by Amy Sparling
It bothers me how hot he is. Why does he have to be so freaking attractive? It’s making my toes all tingly and screwing up my brain. “You make me feel high,” I say under my breath, right before I burst into giggles.
“What was that?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
He eyes me suspiciously but it only lasts a moment before he slips back into his calm mode.
I close my eyes and take in the sweet smell of the flowers. The gentle breeze hits my face and everything feels so perfect. So calm, so pretty. Right now as I sit here, my brother and his girlfriend are downstairs getting high. I can only wonder how epic a night like this on this gorgeous balcony would feel like if all your worries were taken away.
“Hey,” I say. And the moment the word is out of my mouth, a wave of nausea and anxiety fills up every inch of my body. My vision blurs and my mind is spinning in a million directions and I am so freaking scared of what I am about to do. But I refuse to back down now.
I’ve made my decision.
“What is it, doll?”
The words are out of my mouth before I can even stop them. “I want to try it. I want to smoke with you.”
Chapter 3
He only asks if I’m serious about three times. And then he slips back into the apartment on the second floor, using a separate door than the one we came in with the staircase. I stare at my fingers, looking at the creases in my hands, telling myself to be cool.
Don’t back down.
Don’t freak out.
It’s one time.
I need to try this out for myself.
Bluntz returns with a joint and a lighter in his hand. A sly smile spreads across his face and I melt into a puddle of hopeless crush. I am so pathetic. “You’re really cute,” I say.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Are you high already?”
I shake my head, feeling blood rush up to my cheeks. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, doll.”
I love the way he calls me doll.
Bluntz is a kind and patient teacher. He shows me how to take a hit off the joint, how to hold the thing between my fingers and how to suck in the air, keeping it in my lungs before slowly letting it out.
I’m a coughing pathetic loser on my first couple of tries. But he assures me that it’s all part of the learning curve. I feel dorky and weird and embarrassed. But Bluntz is sitting so close to me, his hand gently holding onto my lower back as he guides me in what to do. I don’t even care what I feel like.
Slowly all those worries disappear into the night air.
“Whoa,” I say. My eyes go wide and I take in the stars and the sky. And the flowers. The flowers! They’re so beautiful. I leap out of my chair and cross the balcony so I can touch the flowers.
Bluntz puts a hand on my back again, steadying me. “Don’t fall off the balcony,” he whispers into my ear. I take a step backward, heeding his advice. I draw in a deep breath and feel a thousand tiny butterflies wrap around me.
When I look toward him, I startle. I’m dizzy. Falling. And dizzy. And.
“Oh no,” I say, reaching out frantically. “I’m so dizzy.”
“It’ll be okay, just don’t freak out.” He grabs my arm and I step backward, leaning into him. The feel of his chest against my back makes my toes go all tingly. I want to kiss him so badly. And I would, too, if I could stop thinking about how much body feels like it’s falling. “I feel…” I say, stopping when I can’t think of the words.
I lean my head back, catching Bluntz’s gaze. He smiles down at me and runs a hand through my hair.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he says, gently caressing my arm. “I wish I could remember my first time.”
It feels nice to have him there, so securely. Just an extra piece to make sure I don’t fall over the edge. I am going to fall, too. He doesn’t know it yet, but I know it. I am falling already, falling in a spiral. Clockwise. I stay where I am, standing on the balcony even though I’m still falling. I stand by Bluntz. Bluntz smells good. I think I have smelled him before. I think I have been here before. I can’t stop spinning, even though I’m not moving.
“Bluntz,” I whisper. It feels like I have whispered that before. “Bluntz, I’m kind of scared.”
His fingers squeeze my arm. The index finger, then the middle, then the ring, then the pinky.
“It’s okay, Lexie,” he says. “I’m here with you and it’ll all be over in a few minutes. Just keep falling to the right.”
How did he know I was falling?
Chapter 4
Two days later, Bluntz pulls into Dad’s driveway, the tires of his Jetta bumping over old newspapers as he rolls to a stop behind Ben’s car. It’s three in the afternoon and I know for a fact that Marla isn’t at work because we had just left Bluntz’s apartment-slash-smoke shop.
So why is Ben here? Oh well, I don’t care. I just had lunch and watched a movie with Bluntz. It was basically a date. And for once, it wasn’t part of him babysitting me. He actually asked me to come over. Although we sat on opposite sides of his couch and he never yawned and stretched his arm around me in that classic and cliché move, I’m pretty sure he likes me as much as I like him.
Exactly how much I like him, well, I don’t know that answer yet. I mean, he isn’t Daniel, after all.
But that doesn’t mean he’s not better than Daniel.
I grab my purse from the backseat and turn back around, slamming into a bony shoulder. “Ow.”
“Sorry,” Bluntz says from his side of the car. “I was just getting this CD for ya.” He flips the disk between his index and middle fingers, making the sun reflect off it and right into my eyes.
“What is it?” I ask, snatching it away so he can’t keep blinding me.
He shrugs like it’s totally not a big deal and says, “It’s Zombie Radio’s demo. I played keyboard.”
