Dancing with Molly

by Lena Horowitz

  Dad has stopped staring at me like I’m a stranger, and gradually Mom has even lightened up a little bit. Ashley, on the other hand, glares at me like I’m the source of every problem in the whole world, and hasn’t spoken to me except to ask me to pass food when we are sitting down at dinner. Whatever. She can blame everybody in the world for this, but she was the one who had to go up and talk to Mr. Peterson. If she hadn’t gushed all over him like a crazy person, he wouldn’t have come to find me. And if he hadn’t come to find me, I wouldn’t have kissed him on the nose.

  Did that really happen?

  Reading that sentence just made me laugh for the first time in almost two weeks.

  Last night we had Family Movie Night just like it was any other Friday. Only instead of watching a movie, Dad had us all watch this episode of a show called Drugs, Inc. on National Geographic. It was about molly and the Seattle rave scene. In the episode, all these people are doing molly and talking about it. Of course, they highlight all the “terrible” ways in which molly is dangerous—how it raises your body temperature and puts you at risk of dehydration and blah, blah, blah. Guess what? It made me want to roll. It also made me want to try snorting molly next time. They talked about how the high was faster and more direct. I remembered that it certainly seemed to be that way for Carson and Reid.

  Carson texted me today and asked what I was doing tonight—like he didn’t know. We’ve been playing this game where he texts me and asks what I’m up to, and I make up ridiculous replies like:

  Getting a tattoo of an elephant on my left shoulder.

  Having tea with Kate Middleton and trying on her hats.

  Packing for a trip to Paris with Emma Stone.

  But today I wasn’t in the mood so I just texted him that I was LOSING MY MIND. He texted back a picture of him, Jess, and Kelly with the words:

  We’re coming to spring you from prison. Be ready at 11. He spins at 12AM!

  This awesome DJ that Kyle turned us all on to is playing a show tonight. The DJ is called Whip5mart and he’s supposedly spinning at this underground party Kyle knows about. It’s sort of a traveling rave, and this month it’s being held in an abandoned swimming pool in a part of town I am not allowed to go to by myself. I mean, right now I’m not allowed to go anywhere by myself, but I mean under normal circumstances.

  But I was serious about losing my mind. I have to get out of here. Mom and Dad are usually in bed by ten thirty on Saturdays, and Ashley has been locking herself in her room as soon as dinner is over. She’s been crying a lot because last time Reid called, Mom told him that he could stop calling because Ashley isn’t allowed to date him anymore.

  So, he stopped calling.

  If you ask me, Reid is being exactly the douche that I thought he was to begin with. If your girlfriend’s parents tell you not to see her anymore and you really like her, do you let that stop you? I asked Carson the same thing once about the girl he was supposed to bring to prom. He admitted that he just wasn’t that into her. He felt like her parents did him a favor because he was going to break up with her after prom.

  Anyway, I said I’d be ready at midnight. I told him to park at the end of the block. I’ll just go out the back door in the garage and let myself out onto the sidewalk from the side gate in the backyard. As long as I’m home by five a.m. I should be able to sneak back in, and no one will even know I was gone.

  Sunday, June 15

  I am so scared. I’m exhausted, but I can’t sleep. It’s almost five a.m. I took a shower after I got home, but even the hot water washing away all the sweat and smoke wouldn’t wash away this feeling in my chest. I keep checking my phone to see if Carson or Kelly has texted me any updates on Jess, but there’s nothing.

  I’m not high anymore, but I still feel a little spaced out. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to try to write all of this down. I want it to make sense and it doesn’t yet in my head. Maybe I can put the words down on paper and the whole story will come together, but all I can see in my head is Jess on that stretcher. I guess I should start at the beginning.

  Jess drove.

  She stopped to pick up Kelly and Carson, then they came to my place and parked at the end of the block like I’d told them to. Mom and Dad had gone to bed around ten thirty, and Ashley had been in her room with the door closed all night, just like I’d guessed.

