Oh My...

1.) Alleged Drug Problem

Hi. I'm Alexandra Wallace, and I'm about fifteen minutes away from landing in Detroit. My mom shipped me off to my (alcoholic) aunt to help me with my alleged "drug problem".

Do I have a drug problem? I guess you could say I gravitate towards the bottle (both pill and liquor bottle) a little more than most sixteen year olds. But who can blame me? I'm young, isn't getting fucked up what young people do?

Because of my mom's late eighties heroin addiction, Oxycontin is spewed everywhere. I'll sneak into my mom's room and steal a pill from her underwear drawer from time to time--sometimes to kill the boredom, sometimes to kill the loneliness, and sometimes to kill the sadness. I hardly get high just for the sole purpose of getting high anymore. Unfortunately for me, my mom noticed the steady decline of medication a few months ago and decided to put her bottle in a new, mysterious area. Even now, I still have no clue where her new hiding place is.

Drinking has never been my cup of tea, but since my mom began hiding her pills, it's all I have. Drinking is what got me into trouble, and it's what put me on this devil plane going straight into fucking uncharted land. At least, it's uncharted for me. What's a Brooklyn girl suppose to do in Detroit, anyway?

The incident that sealed my upsetting fate still makes my teeth grind when I think about it. It was such a stupid, preventable situation. I was getting drunk in broad daylight on my front stoop when my little fucking sister came home from school. Of course, at this point, I was halfway down the bottle of Jim Beam and was starting to feel myself. To explain the rest of what happened in the least amount of words, I acted like a stupid drunk bitch in front of my ten year old sister. Naturally, she admitted the whole thing to our mother, who then came to realized that half of her liquor cabinet was empty.

I hate myself. I think that's why I want to be on so often--I hate who I am as a person. Waking up and remembering who I am and what I'm like, I just want to groan. I don't know how Aunt fucking Claire is suppose to help with my self-loath, but according to my mom, it's our only option. "You know I can't afford therapy, Alexandra," she told me one night when I was trying to convince her to not send me away. "I think a change of scenery will help you the most."

A change of scenery. That's what she told me, like deadass those are her exact words. Are you fucking kidding me, Mom? I need therapy and medication to help the fucked up chemicals in my brain telling me to get hammered or kill myself. Not "a change of scenery." Between you and me, I think the real reason she shipped me off was so she wouldn't have to look at me anymore. Sounds bleak, I know, but now she wont have to watch me waste away into nothing, and now she wont have to feel bad for not helping me.

I fidgeted, uncomfortable in these stiff airplane seats. My Xanax wore off almost twenty minutes ago, and now I was gonna have to suffer through the anxiety of being a million fucking feet in the air. I glanced around. No one else seemed to be bothered by this. In fact, everyone looked almost peaceful. I shook my head in disbelief; human's weren't made to be in the air, I thought decidedly. Or else God would've strapped wings to our backs.

I passed the time by reciting rap lyrics under my breath. Even though everyone says the eighties were hip hop's peek, I think the future holds promise. My mom thinks my music is just "noise", and now that I think about it, that's where a lot of our arguments branch off from.

The plane bounced with turbulence. Song lyrics got caught in my throat as I clutched the sides of my dark blue chair. Oh Lord, here we go...

* * *

I think my aunt was on speed.

Or maybe it was coke. Either way, she brought in my luggage in record time and set everything up in the far room to the right. The one story house was small, I was surprised it even had two bedrooms.

Claire was hovering as I put my things into a beige clothes drawer. She cleared her throat a few times before saying, "Well?!"

I rolled my eyes over towards her. I was tired and itching like a fiend; all I wanted to do was drink a beer and go to bed. In a low voice I asked, "What?"

"Don't you like it? The room, you little shit! I spent all last week painting it." She spoke fast, and she kept blinking like she was trying to keep back tears.

My gaze landed on the light purple walls. I nodded slightly in approval. "It's nice, Claire."

"You don't even care," she observed, suddenly giving me a glare.

I scowled. "Of course I do," I snapped, "if I didn't, I wouldn't have said it was nice."

"It's nice, Claire. That doesn't even sound genuine, what the fuck?" I clenched my jaw at the poor imitation she did of me but didn't respond. This was such a pathetic argument to be having, I couldn't even take myself seriously.

But since Claire was obviously high on some sort of drug, she acted as if I seriously offended her. She slammed her fist down on the beige dresser. "Now look missy," I perked my eyebrow up at missy, "I generously took you in after your mother pleaded for my help. I didn't have to do shit, Alex. Why can't you fucking act like you appreciate all this instead of the little fucking twat you've always been?!"

"I didn't want to come here." I calmly returned. "You're not helping anyone but your fucking ego."

"That's not what your mom said, hunny. She was on some crazy fucking shit, claiming you was turnin' into an alcoholic-"

"And to "help me" she sends me to the drunk of the family!" I exclaimed, smiling blackly. "Fucking brilliant. It really is."

Claire stared at me for a long time before rising her hand and striking me across the face. Even though I didn't want to admit it, the bitch could hit. I stumbled back and had to place a hand on the wall for support.

Claire towered over me. "I will not be spoken to like that!" She cried, her left eye twitching with rage. "You're jus'a little punk with no direction. Your mother sent you to me because I was in your shoes once-"

"And did you ever come out of it?" I demanded, taking a few short steps forward. "Did you find any fucking direction? Because, to me, you're still looking pretty fucking lost."

Claire's face lit up in wrath. In a second, she placed her hands behind the dresser and pushed it down. I jumped back as the small house shook. I could only gape at her, completely stunned. "What an awful child you are," Claire said, her upper lip curling up in disgust. "A selfish human being. Get the fuck out." She went digging in her pants pocket and took out a wad of cash. "Get some fucking food before I fuck you up."

I slipped passed her and practically jogged out of the house, making sure to slam the door hard behind me.