Rush The Game

“No.”
    “Did you and Carly have a fight?” Dad’s voice is gentle. It’s his daddy voice, the one that reminds me of when I was small and he’d pick me up if I fell and stick a bandage on my scraped knee. He doesn’t use that voice often anymore. Now he’s Dad instead of Daddy. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up.
    My gaze shoots to his. He’s so clueless sometimes, and others, he sees way too much. “Yeah, we had a fight. How did you know?”
    “Yogurt and granola for one. And two days in a row,” he says with a nod toward the dishwasher. He must have seen me put my bowl away. “I can’t remember the last time you ate breakfast alone on a school day.”
    It’s true. Carly’s usually here long before now. Half the time she’s the one setting out breakfast while I finish up in the shower after my run.
    Speaking of one . . .
    “So you . . . um . . . you only had one beer? You’re cutting down?” I stumble over the questions, but since Dad opened the door to a discussion about his drinking, something he’s never done before, I want to try and get him to talk. I’ve done some reading on the internet and I even went to a couple of Alateen meetings a few months ago. If I can just get Dad to talk to me, maybe I can get him to go to a meeting. . . .
    “Miki,” he says, still holding my hand. “I don’t have a problem. I just like to have a beer now and again. Lots of people have a drink after work to unwind. My job gets to me sometimes. It’s stressful. Especially now, with the economy . . .”
    I know that. Dad works in a bank, in mortgages. Not a happy, happy place.
    He focuses his gaze on some unseen spot on the wall somewhere over my shoulder; he won’t meet my eyes. “I don’t have a problem. It’s all under control. I’m not one of those after-school specials, passed out on the couch, with three empty bottles of gin on the floor.”
    That’s when I’m certain that something’s off. Three empty bottles . On instinct, I pull my hand from Dad’s, yank open the fridge, and count the bottles on the door. He makes an impatient noise but I ignore him, grab the box of empties from under the sink, and count the bottles there.
    Anger and pain crush me.
    Dad and I, we’re mostly honest but sometimes not. And this time, it’s definitely not.
    “One on the counter,” I choke out. “And three more you put in the box, hoping I wouldn’t notice. Why leave one out at all? Why lie to me? Or why not just leave them all out and ignore my worry like you have been for ages?”
    “Four beers over an evening is not a lot for a grown man.”
    “A grown man shouldn’t lie about it to his teenage daughter! Who’s the adult here?” I take a deep breath, and then continue in a more even tone. Catch more flies with honey . “You say you won’t drink, and then I come down and find the bottles on the counter. Instead of going to your fly tying group, you stay home alone—”
    “I go,” he interrupts me.
    “You haven’t been in months. You stay home and drink. Alone. Now you planned some bizarre trick to make me think you drank less than you actually did. Why would you even do that? That’s just”—I hold my hands out to the sides, palms up, and shake my head—“weird. You know it’s causing problems between us, and you drink anyway. When Mom was alive, you never had more than a couple of beers a week. Now you have at least a couple every night.”
    His eyes narrow. “You sound like you’re running through a checklist.” I am. I read it on a site about alcohol abuse, but I don’t think this is the moment to tell him that. “A couple of beers over an evening is not a lot for a grown man,” he repeats.
    “You keep saying that! Are you trying to convince me, or yourself? It isn’t about the exact number. It’s about the fact that you have them every night, that even when you say you won’t, you end up opening a bottle or three or six and draining them. You have a problem. Please, Dad, please—” I swallow and shake my head, trying desperately not to cry.
    Dad. Carly. The game. The shells. Being forced to kill or be killed.
    Jackson. For all the answers he gave me, I still have so many questions.
    My whole world is falling into tiny little broken pieces and I don’t know how to put it back together, how to fix it. How to control this out-of-control spin.
    Dad’s jaw is set, his nostrils pinched, his eyes narrow. “We are not talking about this. We were