Dirt

9

Princeton

I hadn't ever thought it would be like this. 

Stan tells me I was too young to understand what was really happening. He tells me I shouldn't have cared at that age so it is perfectly normal that I didn't. Nothing I could have done, nothing I could have cared about would be to blame.

He told me that when I was too open and I let tears slip of how guilty I feel. Stan just wiped my eleven-year-old tears away and told me he felt guilty as well. We held each other in a cloud of guilt and what if's. Neither of us expected it to be like this.

I was a pussy if I was crying about how it was then. I knew nothing. As the famous saying should go: time never heals. The clock only makes it hurt worse. Guilt is one of those nice fuzzy feelings that swell like a balloon in your lungs until it can't steal any more of your breath. 

When the bottle drains the guilt fills. A nice circle of actions like global warming or gun control. 

When Stan walked onto the greyhound due north two hours I had to walk back into the devil's den. Stan was one of the stable people who kept me from drowning. One less pool floaty. It hurt, but I can't be mad at him. Stan always had a future. The salutatorian doesn't work the rest of his life at the only McDonalds in a town the size of a jail cell. No, his little brother does that. 

Stan was out. Stan was looking forward. If he could have the guts to look forward I wasn't going to give him a reason to look back. I can handle it. I can handle dad. I will always handle dad.

"Are you fucking kidding me!" I haven't cleaned the floors in a couple of weeks but I sure as hell didn't plan to do it at one o'clock this morning. The plan certainly didn't factor in Dad's puke.

Dad looks up from the ground, strings of puke drip from his weak, pathetic smile. He stands up, groaning the whole way with one hand on his lower back, the other wiping his mouth. 

"Ah, I'm sorry, Prince. I tried to make it to the bathroom this time, I swear. It's just I was getting sleepy that I didn't feel the normal burn, you know?" I'm not listening to a single excuse out of him. 

The smell of the vomit is already filling up the trailer. Fuck my bedroom being near the bathroom. My face is curling up into its disgusting twist, my eyes shifting between the pile of ham sandwiches and my Dad with his guilty, little 'I'm sorry Bug' smile. 

"Go sit down, Dad- and get the bucket," He nods slowly, sparring one last look at his mark on the world before wandering back to his recliner/bed.

I can't help but scuff in annoyance. My mind is frozen. I only got to go to lunch before I had to leave to work the shift I picked up from Chelsey so now I'm rocking an under-educated, grease fueled headache. I literally just got out of the shower and now I'm going to have to smell like puke for school and work tomorrow. 

My head is too heavy for my shoulders and all I want to do is sleep forever. Something ticking in my stomach tells me it isn't as easy as it sounds. 

One thing on my side, years of cleaning up puke that it no longer flips my stomach in nausea. No more gagging, no more delicateness. It's embedded in my brain the best ways to clean it up. I always keep the right cleans to get it all off the ground and smell a bit better. 

I can't afford to but I slam the front door after throwing out the trash anyway. The TV is flashing vibrant colors in the darkness of our trailer. They flash over Dad's red eyes and a half-empty bottle. 

I sigh, walk around his feet and throw myself down on the broken loveseat. I sink into the material like I'd be able to become one with the loveseat and never have to get up again. It's Live PD, police officers jingling as they try to book it and catch the drunk that ran away. At least my drunk stays pretty stationary.