten a little more, drank a little less, I would have been sober enough to
realize the danger signs and not get into the car. At the very least I would be less nauseas as we
drove down a side road, inching closer and closer to sixty miles an hour in a school zone.
My mother used to tell me stories of her father. He was a decorated member of the
military. He went on expeditions to Antarctica. He could drink a gallon of milk a day. I was
always most intrigued with her stories of flying. He used to fly the fastest airplanes, trying to
break the sound barrier. The whole family would be gathered up and ushered to the airport to
watch him take off. While the other adults and children would shield their ears at the boom, my
family would not. They stood with their ears uncovered, too proud to shield themselves from the
boom.
We were flying down the freeway, going faster than I knew mere mortals could. Cars that
began as twinkling lights in the distance became fading blips in our rearview mirror faster than I
could blink my eye. I suddenly knew how my grandfather felt as he broke the sound barrier, the
exhilaration that must have coursed through his veins at the pure speed he was travelling at.
You can never go back to a normal life once you have felt it, tainted by the speed but
yearning to feel the thrill again.
As all good Irish Catholics did, my mother went to Catholic school for most of her life. In
the corner of her papers she would write “JMJ”, for Jesus, Mary and Joseph. She always said
“Mary Mother McCree” when confronted with any sort of shocking news. She went to church
not regularly but passionately. After an initial attempt in my childhood to attend every week,
sometimes even twice a week, we attended mass only for the “Big Three”: Christmas, Easter and
tragedies. Religion had no more impact on our lives than a fifteenth century King of France.
I prayed as he drove away after dropping me off. I prayed he would not hurt anyone. I
prayed he would not get pulled over. I prayed he did not get arrested or have his license taken
away. I prayed no one found out I had let a drunk driver drive me home and I hadn’t said a word.
I would like to say my cousin taught me a lesson about the dangers of alcohol
consumption. I would like to say that when I drink, I stop myself and think of how the people
around me are affected. I would like to say that I drink only in social situations, never alone. I
would like to say that I don’t seek out the opportunity to drink. I would like to say that but I
cannot. My father had a passion for wine, a passion I adopted as my own and expanded upon. It
was rare for a childhood meal to go without a glass of red wine, for a celebration to be left
wanting of champagne, for a holiday punch not to be spiked. Alcohol is simply part of our way
of life. Drinking is as natural as breathing.
I had come to my chemistry lab partner’s house to drop off a birthday present, in a feeble
attempt to become friends. He was less than halfway through our homework due that night. I
offered to help him finish. He offered me the last of his forty ounce in thanks. I didn’t think
twice, I grabbed it and downed it. It was old, flat and alcoholic. I had never had a forty before, I
had never heard of a forty before and I never wanted to have another. I felt like I was going to
vomit. I sat on his bed, moaning and complaining. He offered me a shot of white rum if I shut up.
The shot became two and then a glass and then the rest of the bottle.
Engineering was an obvious career choice for my father; it was simply a matter of what
kind to choose. Mechanical engineering seemed safe to him, easy but boring. Computer
engineering would have tempted him, but no school had a program for it while he was at college.
It came down to chemical engineering and electrical engineering. Electrical engineering won out
by a hair, the prestige of the program at a school known for its excellent electrical engineering
professors too tempting to pass up. My father somehow managed to stay good at chemistry
despite this; he was particularly knowledgeable on the fermentation of grapes into wine.
I shouted answers to my new friend from my perch on the bed. Every few questions I
would tell him a wrong answer, change the formula for the compound he should be using. He
would diligently enter it to the program and then groan as it came up wrong and have to start the
whole section from the top again, sending me into a fit of laughter. I would howl at him, berating
him for trusting me once again. Obviously the chemical compound I had given him was
incorrect, didn’t he know basic chemistry? Euphoric I would throw my body to the side, hitting
the wall with the force of snowplow. Feeling nothing I would bounce back and take another sip
of rum. He would ignore me for a few questions before getting stuck and listening to me once
again, restarting the process. He knew I was drunk when I wasn’t able to tell him the H in H2O
stood for hydrogen; I thought it was for my last name.
My dad was more dangerous than he appeared. He would sneak out of his house at night
only to return in a haze of drugs the next morning for church. College was a blur of perilous
experimentation and diligently copying his notes from a loose leaf of paper to a notebook and
back again, so that he fully absorbed and understood the material. He smoked on his way to Boy
Scout meetings, otherwise a model Eagle Scout.
