Max walked into the kitchen, seeing his mothers sitting at the kitchen table. They were in their usual Saturday morning routine, Katie putting a record on the turntable and Zoë gazing out the window as they listened to the music. This morning, they had a compilation of The Smiths on. The kids usually let them at their routine undisrupted, but this morning, they both saw the seriousness on Max's face, and Katie turned down the volume.
"Morning, Max. Are you okay? Yesterday was a lot, pet.", Zoë asked.
"Uh, yeah, I'm processing all that okay, I think," he replied as he put some bread in the toaster, and then went to sit down at the table. "It's El I'm worried about."
Katie furrowed her eyebrows. "Did something happen? Is she okay?"
Max sighed, looking down at his mothers hands, one on his and one on her wife's. "I don't think so. I'm about to break the sibling code, but I'd rather her be cross at me now than her to get into more trouble. Early this morning, about 2 or 3, Nick and Bella dropped her home. She was wasted, Ma. She was after vodka and whiskey, but the lads didn't know how much exactly. They said she was venting a lot, more concerning than normal drunk nonsense. They got her out of the party before she got hurt, but she was in a state when she came home. I checked on her, she's out cold but she's breathing just fine and looks like she got sick a few times into her bin. I hate being a rat, but this is my little sis and I can't cover for her coming home late when she's in that kind of state."
The couple looked at him in disbelief for a moment, then at each other, then back again.
"Shit, fuck. Do you know where she got the drink?", Zoë questioned.
"Not a clue. Not too sure where the bash was either. We can ask her all that when she's up and her head isn't pounding."
"Well, thanks for telling us, Maxie," Katie rubbed his hand. "I know you naturally don't want to rat her out, but she's too young to know how to handle drink. I know we give her a drop of cider or Bailey's at Christmas, maybe a Smirnoff Ice, but not spirits. Especially when other kids are pouring it."
"She won't get in trouble, will she?"
Zoë sighed, pursing her lips. "We'll talk to her, try and figure out what happened. Might get into a small bit of trouble for the sneaking out, but we'll just have to make sure she does something else when she gets bad news besides trying to get liver failure."
"Yeah. We're all devastated but lately El has been doing, not thinking. Even before the diagnosis. I know she's 14 and all but she's so... reactionary."
Katie smiled softly. "Nah, Max, she was always like that. Even as a baby. You were all characters, that's what made us love ye. But you and Brook built resilience ye shouldn't have had to when ye were so young. Elsie never witnessed the things you guys did, she was only a few months when ye came to us. You two had to be resilient for a time; this could be the only time this has been asked of El. She's very lucky, but she's in a position that none of us have been; being a teenager and facing the first major tragedy in her life, that she can remember anyway."
Max furrowed his eyebrows. "What did you go through, Ma?"
"Nothing worth diving into," she retorted with a slight snap.
"I'm sorry, Ma. Shouldn't have said that." The toast popped up, and Max put it on the plate and returned to the table, continuing the conversation as he spread butter on the toast. "I actually hadn't thought about that before. Brook and I don't really talk about the early years. Became kind of irrelevant to us as soon as we entered Starman. Ye were our parents now and that was that. I guess we never thought about how Elsie never knew anything but you guys, this house, Starman. We were all rowdy enough teens, but we weren't going through what El is. I vaped a bit and drank some Lidl beer to deal with not seeming cool, Elsie nearly destroys her liver on her first drink to deal with figuring herself out and everything else."
