I wake up and wish I would just fall back to sleep. What time is it anyway? I wonder. I look around, but my eyes are caked with eye boogers. Wiping them away, I see the world around me and shut my eyes. It’s so bright. Why are the shades up? I slowly open my eyes, allowing them to adjust to the bright room. I glance over at the clock, the numbers glaring at me in a bold red, and see that it’s only 7:30 in the morning.
    This is exactly why I don’t drink. I go to bed late and wake up mad early. Plus, the hangovers are killer. I can hear the television out in the common room and a few whispers. Already others are up, too. I stand up and regret it instantly. The room starts to spin and I get nauseous. I sit down and calm my stomach. I should go throw up, I think. Everyone knows that once you throw up, you feel better. But that doesn’t make the whole process of throwing up any better. I’ve always hated doing it. The painful clutching of my stomach, the dry heaving until finally whatever is in my stomach comes up, and then I have to deal with being light headed. Ugh, I am never drinking again.
    What happened last night? We all went out. Julia, Samantha, Rob, and I. There was a party up on Monroe Street, one of Rob’s friend’s houses. We got in for free and started drinking right away. What time was that? Nine? Ten? Couldn’t have been much later than that. We started with vodka and moved on to rum. Once all of the liquor was polished off we started on the beer, the cheap beer that no one drinks but college kids, and even they don’t like to drink it unless they are too hammered to even taste the hops. We played beer pong, flip cup, kings, and more games that are fuzzy to remember. I drank way too much. The last thing I remember was hanging all over Sammie. Oh, that’s not gonna be pretty. How pissed is Rob going to be? Hell, how pissed is Julia going to be? Where was she? Why was I hanging out with Rob’s girlfriend? Why wasn’t Julia with me? See, this is why I hate drinking. The morning after and all of the details from the night before are lost in the abyss that alcohol creates. Drink responsibly, hah! Who taught us to drink responsibly? I hardly drink at all because I know I don’t know my limits. Once I start drinking, I go and go and go and won’t stop until I pass out from exhaustion or my body just quits. I thought I learned after going to the hospital to get my stomach pumped; yet I still can’t stay away from vodka.
    I blacked out. I must have. I remember hanging all over Sammie and then… waking up in my bed, back in my dorm. I think about it and decide my stomach has finally settled. I walk out into the common room and see the evidence of how rough a night it must have been. The common room is a disaster. Paper, garbage, and upended furniture try to kick my brain into overdrive so that I can remember the night, but it still eludes me. I feel uncomfortable as three sets of eyes stare at me. Julia doesn’t ask how I am feeling, Rob doesn’t make a comment about how drunk I was, and Sammie just looks at me with cold eyes.
    “Hey guys, how you all feeling?” I ask.
    “John,” Rob says. With that tone of voice memories flow through my head, not of last night, but of when I was a child. Whenever my mom said my name that way, the way he just said it, without any emotion or humor behind it, it made my blood run cold. It meant I was in trouble, that I did something wrong. Normally, I would lie and say I didn’t do it, how can you prove it. But something tells me that what ever I did this time was my fault and that I did do it. I just can’t remember. The feeling of nausea returns so I sit down on the chair next to my bedroom door, opposite the couch and them.
    “What?” I ask. My face feels cold, as though there is no blood flowing to it, my stomach feels like it has butterflies and it is ready to blow, and I try harder to remember what happened last night. I fell down outside, in the road, I think. On the walk back. But I can’t remember anything else. 
    “We need to talk,” Julia says. She looks at me coldly too. What could I have done to make my girlfriend look at me like that? I mean, yeah, I was hanging all over Sammie, but I was drunk. Everyone gets like that when they’re drunk. If Julia were around when I was drinking I definitely would have been all over her.
    “About?” I can’t ask more than one-word questions. I finally recognize the feeling rumbling in my stomach and tears sting at my eyes. My body knows what my mind doesn’t. It’s guilt rumbling around, guilt for something I can’t remember doing. How sick is that?
    “John, you drank a lot last night. More than we’ve ever seen you drink before. We were worried about you. 7 shots of vodka, 5 shots of rum, then you moved on to the keg. Once the keg ran out you started on the bottles and cans. You weren’t stopping,” Rob says.