I was spinning in his desk chair. He had long ago corralled me into the chair, nervous I
would fall off the platform bed and crack my head open. He was not eager to be forced to explain
to the rest of his frat why they had to drive a drunk, bleeding girl to the hospital. The speed of the
chair was sickening, moving so fast that I threw myself towards his desk, hoping to slow down
for even a brief moment. The sudden deceleration jerked me off my seat and onto the table. My
hand naturally, subconsciously, gravitated towards his lighter. It was big, bigger than the bic
sitting in my desk in my room, and dangerous looking with a metal coating and cap.
I had always been frightened by lighters, having an intense fear of being burned to death
like Joan of Arc as a child, but had recently taken a liking to them. It was too much of a hassle, I
had found out, to carry a book of matches around with you, constantly needing to be replaced.
Even worse, it was embarrassing to try to light a cigarette in the wind and fail as every match
was blown out. I was gleeful, playing with his lighter, so he left me alone. He later told me he
thought I was too drunk to be dangerous. He was wrong.
It took me less than three minutes to fill his trash can with every flammable object I could
find and throw my hand in, lighter burning bright. The flame reached well above the lip of the
waste basket before he noticed. For a moment he was shell shocked, silent, before jumping into
action. He grabbed my discarded water glass (a failed attempt from earlier to get me to sober up
by taking two sips of water for every one of rum) and threw it on the flame. The fire was quickly
extinguished under the sheer amount of water, I hadn’t taken a single sip from the glass since it
was first handed to me.
After years of sneaking past teachers, parents, siblings, counselors and every other person
you can imagine, my father was a lynx. He walked silently through our hallways. On Christmas
Eve I would sleep in my parents’ room, convinced that they were the ones depositing gifts each
year but lacking evidence. Somehow my father managed to sneak past me every year, never
waking me, with his arms full of gifts.
There’s a secret path from Greek Row to the dorms, known only to drunk students trying
to sneak past the police and into their rooms. I’ve gone over that afternoon a hundred times but
cannot for the life of me figure out how my lab partner walked me over half a mile, stumbling
over myself and shouting at every movement I saw, without anyone confronting us. He got me to
the base of my dorm when I finally had enough coddling and sent him away. I could take care of
myself, I told him.
I would like to say that I was right. I would like to say that the night ended there. I would
like to say I went to my room and slept. I would like to say that but I cannot. I slept for only two
hours before I arose, convinced it was a new day, and, still drunk, began to wreak havoc.
I Chose to Do a Handstand
I’m a danger to myself; I always seem to end up injured. Normally it’s something small:
bruises I don’t remember getting, a pulled muscle leading to a limp, angry red scars from sharp
bushes. But sometimes it’s something big: a broken toe that went ignored for six months; a
dislocated eye muscle shooting pain through my head, bringing me to my knees when it
twitched; a grade three concussion. My friend and I, we called it a two and a half, a grade of
concussion that doesn’t exist, to console ourselves. A grade three concussion is classified as
severe, requiring immediate medical attention and monitoring. If I had a grade three concussion,
we told ourselves, then of course we would have gone to the hospital immediately but I didn’t so
we didn’t. I only had a two and a half, I told myself, there was no reason to worry; I would be
fine.
It was Halloween night. The boy I liked, the boy I had a huge crush on, wanted to hang
out. He wanted to go slacklining, and even though I didn’t really know what that was, I agreed.
There was a whole group of us going and I didn’t want to seem lame for staying at the dorms. So
I bundled up for the chill of fall and joined my friends on our nighttime adventure, not entirely
certain about what I had gotten myself into.
Slacklining, as it turns out, is the cousin of tightrope walking. A thin, flat rope of sorts is
tied between two trees and you take turns making fools of yourselves as you try to walk across it.
I was sure I would pick it up quickly, how hard could it really be? My first attempt I screamed as
I jumped on and just as quickly fell. By my fifth try I was able to get one foot on and,
occasionally, bring the other up to meet it. I only screamed as I tumbled off half the time. My
screams were jarring but not out of place, none of us were very good. Even though we were only
a few feet from the ground, the fall was always terrifying.
We soon transitioned to using each other as columns to hold ourselves steady; we rushed
at one another from opposite ends of the rope like jousting knights while we pulled at our
friends’ hair to stay balanced. But even this grew old as the night aged and so we decided we
needed to do tricks. They started off silly, easy little jumps to show off, before we declared
someone had to do a handstand. I hadn’t done a handstand since before I was in elementary
school so I naturally volunteered to do one on the swinging rope.
