South on Highland: A Novel

by Liana Maeby

  “None taken, I guess.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “That was stupid of me.”

  Blake looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was around. He leaned forward. “Okay, honestly? It’s part of a community-service deal.”

  “For real?”

  “I mean, I get paid too, so two birds, one stone.”

  “Oh. So what did you . . . do?”

  “DUI. Smashed a telephone pole up pretty bad. And half my ribs. But I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  “Did you go to jail?”

  “Briefly.”

  “So it’s just community service now?”

  “And court-mandated Alcoholics Anonymous. But I’m certain I shouldn’t be telling you that.”

  “So you don’t drink?”

  “Six months sober.”

  “I think I’m supposed to say congratulations?”

  Blake laughed again. “You can say whatever you want.”

  He shot me another of his patented winks and walked away. But our precarious almost-friendship was sealed, which translated to me helping him pack up his stuff and take it to his car at the end of every class. Once Life Experience 101 came to an end (with a final assignment to interview a homeless person—as luck would have it, mine turned out to be the world’s foremost authority on chemtrails), I convinced Blake to take me on as a studio intern, selling the internship as a thing I could put down on college apps. A few nights a week, I’d go over to the work space he shared with three other artists. I’d help him prep materials and grind fiberglass for his multimedia paintings.

  “This is a really great one,” I’d offer pretty much every time he finished a work.

  Sometimes our hands would brush while stretching a canvas, and I’d find myself suddenly forced to take a sharp inhalation of oxygen. We didn’t talk a ton on those nights but worked with diligence peppered by occasional banter. On smoke breaks on the fire escape, I would mock Blake for his persona as a sensitive artiste, and he would make fun of me for being a dumb teenager.

  I always tried to limit my drug intake on nights I spent at Blake’s studio, ostensibly concerned it would mess with his sobriety, but really, worried he would judge me and no longer want to hang out.

  One day I came to the studio straight from a full day of working on a new play and was artificially amped to a pretty insane degree. I knew instantly that Blake could tell I was high, although he never brought it up directly. “You feeling okay?” he asked at one point while I mixed paint together like I was beating a stubborn egg.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “Totally. I had way too much coffee earlier.”

  “Then I definitely won’t offer you any more.”

  I tried to steady my hands enough to prime a canvas. I was feeling bouncy but even more productive than usual. I could feel Blake watching me, and I couldn’t help but notice that he seemed curious about the chemicals floating around inside my body. We worked until dawn, at which point he told me he was heading out to Mexico to gather some inspiration, but should be back in a few days. He ended up staying gone for two weeks.

  I spent fourteen straight nights hovering by the phone, waiting for Blake to call. When he finally did, his words were wobbly and he kept laughing at some untold joke. Still, I was thrilled when he asked me to come over to his studio that night, and wasted the evening trying on and discarding outfits until I looked suitably cool—but not like I was trying to be cool, of course.

  I could smell alcohol on his breath before I’d even crossed the room. An empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s was pushed underneath a chair. I settled in to work, but I couldn’t stop sneaking glances to see what he was doing.

  “What’s up?” he asked after I’d shot half a dozen big-eyed inquiries in his direction.

  “Is it okay that you’re drinking?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, my probation’s up.”

  “Oh, cool.” It sounded reasonable to me, and who was I to moralize about sobriety. “I mean . . . I think I’m supposed to say congratulations?”

  Blake laughed. He was trying to finish a painting, a large abstract work on plexiglass, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in it. And he was acting more than a little jumpy. “Hey,” he said, putting down his brush. “You want to get out of here?”

  I smiled and gave him a thumbs-up, trying to contain the influx of excitement that was filling my veins.

  Blake drove me to a little bar called Freddy’s that was stashed away on the east side of town. He shook hands with the bouncer, and the roly-poly tough guy allowed me to walk in without showing ID. “Long time, brother,” the guy said.

  “Yeah, I’ve been out of town,” Blake said quickly, avoiding my eyes.

