Sister, Sister.

IV. Kat's Happy Place

THREE MONTHS, TWO WEEKS AFTER

Karlie

When I was thirteen, I drank alcohol for the first time. I immediately fell in love with the taste, the burn in my throat, the warmth in my belly and the tingle in my toes. I loved the sensation of walking on clouds after many swigs.

It is a distant memory.

The last time I went to Kat's happy place was months before her death. It is an abandoned building on a hill close to a small river.

I was lying on my bed groaning like a woman in labour because of the terrible menstrual cramps I was suffering when Kat barged in with a thick cloud of vanilla around her. She looked at me and wrinkled her nose like I was the most irking thing ever.

"You smell edible," I said. It just flowed out my mouth. "Like ice cream."

"It's my perfume." She walked to me and pulled me up. "Get dressed, puppet. I want us to go somewhere special!"

I was naked from the waist up.

Then she did something weird, she pulled at my pinkish nipple and walked out. I wore my white romper and flip-flops to match with her red romper and flip-flops. Sitting next to her in her boyfriend's car, I avoided the mirrors and ran my tongue over my dry lips, mentally scolding myself for forgetting lipgloss.

Kat wore layers and layers of blood red lipstick and lined her eyes until they were the first thing you noticed. But even without makeup, Kat was easily beautiful.

Daniel drove us to "Happy Place" and I was immediately disappointed. I thought it would be a restaurant or park. But Kat was all smiles as she kissed her boyfriend goodbye and sashayed into the building with a black glass bottle.

"Come on, puppet!" Her voice echoed and I followed her.

The drink tasted like a mixture of full cream milk and  vodka, I guess that is what it was.

Kat promised me that alcohol was the antidote for menstrual cramps. We sat on a mat that Kat had left there on a previous visit, my head on her thighs as I drank huge swigs from the black bottle with the rusted roof over our heads, the ceiling had collapsed and the windows were gaping holes. On the walls were graffiti: "one love forever" engraved into the crumbling cement, "God is love" written with ink and profane words sprayed on. Kat and I turned it into a kind of game, searching for graffiti. We would run through the echoing rooms and scream out the words on the walls, we climbed upstairs too. The alcohol made me very happy and lightheaded, I didn't even feel the cramps again and we drank it everytime we came to the abandoned building.

She called it her happy place because she could come here to think and drink alcohol. She said she found the place when she and Daniel needed a place for emergency make out.

Now, I feel like a traitor taking Jared to Kat's happy place.

I'm surprised that the Mercedes makes it up the hill. Jared parks in front of the once yellow abandoned building.

"Are you sure you want to be here?" He asks looks at the place like he expects to see zombies run out of it.

"This was Kat's Happy place," I reply like it is the answer to his question. Somehow, it is.

The wind pushes the rusty swings beside the building. It brings back memories of Kat and I swinging on them, hearing them groan with wear until one of them collapsed taking Kat with it to the ground. The rusty swing cut into Kat's calf giving her an awful scar after the stitches healed. We told Dad that Kat fell in school and landed on a rusty piece of metal like it was  orchestrated. He drove her to the hospital to get tetanus shots immediately. That was two years ago.