One night, one of the straight-edge punks called out to Peggy and Greta from under their bedroom window. ‘Don’t answer,’ Peggy said. But he wouldn’t stop calling, so they leaned out and he said they were all going somewhere awesome – come on. First, they drove around the streets for hours pulling real estate signs off their posts. Then they drove up a dormant volcano and slid down the crater on the signs. Peggy and Greta had been drinking heavily in their bedroom before the straight-edge punks had called them away for the fun activity so they were sobering up awake, which sucked. The whole thing was exhausting and they were miles from any more drink. They started to shake a bit. That was in the early days. In the late days, like in the months before they went to rehab, they shook like nothing on earth. They joked about how they had around ninety minutes of sobriety each day – between about nine and ten-thirty each morning and man, someone else would have to roll their cigarette and someone else would have to light their cigarette and not even the nicotine would help and they were only twenty-four! They kept saying this.

They still hallucinated now. They’d hear people calling their names when no one was calling their names. There were small, brown, furry things on four legs with no heads – about the size of a large hedgehog – that would strike out from under cars and behind doors. When they saw something, they checked to see if anyone else saw it first. They perfected the sideways glance. ‘Did anyone else see that?’ They were twenty-four. They hadn’t done that many drugs. Alcohol was the only detox you could die from, the doctor had told them as they shook and fevered and scratched. Or maybe the doctor didn’t say that at all. Those first days were fucking terrible.

Someone at Diane’s potluck told the ‘What’s the difference between an alcoholic and an addict’ joke, and everyone laughed. Peggy and Greta were sure some of the people were forcing the laugh out. Some of the women threw their heads back, raising their necks to the ceiling. Peggy and Greta were still in the kitchen, leaning in a doorway, a bottle of Coke each in hand, no straw, no glass. It all looked fake. No one could be that happy without drink. No one. They’d all been telling stories about their drinking. This was their drink, Peggy said as they walked home powerfully and angrily from that last dinner party at Diane’s. Talking about their drinking was getting them drunk. What kind of sobriety was that? They weren’t happy, it was all a ruse. They were whistling in the dark.