  Blake got us drinks, and we headed to the pool table at the back of the bar, where we swiftly learned that neither of us could play worth a damn. But we fucked around with the equipment anyway, and after a million misses I took the lead, simply because I was the one with the least blurry eyesight. We put music on the jukebox and tried to entice one another into betting on our game.

  “Okay,” I said. “If I win, I get to keep the painting with the floating body parts.”

  “And if I win,” Blake said, “you have to clean my whole studio.”

  “If I win, you have to make me dinner.”

  “If I win, we come back here tomorrow.”

  The bartender offered us a round of shots, so we set down our cues and guzzled more booze. I could feel the whiskey burn its way down my throat and then travel back up to cushion my brain. We took a smoke break on the patio, and Blake had to steady himself by leaning up against the railing. He smiled at me. I flipped him off. Blake swayed a little as he smoked his cigarette down to the filter.

  “You’re so pretty,” he slurred.

  I shook my head as if to say What a sap, but took the compliment and stashed it away somewhere secure. I stomped out my smoke and walked back into the bar, where I picked up my pool cue. Blake watched me intently as we played the next few rounds. We both got drunker and drunker, which somehow actually improved our pool skills. I used my cue to shoot the white ball so that the last of my colored balls went into the hole, and raised my hands in triumph.

  “Congratulations, champ-yon,” Blake said with a thick tongue. He slunk over to me. He took me by the hand and pulled me into the dark hallway. He walked me up against the wall and started kissing me everywhere but on my lips. He sucked at my neck and pressed his hands up and down my body.

  “Is this okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, and Blake shoved his tongue in my mouth and mashed his forehead up against my own. It was exactly what I’d wanted for weeks, but I couldn’t stifle the feeling that this night wasn’t going to form a happy memory.

  “Hey.” His breath was hot in my ear. “Let’s get high.”

  What should have been music to my ears sounded more like an alarm bell. Nevertheless, I beckoned Blake into the women’s room and crushed up a few Adderall. Blake smacked his hands across his cheeks and let out a whoop.

  “Now let’s find real drugs,” Blake said, and I nodded my compliance.

  He pulled out his phone and left the bathroom. When I walked out shortly after, he grabbed my hand and headed for the front door, very much in a hurry.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “My place. The guy’s meeting us there.”

  Blake sped through side streets, making abrupt turns that forced me to grab hold of the door handle to avoid falling out of my seat. I wanted to tell him to slow down but figured it wouldn’t make a difference. He took us up a dark road just a stone’s throw from the freeway. He parked his car and told me to wait inside. He got out and crossed the street, where he slipped into the passenger side of an idling lowrider. A minute later, he was back and beckoning me to follow him up to his apartment.

  Blake unlocked the front door but didn’t turn on the lights, letting the space remain illuminated solely by streetlamps filtered through his fli
msy curtains. The place was tiny and bleak. It contained very little furniture, and all the dishes were being used as ashtrays. There was no proper bed, just a mattress on the floor, barely covered by a black sheet. The walls were decorated sparsely with taped-up pencil sketches and magazine tear-outs. I looked around without turning my head and took in the disappointment of the apartment.

  Blake grabbed two beers out of his otherwise empty fridge and pulled a clear baggie filled with sharp white crystals from his pocket. He held it out for me to examine, in a gesture so reverent I wondered if he thought he was looking at a plastic bag full of diamonds.

  “Is that . . . meth?” I asked

  “Fuck yes,” Blake said. “You’ll love it.”

  I was drunk and dizzy, and I wanted to brush my teeth. There was a whiskey stain on my shirt and the smell of tobacco in my hair. Those were things I knew for certain. But whether I felt like smoking crystal meth with my summer-school teacher in a dark, decrepit apartment on the edge of Los Angeles was something I wasn’t sure about one way or the other.

  Blake rummaged around in a drawer until he found a burned-up glass pipe. He placed some of the crystals inside and pulled out his white-wolf lighter. He held the flame beneath the pipe until the bulb bubbled and glowed like a gaseous planet. Then he placed the pipe up to his lips and inhaled, releasing chemical warfare back into the room. He took another hit and passed me the pipe. I followed suit, letting the burning crystals rocket their way inside me. I exhaled and coughed loudly.

