ʷᵃᵛᵉˢ ᵒᶠ ᶜᵒˡᵒʳ / ᵇⁱˡˡⁱᵉ ᵉⁱˡⁱˢʰ

chapter five

He rolled up the windows and reaching into the backseat of the car, pulling out two small ziplock baggies from a cardboard box. I dug around the pocket of my jeans until I found my money. Wordlessly, we made the exchange. Then we got out of the car.

Walking inside the bar, I was immediately hit with the smell of strong cologne and stale puke. The floor was black and white tiling, while the walls were painted navy blue. The lights were dim and tinted purpley. There were no windows.

I was sort of intrigued by the place. As Hugh had said earlier, the majority of customers there were teenagers. Nobody seemed to care much. I watched a girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen years old walk up to the bartender and order a round of shots. 

Back home, the only way to get alcohol was to raid my mother's stash. Which I did often, before I discovered pills, and how much more useful they were.

Hugh waved at a group of people, grabbing my wrist and pulling me over to them. 

"Hey guys. This is Camille. She's staying with Billie's family," he said, introducing me to everyone. 

One of the girls, who was wearing a yellow sundress and stilettos, grinned at me. She was clearly tipsy, the way she keep teetering around, her eyes listlessly scanning the room. I smiled back at her politely.

Hugh told me everyone's names--there were five people total, not counting he and I. Three guys, two girls. The one in the sundress was named Penny, I learned. The other, who had on shorts and a tank, was Jasmine.

"Why're you staying with Billie's family?" Jasmine asked. She had a comforting vibe that I found myself drawn to. She was wearing a bunch of turquoise jewelry and her hair was down to her hips. Another person who, had my mother been there, I would've been scolded for talking to. Which made her all the more appealing.

"Um. Maggie is friends with my mom, so she invited me," I said, which was sort of like a half-truth. I hadn't exactly been invited, but Maggie had welcomed me there with open arms, so it wasn't a total lie. 

"Cool." Jasmine was drinking a hard seltzer. Her rings clinked against the can as she lifted it up to her mouth to take a sip. 

Suddenly, I felt someone tap my shoulder. I spun around. Hugh was standing there, holding two shot glasses. He handed one to me.

"To loosen up," he whispered. 

We did the shots at the same time. A few minutes later, all of the guys disappeared into the men's bathroom.

"They're smoking weed," Jasmine informed me. "There's a window in there. And they're all too scared to smoke on the street because they don't wanna get caught."

I laughed. I could feel myself starting to loosen up. 

"Were you at Hugh's party?" I asked. 

"The one on Tuesday? Yeah. Were you?"

"Only for a while. I don't really like parties."

Jasmine nodded. "Me too. They're gross. I made the mistake of staying until the very end at a Fourth of July party last year, which meant I got to see all the wasted people puke in the kitchen sink. That kind of put me off parties for a while."

I was feeling so elated for some reason, that all of a sudden, I just really wanted to get high. It's sort of like when you're happy, you eat, because eating makes you even more happy. That's how getting high was to me. Like eating. I needed it to survive.

"I'll be right back. I'm gonna go to the bathroom," I told Jasmine, shuffling through the thickening crowd of people at the bar.

When I made it into a stall, I pulled out the baggie from my pocket. I extracted my credit card and a rolled up five dollar bill from my wallet. On the lid of the wastebasket, I placed my baggie down, crushed up a single Adderall ontop, and snorted it.