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Years ago, my parents made a stupid decision — they let my sister throw a high school party at our house and left me in charge.

Things went off the rails about midway through the night. That’s when this moon-faced kid became violently ill.

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He’d been chugging blue, candy-flavoured alcohol from a bottle depicting a cartoon cat on its label. By the time I came across him, he’d already projected a mouthful of it onto the kitchen floor.

In a moment of panic, I picked the boy up by his belt buckle and shirt collar, lugging him upstairs to the bathroom. He continued throwing up and shaking through the night while my girlfriend and I took turns making sure he didn’t choke on his vomit.

He later said he drank the flavoured liquor because he hated the taste of alcohol but still wanted to get drunk and be a stupid teenager. Fair enough, we’ve all been there.

But I can’t help but think what if — under different circumstances — the kid had passed out and died. If he’d been drinking by the water tower, the skate park or at one of the other teenage haunts in our North Shore town, he might have wandered off.