November 7th: Sugar Cookie Medicine

Sleep eluded me that night. I lay in bed, listening to the crickets chirp, still angry with myself for everything I’d done wrong those past few days. I stared at the clock, watching the glowing red numbers change.

I heard someone downstairs, clanking metal, at 3:56. Exhausted and frustrated, I stumbled down the stairs and toward the noise, into the kitchen.

April looked up from her position by the oven. "Oh! Colin! Hey. I was just baking cookies."
I rubbed my eyes, which were bleary from my long, fruitless attempts at sleep. "What are you doing making cookies at four AM?"

April blinked several times, as though she had something in her eye. "You know," she said finally, slowly, "I have no idea."

I stared at her. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying, and she was still wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday. She looked about as bad as I felt. I looked from the bowl of cookie dough on the counter to her tired face. Finally, I cracked my knuckles and pushed up the sleeves of my sweatshirt. "Can I help?"

She nodded. "Grab a spoon."

I pulled a spoon from a nearby drawer and went over to stand next to her. She moved the bowl of dough between us, smiling weakly as she dug out a hunk of dough with her spoon and began to mold it with her hands into a perfect ball.

"Sugar cookies," she said finally. "They heal everything."

I smiled feebly at her, trying not to cry. So that’s what this early-morning baking session was about. Of course, that was what everything was about, those days. It was like our worlds revolved around Lily and her problems.

"Colin..." she said, quietly, breaking my train of thought. I looked over at her, and saw she was crying, a stray tear dripping onto the dough as she set it down on the cookie sheet. "Colin, it’s worse with Lily... Than we thought. It’s going to take more than detox, see? Detox isn’t going to wave its wand and make it all better."

I shrugged. "I knew that," I said. "I’m not an idiot. I don’t think she’s going to go in and suddenly become clean, walk out without any baggage, and come home and be the old Lily again."

April was full-on sobbing now, and she gave up on her baking to lean against the counter, covering her face with one hand. "Colin, it’s more than the heroin now. That’s only the beginning."

"Huh? What do you mean?" This talk was scaring me. I’d never seen April like this, so anxious and depressed.

She took her hand away from her mouth. "Colin, she’s pregnant."

I dropped the spoon I was holding, and it clattered to the counter. Some of the dough flew up at me, sticking to my clothes.

Slowly, I reached for a rag and wiped it off. I turned around and left the kitchen, walking quietly but swiftly. April didn’t call me back, but I heard her opening the oven as I ran up the stairs and to my room, where an exhausted sleep found me as soon as my head hit the pillow.


It was Lily’s first weekend at home, and her last before she headed off to detox. Suddenly signs of her pregnancy were everywhere. Her clothing was looser than it had been before she went away, for one. She spent a long time in the bathroom in the mornings, and refused breakfast. And I suddenly began to find her at the refrigerator at odd hours, looking for one specific food item (it changed every time) that she said was the only thing she wanted to eat.

April must have told her that I knew, because she never told me herself. She just came into my room that Saturday night, crawled into bed next to me, pulled my headphones off, and whispered, "My baby’s a fucking junkie." She laughed after she said it, not an amused laugh but a bitter one, a ‘oh what a wonderful world this is’ laugh.

I set my CD player on the floor and scooted over to make more room for her. "What are you going to do, anyway? Are you keeping it?"

"Giving it up for adoption," she said immediately, then laughed again, the same laugh as before. "At least that’s the plan of the day. It changes at least twice a week."

I smiled weakly. "How far along are you?"

"Two and a half months, about. I don’t show, really. I just look kind of bloated." She sighed. "Mom and Dad are going to kill me."

"No they’re not," I assured her, sitting up a little. "They love you Lil, we all do."

She tried to smile. "Yeah, I guess. They’ll still be damn disappointed, though."

"Lily, if – no, WHEN -- you get clean, those two are going to be prouder of you than they’ll ever be able to say." I put my arm around her and gave her a quick squeeze. "I just wish you would believe in yourself as much as the rest of us believe in you."

It was bullshit fit for an after-school special, but I had something to make up to Lily after the night before, when she had reached out for my support and I’d turned on the television. Lily didn’t seem to believe it, really, but she smiled nonetheless.

"God, I hope I make it. And I hope it doesn’t kill me, or junior here." She patted her belly, biting her lip.

I smiled down at her, my first real smile in a long time. "Junior and you are going to be just fine."

I don’t know how long we lay there in silence, but I think we both drifted off to sleep. I woke up at one point during the night to the sound of the door shutting quietly, and when I looked down she wasn’t there anymore. It was strange to think that when I’d held my older sister in my arms, I’d actually believed for a moment that it would all really work out.