  Of course, I hit every single squeaky stair and floorboard on my way through the house to the garage, and the hinges on that door squealed like a cat being run over by an eighteen wheeler. I stood still, heart racing, listening for any sound from my parents’ bedroom. Then I stepped into the garage and swung the door closed as quickly as possible without slamming it. I was panting as I slipped out the back door of the garage and ran across the damp grass of the backyard to the side gate, where I let myself out onto the sidewalk.

  I felt giddy once I got to the street. The moon was remarkably bright, and I could see Jess’s car at the end of the block. I started laughing as the back door of the car swung open and I jumped in next to Carson, who immediately wrapped both arms around me and kissed me for a long time as Jess pulled away from the curb, shrieking and hooting with Kelly.

  I was lost in Carson’s kiss. He smelled like warm brown sugar and his peppery cologne, and underneath his peppermint gum there was just the hint of a cigarette—but not in a gross ashtray sort of way; it was smoky in a sexy, bad-boy sort of way. When we came up for air, I filled everybody in on my incarceration. Jess agreed that it sounded pretty terrible and Kelly couldn’t believe that I had kissed Mr. Peterson on the nose. She kept giggling about it, then getting control of herself, then collapsing into laughter again in the front seat. Carson said that it was “epic” and kept apologizing for taking off with Jess and Kelly. I assured him that there was nothing he could’ve done, and if he’d been there he’d have just gotten busted, too.

  When we got to the park where the old abandoned swimming pool was, there were cars parked all up and down the road leading up to the entrance. Carson said it looked like we’d have to walk, but Jess said SCREW THAT and drove right up to the fence around the pool. We could see the lights flashing from the scaffolding rigged around the pool, and there was a line of people at the door to the old locker-room entrance. Jess drove around to the opposite side of the pool from where the line was, pulled over the curb between a couple of trees, and parked in the grass next to some picnic tables. We all started laughing and Carson just shook his head and told Jess she was off the hook.

  It was really dark in the car. The trees towering over us blocked out most of the light from the moon and the flashing lights over the empty pool. Carson was texting Reid, who was apparently just meeting us there. He was walking all the way up from where he’d parked on the street and he finally found Jess’s car. He tapped on Carson’s window and then Carson slid over to my side of the backseat and opened the door. Reid got into the car and a girl climbed in after him. It was pretty cramped in the backseat with all four of us—especially since Carson is so tall. He scooted under me, and I sort of wedged myself sideways on his lap.

  The girl with Reid was named Sara and was one of Derrick’s sisters who had just gotten home from her freshman year of college. When Reid saw me there he looked a little sheepish and said, Hey. He introduced me to Sara and then he just laughed and said, Well . . . this is really freaking weird. But it wasn’t a mean laugh or an asshole laugh, it was more like a moment that we were sharing. It wasn’t a laugh that was meant to keep me out. It was a laugh that let me in.

  Kelly handed out capsules of molly to each of us, and I took mine from her and just shrugged at Reid. I said, Who doesn’t want to feel this good? My sister, that’s who. Then I smiled, popped the capsule into my mouth, and swallowed. Reid smiled back at me as Kelly announced that she had two hits for each of us and that this stuff was the purest that Kyle had ever seen. We all slipped her some cash for the party favors. She said that we could wait to do the second hits until we were in the party, but Jess sa
id she wanted to do hers now.

  I got a little nervous, but everybody agreed. Jess said she wanted to snort hers and Reid and Carson said they did too. Kelly and Sara didn’t want to taste it in the back of their mouths all night, so they just swallowed theirs, but I let Carson dump out my second capsule. The powder was tiny, light brown crystals. He crunched it up on a little case that Kelly had in her purse. It was the size of a large makeup compact, but instead of a mirror inside, it folded out into a little metal tray. Carson used his ATM card to crunch up the crystals a little smaller and then tapped the powder into a line. There was a little straw in the case and he held it toward me. I put one end of the straw into my nose and sniffed up the line of powder, just like he had.

