Electro [hs]

One

One ♀

If you mistake your mother's antenatal vitamins for sleeping pills, they won't kill you, but they will make you shit your pants.

Sitting in the back of the car I can't tell who stinks worse; me or the baby strapped into the seat beside me. There's puke and spit crusted in my hair and the taste of activated charcoal between my teeth, last night's cold sweats are now dry on the surface of my skin and there are bandages wrapped around my knuckles. My little brother on the other hand has this sour breastmilk funk going on, looking over and grinning at me like he knows it's socially acceptable for him to load up his diapers whenever he wants but when I do it everyone freaks out and I have to spend the night in a hospital.

"An overdose," mom finally announces. She's been silent the entire drive home, tapping her fingers ominously on the steering wheel because the kind of ass kicking I'm about to recieve takes time and preparation; the fires of hell need stoking before they can be unleashed.

"I was drunk," I mumble, sliding down in my seat and rubbing my brow. "I made a mistake. It wasn't on purpose.

"An overdose," she repeats slowly. Like she's got stuck. I've managed to piss off my mother so much she's skipping and stuttering like a scratched CD

The car pulls into the driveway but mom doesn't turn off the ignition. Outside of the stale car is a fresh Minnesota morning, cloudless and piercing like the sharp point on a needle. I focus on the front yard, an uneven slope of patchy grass and the rose bush planted next to the front door that didn't take to the soil and has been dying slowly for months. Mostly so I don't have to look at my mom.

"What the hell were you thinking?" 

"Well I'm thinking you guys should talk about this inside," pipes Nico, the live-in sperm donor. Or, as most people would call him, my step-father.

He and my mother met online two years ago and because the clammy fingers of middle age had already wriggled into their brains and started prodding, they got married within about five minutes of seeing each other in the flesh. Nico so he wouldn't die a childless bachelor in a foreign country, face down in a box of chinese food, stinking up his impersonal IKEA furnished condo, my mother so she wouldn't have to be 'the divorcee' for the rest of her life and could give her dwindling egg supply one last hurrah before they reached their sell by date.

And pray that  she didn't squeeze out another me, I guess.

I don't mind Nico most of the time, truly. He's a squat little spanish insurance salesman who's about eighty percent body hair and the other twenty percent ill-fitting denim as well as the kind of asshole who thinks popular music begins and ends with Bon Jovi- but at least he doesn't try to parent me. Or 'bond' with me like I'm the kid he never had. We are, at best, separate countries under one roof. Picture Switzerland and France. Relations are cordial but we both understand the clear division in territory.

My mom on the other hand takes a conquer and pillage approach. "Is this some kind of cry for attention? Because you certainly have my attention now Charlie Hogan...."

She looks at me and I baulk.

"Well?" she demands before her expression softens slightly, "Did something happen at prom? Or...if you have something to tell me...about...you know...then we can-"

"Mom!" I bark, sensing an uncomfortable situation looming like nuclear war and running hard and fast for the bomb shelter."I couldn't sleep. I wanted a sleeping pill. Crazier things have happened. Can we please just not?"

She sighs heavily and turns to Nico, "Well that's it. We'll have to cancel the trip."

"Woah, woah, woah. Wait just a minute. We're going to Barcelona," Nico exclaims hotly, his accent and gestures becoming more exaggerated and Mediterranean by the second. "My mother wants to see her grandson.This has been planned for months!"