SWIM Book 1 (Complete three-hundred pages)

DAY 36.2

Sunday, December 24, 2017

I

wish I was physically stronger. For when I found the cellar door locked and imagined Craig imprisoned behind it in the cold, damp environment of the alcohol collections, I immediately tried to pull the handle with the force of a wooly mammoth's trunk. To no avail I grew enraged and banged on the door, shouting Craig's name—but no response came to me from behind that door. I then ran upstairs in a fright up to the second floor, the third floor, the fourth and then up to the door leading out to the roof, noticed it was still locked to keep me out of the late Hanukah party, and started firing my fists and screaming to get the guys' attention over their blaring instruments.

The music stopped and so did the dancing feet above. Footsteps crossed the ceiling. I heard a click and the door to the roof opened with George behind it. His face was sweaty and his cheeks and eyes were pink and weary. "What do you want?" George said.

"Why is the cellar locked!" I put my foot down. My fists clenched.

George merely shook his head at me and said, "If the door to the cellar is locked downstairs, then Craig obviously locked himself inside. There is no lock on the outside of the cellar, right? So, the door's locked state is of his doing, not ours."

I blinked at him several times. "But why would Craig want to lock himself in the cellar?"

George smiled in his drunken stupor and leaned in to whisper something behind his hand—he looked over his shoulder to make sure Jack couldn't hear him tell me: "Zara, you didn't hear it from me, but if I were to make a guess, I'd say Craig locked himself in the cellar to keep Jack and the rest of us away from drinking anymore of the alcohol. . ." His voice trailed off as he lost balance and nearly tripped over his own two feet in the doorway.

I asked the drunken and delirious George, "Why would Craig want to do that?"

And George lifted a smolder at me and whispered, "Maybe it's because we beat him up so badly for having sex with you or because we got so drunk for the holidays and or while we were joyously trying to kill ourselves that Jack tried to kill Craig with the chainsaw."

I shouted, "You all did what?! Jack tried to do what to Craig?!"

George laughed and stumbled to the ground. A mini vodka bottle fell out of his shirt pocket.

"You're all animals! How could you do this! We're all going to die if you keep this up! I'm glad Craig stopped you from getting any more alcohol! You're insane!"

George broke out in hysterics and said, "You should be happy, because if it wasn't for the alcohol to calm our nerves, Brett and Jack would have probably gotten into a final brawl, George would be chain-sawed up, and it would have only been a matter of time before Jack had finally gotten to getting to you." George burst into ridiculous laughter and suddenly slammed the door shut and locked it before I could stop him. His footsteps raced across the roof again.

I then stood behind the door in a fearful trans. I realized, if Craig really did lock himself in the cellar to keep the boys away from the liquor, he would at one point get hungry and need someone to bring him food. I would have to get food from the kitchen every day to feed him or else he would starve. The problem is, the boys would try to stop me if they found out I was taking out two meals a day from the kitchen.

Things were just getting worse. I wished my life were more like a comedic sitcom like Modern Family, The Office and That 70's Show—rather than a sixty-minute Netflix drama like Lost, in which the ending turned out bad for everybody. Nonetheless, I was beginning to get the feeling that my life was about to turn out like that Jack Nicholson movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which the first half is all fun and games, and the second half is when everybody gets hurt.