  “Take another hit,” Blake said.

  I paused my hacking to inhale more chemicals, then swiftly resumed with doubled intensity. Blake grabbed the pipe back from me and put it up to his mouth. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet and put his hands on my shoulders. Everything inside me felt taut and acute, like my body had been taken in for a tune-up, and my wires were accidentally tightened too much. There was pleasure flowing through me, but my brain was becoming confused by an overload of sensations. Blake shoved me up against the wall and kissed me. I couldn’t tell if it was what I wanted, but I couldn’t just stand there while my head unraveled, so I closed my eyes and let Blake gnash his teeth against me and claw at my jeans.

  He had my shirt off, and then he stopped, overtaken by a sudden burst of clarity. I didn’t want to have a conversation, and I needed somewhere to put my energy. So I unbuttoned his pants, which was all he needed to flip me onto the spartan mattress and do the same with mine. There was sweat and spit everywhere, and my head was inches from a makeshift ashtray. My body felt like it might explode or shut off or simply walk out of the room and leave my consciousness behind. With Blake on top of me as dawn crept through the curtains, I wished for the first time in my life that I were someone else.

  Blake shut his eyes and thrust into me. I tried to push my arms against his chest in the hopes it would make him slow down, but he was operating inside some sort of fugue state. I bit down on my hand to keep from whimpering. Finally, Blake rolled off of me and flopped over to the other side of the mattress, breathing heavily. There were red marks from my own teeth on my hand, and scratches from Blake all over my body.

  I pulled the black sheet over myself and tried to think of something to say. But Blake wouldn’t look at me, and I could see him fighting inside his own head. He got up and filled a glass with tap water. He drained it in one gulp and then filled it again. He got a beer from the fridge and popped it open. Then he handed me the glass.

  As I downed the acrid water, Blake went back for his pipe and the bag of crystal. I didn’t want to watch, so I turned my head toward the window. Soon, Blake was hopping all around the room. The fight inside his head appeared to have been subdued. He sat down on the mattress and offered me the pipe, but I shook my head.

  “Come on,” he said. “Don’t bail on me now. Let’s just talk. And hang out.”

  “Honestly, I think I’ve probably had enough of that.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “I meant the meth. Obviously.”

  “You barely smoked any.”

  “I just feel kind of weird.”

  “Whatever,” Blake said. “I thought you were like me.”

  He almost had me with the accusation, and he could tell. He held the pipe out in front of me, just over my head. He smiled. I nearly took it, but panic began to rise inside my stomach, and I shook my head.

  “It’s late,” I said. “So late it’s early.”

  “What is that, teenage poetry?”

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  “Come on, I’m just kidding.”

  Blake reached out to touch me, and I recoiled. I was on edge and needed to leave. I stood and put my clothes on. The sun was up, and I realized I didn’t have my car. I fought back tears as I hurriedly threw my hair into a ponytail. Blake shrugged. He sank back onto the mattress and took another hit of the meth. He mumbled something under his breath, and then said it again more loudly to be sure I’d hear it. “That’s what I get for fucking little babies.”

  The space behind my eyes went white, and I bit down on my tongue, determined I wouldn’t let Blake see me cry. I felt crazy and sticky and completely in over my head.

  “You are an asshole,” I said. “And a creep.”

  “Hey,” he said through a cloud of chemicals as I headed for the door. “You’re the one who wanted the fucking life experience.”

  I ran out of the apartment and paced the block. I took a deep breath and forced my brain to function. I called Mari and begged her to come pick me up. She’d been sleeping, and it took a minute for her to even understand what I was asking. But I couldn’t hide the quiver in my voice, and she promised to bring her chariot to me posthaste as soon as she realized I might actually be in trouble.

