by mcdavis3
“What’s he on?”
“Who knows.” Eventually the staff brought out a gurney and they carried him off into the night. I’d done ecstasy seven times before and been fine. But I started to get a real uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, as if I’d just witnessed a superstitious omen. When Ian got back I took my pill and bit it in half, letting one half fall secretly into the grass.
“Shit Marco, did you already take your pill?” Ian asked right after. A hot wave of fear ran through my chest and neck.
“Yaaa?”
“I forgot to tell you it was a triple stack, all he had was triple stacks.”
Everyone laughed.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Katie reassured me.
I got really quiet. God tried to warn me and I didn’t listen. I didn’t even want to roll a whole pill, now I was about to roll a pill and a half. We got into the tent to wait for it to kick in. I was scared. It’s gonna be okay, I reassured myself, everyone else is doing three pills. Those thirteen year olds were doing 9. Has it kicked in yet? I feel hot, I feel like I have a fever, I feel disoriented. I started to get claustrophobic in the tent and got out. I felt queasy as the glaring lights began bothering my peripheral vision. There were a lot more people now, the hilltop meadow was packed. Huge gangsters and girls dressed up in leather and neon parted for me as I made my way through the crowd. The passing gazes from strangers only amplified my anxiety.
Is it dangerous to bite triple stacks? I panicked. I just feel terrible. This is where I’m going to die, my mom and dad are going to be told I died at a rave with weirdoes on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. I walked off towards a cliff and sat down on a stump, looking off into the dark woods. My hearts’ just beating too fast, I worried. I shouldn’t have bit that e-pill. I should call my mom, or 911.
I pictured my disgrace while I fished in my pocket for my phone. “You have one new voicemail,” the glowing green screen read. I didn’t recognize the number. I brought the phone to my ear.
“Hi Mr. James. This is Rita, Katie’s mom. Sorry to bother you so late but if you could have Katie give me a call I’d really appreciate it…Actually, tell her she can just call me tomorrow morning. Sorry again for calling so late, have a goodnight.”
I hunched over and cackled to myself a few times. I listened to the message over and over again, each time it made me laugh. Katie was gonna laugh so hard when I played it on speaker for everyone. I got up and headed back to the tent. A great feeling was growing inside me. It’s definitely kicking in, I joyously observed, I’m not going to die. It crossed my mind that I could even die feeling this good.
There was a gob of Vick’s Vapor Rub on my neck. Carol’s nails clawed through my hair spreading in and out like spiders legs while I moaned out loud. Someone passed me a surgical mask gooped up with Vick’s. I took a big huff and floated down into Carol’s lap while little black specks floated and twirled all around. They looked so real. With every breath a rushing wave of tingling contentment ran through me. Moments of self-realization that I was in absolute heaven caused my whole body to tense up in convulsions of joy. Every cell in my body felt as if were turned over anew. All as I simply sat and rubbed my thighs with my hands and impulsively licked my lips. This is the feeling I’ve been searching my whole life for, I thought over and over.
“You didn’t have any friends in grade school, Kristine.” Katie was poking fun.
“That’s not true.” Kristine protested.
“It is true. The only reason Lizzie hung out with you is because Lizzie’s mom forced her to hang out with you.” Katie turned to the group. “Kristine was so weird that in middle school we had to give her an ultimatum, she had to start acting cooler or we couldn’t be friends with her anymore. She even agreed to come to “cool” lessons, taught by me, of course.”
Katie got up on her knees, “See, Kristine’s problem was that whenever a cute guy would talk to her she would laugh way too loudly or hit him or something. So to practice, I’d compliment her and she’d have to very gracefully and composedly say, ‘Thank you.’” We all laughed, “This was before she grew amazing boobs. Now she’s too confident. Kristine, what do you call your boobs again? Mildred and Gertrude? Tell them how you soak them in lavender ice water every night to keep them perky, tell them how you sleep in a sports bra.” Katie was rolling in laughter. I took a gob full of Vick’s and rubbed some under my nose and in my ears.