    I sigh a breath of relief. They’re worried about my drinking. That’s all; I’m a wreck and can’t stop drinking. It’s like an intervention, nothing big at all, but the feeling of guilt isn’t going away and deep down I know that something else is going on. I close my eyes and try to force my thoughts to come together. What happened? I feel like screaming it at them, but they are going to tell me in their own time, I can see that on Rob’s face.
    “Come on Rob, you know I don’t know my limits. It’s no big deal. I won’t drink for a little while, okay? I can’t remember what happened last night, but if I said anything mean or wrong, I’m sorry. You guys know me, I’m not an asshole. When I drink, I just lose myself,” I say, hoping for the end of this conversation and for the cold eyes to stop stripping me down and making me feel worthless. The last time I was drunk, I told them that they didn’t appreciate me and I was sick of it. I got angry, ran away, and walked all around town in a drunken stupor, dodging behind hedges and bushes at the sound of people and the sight of cars. I had apologized and everything went back to normal. Well, as normal as possible.
    That’s not going to work this time. That much even the three blind mice can see. It’s not on Rob’s face, my best friend since grade school, or Julia’s, my girlfriend since freshman year in high school, but the accusation and hate come through Sammie. I did something, something really bad, and the hatred is rolling off of her in waves so thick that I think I’m drowning.
    “No, you weren’t just out of control, Johnathan,” Sammie says, her usually soft voice as sharp as shards of glass. I lean back in shock. What did I do?
    “Huh?” The sudden change in Sammie is too quick and too severe for anything that I could have done.
    “You were out of your mind!” she screams, and I jump. Tears are flowing down her face. My eyes go from her to Rob, who looks down, and I feel something break apart. I stare at him, trying to will him to look at me, but it doesn’t work. She is freaking out on me and he isn’t even trying to tell me what I did. A wave of anger washes over me.
    I glance over at Julia and see hate in her eyes, too, but I also see sympathy. What ever I did, does she feel for me? Does she think I’m a monster too? As quick as the anger showed up, it disappears.
    The guilt within me is pulsating, becoming unbearable. Even my own body is against me. I clench my fists, trying to get myself under control, to calm down and not become an emotional wreck, and I wince. I hold my fists up and see that my knuckles are bruised. I crack them and pain answers. I look from them to Sammie.
    “What did I do?” I ask, the plea for the answer embedded in the very form of the question. I need to know, but I also know that the answer will break me. Something happened, something violent, and I did it. My fists are bruised.
    “Julia was throwing up and Rob wanted to walk her home,” Sammie says. “You were at least partially sober.” She glares at me. “You told him that he could because you wanted to get really drunk. Something about having a really bad few weeks of school and you just wanted to let go of everything, have fun, and drink. I told Rob I would watch over you while he walked Julia home. He asked you, of all people, if that was okay and you took another shot and said, ‘Sure’.”
    I’m cold. I remember a little bit now. It’s blurry, but I remember him asking me if I would be okay with Sammie. I told him not to worry; I wasn’t going to drink much more anyway. I just wanted to be a little bit more drunk, to forget about that calc exam I had failed Thursday. He laughed at me and handed me another shot, one that I quickly downed. I can’t really remember anything else yet.
    “You played a few more games of pong, somehow winning them all, and then… you lost.” She takes a breath, trying to hold her composure. “That’s when you started to look around for Julia.”
    The rest of the night comes flooding back to me, the few given details brushing away the haze of the night.
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    “Where’s Julia!” I yelled, but the noise of the party overwhelmed my voice. I looked around, but the room was spinning and everyone was blurring together. “Julia!” I yelled again. “Julia!”
    “She’s not here, John! She went home,” Sammie said.
    I looked down at her and took a gulp of beer. “Where’d she go?”
    “She went home.”
    “You liar!” I yelled.
    “No, I swear, she went home. Robbie took her home. He’ll be back here soon, okay?”
    “No,” I said, and dropped my beer on the floor. Somewhere in the room someone started the asshole chant, but I ignored it. “I want to see her now.” I walked away from Sammie and to the front door, tripping over nothing constantly and using the people around me as supports.
    “Wait up!” Sammie said, pushing through the crowd.
