J A S O N
Tristan had been serious about not selling me anymore weed, but Jack had gotten a dealer's phone number from his cousin and blown his and Finn's allowance in everything he could get with it. This included weed, molly, and acid. I wasn't interested in fucking up my brain chemistry more than it already was, so I just went for the weed. Jack wasn't happy about this.
"Come on!" he said when I said no for the third time to the colorful tab on the palm of his hand. "You're gonna love it, dude! Finn and I did it this summer at a concert and â"
"Jack, just stop it," Edward said next to me. We were on the couch of Jacob's living room, who was somewhere upstairs, probably trying to hide his tail, and his horns, and the smell of sulfur he had dragged with him from hell. Apart from us, the house was empty. The party hadn't started yet. Edward went on, "It's bad enough you're doing it. You don't have to drag other people into it too."
"Bad enough? You fucking loved it last time," Jack whined.
I looked at Edward in shock. Never in my life would I have guessed Edward had done acid and loved it. He wouldn't even smoke weed with us, much less do psychedelics.
"When did I ever do acid?" he asked, unimpressed.
"He didn't do acid, bro," Finn said, looking at his twin. "It was molly."
"Yeah, molly, whatever." Jack shrugged, looking back at Edward, "You loved it."
"You did," Finn said with a smirk that stretched out the scar on his bottom lip.
"I've never done drugs in my life." Edward said, still unimpressed. I was very confused. So was he, because he said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Did we tell him?" Jack asked Finn.
Behind them, trying to connect his phone to the speakers, Liam said, "You didn't tell me."
Edward sat up straight on the couch, "What are you talking about?!"
"Remember the party Jacob threw in the first week of classes?" Jack asked, scratching the back of his head. He had put the tab of acid he had been holding in his hand on the tip of his tongue already, so it was a matter of time until he became even stupider.
"Yeah, why?" Edward asked.
"Well, we put molly in your drink that night." Finn said.
"You put what in my drink?"
"Molly."
"That's fucked up." This was Isaac. He had been sitting next to Edward on the other side of the couch, very focused on the joint he was rolling for us, but he stopped to say this.
Isaac was supposed to be my stand-in on the team, but after the homecoming game, Coach had basically begged him to join the starting line-up for the rest of the year. I had wanted to break both of Isaac's legs and send them to Coach Sargent's front step for making me feel replaceable, but I ended up just pouting about it, as one did.
In any case, Isaac had turned out to be the kind of guy that made Edward genuinely relax, which was a prowess not known to many, or rather, to none, since Edward was the kind of guy to have never been relaxed ever. I liked Isaac.
"He hooked up with Allora that same night, so how fucked up can it really be?" Jack said.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and then opened them again.
The question left my mouth before I could even think of it, "You hooked with who?"
"Whom," Liam said.
"Fuck you."
He started laughing, "You didn't know?"
Edward shook his head, "It's not like that."
"Like what?" Jack laughed. "You were practically fucking in the pool."
I closed my eyes again. Opened them.
"Are you dating?" I asked him.
"We're just friends," Edward said, rubbing his forehead like he had a headache.
"They went on a movie date," Liam said. I was going to punch him soon.
"As friends," Edward insisted.
So did Liam, "No one goes to the movies as friends."
"Do you like her?" I asked.
Edward said of course first, and then, "Not like that though."
"Why?" How?
"What's happening right now?" Finn asked before Edward could go on. "When we hooked up with Allora this summer, you actually punched us in the fucking face. I had a black eye for weeks. Why does it sound like you want Edward to fuck your girl?"
"Watch your mouth."
He threw his arms up, "I'm just saying. You got double standards â"
"Edward isn't like you."
"What the fuck does that mean?" he asked, hands on the waist of his shorts. His t-shirt had Area 69 written on it and an arrow pointing down.
I shook my head, "You know exactly what it means."
"Suck my dick," Jack said. He was also wearing shorts, but his shirt said got milf?
I ignored him and turned to Edward again. "So you're not hooking up?"
"No, we're just friends."
"So you don't like her?"
"Not like that, no."
"Why?"
"He's fucking gay," Liam said.
"Are you?" I asked.
"No," Edward said, right before, "I mean, I don't think so, I don't know."
"You should tell her if you are," I said. "It's not fair to lead her onâ"
"I'm not trying to lead her on."
"You should tell her that too."
"I don't think that's necessary â"
"Of course it is, Edward!" I stopped him. "Have you met yourself? She's probably head over fucking heels for you. The only reason she wasn't before was because the whole time we were dating I made sure you were never in the same room together."