All you need to remember, I was warned, is don’t fall forward. If you fall forward you
might snap your neck; always try to fall backward to land on your butt or legs. I set myself up,
slowly getting my legs partially in the air. I was in the beginnings of a crow position, arms
straight with my legs bent, when I started falling. Fall backwards, I told myself. So I grabbed
onto the rope tightly, jerked myself backwards and let myself fall. I missed the ground the first
time around, I was hunched up against the rope too tightly. I kept spinning and falling and
bouncing with the rope until the ground met the back of my neck, all my weight landing where
my skull kisses my spine.
I couldn’t see. Everything was black, pulsing with darkness. I could hear muffled voices,
asking if I was okay. I tried to nod but I’m not sure if I did or not; my head was spinning. I felt
like I was on a boat being sucked into Charybdis. I don’t know how long I laid there, unable to
move myself, but when I got to my feet I knew I couldn’t tell anyone my secret. They would
only worry, demand that the night end just as we were starting to have fun. I knew I couldn’t tell
any of them that I had lost feeling in my right arm.
The night continued normally for everyone else as I slowly began to lose feeling in the
tips of my left fingers. I told myself I was only cold but I knew I wasn’t. I was burning hot and
shedding layers faster than I knew I could move. I knew it was cold outside. I could remember it
being cold at the beginning of the night, when I put on two jackets and a hat and gloves, but now
I felt like I was on fire. My right hand was numb against the tree and I was surprised it didn’t
burn a hole through the trunk. I didn’t know what was happening to me and I decided I didn’t
care, I couldn’t care. It could only become an issue if I acknowledged it.
The rest of the group left for a moment, all but three of us, and I let myself fall. Down,
down, lower and lower and suddenly I was forced up, the rope bouncing me back to my original
spot. I laughed. I screamed. I did it again. Self-trust falls, I called them, letting the slackline catch
me before the ground could. A boy was egging me on, telling me to fall faster, to step out
further. A girl was telling me to stop but I knew she was only scared of doing it. I told her to try,
demanded her to, and she asked me to show her one more time. I laughed. I did it again. I
screamed. I couldn’t move; I had missed the rope almost completely, landing on the same spot I
had earlier. The rope bounced me up and down, pressing into my neck until dumping me onto
the ground, my head landing with a resounding thump. I couldn’t feel my body at all anymore.
The boy laughed, jumping onto the rope above my motionless body again and again. I couldn’t
move no matter how close he came to kicking my head.
I don’t remember much of what happened after that. Only pieces.
The sky was brighter than I had ever seen it. The stars were bright before, showering me
with light whenever I would risk a glance up, but they were blinding now. They were spinning
around one another, dancing, laughing, lighting the sky on fire. I was dancing with them, arms in
the air as I jumped from side to side, weaving between them, waltzing with myself.
Warm air rushed at me from the vents. My neck was burning; the only part of my body I
could feel was on fire. I threw myself into the whirlwind of heat, determined to light myself on
fire, to feel again. Leaves blew up around and I grabbed at them, screeching as they escaped my
grasp. I hurled my body forward and suddenly my skin was stinging. I was on the ground. I
hadn’t remembered falling but I pulled myself back to the vent to bask in the heat and the silence
it provided. I was alone and on fire.
I was flying through the air, hopping over bricks and roots. I was running up the edge of
the stairs, concrete on one side and air on the other. They were shouting my name. Get down,
they yelled, you’ll hurt yourself. I cackled; I couldn’t hurt myself more than I already had that
night. I was Achilles, invincible except for one small spot unknown to the world.
Don’t pass out. They kept telling me, commanding me, not to pass out. Their faces were
swimming around me, the light above them burning into my retinas. Stop yelling I said, I tried to
say. No words came out. They were prodding me, shaking me. Please stop yelling, I cried.
Silence.
I’m not going to pass out, I’m only going to rest my eyes for a moment.
I Chose to Not Let My Parents Come to Dinner with Me
My brothers never call me. None of my siblings like talking on the phone; I can think of
only one time when Max was in college that he called my mom. He needed some money, he had
run out, and he knew my dad had said they weren’t going to lend him any more money but he
was hoping my mom could just spot him a bit of cash. He would really appreciate it. My mother
went to the bank right then, wiring him what he wanted. She bought me an ice cream cone for
my silence. So I should have been surprised to see him calling me that night, my phone screen
lighting up with a picture of my brother posing like a baboon, and two messages from Sam,
silently demanding me to listen to them. But I ignored them.
