“You’re telling me you really don’t know who those guys were at the party?”
“Sabrina, I don’t know how to explain it. There’s one that I would probably recognize again if I saw him, but the rest of them were waiting in the room and the light was practically out. I know that sounds really bad because it is. They shut the door behind me and before I knew what had happened, well – you know the rest.” The rest of what I had told her. I simply told her that I passed out. I didn’t tell her that I participated in the funkiest, wildest, most ecstatic experience of my life for what I could tell was about six hours. How I woke up with a broken arm is still a mystery.
“Alright, Sabrina. I’m going to talk to a guy named Kenneth who I’ve met a couple of times and ask him for help, but only for you to drink in some tea or something and ONLY to help you get caught up. Have you looked up withdrawals? I don’t want you to get sick or weirded out or anything.”
We hit google again. We both got really nervous – the withdrawals were not just uncomfortable, but serious and could result in serious psychosis. Some of the articles talked about indescribable pain and all of them talked about serious trouble with the law. I looked at Sabrina.
“Come on Sabrina – this is for people who use a lot and then crash. I just need the rush – just for a couple of days. Then, I’ll probably have trouble sleeping for a couple of days and that will be it.” She still sat, unconvinced. I couldn’t believe that I was having to convince Sabrina of anything – the most extraverted person I knew. The one I had been trying to convince for years to settle down.
“Jasmine, it’s totally my fault that you’re even in this mess. I can’t believe that we are actually trying to find ways to find crystal meth for you to use so you can get caught up in school. Seriously, I think you need to just tough it out. You’re the smartest person I know. You can do this on your own.”
“NO.” I screamed it angrily, almost with a guttural noise that she didn’t know was there. Something had entered my body and soul that I didn’t even know I had. All I knew was that wanted to feel that feeling again and I was making excuses – any excuses that I had to in order to feel that feeling of perfection again. That feeling of being higher than the clouds and more capable than anyone else on Earth. It would only be once or twice – I mean, what was the big deal?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jasmine was in the shower and heard the phone ringing.
“Sabrina!! Sabrina??? Where are you???” The phone kept ringing. God, she thought to herself. I’ll answer the phone myself. She grabbed a towel and ran to the phone.
“Hey, Jazz, it’s me.” It was Sabrina. “That friend I told you about? He says he can get us some of the candy we were talking about – do you have $150?”
WOW. “Is it that much? I don’t guess it matters. Sure, I’ll get it to you. How do we do this?”
“Well, you give me the money, I will meet him at the coffee shop and then I’ll come home and we’ll put some in coffee, like you did, OK? I don’t feel too scared because we’ll be there for each other, right?”
Jasmine stood, wet in her towel, thinking about it and said, “Sure. I’ll have it when you get here.” I could hardly wait until Sabrina came home with the meth. I could believe even less that I had just become someone who purchased illegal drugs for recreational use. But, it wasn’t really recreational – it was to get caught up. (At least that made me feel better when I thought about it.) Somehow, it rationalized what I was doing and why. I still couldn’t wait to feel like that again, though.
About a half hour later, Sabrina showed up at the door and I gave her the money. It didn’t even occur to me to hide it or to act secretly. After all, I was only giving her money. She could be going to the store to buy me a pair of boots. I went back inside, like any other time I would take a shower and started drying off and blow-drying my hair. I started putting on my makeup when Sabrina came home with “the stuff”.
Chapter Twelve
“Ok, so I got it.” She took a small plastic bag out of her purse, the size of a small golf ball.
“That’s it? That’s what we got for $150?” It didn’t seem like hardly anything at all. Is this what buying drugs was about or was this just a really expensive drug because it was so powerful??
“Come on, Jazz, it wasn’t like I had time to go bargain shopping or anything. Apparently, this is the going price for this drug. Apparently, it’s also quite popular and you have to call this guy only on certain days because that’s the only time he can get it. The last thing either of us need is to get caught with this on us or be in a car accident or something and have it in on us – you already have it on your record…” The way she said it almost sounded accusatory, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get it out and make the tea.
“Seriously?” We both looked at a few pieces of what looked like light yellow rock candy in a bag and I looked at her and said, “so what do we do now?”
“Like I would know…I say we make some tea and put some in it.”
“How much?” Again, they hit Google. It was surprising how much information was on Google about something so illegal that seemed to be completely accurate information. According to the article, we were supposed to put it into the tea, let it dissolve and then drink it. We should feel the effects within a few minutes and they should last anywhere from three hours to sixteen hours.
“Sixteen hours? It didn’t last that long at all. Of course, my situation was a little bit different, but they may have not used very much either.”
“So what should we use?”
We decided to put in half to each cup of tea, let it dissolve and then see what happened. We were both very nervous, but as promised, it wasn’t but a few minutes and the drug was interacting as it was supposed to. My head started to spin. I started seeing red and green everywhere – I mean there were other colors, but red and green definitely stood out. I started looking at my hands, and even my fingers looked more red than they usually did.
“Do my fingers look red to you?” I held my hands out for Sabrina to look at.
