What Could Have Been

At choir camp, we locked the door and drank in the dressing room:three girls framed inside the mirror's burning bulbs, red-faced

and giddy with our secret even before the first sip. We chasedwith Cherry Coke, then Goldfish crackers, because Everclear's

kickback was unrelenting. Onstage I was buzzed but not wasted:bold. People preferred that version of me, especially the director,

and I wanted the lead in next year's musical. But we never measured,just chugged as much as our throats allowed, and one day, sloppy,

we got caught. The principal suspended us for the first weekof school. Two of us had fathers who were recovering alcoholics—

so our parents' anger made sense, their fear. They sent usto the Alternative to Suspension program on the rough

edge of town, where worn-down men studied for the gedin the same concrete building. The woman in charge

checked our bathroom, bending down to look for legsbefore waving us in, because there'd been problems in the past.

Still, the next summer, I spent my June and July afternoonsnot caring how much liquor my friend drank at the lake

before I climbed into the backseat of her sun-swamped car.Most days I feared the wrath of authority more than mortality,

so to me, the worst had happened. I reveled in numb lipsand loose limbs. Unbuckled, I slid across the hot upholstery

at every backroads curve while a bottle sloshed in my bag.The flavor that summer was green apple—vodka, the easy

answer to everything, hangovers still some distant reality.My body at sixteen handled destruction with undeserved grace,

even as my swimsuit soaked the warm cloth beneath meuntil it felt like I was sitting in—and yes, how easily

we all could have been—sitting in a pool of blood.