I was waiting for a call back from Ian. Ian was supposed to be at this party with me. Ian
and I did everything together. Ian drove me home across town every day. Ian and I were part
fake boyfriend and girlfriend, part fake cousins. Ian was the boy I could see myself ending up
with one day, unless he was gay. I couldn’t tell yet. But Ian wasn’t there. Instead I was
surrounded by girls I only vaguely knew by name and interest. Hope was friends with all of us, it
was her going away party after all, but I was friends with only her. So I kept checking my phone
to see if Ian had responded and I kept ignoring new messages from my brothers. The numbers
were racking up, three from Sam, now five, eight. My phone was constantly buzzing with
updates. When I finally answered a call, they said only one thing “Come outside, we’re going
home.”
Max always drove the Scion, he liked the challenge of stick shift he said; he liked how
much more engaging driving was when you had to shift gears. I walked out of the pizzeria,
expecting to see our Black Cherry, box of a car waiting for me. I only saw Sam. He was pacing,
glancing up at me as I came towards him. I started to make a joke about his ragged appearance, a
teasing jab, but once I was close enough for him to hear me, he swept me into a hug and ushered
me towards a car I had never seen. They hadn’t come to pick me up in our car but the car of a
man I had never met before.
It turned out to be Max’s bandmate’s father’s car and when I got in the backseat I was
thoroughly uncomfortable. I tried to make pleasant conversation with the man driving but every
attempt fell flat. It was obvious I had missed out on some key piece of information and no one
felt the need to clue me in. For a moment I was convinced I was being sold to this new man as a
sex slave and that I was going to end up a tragic news story: “Brothers Sell Youngest Sister to
Fuel Drug and Alcohol Habit; Girl Never Seen Again” but I had enough faith in my brothers to
feel safe enough, confident that I wasn’t about to die. The man and his son kept offering their
condolences and I kept brushing them off. So what if I had missed the end of the party, I said, it
wasn’t that fun anyway. No one responded. It was clear I hadn’t listened to the messages on my
phone.
Once we arrived home my brothers started to list things off. This is going to be difficult
to process, they said, you might need some time alone but know that we are here for you. I was
insulted, just because I was the youngest member of our family did not mean that I was stupid.
And then it began.
Car. Tires. Shoes. Sign. Accident. Not paying attention. Katy. Mom.
Dad. Running. Shouting. Crying. Accident. Terror. Police. Survivor.
Accident. Downtown. Family. Accident. Warning. Accident. Death.
I couldn’t put it together, not quickly enough, only that there was an accident. Was Katy
running around barefoot downtown, warning people? Or maybe Katy had been in an accident
and lost her shoes? Where were our parents? Were they helping the man who lost his shoes
change his tire? Was a man running around shoeless and we needed to be warned? Was he
armed? Was he insane? Why were they sad? Why wasn’t I sad?
No more was explained to me as they began talking in hushed tones and I never gave an
inclination I didn’t know what was going on. I simply grabbed a deck of cards and began playing
Solitaire, the way my dad had showed me, count to seven and flip two cards. It was soothing to
flip the cards, it allowed my mind to wander. What if Ian was at the party now? I wondered when
Katy would get home, I had broken a promise to her earlier that night. We had both pledged to
be vegan that summer. Well she had pledged, I had told her I would go along with it because I
had been vegan once, how hard could it be to do it again? It turned out not many pizzas are
vegan so I had thrown caution to the wind that night and ordered a cheese and pineapple pizza,
all for me. I hoped she wouldn’t be too angry at me.
Someone was dead, or at least near death. That much was clear to me by my third game
of cards. I had narrowed down my options and concluded my sister, Katy, had died. She had
been downtown, waiting for a friend to change a tire on their car and had been struck by
someone driving by. She had been flung into the air, losing her shoes, and my parents were at the
hospital with her now, identifying her body.
By my sixth game Katy had walked through the door, face wet and feet shoeless but
alive. I was overjoyed to see her but stumped, uncertain what could have happened if my theory
was wrong. She joined my brothers on the couch, matching their tone as I thought of new
explanations.
Perhaps my parents were just being Good Samaritans, helping out someone downtown
who was hit by a car or who needed their tire changed. That must be it. My mom wanted to go
out to dinner that night, her and my dad must have helped someone in trouble on their way home.
That had to be it.
My mom came home, the sounds of the sirens announcing her arrival suddenly muted
when I saw her face. She was crying. She was sobbing. She was heartbroken. She hugged us all
and suddenly we were in her room. She had changed clothes and was kneeling on her bed with
her four children gathered around her. No one said anything, she only cried and we held her. My
mind began to wander as I leaned against a bedpost and then suddenly she was talking. She was
explaining, stroking our hair, saying that there was nothing we could do, that she had no good
news for us; that it had truly happened.
I left the room not long after that, returning to my card game.
My dad never came home.