I climbed out of the tent and headed over to the stage, on a mission to mingle. I walked up on some pig-faced girl standing by herself, wearing long striped rainbow gloves and a pink bunny backpack.
“Hey, what’s your name? Where you from?” Just saying hi to her made me feel like the humanitarian of the year.
“My name’s Tripz, I’m from Everett, you want one of my bracelets?” She held up a forearm covered in beads.
“No-one’s ever given me a bracelet before, I’m honored. Are you rolling?”
“Ya.”
“Me too.” Through the crowd I saw a guy giving light shows with glow sticks and ran towards him.
“Can I get a show?”
“Sure man, sit down.”
“What’s your name? Where are you from? Are you rolling?”
“My name’s Pupils, I’m from Capitol Hill. Ya, I’m rolling balls.” The conversations never got much farther than this, especially shouting over the blaring baselines. But you could just feel the openness. Everyone’s guards were down. This was real church.
Once Pupils finished with my light show he put a Vick’s inhaler in his mouth. “Open your eyes,” he blew it across my eyes creating a tingling orgasmic sensation on my eyeballs.
“Holy shit, that’s a first.”
“Did I pop your cherry?” I nodded my head laughing.
That’s when she walked right in front of me through the crowd. No way. I almost didn’t recognize her without her white sweater and black skirt, but that tight ponytail was unmistakable.
I jogged after her and pick her up from behind, “Angela!” She was confused at first, but she figured it out quickly.
“Marco, right?”
I turned and addressed Angela’s curious friends who had gathered around her protectively. I put my arm around her shoulder for effect. “Earlier this very day, I watched this girl give a perfect speech in front of a packed congregation at one of Seattle’s most popular churches. That’s right, church. And while she was speaking, I watched her thinking, look at this perfect girl, she’s a pure saint, the perfect teenager.” Everyone laughed.
“I thought the same thing about you. You’re a really good speaker.” Through her sweatshirt I could feel the steep curve of her oblique, the strong pull of her hand around my waist. I’d discovered another member of our secret society–by far my biggest find. She had everyone fooled. I leaned into her neck and snuck another smell of her sweet freesia fragrance, then another.
“Where are you from?”
“Madison Park. Are you rolling?”
“No,” I reached up to pat down my hair that had become matted everywhere from Vick’s.
“Are you?”
“No.” She answered believably.
We stood there for a moment, watching a few people in the crowd show off their complete inability to dance. I took my arm off her.
“Hey, my friends gotta go,” She told me. “We gotta go.”
As the last bit of her disappeared into the crowd the e did something to me and a part of my soul ripped itself out to go with her. I took a step after her. People pushed me by, walking off into the night.
Sadly, the moments when you’re peaking on ecstasy and everything’s perfect end. Life goes on. Leaving you tossing and twirling on the couch trying to make the yucky grossness go away. Tortured by sublime memories of holding Angela. Was it all synthetic? Feeling hella future-drugs sick. Spacey, brain-dead, “cracked-out.” And all the weed in the world can’t make it go away, only days of rest. After that night I decided e was like Pandora
’s Box, and going to heaven for two hours wasn’t worth having to come back. I quit e forever.
25. Science Class with Oakley (Fall, 2005)
Loren’s old-school Volvo skirted to a halt in the senior parking lot. We’d just smoked a “chewy b-legit” during lunch–two blunts rolled end-to-end with some morphine sprinkled in. To smoke with Loren I had to push myself past any sort of logical limit. He was on hella ADD medication, so all this shit barely even phased him.
I was in shotgun, leaning down into my thumb and index finger massaging my eyebrows. I was focusing on the sensation in an attempt to maintain some connection to the world. Rushes of weight hit me, twisting and turning me off-kilter, telling me to lay my head down anywhere, on the stick shift. It was a battle just keep my dwindling eyes open, like a diver squeezing out every ounce of strength as he swims for the surface. I’d space out and get lost in fantasies, always forgetting what I was dreaming about, then laugh about not being able to remember. This was the game, the art, what made me so much better. That I could function with the great weight, the secret storm. I still participated in class, too. I’d given presentations where I could barely put together complete sentences. Family dinners spent epically jumping from thought to thought last-second like a trapeze artist. And I still got A’s. I was the perfect teenager, excelling in both worlds. It was supposed to be impossible. As far as I knew, only Mia and Morris could say the same thing. Three out of 1800.
