Immediately I began consuming everything offered me. Thus I attained a sufficient state of inebriation and began talking way too much to anyone who would listen. During my mingling, my cousin decided to get into a fight with some guy about god knows what, because what’s a high school party without a good amount of drama? My sister, quite the drama queen herself, approached me in a huffy to inform me of recent events. She was dragging my cousin along with her, his hand dripping with blood. “We have to clean him up and take him home.” She informed me. “Okay,” I said, “but I can’t drive.” I had driven us to the party but immediately forgot my responsibilities upon the first sighting of booze. “I figured!” She answered totally bitchy. “I can drive.” I tried to argue, persuade her not to as I assumed everyone else was as drunk as I. She assured me that she only had one drink and was completely sober, so I gave up and followed her to the car. A few other friends/party guests piled in as well; I guess they wanted to see what would happen next. We arrived at my house, cleaned and bandaged my cousin’s hand, dropped him off at his place of residence, and then returned to the party.
A few hours later, about 3am, we decided it was time we called it a night. Again my sister drove. I sat in the front seat wearing a baseball cap (that I had stolen from some random guy as was my custom at that stage) backward on my head. As we turned into our cul-de- sac we noticed flashing lights and several fire engines. My sister turned to me “what should we do? It doesn’t look like they’re letting cars through.” I tried to focus on her, swaying in my drunkenness. “Its probably one of those damn old neighbors” I finally spit out. “Let’s go get some food and water and hopefully when we get back they’ll be gone.” So we drove-thru the closest fast food restaurant that was open and returned to our home street. Nothing had changed.
We sat there parked at the beginning of the cul-de-sac unsure what to do when a fireman approached us. “Hello, I’m Captain Morgan” he introduced himself. I couldn’t help but smile thinking of his contribution to my current state. “Do you live down here?” he asked. “Yes just a few houses down” I answered. He surveyed us, “which of you is older?” he asked. I raised my hand. He nodded toward my sister, “oh, then why is she driving?” Though I’m sure it was pretty obvious, I tried to answer anyway, “Er…well…she’s a better driver…?” I smiled. He looked us over one more time. “Any chance you guys have two dogs and a pool?” We nodded. “Yup that’s the house that caught on fire” he continued nonchalant. I looked to my sister and gasped, the size of her eyes mirrored mine. We asked him to repeat himself, hoping that we had misunderstood, but he only confirmed: there was a fire in our house. We informed him that our parent’s were out of town for the weekend, and though we were essentially “in charge” in their absence our younger sisters were staying with our aunt.
I was far too drunk to deal with this, and my sister far too emotional. So we left towards our aunt’s house, hoping that she would know what to do. We called her and relayed what we had just heard; she told us she’d be waiting for us to pick her up. Being both drunk and in shock, I don’t remember getting to her house or the drive back home. But when we returned to the scene of the blaze, there was quite the crowd gathered around. Not only had our neighbors awoken to see what the ruckus was about, but my sister had also informed her friends about what had happened and it seemed that the entire school had shown up to see the events unfold. The firefighters gave my aunt an account of the occurrence—it seemed to be an electrical fire that started in the bathroom. We had a wall heater at the time and apparently in the excitement of trying to repair my cousin’s hand someone had accidentally switched it on and not noticed, thus leaving it on after we had left the premises. As luck would have it, there happened to be a pile of towels near enough to the heater to catch flame. This of course would all be realized later; at the time all we knew was that our home had been destroyed because of a fire that seemed to have originated in the bathroom.
The fire-fighters allowed us to enter the house to get anything that we felt necessary—a couple turtles, fish, and a hamster that wouldn’t be able to endure the smoke that still lingered throughout the house. Upon entering I immediately felt sick. The combination of the alcohol I had consumed, the thick smoke that hung throughout the house, and the sight of what was once my home was almost too much too handle. I quickly grabbed what I could and ran out of the house gagging. My sister also couldn't spend much time inside and was standing on the lawn in tears. My aunt assured us that all would be well and we called our parents to inform them of the events as she drove us to her place to sleep.
When we awoke the next morning nearly the entire family was gathered at my aunt’s house discussing the events of the previous evening. My parents decided that it would be best to attempt to get a night’s sleep before driving back home, so they were not yet there. My younger sisters awoke confused, asking how their pets had come to arrive at my aunt’s house and why everyone else was there so early. Not knowing how to break the news, we evaded their questions and told them not to worry about it. My older sister who lived with my grandparents awoke in the morning to find a text message that my sister had sent at 3:30am saying “our house go up in flames call us.” As it was the beginning of July she assumed that we drunkenly had a pre-Independence Day firework show, and picked up the land-line to give us a ring. Upon putting the telephone to her ear she heard my grandfather shouting “what do you mean their house caught on fire?!”
Needless to say, my parents haven’t taken a trip since.