Edward looked very confused. Not Isaac. Isaac was laughing to himself.
I pointed at him, "Isaac gets it."
Edward turned to him, "You do?"
He nodded, "Obviously."
Then, louder than all of us combined, electronic music started playing from the speaker Liam had been struggling with, and Jacob walked into the room looking like the hot topic shopping piece of shit he was, "Let's get this party started, bitches!"
Isaac had just finished rolling our joint. Jacob took it and lit it up.
"You're doing acid with us, right?" Jack whined.
Jacob blew out smoke in Isaac's face before handing him back the joint, a quarter of it turned to ash, and then grabbed the tiny zip lock bag with molly in it and got a couple tiny pills out of it, a smirk on his face the whole time.
Edward frowned next to me, "I don't think you should â"
"Shut up," Jacob stopped him as he swallowed them dry. "It's my party."
I smiled, "I hope you shit yourself in front of everyone."
Jacob didn't hear me. Instead, he turned the music up, and disappeared in the hallway, apparently because a bunch of people were outside waiting to be let in. The twins followed him. Liam took a tab of acid and put it on his tongue and then did the same. I didn't know who was going to keep an eye on them for the rest of the night. Probably no one. Definitely not me.
By the time Isaac and I finished the joint â Edward insisted on being the best person in the world and refused to do drugs with us â the party was alive and well. The living room was packed with people like a bus on rush hour and everyone was dancing to the sound of the shit DJ Jacob had put on. I didn't move from the couch, not because I didn't want to, but because I couldn't. Both mentally and physically, I was as good as dead.
Edward and Isaac didn't move either, buried in the couch as they were, heads turned to each other, going on and on about this and that, and that and this. If I hadn't become as hungry as I had, I probably would have fallen asleep right there next to them. It wouldn't be the first time I fell asleep at a party. The reason my cast was covered in bad drawings of male genitalia was because I kept falling asleep at parties.
Not this time. This time, I managed to get up and drag myself to the kitchen, where a bad game of beer pong was happening on a sticky-looking marble counter. I ignored it and moved for the fridge. Finn was making out with a girl in front of it.
I rolled my eyes and poked them with one of my crutches. Finn looked up at me and smiled like an idiot, "Dude, my dick is on fire right now."
The girl laughed, and said, "There's pizza over there."
And I managed a smile, and said, "God bless you."
She was right. There was pizza on another sticky-looking counter across the room. There was also Allora standing there in a black mini skirt and knee-high leather boots, eating a slice, and smiling at something someone else was saying.
I walked over, said excuse me like I didn't want to get on my knees and beg her to take me back, and took a slice of pizza. Allora ignored me, as she always did, and kept smiling. The other girl kept talking, her cheeks red, probably from the wine they were sharing straight from the bottle, her hair pushed back, an over-sized white shirt falling over her jeans, which, in turn, fell over a pair of red leather boots. I had no idea who she was.
"What the fuck are you looking at, Jason?" someone asked. Not just someone. Behind me, Kylie Green was wearing everything tiny and everything tight, and looking like she wanted to slap me across the face. She had done it before. She could probably do it again.
I shook my head, and said, "Nothing."
"What are you doing here?" she asked, and I pointed at the pizza. She looked at the others. "Is he bothering you?"
The girl in the white shirt shook her head, and Allora shrugged. I finished my slice of pizza and got a few more to go. Kylie looked disgusted watching me do it but didn't say a word. The others weren't looking at me at all. They were talking about college options.
I turned around so I could go feel like a bag of shit somewhere else when Kylie said, "Do you feel it yet? Finn says it takes about half an hour to hit."
I turned back around, "Please tell me you didn't take molly."
Kylie smiled, "We took molly."
"Did you forget what happened last time you got fucked up?"
"Excuse me?" This was Allora. She was talking to me for the first time in months, and she looked like she wanted to smash her bottle of wine on my head. Great.
"I'm not saying it was your fault." I never did. "I'm just saying it's probably not a â"
"We don't care about what you're saying," Kylie said.
I opened my mouth again. I didn't care, "Allie, I â"
"What are you still doing here?" This was Kylie again, looking, again, like she wanted to slap me. "Don't you have to go punch a wall or something?"
I did want to go punch a wall. She wasn't wrong.
"We can take care of ourselves," Allora said, throwing the crust of the slice of pizza she had been eating on the greasy box, and grabbing the bottle of wine. She looked at the others, "Let's go dance."
