Drinking Age

by Madeline Stratford

At the age of seventeen, I had my first drink. At eighteen, I developed an addiction.

My name is Matty Sullivan, and I’m an alcoholic.

I’ve never said those words out loud, only in my head. On occasion, people will give me the title, and I set it aside. But, for the most part, people don’t seem to care as long as my problem stays in the confines of my home. This way, no one knows the extent of it. No one gets hurt. Nobody knows that I drank last night, and nobody knows I don’t know the amount I consumed.

My uneasy slumber is interrupted by my friend Lynas shaking me awake. My eyes open, singeing against the bright lights, and my mind throbs at the volume of his voice. I curl inward. When he says, “I stole an alien, and you need to hide her,” I am suddenly awake.

I squint against the bright lights of my room. “What?”

He is pacing. It's making me dizzy. “It's a long story, but she needs to lie low for a few

days.”

I press my head into the soft pillow. “Shhh. Don’t talk so loud.” He stops. Stares at me. “Are you hungover?”

I don’t answer.

He says nothing to this because he is looking out the window, paranoid. “I have to go, and you need to keep her safe.”

The front door opens and closes, then he is gone.

It only occurs to me that I have not fully grasped the weight of the situation until a tall girl with pink skin slowly enters my room. For a small stretch of time, I am frozen. Captivated, I think, is a better word for it. “Um…” My words fail me.

She looks at me, and she smiles.

Lynas was not kidding.

I did not make that up in my head.

There is an alien in my bedroom.

The alien doesn’t talk much. I have found myself following her around my small house. In every room, she looks out of place. She is clean and bright, unlike the darkness of my living space. I stay three steps behind her, surprised when she stops. She looks at a small painting hung on the wall. It is hung out of place, in an odd spot, only to hide the chipping paint.

“Trees,” she says. The sound of her voice is unnatural. There is an almost digital tint woven between the words she speaks. I stare at her and the oddness that consumes her, and wonder if she may be a robot.

“Trees?” I move closer, looking at the painting. “Yes, those are trees.”

She lets her hand fall by her side—three fingers, I count—and she plays with the hem of her shirt. It is oversized and striped, paired with black cotton pants. “Can I see them?”

“You want to see real trees?” She nods.

I hesitate. “They are all dead. They don’t exist anymore.”

Disappointment hangs heavy on her shoulders. Suddenly, I feel like a horrible person. I decide to switch the topic. “Who taught you English? Do they speak English where you are from?”

She shakes her head. “The men in white and black.”

“The men with black and white clothes?”

“Skin.”

“Oh.”

She moves past me, into the living room. She leaves a scented trail, one of an unfamiliar smell. It is sweet, though. Nice. She looks around the room, taking in her surroundings. I am not much of a decorator; everything I have is old and unimpressive, so there is not much to be seen.

“Is there something I can call you? Do you have a name?”

She turns to face me, then says something I have never heard. Sounds you would not call words.

I stare at her, her purple eyes gazing back into mine. “Is there a translation for that?” I ask.

She inhales a breath and thinks. A moment later, she says, “You say, ‘the colors of flowers in the spring.’”

“That is quite long, and that also does not help.”

She tilts her head, confused.

“All the flowers are dead. The colors of flowers in the spring are brown.”

She smiles. “Brown. Pretty.”

“Um, no. Not pretty.”

She doesn’t have a reaction to that; she just moves around the small, cracked coffee table to my sofa. She sits, pulling her knees into her chest.

“You know,” I move closer, standing in the middle of the room, “when I was younger, I lived by this pond. Then, we still had flowers, and they covered the perimeter of the pond. Lily of the Valley is what they were called. They were pink and white. Though pink and white are not names. But Lily is.”

She holds out her pointer finger and taps it against her chest. “Lily?”

I nod. “Yes. If you like it.”

“I do like.”

“My name is Matty.”

She says my name over and over again. “Matty. Matty. Matty.” She tastes the letters on her tongue, trying them out in different ways. “Maaatty.”

She makes my name sound interesting.

Later, the sun is high in the sky, shining through the window, making the dust in the air shine like glitter. I called Lynas, demanding a simple explanation of where Lily came from. All he said was that she was brought into the station. If she stayed, she would be in danger.

“Are you hungry?” I ask her. “I could make you food.”

She sits on my couch, knees pressed against her chest. She looks at me, and I am mesmerized by her eyes.

“Have pink food?”

I tilt my head. “Pink food?”

She is silent. Thinking. “Fruit?”

“Pink fruit?”

She nods.

“Do you mean strawberries?”

She smiles. “Yes. Strapbery.”

I look away, hiding my amusement, careful not to call attention to her mispronunciation. “No, I don’t have any berries. Those are hard to come by, and expensive.”

She is disappointed, and I am, again, a terrible person.

“I have strawberry jam. It's not real fruit, but it tastes similar.”

Going to my kitchen, I grab the small jar out of the cabinet. From the drawer, I take a small spoon. I notice her quiet steps behind me, and when I turn, I place the spoon in her hand. She looks at it, confused, while I open the jar. Without saying anything, I demonstrate how to use the spoon, scooping some jam on it. I hand it to her. When the taste hits her tongue, her eyes widen.

“Do you like it?”

She nods vigorously. She returns to her seat on the couch, and I selfishly take the opportunity to stare at her. All my life, I had thought aliens wore green skin and saw out of big bug eyes. But not her. No, she is nothing like that. Her skin is pale, tinted pink. Her eyes are small, the same as mine, only I think they have magic in them. They glisten and look purple under the fluorescent lights. Her hair is long and white, smoother than the finest silk.

