Lucy in the Sky (12 page)
Authors: Anonymous
OH! And I have to remind Lauren about another little chunk of Xanax.
Holy. Moses.
Why do they even HAVE school the day of homecoming. It's taking FOR. EV. ER.
And we still have to get through the damn pep rally. Elizabeth Archer is so excited about it, she's about to explode. I am sitting behind her, and she keeps turning around to wink and smile at me and Ross. Elizabeth is wearing the new cheerleading uniforms she and the squad earned washing cars in their bikinis over the summer. The skirts are so short they're almost nonexistent.
Ross asked me if I wanted to get stoned at lunch, but I told him NO. Under no circumstances do we smoke during school. THAT would make us total STONERS.
And we're not stoners.
We smoke in the parking lot AFTER school.
He rolled his eyes, and shook his head.
Then Lauren walked up and said she had a quarter of a Xanax bar for each of us that she'd be handing out right
after last period. Ross called her the Fairy Godmother of Pharmaceuticals, and Astrid laughed really hard.
Oh, crap!
Mrs. Winslow just called on me because she saw me writing and thought I was taking notes. I had NO IDEA what she was talking about. I haven't really had to pay attention in a history class in years. Newsflash: American history doesn't change much after 5th grade. Pretty much, you've hit the high points by then.
I better put this away. The last thing I need is for it to get confiscated. Jeez.
I CAN'T WAIT FOR TONIIIIIIIIIIGHT!
I don't even know where to start. I'm in real trouble. Serious. Trouble. Last night was a complete nightmare. I am so scared. I don't even know who to talk to. I want to go tell my mom all about it right this second, but I can't. I'm so afraid that she'll never let me leave the house again. I can't even write about this. I'm crying so hard, I can't see what I'm writing.
Later â¦
Lauren just left. She came over to make me feel better. I love her so much. I know I've only known her for a couple of months, but I don't really remember my life without her. I don't know
how I would've made it through the day without her. She gave me another little chunk of Xanax, and I'm finally feeling relaxed for the first time all day.
Mom must think I've lost my mind. She thinks I just had a bad date.
Jeez. That's the understatement of the year.
I'm too tired to even think about writing all of this down now, but I will first thing when I get up tomorrow. I need to write it down. I want to. Something about writing it down will make some sense of what happened last night.
I hope.
It's Sunday morning. I'm feeling better today. I was just lying here in my bed, and I felt the fear flood into my stomach again, like the fog that hides the sun on June mornings. I know I just have to keep moving this pen across the page, but everything in me says that if I tell the truth about what happened Friday night, that'll make it real somehow, and I don't know if I can even face the memory in my head, much less watch the words come out of the pen and onto the paper in this journal.
It started out easy, and bright. The pep rally was crazy, and then Lauren passed out the Xanax, and Ross, Lauren, Astrid, and I all headed over to Lauren's place to order food
and get ready for the dance. Lauren's dad is out of town this weekend, so she mixed us up some cosmos as soon as we got to her place, and by the time we'd had one, the food had arrived and the Xanax had kicked in. We ate and then started getting ready.
We laughed until our mascara ran and we all had to do it again. That's what I mainly remember about getting ready: laughing.
Ross was SO FUNNY. He'd only had one cosmo 'cause they're too girly, but he'd smoked a whole bowl of pot himself, then finished all of our leftovers while we all got ready. He was ready to go in like two minutes. He had a new polo and a pair of skinny jeans that looked like he was melted and poured into them. He lay down in the Jacuzzi tub in Lauren's HUGE bathroom and cracked jokes while he smoked pot and we straightened our hair. Well, Lauren and I straightened; Astrid curled. There were lots of hair ironing devices.
Then finally we were ready and Ross let out a low whistle, and then we spent like 20 minutes taking pictures of each other in various configurations. Of course, then Andrew and Ryan showed up, and they'd brought beer that Andrew had nabbed out of his dad's beer fridge in the garage. Ross smoked them out and had a beer, and the three of them seemed to bond or something. At one point Andrew told Ross he was okay for a
homo, and Ross told Andrew that he was not bad for a breeder, and the two of them collapsed on the couch laughing and blowing pot smoke all over the place.
