February 2008
DESIGN IDEAS
Maria and the other soccer players shrieked with delight when they saw the bright, golden object streaking across the pink sky. Never in her life had Maria seen seen such an enormous heavenly object. She was astounded at how much more luminous the object was compared to the fading sun in the west. And what’s more, it seemed to get bigger and bigger with every soaring second.
And that’s when she realized it was headed her way.
“RUN!” yelled the soccer coach, and everyone present at practice took refuge within the humid walls of the nearby greenhouses.
BANG
It was a commotion of dust and lights in bright colors unimaginable to Maria’s youthful mind.
The girl’s soccer team watched in anticipation as the lights faded, and the golden smoke dissipated. Slowly, Maria began to discern a figure materialize in the dust. Finally, they were able to see what exactly caused the commotion
A boy. Not just any boy. Maria was fully convinced within the first three seconds of looking at him that he was the most beautiful boy she had ever and will ever lay eyes on. She sighed dreamily, feeling the entire soccer team around her do the same, including the coach.
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I thought it was just a party. I mean, I got all dressed up and everything. They told me there were going to be so many people there. My friends, their friends, their friends’ friends. And there was going to be alcohol, lots and lots of wine and vodka and gin and rum. I was very, very excited.
Jason came over my place half an hour before the “party.” He asked if he could give me a ride to Kara’s to avoid my driving drunk again later on. I agreed as long as he promised to take me anywhere I wanted to go afterwards.
“Are you going to drink again,” he asked me.
“Of course! When do I not?”
The drive there should have given me the hint that something was up. Everytime I mentioned how excited I was about the party, Jason would all of a sudden be quiet. His guilt was painted all over his features and yet I was too stupid to recognize it.
We got to Kara’s apartment and the walk to her door was unusually quiet. I still did not catch on the fact that there was no loud music blaring nor was there any party guests loitering in the ornate hallways of the Waldorf Towers.
And I still didn’t catch on when Kara opened the door and all the lights inside her apartment were undimmed while a big group of our friends and coworkers were gathered in a circle in her living room.
I felt so stupid. Tricked. Lied to. Because I did not realize what was happening until Kara sat down across from me and said:
“Danny. This is an intervention.”
They were serious, I knew, I just chose not to believe it. ”Funny, Kara. Now I thought we were going to celebrate Margo’s birthday?!”
“We’re serious, Danny,” she said, “all of the people in this room are worried about your drinking. Especially the dangerous things you do while you’re drunk.”
“I told you, over and over again, that accident was not my fault! I was a good driver—”
“Danny, you ran over a child!” said Jason.
“The doctors said he’ll recover, did he not?!”
“That’s not the point!”
It was like that for the first hour. Everybody arguing about my drinking. But it reached a point when they started drilling me with words like ‘love’ or ‘friendship’ or ‘addiction.’ I started to see what they see, what they think of me, and what kind of friends they really were. And so I started to agree.
“We’ve signed you up for a treatment program in the Hamptons,” said Kara.
It wasn’t as if I wanted it to be this way. No. It was supposed to just be a fun night where we hung out and talked and played around or whatever. No one was supposed to die. I mean, it wasn’t as if it was on the agenda.
We were drunk. Of course we were drunk. Tommy brought the booze from his uncle’s mini fridge that he kept in the garage. I found some vodka under my mom’s bed. It had been so long since we found alcohol to play with so we wanted to really enjoy it, so we went to the beach.
It wasn’t unusual for the rain to make her feel depressed. In fact, she was used to rainy days ruining her mood. It was almost like clockwork, actually. As soon as the ground gets damp and the whole world seemed as if it had been soaked by the brutal skies above, she would immediately feel her posture slump and the dejected sigh coming on. Her reaction happened so frequently that her coworkers chalked it up as just part of her personality
“What’s wrong, Jane?” Tom from accounting had asked her one day.
“It’s nothing,” she said, “the rain.”
”Oh, right…” he trailed and after an impregnable silence, he would move on without saying anything else.
It was the same for every single rainy day of her life. That is, until she met Christian, one ironically rainy day.