  YEOWCH. It totally burns to snort powder into your nose. And then the taste that flooded down the back of my throat and into my mouth? It was terrible. It was like I was chewing on a latex glove. But damn, by the time we got to the door of the old locker rooms, I was already dancing. Carson was walking behind me, his hand on my hips, his fingers hooked in my belt loops. He was laughing and directing me through the old tile rooms toward the door that led out to the pool. We heard a big cheer as we stepped out onto the concrete pool deck, and saw that Whip5mart had just stepped behind the big deck of equipment between two diving boards. The blue slope of concrete was covered with a mass of bodies, and I couldn’t wait to get down into it. The music had hit my feet and it was a totally physical experience. All I wanted to do was dance.

  The molly washed over me in waves unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Carson and I were silent as we danced, and I could almost feel the beats hitting my skin like raindrops. Reid and Sara danced behind Carson, and Jess and Kelly were to our right. The six of us could barely talk to each other. Every once in a while, Carson would pull me in and kiss me. He and Reid had peeled off their shirts a long time ago—was it hours? I didn’t know how long we’d been dancing. His hair was wet with sweat and seemed to be glowing purple under the lights. I knew it was just the drug playing tricks on my eyes, but it was a beautiful trick.

  As Whip5mart shifted into a quieter, down-tempo track, Carson threw his head back and whooped. Reid laughed and told Jess and Kelly that this molly was the SHIT. Sara said she needed some gum ’cause she was gurning really badly. Kelly handed her a couple sticks out of her hip pocket and I realized Sara was talking about the tension in her jaw. I felt it too, and Carson rescued me with some gum of his own. He grabbed my hand and we followed Reid and Sara, who were headed to get some water at the old pool snack bar. I yelled for Jess to come too, and I’ll never forget the look on her face. There was sweat pouring down her cheeks from dancing, but she had this huge grin and was staring up into the lights as she and Kelly danced like they were on a different plane of existence.

  After we waded through the lines, Carson slapped down a twenty and we all had waters. Then he led us through a hole in the chain-link fence to the picnic tables near where we’d parked. We all sat down on one of the tables and he and Reid passed around a pack of cigarettes. I hate the smell of smoke, and I’ve only smoked a cigarette a couple times, but the gum, the water, and the waves of feeling that were pouring over me made me think that a smoke would be the PERFECT thing. Carson looked surprised when I took a cigarette, but then he leaned toward me with his lighter and sparked it to life.

  The first inhale made me cough a little, but then the buzz of the nicotine hit me and made the lights from the pool flash in my eyes like a starburst. I started giggling as I blew out my second drag of smoke, and Carson and I talked with Reid and Sara about how amazing this all was. The pool seemed to be alive—like it was a giant creature with all these limbs, flailing and bouncing in time to the music. We all agreed that we were rolling like crazy. Reid said that the second hit had sent him over the moon, and Sara and I agreed.

  After we finished our cigarettes and talked for a little while longer, we slipped back through the fence. It was a lot cooler on the deck around the pool than it was being down in the crush of bodies, so we started dancing by an abandoned lifeguard stand where this girl in a bikini was standing twirling glow sticks. The lights from the party were dancing off Carson’s chest and abs, and I hooked a finger into the waistband of his jeans next to where he’d hung his T-shirt and pulled him close to me. I think he is the most handsome creature I’ve ever laid eyes on. Even with all the fear in my stomach right now, and feeling dazed while I write this all down, the memory of his smile makes me get goose bumps down my spine and makes my breath a little short. I want him here right now to touch me, to kiss me, to run his hands across my chest and down my stomach. I want to feel his fingers pulling off my underwear and tugging me toward him.

  Jeez. I’m blushing while I write this, but I don’t care. That’s how I felt dancing next to Carson at the pool—like everything was plugged into a socket and I wanted him plugged into me. There was fire in my legs and ice down my arms. I reached up to throw my arms around his neck, and as I did, I saw him look over my shoulder. The pupils of his eyes were like big black olives—you could barely see any of the color of his irises. As I looked into his eyes I saw lights flashing from behind us, and saw chasers of red and blue squiggles, but there was something else, too: a sound wailing over the music.