“You got Visine, cuddy?” Loren asked me.
“No.” It took all my effort to just respond. Millen was in the backseat, one of Loren’s good friends. Millen was shy and quiet, but he was good looking so all the girls thought he was adorable. As Millen told it, he used to be Luke vs. the rancor stressed out with bad social anxiety until he started smoking weed. I mean, Millen would never have Loren’s charisma, but it was easy to picture him being even more shy and anxious than he already was.
“This should be fun.” We got out of the car.
“We outro.” Throwing two fingers into the air they headed off towards the portables. My eyes must be so chinked out and red, I worried.
My Visine, cologne, and gum were in my car on the other side of campus. It’ll be okay, I told myself, it’s only the first day, I’ll just lay low. We don’t do anything on the first day. Then a great thought occurred to me and excitedly I reached into my backpack and pulled out my cd player, luckily my “weed mix” cd was still in it. Alright Marco, it’s game time. Pull it together, you got this.
I pushed open the big doors to one of the main hallways. The first two people I saw were Benny and Devin walking towards me. “Well what do we have here? Busted! Class is that way.” I yelled accusingly down the hall while pointing them back the other way. Playing hall monitor was one of Jonsen’s money comedy bits for passing by old acquaintances awkwardly at school. He used to do it to me.
“Devin forgot his backpack in my car.” Benny shouted back. “We’re just getting it real quick.”
“Yeaa sure. Don’t think I’m not onto you. I know what’s really going on around here.” They laughed half-heartedly as our paths crossed.
As the hallway became crowded with hundreds of kids, my grip tightened on my backpack straps, but I kept my head held high with a shining smirk on my face. The mesmerizing beat bangin’ in my headphones pumped me up. “I take sacks to the face, whenever I can, don’t need no crutch, I’m so keyed up.”
Up ahead I saw Mark leaning back with one foot against the wall, he was surveying the crowd. Another senior was facing him, up in his ear seemingly about something serious. I gave Mark a courteous flick of my head as his eyes caught me. He took one look at me and started laughing loudly to bring his friends’ attention to me, even bringing a fist over his mouth.
“You hella lit or what, bro?” He asked, lifting his eyebrows at me twice. I smiled and shook my head as I walked by.
I came across Wendy Acer and a group of her AP friends huddled around a locker. Wendy was an uptight honors student for life I used to ride the bus with.
I’d hunch over the back of her seat, “Hey bus buddy. So how was your day? What did you learn? Who’s your crush, Wendy? Of course you have a crush, everyone has a crush. Is it Evan? Want me to say something to him for you? Hey Evan. Ya Evan, over here. Wendy thinks you’re sexy.” I liked playfully pushing overachievers out of their comfort zones.
I walked up and put my arm around Wendy, leaning my weight on her shoulder. Her friend, who had been gushing about something, froze at my interruption.
“Keep going, that’s my favorite story,” I said charmingly. No laughs. I looked around at the oblong faces. Chins, hips, and noses that were too big or small. Wendy had a light brown mustache that she probably didn’t even know was there. But even her knitted sweater couldn’t hide the secret perky mountains underneath. Sometimes I’d sit next to her on the bus and she’d get so angry she’d press her legs up against the wall and push me out with her back. But she always left the aisle seat open.
Wendy slugged me in the stomach just hard enough to where I could tell she 50% liked me. Her friends were glaring at me nastily like they hated my guts. This isn’t going well, I concluded. I aborted and backed away, laughing it off right in their faces with a shrug. The bell rang, and, as everyone scrambled to class, I dipped into the bathroom. I couldn’t be on time to my next class, I had Science with Oakley this year.