“What do you see?” Sabrina was staring at her own hand, and then she started laughing out loud.
“Did you hear me? How do you feel?” Sabrina looked at Jasmine, and before either of them knew what was happening, Sabrina reached over and kissed me, square on the mouth. Like a really, long, passionate kiss. I could taste her tongue. Was this a dream? Was this happening? It seemed like it lasted forever. After a few minutes, I looked at her.
“What the hell was that?” Sabrina laughed out loud.
“It was a kiss, you dork. I don’t know – it just felt like the right thing to do.”
“I didn’t know you could kiss that good. You’re a really good kisser.” All I could think was about the kiss – does this mean we are lesbians now? What the hell just happened? And why did it feel so great?
“I’m going to the bathroom.” Sabrina got up and walked into the bathroom and I knew exactly what she was doing. I waited for a few minutes, opened my computer and started to type. I didn’t even know what I was typing about, but I couldn’t stop. I could hear Sabrina in the bathroom with her vibrator. (I had always thought the idea of using a mechanical tool for sexual pleasure was completely unnecessary and gross, but Sabrina made no secret of it and she was certainly enjoying herself tonight.)
I, on the other hand, enjoyed writing more than anything in the world. I wrote until the wee hours of the morning when I don’t remember, but I fell into my bed, clothes on, and passed out. I woke up to the sunlight in my face. There was a note on the desk and a Danish from Sabrina. “Thanks for last night – what a TRIP!! We’ll do it again!” I looked at the time and at the typewriter. We’ll do what again? We won’t be making out again, if that’s what she meant…I would never be able to look at her again the same. My best friend and I since third grade made out last night. TOO weird.
It was 11:15 in the morning, which means I had missed my first two classes, but she I
had typed all night long. The manuscript was excellent but I couldn’t remember typing a word of it. As I read it, it was as though as stranger had written it. ‘Wow’, is all I could think. This is how Freud was a genius on coke – he couldn’t remember what he had written down, but it was ingenious. Michelangelo was the same way. I had definitely stumbled onto something, but there was that throbbing, debilitating headache again.
And a TERRIBLE craving for more. More meth. I hadn’t even started on my makeup work from the hospital stay and Sabrina and I had used all of what we had purchased the night before. I called Sabrina and asked her for the number to the guy she had purchased the meth from the night before.
“For real? You promised that you weren’t going to do this. Jasmine, are you really thinking about this? This just isn’t like you…”
“Look, Sabrina.” I knew that Sabrina was right and that this was not something I should be doing. If it was anyone else, I would be the one lecturing them about needing to get help. But it was just SO easy to get my work done and it felt SO good – everything felt so good. Brushing my hair felt like a three hour massage. How could I possibly explain this and not sound like an addict? Can you become an addict after using a drug once or twice? I was tired of questions and didn’t care. I just wanted her to find me more of that drug. For whatever reason, I just wasn’t in a mood to care. I mean, this was Sabrina.
And that’s how I began my friendship with Kenneth. He was a “Hop and a jump” away, anytime I had $150 to spare and a paper to write…or I just wanted a good laugh. He was sort of a dork on campus and no one really knew him and he always seemed to have a way to find places where no one would see us talking. I could easily slip him money and he would easily give me more of “my medicine”, as I began to call it.
Even though I had been told to find a therapist, no one ever really followed up with me and I never went to a therapist. I thought a lot about that night, but I thought more about getting my work done. And how I could get more of what Kenneth had to offer. I wasn’t thinking in the least about therapy. Like I really wanted to talk to anyone about stopping one of the most enjoyable things I had ever experienced. I could picture it…
“Hi. My name is Jasmine Stanton. I was gang raped by seven unknown guys while I was high on meth and it was the most enjoyable feeling I’ve ever known. I can’t wait to get high the minute I leave this office.” I couldn’t imagine how a therapist would turn that situation into anything that would work in my favor.
Chapter Thirteen
It was a normal Saturday afternoon and fall was starting to waft into the air. The leaves were turning colors, the airs was becoming crisp with the hint of winter coming, and school was about to be in full swing. Stepping outside my apartment, I could smell cool air for the first time this year and knew that this was the beginning of my favorite time of year. I had almost made it through my first year of college with an average GPA. Never having been an average student, this didn’t settle well with me and I was consistently trying harder, but the harder I tried, nothing changed. Not the best, but it was college. (At least that’s what I told myself.)
One professor in particular, Professor Diffie, and I had become very close. He wasn’t my English professor – he taught several humanities courses and I had taken his sociology course. However, he had a dry, unique sense of humor that most people didn’t understand. I understand him well and enjoyed going to his class every day.
He had a friend on the Memphis paper who promised me an internship when I was finished with my degree and I could hardly wait. Professor Diffie was one of the few professors on campus who truly respected hardworking students and didn’t expect anything in return. He wasn’t a womanizer – in fact, a lot of the students talked about him being gay. I simply saw him as someone who dressed the same every day and who enjoyed his privacy. And, if he was gay, it wasn’t really my business. He was very nice to me and I was glad to have someone besides Sabrina to confide in. Someone with less emotional baggage and fewer boundaries.