She is beautiful.

Extraordinary.

After a stretch of time, I realize she is only eating jam. “I have bread you can put it on. It's stale, but if you toast it, you can’t tell that much.”

She says nothing, only taking more spoonfuls of jam.

I move closer, taking a seat next to her. I pick at the dirt under my nails. “Do you have family?” I ask her. “Brothers or sisters? Parents?”

“I have parents, but dead,” she says.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

She licks the spoon. “Four thousand and twenty-two years when they die.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Not enough,” she says, simply. “You have parents?”

“Yes, but they died when I was seventeen.”

“How old?”

“My mom was forty-two, and my dad was forty-seven.”

Her eyes widen in horror. “Only?”

“Yes.”

Going to the kitchen, I grab a beer from my fridge. I pop the cap off and take a sip, washing away the words I said.

Lily looks at the bottle. “What is it?”

“This is, um.” I pause. “It’s called beer, but I don’t think it would be good for you.”

“Good for you?”

“Um, no.”

“No?”

“No. But it makes me see bright colors.”

“Let me see trees,” she says later that night, her words traveling through the darkness of my house. “There are no more trees, Lily. They are all dead. You know this.”

The next morning, in the newspaper, I see an ad for a museum. It is a long, thirty-minute train ride from my home, but it has a tree exhibit. They have the last living tree on display. Lily’s pleading for the sight of trees plays in my head, and I decide to take her. I would like to see her thin lips in a smile, and hear her automated voice say words with joy.

Later in the day, I wrap her in dark fabric, covering her face and pink skin. I do the same for myself, concealing my dark hair and fair complexion. We won’t stand out, as it is common for people to have face coverings. It protects us from the unclean air. The train ride is uncomfortable, cramped with people going about their day, but I realize it was worth it when we get to the museum. In the center of the dark wooden floors stands a tall tree surrounded by layers of glass. Lily gasps. “Real tree?”

I nod. “Yes, it's a real tree.”

She rushes to it, pressing her face against the glass.

I stand next to her, watching. Her eyes trail down the rich color of the bark and the lightness of the leaves. Willow is what the plaque says.

“Do you know what beautiful means?” I ask.

She pulls back. “No.”

I think. “Trees,” I say. “Trees are beautiful, as well as you.”

She taps her finger against her chest. “Beautiful like trees?”

“Yes. Only more.”

She smiles, wide.

“Don’t do that too much,” I tell her, “or your face will get stuck.”

Lily’s shoulders shake gently. “Funny.”

“You think I’m funny?”

“Yes,” she says, and I want to hold her words in both of my hands, close to my lungs, so I can breathe them in deeply.

We stay at the museum till the workers say it is closed. I have to pry Lily away from the glass, and she only willingly follows me when I promise to bring her back one day. The train ride home is less packed. People are most likely in their homes at this hour. Later that night, after Lily falls asleep, I go to the kitchen and grab a case of beer. After three, I pass out and dream of the flowers that surrounded the pond.

“Jam?”

“It’s in the cabinet,” I tell her. “Listen, I’m going to take a shower. You can watch TV if you want. You press the button at the bottom to turn it on.”

She only nods, maneuvering the items around to find the familiar jar.

In the bathroom, I brush my teeth, washing away the taste of alcohol. I get in the shower, standing under the stream of heat, letting the water burn off the disappointing actions from my skin. After fifteen minutes, I return to the living room, expecting to see Lily on the couch.

Only she is not.

I see her hair first, fanned out on the old carpet. Then it is her hand, three fingers wrapped around a beer bottle that is spilling onto the floor. My heart stops in my chest. “Lily?”

She does not move.

I rush to her, and horror consumes me. A pink foam, the same color as the jam, seeps out of the corners of her mouth. Her eyes are closed, and as my hand touches her face, she is cold. I grab onto her shoulders and start to shake. “Lily, wake up.” I shake harder. “Lily!”

“You gave her alcohol?” Lynas’s voice startles me. He stands at the front door, car keys in hand, and anger on his face.

“No. No! I didn’t.”

I lift her body, putting her in a sitting position.

“Is she dead?” he asks.

I don’t answer—I can’t. I shove my fingers down her throat, trying to make her empty the poison she drank. It does nothing. She does not heave, she does not gag, she does nothing but lie peacefully in my arms. I shake her. “Lily. Lily!” I lay her back down, trying to pry her eyes open. I want to see the magic in them again. “Wake up, come on.” Tears fall from my eyes, and roll down my face. “Lily!”

“Oh my god, my boss is going to kill me.” Is all Lynas says.

I press my ear against her chest, searching for a heartbeat. I don’t find one.

There is this pain in my body, one that starts in my heart and spills into the rest of me. I am weak now, a coward. My job was to keep her safe, and instead, I let my problem bleed into her, killing her joy and innocence.

I am a terrible person.

An embarrassment.

Two weeks after I killed Lily, I realized I hadn’t had a single drink. And two weeks after that, I dreamt of her and promised that I wouldn’t have one ever again. I also told her that I hope she is seeing bright colors.

She stared at me. Trees standing tall behind her. “I see bright colors, Matty. They live in trees.”

BIO: Madeline Stratford is eighteen and an emerging writer from Northwest Arkansas. She has one previously published story, “Call Me Simon,” which was featured in Horror Tree earlier this year. She is currently working on her second novel, How Do You Perceive Me?, which explores themes of love and self-acceptance.