“You’re in a band?” I try to picture him up on stage. He wears clean clothes, not ripped up rock star clothes. But he does have the classic long shaggy hair, so I guess he fits the part. Every band has that one shy, quiet guy in it.
“I was,” he says, focusing on the CD in my hand. “The band broke up a while ago.”
“Why?”
“Marla was dating the singer. She dumped him, and I guess he didn’t want to be around us.” He shrugs, trailing off. The boy never talks for more than a few seconds.
“Yeah, I get it,” I say, tossing around this new information in my mind. Marla’s old boyfriend sang in a band. He was the total opposite of Ben. “How long ago was that?”
“Three months.”
“Ah.” I open the car door. There isn’t much else to say besides sorry my brother broke up your band. And I’m not going to say that. I want Bluntz to like me, not find reasons to stay away from me and my family.
I can hear the music before I open the front door. Pink Floyd, one of Ben’s favorite bands, roars through the house coming from Ben’s room. My hand vibrates on the handrail as I walk up the stairs. A pile of shattered glass rests at the top of the second floor. Three framed photos had fallen off the walls because of the music.
It would be pointless to knock on his door; I can’t even hear myself think because of the music. Slowly, I open it and peek my head inside. Several sticks of incense burn in all corners of the room. The skunk smell overpowers all of them.
Ben sits on the floor, leaning against his bed, Xbox controller in his hand. I look at the TV—it’s not even on.
“You okay?” I yell.
He looks up at me, a lost expression on his face. Then he looks at the blank TV screen and at the controller. I turn down the stereo to a level that doesn’t make my eardrums bleed and go over to the TV. I push the power button and then the one on the Xbox.
This doesn’t motivate him to do anything other than pick up the joint in the ashtray on his nightstand. He takes a long hit from it, the tip turning bright orange as he inhales.
“Ben?” I sit on the floor next to him. “
Ben, what’s wrong?”
He takes another hit, holding the breath for a long time before slowly exhaling. I shove his shoulder. “Talk to me. Why are you acting like a zombie?”
He smiles. “Because I’m baked.”
He starts to chuckle and his head droops down to his chest. The smell of marijuana is so strong it feels like the hairs in my nose are burning each time I breathe. He reaches for the joint again, but since I still have all of my reflexes, I steal the ashtray and hold it away from his reach.
He laughs again, as if this is the funniest game in the world and holds out his hand to me. Like I’m just going to give it to him? Right.
I crawl out of his grasp and set the ashtray on his desk across the room. Ben’s bloodshot gaze falls to the floor. His bottom lip sticks out and he makes the most pathetic puppy face. “Give that back,” he says.
“Sorry.” I step into the hall bathroom, leaving his bedroom door open so he can see me as I drop the joint in the toilet and flush it away forever. He swears and throws his controller on the floor. It bounces across the carpet. “That was mean,” he mumbles.
Back in his room, I open the window, hoping the fresh air will clean out the thick suffocating stench of pot and help us both breathe a little better. He glares at me as I move through his room, picking up dirty clothes and reorganizing his desk. When the room looks as good as it can get, I lean against the wall and cross my arms over my chest. “You need to talk to me,” I say in my most adult-like voice.
“I don’t have to talk to anyone.”
“I thought you didn’t get high very often.”
“I thought you didn’t get high at all.” An evil grin spreads across his face, lasting for only a second.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bluntz had promised me that he wouldn’t tell anyone that I had smoked with him. Because it’s not like I actually smoked; I was just experimenting. Ben could not possibly know what I had done.
“Right,” Ben says, laughing even though what he’s doing doesn’t sound like a laugh in the traditional sense. He stretches out his leg and reaches into his pocket, retrieving a plastic bag full of joints. He puts one in his mouth and grabs a lighter from under the bed.
“Dammit, Ben!”
He lights it and takes a hit. I know I can’t overpower him and take it away. Ben may be stoned, but he’s still way stronger than me. “I think you’re high enough. You don’t need anymore. Please put that away.”
He takes another long drag on the joint, just to spite me. “It’s not like I’m going to overdose.” He smiles. “That’s impossible. Here Lex, take a hit.” He holds it out to me. “Puff, puff, pass, little sis.”
I shake my head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Never mind me,” he says, pointing at me with the joint. “I know your dirty secret.”
“I have no secrets,” I lie.
“You got high with Bluntz.” His eyes meet mine, daring me to object. When I don’t say anything, he continues, “You don’t have to be ashamed. I’m proud of my baby sis.”
“Shut up.” My mind is whirling with a million excuses and lies, but none of them are believable. If Ben knows what I did, he’ll know I’m a hypocrite. I’ll lose my ability to help him.
“You need to stop taking my shit away from me, trying to be my mommy. Because you’re one of us now, Lex.” He flicks the lighter and holds it to his joint again, taking another hit. Then holds it out to me. I wonder if he’ll talk to me if I get high with him. Maybe he will confide in me more, knowing I’m in the same state of mind as he is. But the other night is still fresh in my mind, the head rush and the dizziness and how completely wrong it made me feel. I can’t do it.
Ben leans forward, pushing the joint even closer to me now, begging me to take it. I want to make him happy. I want him to talk to me. But I can’t bear to smoke again. Even though Bluntz looked so cute when he taught me how to inhale correctly so I could feel the high.