I watched them walk away. Behind me, someone asked if I was really going to eat all the slices I was holding. I turned around and rolled my eyes. There was a scrawny freshman-looking kid looking at me, or rather, at all of the slices of pizza in my hand.
I shrugged, and handed them to them, "Just fucking have them."
He smiled, and took them, "You're Jason, right?"
I watched him stuff his face, and said, "No."
With a frown, he insisted, "Yes, you are. A vending machine fell on you, right?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm just asking cause you probably know Jack Walker."
I wanted to say I had no idea who that was, but instead what came out was, "Yeah, I know Jack, why?"
"Right," the kid said with his mouth full. "I think he's tripping."
"He's on acid," I said. I wanted to get out of this marble kitchen and go look for the girls, but the kid was probably going to tell me Jack was screaming, crying, and throwing up, and as much as I wanted to punch Jack in the face most of the times, I didn't want him to choke on his own vomit.
"He is? Fuck!" he said, like he thought it was cool. "Well, it makes sense. He's saying he's got no legs."
"In a good or a bad way?"
"Definitely a good way," he said.
"Is Liam Chan there?"
"Yeah, is he on acid too?"
"Yeah, look, I don't have time for this, where are they? Are they alone?"
"They're by the pool. A lot of people are there though."
"Cool," I said, turning my back at him and going for the door.
"Thanks for the pizza!" he shouted over. "I'm Gary by the way."
I didn't answer. In the living room, Jacob's electronic music had really gotten everyone dancing, singing, and hooking up. Edward and Isaac were still on the couch, still talking. I was about to go ask them if they had seen Allora or Kylie or even the other girl, when I saw them dancing right in the middle of it all.
I made my way over to them, struggling to find space for both me and my crutches, cursing every time someone leaned on my cast without realizing it, and finally wanting to just drop dead when I realized it was just Kylie and the other girl I had seen dancing, and not Allora.
"Where the fuck is â"
"Jason!" Kylie shouted, a big, big smile on her face. "I'm definitely feeling it now."
"Where's Allora?"
"I don't know. She ran off somewhere. You know how it is."
"She ran off on her own?" I asked.
"Yeah, she did."
"You let her run off on her own?"
"She's fine," she said, and then again, when I just kept looking at her, "She's fine!"
I leaned closer to the other girl to ask, "Did you see where she ran off too?"
She seemed to hate it that I was this close to her, but she still answered, "She said she was going to the bathroom."
I looked at Kylie, who shrugged, and said, "I thought she ran off. She does that a lot."
"And you let her? After what happened?!" I asked. "How long has it been since she left?"
Kylie was looking at me like I was an idiot. I was, but that had nothing to do with what was happening right now. She said, "Why don't go you keep an eye on your friends instead? They're the ones who need to be put on a leash, not us."
I rolled my eyes and turned away to go check every bathroom in the house. I was in the hallway when I realized they had both followed me.
"We'll find her," Kylie said, grabbing my shoulder. "We don't need your help."
"I think you do," I said, knocking on the first door I saw. Someone walking by said it was a closet, and Kylie laughed. I said, "Fuck you."
She knocked on the next door.
"I think that's another closet," Kylie's friend said.
This time I laughed, and she said, "Fuck you. I'm on molly. What's your excuse?"
I didn't answer her. Instead I led the way around the corner and into the next hallway, where a big line of people led to a closed door, which was most definitely the bathroom.
"What the fuck is happening here?" I asked.
The person at the end of the line said, "Someone better be fucking dead in there."
"The line hasn't moved at all since I got here," someone else said.
"Why don't you just go to another bathroom?" Kylie asked, walking up to the door, and looking ready to break it down.
"Jacob's hooking up with Harper in the bathroom upstairs, and someone threw up in the other one," the girl at the front of the line said. When Kylie knocked on the door with both hands, the girl added, "I've obviously tried that. It doesn't work."
"Allora!" Kylie called. "It's me! Open up!"
The door opened. Kylie turned back, grabbed her friend's hand, and pulled her in with her. I put my hand on the door before she could close it again. Before going in, I turned around at the people waiting in line.
"There's another bathroom by the pool, and another outside by the barbecue. You can also just take a shit on the floor. I don't care."
Then I walked in and closed the door behind me. Allora was sitting next to the toilet with both her knees pulled in, and Kylie was already on the floor next to her, pushing her hair out of her face, while the other girl stood there, looking very confused, and very scared.
I asked Allora what happened, but she didn't answer me. Instead, she turned to Kylie and said, "Is molly supposed to give you hallucinations? Cause I'm having hallucinations."