  I whirled around and Carson started pushing through the crowd. There was an ambulance and it was so overwhelming—the visuals and the sounds and the people—I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with Carson if he hadn’t reached back and grabbed my hand. He was tall enough to see over everybody else and glimpse what was happening at the bottom of the pool before I did. As we got to the edge I saw three paramedics. One was holding a light and an IV bag up in the air. The other two were bent over a rolling stretcher that they had carried into the pool. There was a circle of people around them, clearing space as the rest of the party danced, completely unaware that there was something happening in the other end of the pool.

  My eyes followed the tube from the IV bag into the arm of the person on the stretcher. Two medics jerked upward on the rails of the stretcher as they lifted it onto the edge of the pool and climbed out. The legs and wheels underneath the gurney unfolded, and they started rolling the patient past us toward the ambulance.

  As they passed, I saw that the person on the stretcher was Jess. I slipped my hand out of Carson’s and ran as fast as I could. I was within a couple feet of the stretcher when someone stepped into my path, and as I tried to push past them, I felt two arms wrap around me and heard my name.

  I looked down, blinking, and saw that it was Kelly. Carson, Reid, and Sara caught up with me, and we were all shouting questions at Kelly at the same time. She waved us all over to the hole in the chain link and we congregated by the picnic tables. Kelly explained that Jess hadn’t had enough water to drink and was just dehydrated. I was crying and kept yelling JUST? She’s JUST DEHYDRATED? Kelly kept trying to shush me, and that just pissed me off, but Carson finally wrapped both arms around me and walked me away from the group. We sat under a tree, and he explained to me that we had to let the paramedics take Jess to the hospital. That she’d be okay.

  All of this was a blur to me at the time, but eventually, he handed me his cigarette and I took a few drags and calmed down. Kelly called her brother, Kyle, who called Jess’s parents and told them she was headed to the hospital. Then he came to pick us up. It was still dark, but the sky was getting a shade lighter as we all piled into Kyle’s white SUV. Kelly told him to take me home first, and we were all pretty quiet as we drove through the predawn streets. There was no traffic that early in the morning. Carson put his arm around me and whispered that he was sure Jess would be okay. I couldn’t stop the tears from slipping quietly down my cheeks. It wasn’t so much that I was sad as I was scared. Scared for Jess, and scared about what had just happened.

  When Kyle pulled onto my street, I told him to stop where Jess had picked me up earlier, and after one more kiss from Carson, I slipped out of the car, walked up the street t
o the side gate, and let myself into the house. I didn’t even care about getting caught anymore. I just wanted to get to my room so I could take a shower and be by myself. I tiptoed across the living room and when I got to my room I slipped out of my sweaty clothes and took a long, hot shower. I thought I’d want to go directly to bed, but I still must have some of the drugs in my system, because I just lay there, wide awake. That’s when I decided to get up and write it all down.

  I guess there’s nothing left to do now but sleep and maybe pray. Pray that Jess will be okay.

  Later . . .

  ASHLEY IS A PAIN IN MY ASS.

  She just left my room. I had just crawled back into bed when the door opened and Ashley came in and turned on the light. I sat up and looked at her—not quite understanding what was happening. She glared at me and said, I know what’s going on.

  My mind was racing because I didn’t know what exactly she was referring to. Did she know that I’d snuck out? Did she somehow know about Jess? I wasn’t in the dark long. She was whispering at me—a loud, angry whisper. She started off by telling me that I wasn’t fooling anyone, especially HER. She told me that she’d gone to get some water last night and she saw me as I was crossing the backyard to let myself out the side gate.

  She said she knew I was going out to do more molly and if I didn’t promise to stop rolling she was going to tell Mom and Dad that I’d snuck out. That threat, that ultimatum, made all the things I really hate about her come rolling over me. All of her popular-girl prettiness and how left out I’d always felt spun around in my chest and made me go blind with rage. I couldn’t believe how angry I was. I told her to shut the hell up and that she didn’t know what she was talking about, but she just stared at me with her ice queen eyes and said, Fine. Let’s go tell Mom and Dad right now.