Nowhere In Particular // H.S.

Ten: "Don't you mind?"

When I was fourteen Pat came home one night absolutely plastered. I remember it was really early in the morning, maybe one or so, and everyone else in the house was already asleep. I was still awake because I was really into the book I had been reading and kept telling myself "one more chapter", fighting back the yawns because I was too absorbed in the story.

I heard the car pull up, I think his friend Justin dropped him off, and they yelled loudly about something for a few minutes before Pat stumbled his way to our front door. He was a senior in high school at this point. He was dating a girl named Katie and told my mom he was going to weekly study sessions on Friday nights when he was really meeting his friends at the house of whoever was hosting a party that week. I don't know if my mom legitimately believed him when he said he was studying or if she just chose to ignore his real reasoning for falling into the house after midnight, but I remember feeling very frustrated by it.

Leaving the comfort of my bed and the story that I was so wrapped up in, I traveled down the stairs to see Pat falling over as he walked through the front door. He slammed the door shut, not even attempting to be quiet, and slurred something I can't remember. I wanted to tell him to shut up because if he kept up his drunken stumble he'd surely wake up our parents. Instead of saying anything I walked down the stairs to where was standing, letting him put his arm around my shoulder.

He stared at me with glassy eyes, his breath sickening with the stale smell of alcohol but used my shoulder to sturdy himself as we started to make our way to the stairs. Despite my attempts to keep him from falling over I was just a small girl and he was much taller, much bigger and way too clumsy with his drunken steps for me to be able to support him. He fell over again, only this time he tried to catch himself, reaching for a small table in our front room.

The table knocked over, because it was also small and weak like me, but this table held something special that came crashing down with it. A vase that had been in my mom's family since her great, great grandparents were kids was on that table, and then it was on the ground in small pieces scattered everywhere. It was a beautiful vase, cream colored porcelain with pretty blue details, but what was most concerning was my mom's love for it.

She cherished that vase, told the story of how it originally came into our family to every visitor that walked into our home. She dusted it off almost every day, straightening it on the small table every time she passed by. She loved that vase and I wasn't able to stop it from falling to its loud crashing end.

I'm still surprised to this day that no one woke up from it, that no one came running down the stairs to see what was happening in our house. I thought for sure my mom would be able to sense it falling into pieces, like part of her soul would break and she'd know what had happened.

But no one came.

Pat kept falling, falling with the vase and he too broke into a million pieces. I wasn't sure what to do. I didn't know what to say to my older brother who was crying, drunk, and rocking back and forth on the floor below me. I'd never seen him like that and I can't remember another time where I saw him like that again.

I knelt down beside him and hugged him tightly. It felt strange because we were never keen on showing much affection to each other, too busy giving each other a hard time. He didn't hesitate to hug me back though and he dug his head into my shoulder and cried even harder.

He told me Katie, his girlfriend, had cheated on him. He accidently walked into a bedroom at the party he was at and she was there in bed with another boy. Not knowing what else to do he drank more than he should in an attempt to forget about her and the pain she caused. He held it in, stumbling around with a drunken smile, until that vase crashed and he finally let himself crash too.