The Opposition

Chapter 35: Sadie

The summer before junior year, I walked in on Maddie in the kitchen... singing. Summer and winter break were the only two holidays that forced me to be confined to the small apartment with my sister, mother, and father, though he wasn't around enough to warrant him being an actual member of the household. All throughout June and July, I locked myself in my bedroom, only venturing out to cook something or to take a ten minute walk down to the library. Summer was hardly a time to relax. I used it to brush up on my French, remind myself of important mathematical formulas, and obsessively text Angie and Ana so our friendship remained strong, even hundreds of miles apart.

As predicted, Maddie spent the entire summer drowning in bottles of cheap liquor. And I stayed away from her. I loved my sister. I really did. Probably more than I've ever loved anybody else. But I couldn't bear to see her like that. I was just too weak. This one day in the beginning of August, though, Maddie wasn't drunk. She was up before two in the afternoon, her clothes were clean, and she wasn't moaning about a headache. It was clear: she'd remained sober for twenty-four hours. I couldn't make out the song that she was singing, too stunned by the presence of her pre-drinking bubbly personality.

"What are you doing?" I asked her, tentatively, afraid that my voice would somehow snap her out of this happy state and push towards a bottle of vodka.

"Making breakfast," she replied, smiling at me with her crooked teeth.

I didn't tell her that's 1 PM. "What are you making?"

She grabbed onto my hand and pulled me towards the stovetop. "Pancakes. All homemade. Not a boxed mix in sight."

I starred between the hot stove and the pile of perfectly golden brown pancakes on the plate beside her. Before falling too deep into her addiction, Maddie was the sole cook of the house. She would bake intricate pasta dishes and stir up fruity drinks (alcohol-free). I'd always been a worse cook.

"Looks good, Maddie," I told her, earnestly.

It was moments like these that I thought that Maddie didn't even remember that she was an alcoholic. She would act was if she'd never accepted that bottle from our father and never dropped out of one of the best schools in the United States. Moments like these, you'd think that she would be going back to an Ivy League university in a few weeks. Like she'd just dropped by to visit her family for the summer before going back to maintain her 4.0 GPA. Not like she's just having one good day before going back to passing out on the couch and roaming around bars with her friends.

After flipping the last of the pancakes and turning off the stove, Maddie tugged me by the hand again and sat us at the small dining room table. Our apartment was nothing special. Peeling paint and second-hand furniture, it was small, but nothing that I'd complain about.

"So, how's school?" She asked. She said "school" as if she never attended Fairridge too.

But I entertained her. I told her about my classes, Ana and Angie, and even about debate. I thought that I saw a small bit of hurt pass over her features when I mentioned the one thing that she used to love just as much as I did. But it passed quickly as soon as I started speaking about my rivalry with Carter Conners, the insufferable boy that I'd been paired with in too many classes to count over the past two years.

After spitting out a slew of insults, all directed towards Carter, Maddie started laughing. "You really hate him," she commented.

I nodded.

"Is he cute?" she asked, leaning in closer and lowering her voice, as if anyone was around to hear. I didn't know where my mother had disappeared to for the day.

"He's alright," I grumbled. I wasn't going to detail Carter's messy brown hair, sharp jaw, dimpled smile, or lean, yet muscular, physique to her.

"I'm taking that as him being smoking hot," Maddie said.