    I had already made it outside. I started to walk down the stairs, but ended up falling down them instead. Sammie came up beside me, helped me up, and put my arm over her shoulders. “Use me as a crutch,” she said. I nodded, suddenly tired from the small walk and at the idea of walking any further.
    I kept saying, “I’m sorry” to her though I was only apologizing for being drunk and not for acting like a moron. We walked back to the dorms and up to the suite. I was shouting to see Julia and mumbling nonsensical things all the way up. At the door, Sammie paused and said, “Okay, we have to be quiet going in. No more yelling.”
    “Where’s Julia!” I yelled. I continued until Sammie told me to shut up.
    “Be quiet, you’ll wake everyone up!”
    “Where’s Robbie? Is he in there with her? Why won’t you let me go inside?” I yelled.
    “Just be quiet,” she said.
    “Is Julia cheating on me?” I asked, my voice slurring and the hallway spinning out of control.
    “What? No! Why would you say that?”
    “Let me in my room!” I shoved Sammie into the wall. I fumbled with my keys and walked into the room. Robbie was sitting on the couch with Julia, whose head was in a trashcan.
    “You bastard!” I yelled. I chucked a book at him.
    “What the hell?” he said, looking at Sammie, who was just getting off of the ground.
    “He thinks you and Julia are fooling around, “ she said and dodged another book.
    “Okay buddy, come on. Let’s get you to bed. You’ve had enough fun for one night,” Robbie said. He walked closer to me and put a hand on my shoulder. I threw the first punch.
********************************************************************************************
    “Wait,” I say. “We fought, didn’t we?” I ask Rob. He nods his head and I finally notice that his lip is split open and that he has a shadow of a black eye already starting to show up. I look around the room. The common room table is upended, the posters on the wall are torn apart, and there is trash everywhere. “We brawled?” I ask and he nods again.
    More continues to come back to me, but I want to hear it from Sammie, so I ignore it.
    “You kept hitting Robbie and he hadn’t even struck you back yet, so I jumped in and tried to split you two apart. It was a stupid idea, but you kept hitting him and hitting him. When I jumped in, you turned on me too, “ she says. She lifts her sleeves, showing bruised arms. “You shrugged me off your back and punched Robbie one more time.”
“That last one knocked me unconscious, but I don’t think I was out for very long. Five, maybe ten minutes,” Robbie says.
“ It was long enough. He was knocked out and Julia was too busy throwing up and couldn’t do anything to stop you.  I was afraid that you were going to keep going after Robbie so I tried to talk you out of your rage.” She lifts up her shirt, exposing her stomach and ribs. It’s mostly one big bruise, already turning an ugly shade of yellow and purple. “It obviously didn’t work. When I finally stopped talking and crying, you started to throw things around the room and tear the posters down. Robbie woke up and jumped on your back. You both fell down to the ground, him pinning you to the floor, and he punched you in the mouth a few times. You tried to fight back, but I think the alcohol finally got to you because you passed out. Robbie carried you into your bedroom and shut the door. We didn’t hear from you again until now, ” she says, the hate still rolling off of her.
    I break down and start to cry, telling them how sorry I am, that I will never do it again, and to please forgive me. I cry and bawl for an hour and they just stare at me. I just keep talking to Robbie and Sammie and telling them how much of an asshole I was. They stare at me with cold eyes. When I am finally unable to cry any more, Sammie and Robbie get off of the couch, look at me, and walk out. I look down at my bruised hands, my destroyed dorm, and then to Julia. She’s crying too.
    “You can’t fix this one, babe,” she says. “You went over board. Sammie will always hate you. Those bruises…” Her eyes glaze over and I wonder what she’s thinking about. “Robbie, well, he loves you like a brother, but you attacked him for no reason,” she continues. “He’s not gonna forgive you any time soon. I’m not going to forgive you any time soon. You attacked our friends, accused me of cheating on you, and were too drunk to stop yourself. How can I forgive you for that? How can any of us? You need help, Johnathan. You should get some before you hurt yourself more than you have already.”
    She stands up and kisses me on the cheek. I want to tell her how sorry I am and to beg even more for forgiveness, but I know it’s over. As the door closes behind her, I wonder if it’s worth getting any help if I’ve already lost the people I love most.