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Andrea Briggs

Wasted

You break curfew twice that week, once coming home
from Robbie's still giggling from the bowl you shared, the
second time after Nick's party had reached the point of
night where even doing hits wasn't fun anymore after
Tina had vomited on the new carpet.

You've done it all before, though more and more
recently now that school's gotten old and boring, and your
boring, old Da goes to work at the university where he
teaches a course in a room that's as dusty as he is. He's
never actually caught you returning at three or four or
five in the morning, though when he looks at you across
the top of his newspaper over breakfast, you know that he
knows that you've been out, and what you've been doing.

He won't confront you. Da loathes confrontation, and
since it's just the two of you, there's no one else to stop
you. You like it. It's fun. You sneak out a third time on
Friday, back to Robbie's, knowing that it's dangerous,
because Saturday morning is The Anniversary, capitalised
in your head even though it doesn't really mean anything
to you. Cemeteries are just as boring as school, because
you and Da just stand there for a quarter of an hour and
stare at plastic flowers and don't talk to each other.

You spend the time at Robbie's doing hilarious
impressions of your Da, all "eat your veg" and "brush
your teeth," like you're still five instead of fourteen,
playing up the ridiculous regional accent he's tried to lose
but sometimes slips into when he's distracted enough.
But the few bottles of beer Robbie stole from his brother
run out quickly, the joint you share small and weak. The

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