I don't think I've ever had so much reading.

And it's interesting, it really is, but so much of it is stuff that's totally unrelated to astronomy, and so that makes it harder to push through. I'm finding myself on campus even when I don't have classes, nursing a coffee in one hand and a highlighter in the other, trying to make sense of some seriously advanced physics.

I wonder if I'm cut out for this, sometimes, and I'm pulling back and rubbing my temples when I spot a familiar face in the distance. When I'd last seen her I'd had my arm in a cast. I'd say it's completely healed by now, but sometimes it still aches when it rains. "Hey, Jenny, right?" I offer with a smile, deciding her presence is as good an excuse to take a break as any other.

The stables are beautiful. That alone makes me figure this is probably a bad idea. I'm not cut out for this sort of elegance, for the stiff way the people I pass stand. I've always slumped. 

But I need a way to fill my time. The closer I get to eighteen, the more terrified I get that I'll lose myself in the bottle when it's even easier to grasp. T.J.'s promised to take me to one of his meetings if I want to go, but I don't want this to be his burden. He's doing so well. He deserves to get better. What I need is a distraction. I could get a job, I could go back to delivering papers – I've even asked about it once or twice – but something draws me to the stables, to the heavy scent of hay and horse hair. 

I'm not wearing my cast anymore, so I can keep my arms wrapped around my front, careful to stay out of everybody's way. Not that anyone's unkind as they pass me. I even garner a few smiles. I'm just used to being on the sidelines, to veering out of the way before anyone has the chance to step on my toes. 

There's a mare, I think, with a deep red coat just outside the office and she's beautiful. I don't know where her rider is, I look around, and hesitate only for a few seconds before I let my hands ghost over her neck. She's so strong. And so much more stunning than my sketches of horses and ponies, all over my bedroom wall back home, could ever do justice. "Aren't you pretty?" I say, unable to deny myself a smile. Hearing footsteps, I force myself to pull away, flushing red. The last thing I want to do is make anyone here mad. The last thing I want to do is make anyone mad, period.

I thought that I could blame Sutter for my dive into drinking, the fact that he handed me the cup filled with beer the reason I am this way. But I can’t help but think that maybe this was inevitable. That maybe, like my father, I am always going to seek escapism in liquid form. Or whichever form it takes that will let me get away.

For a while, I keep my flask at my side but never take a sip. I pride myself on that fact. It’s a comfort in and of itself, the cool metal and the curves of my engraved name. A gift and a curse all at once, a beautiful bottle for a brew that made me a wreck at prom, that made soft and pliable for a boy who, a few weeks prior, didn't even know who I was. And I'm doing okay, I think. It's strange having nothing to do. Not having to wake up at 5am six days a week to deliver a route that reaps cheques in my mother's name. I've spoken to the advisors at the colleges and had them reassure me time and time again that having a transcript won't be an issue, and even if it sits in my gut, the uncertainty, I try to believe them. I try, and that's new, to embrace change.

But my arm still aches and there's only so many painkillers the doctor will give me without asking too many questions, and I think of how my dad started with the socially acceptable types of substance abuse, pills just like these, before he turned to the lure of gasoline. A lure I never understood. At least not until I knew it had nothing to do with the means but rather the end. The end of the pain, the end of the noise, and then, one horrible day for my sister, my poor sister who had to find him and his alive-but-dead eyes, his end.

I should wait until I get home and I should try and stop myself from taking such large, burning sips, but for all that I am getting right, for all of the future that I have before me, I am stuck and sore and scared and Sutter said awful, awful things before I got here that still swim around in my consciousness and gnaw away at my (however childish) hopes and dreams. So though I look around to make sure it’s not too obvious, the swig I take is in the park and I wince as the vodka bites. Wiping my mouth, tears fill my eyes, and I wonder how long it will take until it does its job and numbs me enough to move on.