Sitting next to Sarah’s bed, I think about what’s happening with her. I wonder why she’s doing this to herself. Is she lonely? I ask. Unhappy? Afraid? It would be nice if I could say I understood, but that would not be right. No, it wouldn’t be, because I just don’t know. It would be like asking why Rube and I go down to the dog track. It’s not because we’re ill-adjusted or we don’t fit in or anything like that. It just is. We go to the track. Sarah’s getting drunk. She did have a boyfriend once, but he went.

Stop, I tell myself. Stop thinking about all that. But somehow I can’t. Even when I try to think of other things, I just get on to thinking about the other members of my family.

Dad — the plumber, who had an accident at work a few months ago and lost all of his jobs. Sure, insurance paid for his injuries, but now he’s just plain out of work from it.

Mrs Wolfe — working hard cleaning people’s houses, and just got a new job at the hospital.

Steve — working and waiting and dying to leave home.

Then Rube and me — the juveniles.

‘Cam?’

Sarah’s voice swims to me on a stream of bourbon, Coke and some other cocktail that drowns the room.

‘Cam.’

‘Cam’ron.’

Then sleep.

Then Rube.

He arrives and mutters out a ‘Huh’.

‘Can y’ go flush the toilet?’ I ask him. He does it. I hear it, rising and falling like the blowhole down south.

At six, I get up and return to Rube’s and my room.

I could kiss Sarah’s cheek as I leave, but I don’t. Instead, I trounce my hair with my hand, giving up on it in the end — it’s bound to stick up. In all directions.

When I get up for real, around seven o’clock, I check on Sarah one last time, just to make sure she hasn’t made herself a superstar and choked on her own vomit. She hasn’t, but her room’s a shocker. The smell is of:

Juice.

Smoke.

Hangover.

And Sarah lying there, caked in it.

Daylight shoots through her window.

I walk.

Out.

Sunday.

I get breakfast, wearing trackies and a T-shirt. I’m barefoot. I watch the end of ‘Rage’ with the volume turned completely down. Then there’s a business show that wears a suit and tie and a fake hanky in its pocket.

‘Cam.’

It’s Steve.