Sabrina was really the only friend I had and it seemed like college had somehow torn the relationship that we had always had right down the middle. I had known her since third grade at Eastside Elementary. We met on the bus going home from school and a really big, nasty looking girl was picking on me because of my backpack and Sabrina, who didn’t even know me, defended me, ran off the bully, and we had been friends since that time. Practically my whole life.
We stayed close – I saw and talked to her every day - but she had her own social life and I stayed alone most of the time. The meth kept me sane and, the farther and farther Sabrina and I drifted apart, the more alone I felt. I would study after I took it, I would read after I took it – sometimes, I would just clean for hours after I took it and I felt absolute elation any time I took it.
I started snorting meth instead of drinking it and it was like the first time I had used it. I only did it in private – in the bathroom where no one could see me. When I was snorting it up my nose, I felt like the whole world was watching on a hidden camera somewhere and the police were going to bust down my door like they do on reality television. But no one every busted down my door. Kenneth just kept taking my money, Sabrina just kept partying her ass off, and I just stayed alone, in my apartment, and snorted several times a day.
It just kept becoming more and more desirable to me and using a little bit just didn’t make me feel as good as it had the first time I had tried it. I was taking meth daily, at least three or four times, but no one knew – except for me and Kenny (we were becoming sort of friends – enough so that on our last chat, he ended it with ‘call me Kenny’. So I did.). He was happy – he was making a ton of money and I’m not sure what I was. I felt almost out of myself, but in a really wonderful way – like I could fly if I wanted to. The “real” me was sort of out of town for a while so the interim “me” could get caught up and forget about that night. That one night at that one party.
I thought about flying that afternoon. I was dusting the room and changing the sheets and the window was open and the breeze kept blowing into the room and catching my breath. I had been dreaming about flying since I was a little girl. I wasn’t ever sure what the dreams meant, but I would literally flap my arms in the dreams and take off…and I could fly above the town – not really high, just enough that I could look down at the houses and cars and people beneath me. I would sort of float through the air, but I was still flapping – and flying.
I snorted a small amount of meth – just enough to feel the rush and I walked over to the window. Staying in a dorm had been the pits, especially three stories up. We had tried hard to decorate it and make it ours, but every hole in the wall had to be patched and painted, four square white walls were all that was allowed and there just wasn’t much anyone could do with that. Everyone heard every sound we made – if we accidentally coughed too loud, the neighbors would beat on the walls (and likewise). The roommates below us were a young couple who stayed up all night, their old, rusty bed beating against the wall all night long. Sabrina and I would try to cover our heads with our pillows, but sometimes it was more fun to listen and laugh. It was college and it wouldn’t be forever.
Jonathan had become really distant lately, and I couldn’t figure out why. God, was he gorgeous. I thought about him all the time. The first night we met, he was such a hero and after that, we started seeing each other quite a bit. Quite a bit turned into every day and Jonathan and I became inseparable very quickly. But even he didn’t know that when I was “going to the bathroom”, I was really getting high. I really believed that Jonathan was my soul mate and that he was the one who I would finish college with and marry one day.
One night, we had gone to see one of the movies that the college showed in the atrium theatre. It was a romantic comedy and the movie turned into a beautiful moonlit stroll, a walk back to my dorm, me taking a quick trip to my bathroom and, before I knew it, Jonathan and I were having making love. It wasn’t sex. It was em
otion-packed. Not just twenty minutes and we were finished. It was the kind of love-making that you read about in magazines. We made love for hours – we fell onto the floor, laughed and got back into the bed, and kept making love in every possible, imaginable position one could think of. The touch of his fingertips anywhere on my skin sent electric shocks through me all over, so trying to describe the feeling of his whole body completely connected with mine is impossible. I don’t have any idea how long we made love that night. When I woke up the next morning, he was gone, but there was a note and a flower on the pillow – “Love you, babe – call me later.” And a smiley face, drawn on the note. I knew the smiley face was a subtle way of saying thanks for a great night – just knowing Jonathan and knowing how he reacted to the wildness and the passion of that experience, he had never experienced anything like that either.
I picked up the flower, breathed in the aroma of the petals, stretched and looked at the clock. I stood at the window, remembering that morning, and remembering how much I loved Jonathan, how great life was, and how really late I was for chem. lab that morning.
“OH MY GOD! 11:30 in the morning!! I’ve missed Chem Lab again – Oh, God, I’m going to fail this class…” and I ran into the shower, threw on clothes and with wet hair and half of my belongings thrown into an oversized bag I ran to Chemistry. I was late and the Professor was not Professor Diffie and this Professor was NOT happy about my tardiness or my unkempt appearance at all.
After that night, he just didn’t call for a couple of weeks. I would leave messages, and even one afternoon I ran into him on the Green. “Is everything OK? I haven’t heard from you.” I tried to kiss his cheek, and he drew back a little, like he was uncomfortable.
Girl Seduced (The Girl Interrupted Trilogy Book #1) Page 6