  I walked a few blocks to sit in the parking lot of a donut shop so I wouldn’t have to be totally honest about where I’d been all night. After twenty endless minutes, Mari pulled up and blasted her horn. “Hey, weirdo, get in.”

  “Is it okay if we don’t talk about it?” I asked right away.

  Mari looked me over. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  She paused for a moment and considered whether I was telling the truth. “Then, bitch, you better buy me a donut for my trouble.”

  I put all my gratitude into a grin. I walked into the shop and came out with half a dozen pastries, which Mari inhaled and I picked at while she drove me to my car. But the donuts weren’t cutting it. From the second I’d left Blake’s apartment, all I could think about was going home and immediately ingesting something that would allow me to twist the memory of the night into something else altogether.

  INT. INDUSTRIAL WAREHOUSE – NIGHT

  A rave is in full effect. Music throbs. People wander around, dancing and waving glow sticks. There’s quite a bit of touching going on, most of it MDMA-induced.

  In a corner, we see Leila, alone and looking flushed. She downs a bottle of water and drops it. It lands on top of a GUY who’s lying on the floor and smiling up at the ceiling.

  LEILA

  (muttering)

  Sorry.

  Leila wanders to the back patio, where there’s more touching and a lot of smoking. She walks over to an INDUSTRIAL KID in combat boots. He has a pacifier around his neck and is holding a pack of menthols.

  LEILA

  Hi. Can I . . . ?

  The kid smiles and hands Leila a cigarette, which he lights. Then he runs a hand through her hair.

  Leila walks away.

  INDUSTRIAL KID

  Hey, where you going?

  Leila slumps against a wall and smokes her cigarette, staring out. A second later, two bodies slide down on either side of her. It’s Mari and Devon.

  DEVON

  We’ve been looking all over for you.

  LEILA

  I feel fucking weird.

  MARI

  Yeah, you don’t look so great, bud.

  They sit silently for a moment.

  DEVON

  Mari
made out with some old guy.

  MARI

  Whatever. He had water. And candy.

  LEILA

  Werther’s Originals?

  Devon laughs. He puts his arm around Leila’s shoulder, and they stare out at the spectacle before them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As soon as I turned seventeen, I acquired a nemesis. A mortal enemy and a true foe. Her name was Lulu.

  To explain: my biggest problem during this period was sleep. I usually didn’t need much of it, found it just got in the way, but there were times my body simply refused to function at the level I was demanding of it. And when that happened, I had no choice but to push my drugs aside (like, inches; somewhere easily retrievable come the first nauseating rays of sunlight) and surrender to my pillow and my CD of chirping crickets. However, sleep didn’t always accept such a quick white flag; it wanted to battle a little more and earn its victory. And so, with my official army of uppers unable to soldier on, I was forced to call in reinforcements—in the form of benzos and opiates.

  Though a steady supply of Ritalin and Adderall was easy to come by in my universe of overmedicated teens, downers tended to fall more squarely in the realm of adult problem-solvers. So I began to raid the cabinets of my friends’ parents for those sweet tablets of dreamland bliss. It was a simple solution to a big problem; or so it would have been if it weren’t for Lulu.

  Lulu was my age and weighed about ninety pounds. She had wispy blonde hair that wrapped around her tiny skull in a single braid. She wore flowy skirts and Victorian corsets, like an Ophelia interpreted by Courtney Love. Opiates were Lulu’s main thing—those and the clove cigarettes she smoked constantly while buzzing around in the concentric circles that made up her own little world.

  Despite this other-planetary weirdness, Lulu was gifted with the innate ability to arrive at parties exactly ten minutes before I did—which meant she could hit the master bathroom first and leave me a beggar for medicine-cabinet scraps. Time after time, I’d put in half an hour of gabbing about that Rilo Kiley show at the Fonda last month only to make my escape to the upstairs bathroom and find it already plundered of all its lovely Rx nectars. Sometimes Lulu would show a little mercy and leave me a pill or two, smirking as she floated through the bathroom door, but she usually emptied the place for all it was worth—a level that even I had not yet sunk to. Hollywood mothers need their Valium, after all.