In the mirror I adjusted my windbreaker so it was falling barely off my shoulders. The bright bathroom lights exposed my new nemesis: acne. Every night I performed surgery on my face and back. I went at them delicately with needles, then harder. If that didn’t work I pinched the living crap out of them. Then finished by dumping on creams and ointments. Last night I went after a big one on my temple. Now it was a blotchy red scab. The coat of brown-tinted acne cream I’d put on in the morning was wearing off so I took out the tube from my backpack. Carefully, I spread a thin layer over the scab. Then another. That’s too much, I grumbled, I look like a painted idiot. I rinsed it off to start over again. And again.
The process irritated it and made it redder, turning it into a bigger blotchy thing. With an exhausted sigh I gave up and stopped messing with it. I looked at the clock. It had been five minutes since class started, I decided to wait another five.
I tried to look at myself again, ignoring my temple. In an inexplicable moment of honesty, badass Jeff once told me I was one of the best looking guys he’d ever seen. But how come the girls I liked never liked me back? Would anyone notice my blotch? I will never truly know how good looking I am, I philosophized. I giggled at the absurdity of this realization. It didn’t matter anyways, it was all about confidence.
The time came, and taking a deep breath, I tried to block the blotch from my consciousness. Before ducking out of the bathroom I ritualistically gave a quick nod to the sky in thanks for being alive. Then I jaunted across the empty courtyard to the science wing.
I opened the classroom door to dead silence and 50 pairs of eyes pinned on me.
I made a big “O” with my lips playfully, as if to say, “Uh oh, I’m sorry.” From the far left side of the classroom I spotted Oakley waving at me. There was only one seat left, in the middle row on the right side of the room. I started squeezing through the aisles. I must smell like a chimney, I cringed. The seat was between Rachel Ross and Andrew Tilly. The teacher was giving a textbook overview, but I missed book registration at the beginning of class so I was left sitting in front of an embarrassingly empty desk. I looked over at Andrew. He was a fat kid who I knew through rumor got in trouble constantly with his mom for watching a lot of porn. Andrew looked back at me with big fawning eyes. I turned to Rachel. Rachel was a short sporty girl who ran sprints by herself afterschool on the field. Her body was turned away from me shielding her book. Rachel had disliked me and my obnoxious ways since grade school.
I went back to Andrew, “Hey, can I share with you?”
“Ya, man.” He lit up. I was careful not to
smile back. He was the type that would crack up at my slightest giggle. He slide his book between us and I pretended to stare at it.
“It’s time to run through our Bunsen burner demo so partner up.” The teacher concluded.
“Want to be my partner?” Andrew asked me.
“Oh man, I would but I’m partners with Oakley.” As I got up a huge head rush hit me, temporarily blinding me for 20 seconds. Whoa. I giggled to myself as I felt my way along the desks and chairs out to the aisle. I regained my vision to see Oakley waiting for me.
“I saved you a seat for forever but you never showed.”
“My bad, Oakleyyy.” I drew the ‘y’ out to add a touch of familiarity to her name. I usually did something like this to her name when I saw her. To remind her that I knew her back when she was an obnoxious hairy girl. She always heard it.
As we walked to the workstations at the back of the class I raced through a rolodex of things to ask her. Was I late for anything important? That’s dumb, sounds like I’m trying to sound cool. How were your first two classes? Boring. How’s soccer? More crap. What party are you going to this weekend? Too early in the week for that, save that for Thursday or Friday. Why can’t I think up something funny?
As we reached the station I jumped ahead and positioned myself on the left so that my blotch wasn’t facing her. We read the instruction sheet at the station. I was so nervous nothing was coming out.
I looked over into her dark brown eyes dipped in midnight mascara. They were eyes made to command. Every little hair of her eyebrows was chiseled to perfection. Her beauty wasn’t a wild mountain meadow, perfect as it is. It was a garden, cultivated and worked on an hour every morning.