At that point Astrid looked at her watch and herded us all out the door.
For some reason, stepping outside made me realize how hard the Xanax had hit on top of the cosmos. All of a sudden I was floating, but it wasn't as clean as just Xanax or a muscle relaxer. I'd only smoked one hit of pot, but on top of two cosmos and the pill, I was a little foggy, and as we crowded into the elevators at Lauren's condo, I wobbled a little on my heels. I was glad that Ryan had big arms. He smiled at me when I was teetering toward the wall, offered me his arm, and asked if I was okay.
I smiled and said that I was fine. He raised an eyebrow and said, Oh, I can see you're fine. You're the finest girl I've ever taken to a dance; that's for damn sure.
I blushed HARD when he said that. Then Lauren said, God, Andy, your friend RyRy is a total cheese ball.
And then we were laughing again.
Ian joined us in the stands at the game. He looked great, and Ross got that big goofy grin on his face when they sat down together next to me. The crowd was WILD. We all were. The air was crisp and you could smell the ocean from the soccer field. Elizabeth Archer cheered right at Ross during the big halftime
routine. Then as the junior class princess she was escorted across the field by Jason. Astrid snickered when she saw this and said that Megan Archer wouldn't give Jason the time of day, so he was escorting Elizabeth to homecoming in hopes of showing up on her radar.
We won the game, and Cam joined us after he had showered and changed. Astrid went walking up to him in her impossibly high heels that made her almost come to his chin. He bent down and kissed her softly on the lips. Ross punched him in the shoulder and said that he didn't care what the two of them did behind closed doors, but he didn't want them flaunting their lifestyle choice in his face, which made Cam laugh so hard he snorted.
We didn't want to be the very first ones at the dance, so we walked to the back of the parking lot and took turns sliding into Ian's gigantic Land Rover to smoke a bowl. Then Lauren dragged me and Astrid into her car so that we could touch up. LAST LOOKS EVERYONE! she yelled. She said that's what they say on movie and music-video sets before they shoot the scene so that the makeup people know to dab powder and fix hair.
When we were in her car, she passed around a silver flask she said her dad keeps in the kitchen and never uses. It was filled with cosmos. Naturally.
Then we headed into the dance.
And we DANCED.
It was hilarious. Ian is SUCH a good dancer, and he's 20, so he doesn't give a crap about what high school kids think of him. Every girl in the place wanted to dance with him, and every guy in the gym wanted to BE him because every girl wanted him, but when there was a slow dance, he pulled Ross in, and held him close, and flipped off anybody who gave him a dirty look.
That's what I want. I want somebody who has my back.
Ryan was an okay dancer, but he was REEEEEALLY stoned and had slammed a couple of beers in the parking lot, so he smelled sort of skunky. Still, it was fun. He kept telling me how sexy I was and how I was making him crazy. He tried to press his junk up against me every 30 seconds, and I just let him. It was fun watching him get all red in the face.
Then I'd drag him over and make him dance with Ross and Ian and me. Lauren did the same thing with Andrew, and by the time we'd been in the gym for an hour, we'd danced ourselves as sweaty as Cam was when he'd walked off the soccer field.
And then we were leaving. Cam and Astrid hadn't moved apart from each other in like an hour, and Ian was trying to take his shirt off, which is against dress code at the dance, and Ross had to drag him out into the parking lot, laughing, and I looked at Lauren, and she said, Let's blow this joint. And I said, A JOINT sounds GREAT!
Lauren went over and tapped on Cam's shoulder. He finally came up for air with Astrid, and he said they'd meet us at Ian's dad's place.
I shoulda gone home right that second.
Crap. Now I'm crying again. And Mom just called up the stairs. We're driving up to have lunch at my grandparents' house. I'll have to finish this in the car.
Later â¦
It's too hard to write while we're driving. I can't tell if it's the butterflies in my stomach or the motion of the car. Either way, it's making me a little sick.