"Yeah, that's normal," Kylie said.
"Is it?" the other girl asked, her phone already in her hand. "Maybe we should call 911."
"No one's calling 911," I said, "Is this your first time doing molly?"
"I'm sweating so much right now," she said instead of answering me. "This is really stressing me out. How do you feel?"
"I just feel like I wanna hug everyone," Kylie said. "I have all this love and â"
"Yeah, I feel like that too, but I also feel like the walls are melting around me."
"That's normal," I said, even though I didn't think it was. "Just go with it."
She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.
"Maybe we should just take her home," the other girl said.
"I'm on molly. I'm not driving anywhere," Kylie said, putting her arm around Allora's shoulder so she could lean on her instead of the walls she claimed were melting.
"I can call you a taxi," I said after a while, getting my phone from my back pocket. There was a message from my mom asking if I was having fun. I wasn't.
Kylie turned to Allora, "Do you wanna get out of here? You can sleep at mine."
She didn't answer. She didn't even open her eyes.
"I think she's already asleep," the other girl said.
"Right," I said. "I'm calling you a taxi."
She shrugged and looked at the other girl, "You'll sleep over too, right? I feel like we ruined your night."
"No, I had fun," she said.
"You're lying."
"I'm not."
"Can you do this some other time?" I stopped them. "We need to get Allora out of here."
Kylie moved so she could put Allora's arm around her shoulders and her legs around her waist. Then she got up like she weighted nothing. I took my jacket off and put it around Allora. The other girl opened the bathroom door and every other door after that.
By the time we made it outside, Kylie was sweating. She put Allora down on the front steps of Jacob's house, and then sat down next to her, so she could have something to lean on. Finally, she looked at me.
"Are you staying?"
I shook my head, "No, I'll call another taxi once you leave."
She nodded, and after a while, she said, "You know, I wanted to put that guy in the hospital too."
That guy. Bill Peterson. What happened last time they got too fucked up at a party. I thought about it every day. It was prom night and Allora had knocked herself out on wine coolers with Kylie. Except Kylie had fallen asleep on the bleachers of the school gym and Allora had thought Bill Peterson was me and gone off with him to the handicap toilets. Bill hadn't been that drunk to forget who he was. He had just been a piece of shit taking advantage of a drunk girl and bragging about it to everyone at school the week after. As soon as I found out, he had become the latest admission at our hospital's emergency ward.
I turned to Kylie, "Why didn't you?"
She shook her head, "Cause that wasn't what she wanted."
"It was what he deserved though."
"Yeah, well, that's not how the world works, is it?"
"I heard he goes to some private school upstate now," I said. "He's probably gonna grow up to be a big shot CEO somewhere â"
"She just wanted us to be there for her," Kylie said. "Instead you made everything about you and how you felt. Do you have any idea how she felt?"
"I do. I did," I said. "Everything I felt back then, I felt for her."
She leaned her head on Allora's, "Yeah, well, you didn't show it right."
"I know," I said, looking at the screen of my phone. The taxi should be minutes away, so I asked, while I still had the chance, "Does she hate me?"
Kylie shook her head, and said, "Of course not."
I swallowed the lump in my throat, "She won't even look at me."
She smiled, "She's sleeping, Jason."
"You know what I mean."
"Yeah, I do," she admitted. "I think you remind her of the worst thing that's ever happened to her, and it doesn't help that you go around punching people either."
"I know," I said. "I can't help myself."
"Then who can?"
The taxi was coming up the driveway. Once it stopped, Kylie helped Allora onto the backseat. I told her she could keep the jacket, but she insisted I take it back. The other girl got in last.
Before closing the door, she turned to me, and said, "Thank you."
I meant to ask for what, but the car was on the move before I could open my mouth. I got home half an hour later. The tv was on in the living room. I walked in. Daisy and Zoe were having one of their sleepovers, both of them wrapped in a blanket on each corner of the couch, a bowl of popcorn in the space between them, and It playing on the screen.
"No," Daisy said when I moved the popcorn to the coffee table and took a seat in the middle of them. "Jason, I said no."
I took off my shoes, laid my head on Zoe's lap, and stretched my legs across Daisy's.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" she asked, pressing pause on the movie.
Zoe ran her fingers through my hair, "Bad night?"
"Fucking horrible night," I said, grabbing the popcorn back from the coffee table and throwing a handful of them into my mouth.
Daisy groaned and said, "Your feet fucking stink."
Then she pressed play again.