Hmm, I have an idea.
Taking the joint and holding it up to my lips, I watch Ben’s smile turn to relief. Barely inhaling, I raise my chest to make it look like I had taken in way more than I did. My charade probably doesn’t have to be this realistic; Ben is so far gone now, he doesn’t seem to know where we are. He looks around the room in awe, taking in the sight of his possessions that he sees every day, only experiencing them differently now that he’s high.
He reaches for the joint but I hold it away from him at arm’s length. “I smoked. Now you talk to me.”
“What do you wanna talk about?” He rolls his eyes to the ceiling.
“What’s bothering you?”
“Nothing.” Ben draws out the word like it’s an obvious answer to a question too stupid to be asked in the first place.
“Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be with Marla?”
His face contorts painfully as he stares down at his hands. For the first time since I walked into his room, he’s not smiling. He reaches under the baseball cap next to him and pulls out a folded note. Instinctively, I reach out to take it, and for a moment it looks like he’s going to hand it to me.
But then he crumples it in his fist. He stares at his white knuckles for a moment and then slowly lets his eyes meet mine. For the first time in my life, I feel like the older sibling.
He frowns. “Marla broke up with me.”
Chapter 5
When I was a kid, we had a family emergency plan for if the house caught on fire. Everyone was supposed to leave all of their belongings and run outside to our special pre-appointed meeting place: the big oak tree in the back yard. We also had a safe word in case a stranger ever came to pick us up from school. It was Belle. My mom had chosen it because I was the youngest kid and she didn’t think I’d forget my own middle name in an emergency.
We never had to use the safe word for anything, and our house never burned down. I think the most tragic thing to ever happen to our family was the divorce. And even that went pretty smoothly. It’s naive to feel that your house will never burn down and that safe words are pointless, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking that way.
The first night Ben didn’t come home wasn’t anything to worry about. I’d left the lights on out of fear of being alone in the house, but besides that I had fallen asleep with no problems. All my thoughts were filled with my insane crush on Bluntz so I barely had room in my mind to wonder why my brother wasn’t home.
The second night Ben didn’t come home, well, that’s when the rock settled into my stomach. All of my attempts to call him went straight to voicemail. I got it, that he was heartbroken and sad and all that, but why did he want to be away from home? From me?
Now, five miserable days later, I sit under the oak tree in the back yard as the sun sets behind a row of houses to my right. I know Ben won’t magically show up at our childhood meeting place, but I don’t like being in the house anymore. I’ve even turned down hanging out with Jill because I’m afraid if I leave the house for even a minute, I might miss Ben. Mom would demand that I come home if she knew I was alone, so I’ve been avoiding her, too.
For five whole days I’ve eaten cereal and watched the big TV and listened for Ben’s car pulling into the driveway. This house feels like a prison. I feel like a little old lady who obsessively worries about everything. Ben is eighteen and capable of running his own life.
I hope he isn’t doing drugs wherever he’s hiding.
But he probably is.
I’ve pretty much realized that Marla was the catalyst to Ben’s new drug habit. She worked at a smoke shop after all, and had Ben wrapped around her finger. He must have done it just to feel cool and fit in with her crowd. And now that she is gone, I know Ben is sad about it but hopefully he can heal and go back to normal.
Although the bag of joints he had when I last saw him worry me.
I really want Ben to come home.
I wake up around two in the morning in the living room, having passed out on the couc
h. An infomercial on TV advertises the shockingly low price of some kitchen appliance that no one will ever actually use. And if you call now, you can get two of them for the price of one. I check my phone on the coffee table: zero missed calls, zero new messages.
Because I’m so exhausted and not thinking clearly, I get this crazy idea that maybe the explanation for Ben’s absence is in his room, waiting for me to discover it with a bit of snooping. He’s been gone all week so maybe he was at YMCA camp or a convention for…I don’t know—stuff. Yeah, that could be it.
I know I sound crazy. I don’t care.
I skip up the stairs, still disoriented from having been asleep and almost slam my shoulder into the wall as I round the hallway to Ben’s room. It reeks in here even worse than usual.
His desk is empty, devoid of any flyers for week long extravaganzas. There are no clues to tell me where he has gone. The only clue I can find in here is incredibly bad: his cell phone charger plugged in by the nightstand.
If Ben had planned a trip, he would have taken that. He probably would have taken his debit card from the nightstand too.
I plop on his bed and sink my head into his pillow. It has a touch of that skunk smell, but mostly smells like him. Pounding my fists on the pillow, I say to no one, “Where are you?”
There is a crumpling sound, and I reach under the pillow, finding a ball of paper. It is a folded piece of notebook paper that’s been crumpled up. My heart races. It’s the letter. The letter. It’s none of my business but I have to know what Marla had written that was so cruel it drove Ben to binge on weed and then disappear.
Slowly, I sit up in bed and unfold the note.
I’m sorry it has to be this way, but now that you know the truth you can at least see why we can’t be together. I’m not covering for your ass anymore, so if you want to avoid a lot of trouble, you’ll get the money to Max ASAP.