Later â¦
I feel better now that I've eaten. I think I was just hungry. Grams made a big pot roast with all the trimmings. She had this giant yellow cake with fudge frosting, like the ones you see on the commercials for Betty Crocker, only this one didn't come from a mix: She made it from scratch. It's Cam's favorite dessert. I had a very small slice. It was good to see Cam smile again, even if it was about cake. Sometimes he seems so easy. All it took to put him in a good mood again was food.
Cam dragged me into the kitchen with him to do the dishes so that Grams and Gramps could hang out with Mom and Dad
for a while. Actually, it was so he could talk to me about what happened at homecoming. At least he's not yelling at me like he did on Friday.
It all happened so fast after we got to Ian's parents' place, which is this HUGE house in the hills. The whole place looks like it might teeter off the side of the hill with one stiff wind and we'd wind up crashing down the hill into the big strip of trendy nightclubs below.
The view took my breath away. You could see downtown to the left and all the way to the edge of city and the beach on the right.
Ian and Ross beat us there because Lauren wanted to stop and get cranberry juice so that we could make cosmos just in case they didn't have the right mixers. Ryan was driving because Andrew was totally tanked. He'd slammed like 3 of the beers he and Ryan brought during the dance. He kept whinnying like a horse and trying to slap Lauren's butt. Lauren was not amused.
When we got to Ian's, she made a beeline for the kitchen to whip up some drinks. Ryan and Andrew followed her inside, and I stopped by the pool to take in the view. There's something about being up in the air like this and seeing the whole city laid out below me that never gets old. It looks beautiful from so far away, like somebody lined up perfect strands of red-and-white holiday lights in a grid and then plugged in the whole city.
When you're driving around down in it, there's so much light, and noise and honking and screaming and laughter and music, but up in the hills, it looks so peaceful and everything is so quiet.
I was thinking about all that when I heard a voice behind me say, Beautiful, isn't it?
I knew it was Blake before I turned around, and before I could, I felt his arms slide around my waist. He pulled me in toward his chest from behind and whispered in my ear:
It's beautiful, like you.
Maybe it was the pot, or the Xanax, or maybe it was just how I felt in the moment, but before I knew what was happening, he had pulled me in and we were kissing! Right in front of everyone.
And I didn't care.
At that same moment Lauren came walking in the door with my drink.
What the hell are you doing?? She said it in a loud whisper that sounded angry, but when I saw her face, she was about to laugh. I stepped away from Blake, blushing.
I couldn't believe Blake had shown up! He said he'd just gotten back last night and Lauren had told him about homecoming tonight and invited him up.
Lauren handed me a cosmo and told me I better watch it because Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber are in there
getting wasted right now and I didn't want to start a brawl by kissing Blake in front of my date.
Blake laughed and said he could handle a coupla high school guys.
That's when we went inside and I saw Ross bending over the mirror on the coffee table in the living room. Then I heard him take a huge sniff and throw his head back and shout, WHOO!
Ian was sitting next to him and kissed him and laughed. Only, it wasn't a normal laugh. It was sort of wild and loud. When he turned around, his eyes were wide and darted back and forth between us. When he saw me and Lauren, he yelled, LADIES!
Blake laughed and led us down two short steps into the living room. He asked us if we wanted any party favors. I looked at Ross and said, WHAT are you DOING? I couldn't believe he was doing coke. I could see that Ryan and Andrew were out on the balcony off of the living room smoking cigarettes.
Ian just laughed and told me to relax, that Ross just did a little bump.
Then, before I knew what had happened, Lauren was bending over the mirror. She came up, sniffed, and tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder. She turned to me and said a single word:
C'mon.
I looked down at the little straight line of powder next to the larger pile. There was a little straw in her hand. My heart started racing faster than the beat of the music.
I glanced over at Blake, who grinned at me and said, You're gonna like it!
I looked around at everyone else. Ian was tickling Ross on the couch. Ryan and Andrew were staring through the window with their cigarettes. I could smell the fingers of smoke tickling my nose through the partially opened door. When they saw me contemplating the mirror, they started chanting, DO IT DO IT DO IT â¦