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thirty one: asphyxiation

It was Friday, and I couldn't even breathe. Twenty four hours was nowhere near enough time to process what just happened. Apparently it was my turn to ignore Elias, seeing that I was ignoring his texts and avoiding him during the day.

After being out for the half of the week, Eli returned to school, and from the amount of messages I was receiving, I knew he wanted to talk. But I just... didn't want to.

I wouldn't be able to meet his eyes. The sheer judgement and guilt that would reflect in his expression wouldn't allow me to keep it together. And how could I be around anyone if I was the cause of Crash's hospitalization? I put the life of one of my friends at risk to test tabs? The sickest part of this was even though I was guilty for the health of one person, I couldn't help but be reprieved in terms of a business standpoint. If I had sold this batch of acid without testing it, many more people would've been at risk.

But that hardly cancels out the fact that I'm a horrible human being.

Chemistry was going to be a no-show, considering that was not only my first class, but Elias and Temi were in it, and I didn't want questions about my puffy eyes, or demands for an explanation.

My phone rang and I ignored it at first, but when it rang again, I sighed in annoyance and looked at the screen. It was Crash.

Instantly, I picked up, my pulse jumping and my body tense as ever. "Oh my god, are you okay?"

Beeping from machines were in the background of the receiver. "Yes, I'm good. But you gotta come to the hospital because we need to talk."

A series of alarms went off in my head, and it shook me to the core. "O-okay. What hospital?"

—

When I walked over to room 301 in Scarsdale Memorial Hospital, the sight of Crash sitting in the bed with wires coming out of him made me want to cry again. However, I was happy to see him awake and not harmed, so I knocked and walked further into the room. I didn't even care that I skipped out on the rest of school, I needed to see how he was.

Crash glanced up and sent me a smile. Not a "I'm sending you to jail because you put me in the hospital" smile, but the genuine grin that I knew him to give me every time he spoke.

"How are you feeling?" I greeted, walking over to his bedside. His locs were tied up into a messy bun and funnily enough, he looked super moisturized on his face. "There's no way you're in a hospital and you still look better than me on a regular."

He laughed. "Yeah, I'm alright. My mom didn't want me to miss one day on my skin care routine. I woke up with a hydration mask on my face."

I couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity because that sounded exactly like something Crash's family would do. After all, hissed was a photographer and his mom was a model and magazine editor. An eye for beauty runs in the family. But then, I remembered why he was here in the first place. Me.

My lip trembled and my eyes couldn't hold back the tears. Seeing him here was too real, and the guilt was eating me up. "Danny, I'm so sorry. This is all my fault."

His eyes softened and he grabbed my hand. "Bro, don't. It's not your fault. I told you if I ever died on Flame, tell my parents I was Jimi Hendrix."

"It's not a joke, Crash!" I replied, shaking my head. "I rushed Elias to get a batch out so we could sell it. It's not fair to you that I put your life on the line because I was greedy—"

"Ember. Stop." The background of the TV was muted, but that's all I could look at. He was too much and the indiscretion was eating me alive. "It's my fault, too. I smoked two spliff right before I tripped because I wanted to try it. I didn't expect the tab to be as strong as it was. When I was younger, I used to have seizures a lot. But I haven't had one in so long, so I think me mixing triggered one."

"But you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm good." He sighed and looked at me, before his eyes trailed past me and his eyes widened. "Oh, shit. That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about."

I looked back at the TV as he pressed the mute button to hear the sound of the local news. Crash's mom, Kirsten Redding-Somers, stood in front of a podium, dressed to the nines in a Chanel tweed suit. There were several local news microphones poised in front of her.

"Good morning, I come to you with news in regards to my son," she spoke, her voice strong. Wow, she was born for PR. "He is awake and still recovering, and we thank Scarsdale Memorial for their support and attentive care towards my family."

Crash groaned, shaking my head. "Only my mom would spin this into a moment."

"However, what I come here to say today is that I am in full support of the future moves and actions that will be completed by the Scarsdale Police Department. As a mother of a high school senior, I see the impacts of illegal drug use on a community, as I can see the direct effect on my son's health."

My jaw dropped as she held up the ziplock baggie of Flame to the camera. The cartoon print on the sheet of tabs was plain as day through the zoomed-in camera, and Crash cursed before putting his head in his hands. We were busted.

"I turn it over to Captain Tim Murphy for a statement," she finished, walking over to accommodate the police chief, clad in uniform.

"Thank you, Mrs. Somers. Over the past two weeks, we've been investigating a series of lysergic acid diethylamide, also known colloquially as 'acid' or 'LSD'," he began, and with every word he spoke, my anxiety shot higher and higher. I gripped the rails of the bed, my nails digging into the cold metal. "This is a highly illegal drug, and we've arrived at the conclusion that this is an operation that began in Scarsdale and is advancing quickly to other village towns in the Westchester County area. If you know anything about this substance, we encourage you to call the tip hotline."

A crack was audible, and I felt a warm liquid trail down my fingers. I held my hand to my face and noticed one acrylic nail was gone. It broke in the middle and took half my nail with it. Oddly enough, I didn't feel the pain.

"This was what I wanted to warn you about," Crash whispered, his head bowed. "My mom and dad flipped out when they saw the tabs on my desk after I went to the hospital. They thought it was laced."

My body was numb, and I had to come to terms with the fact that this could be game over for everyone. Eventually, they were going to piece everything together, and it was all downhill from there.

"Relax," Crash said. He picked his phone up from the bedside ledge and showed me his post where he was posed in the bed with his face mask on, using a jade roller. "No one who even knows about Flame will be watching that. I already posted on my IG story that my mom dragged it and that I'm good."

It did relieve me of some doubt, but not entirely. But what would? Flame was on TV.

But it seemed that any publicity is good publicity, considering that I felt vibrations from my second phone in my bag. My eyebrows furrowed as I dug for it, and what I saw on screen was shocking to say the least. People in other counties were hitting me up with photos of the baggy from the news, asking for more tabs. One person that I remembered selling to at Winter Wonderland even wrote "WORLDWIDE FLAME" and asked for 10 more. It seemed like the news worked as free advertisement for our tabs.

I showed Crash and he was excited. "Yeah, I can't wait to start back up."

"Start back up?" I parroted, incredulously. "You almost died and the police are literally investigating. Do you want us to go to jail?"

"Please, they're not even close to pinpointing it. There's four different schools in Scarsdale alone. And how would they even know the person pushing it is? No one would expect high school students to be in the middle of a drug ring."

He had a point. It was unexpected    which was the reason we stayed off the radar for so long. We just had to make sure we never made a mistake again. Was it possible to keep on with this without getting caught? Winter break was next week. It'd be easier to lay low when no one was in school.

"I guess. But we have to be low-key and I gotta sell out of school only now, the building is too dangerous now," I eventually said, apprehension in my tone. "I don't like this though, I have a bad feeling."

"Don't worry, nothing will happen," he said with a grin, his pearly whites only slightly easing my angst. "Just think of how the numbers have been growing. We'll be fine."