Conflux: The Lost Girls

6 - In teenage jungles

Dawn breaks, blowing the night away like the bitter electric powder. A peek out the door with glaring eyes. I forget how many times I look, but it must be sixty. Seventy. By now it's just to stay sane.

I lock the door again. The insane hours fall out of my over-amped brain as the pulsating energy fades to shaky, lingering weirdness. A single bulb flickers and the dingy bathroom takes on a tired feel. My thoughts and energy flicker with it, light and dark. Lines and edges blur and shake and cross over one another.

The bag fits in my palm, looks lighter than when I started. Two or three times I went back to it in the last hours, or was it four times?

I had to. It kept me watchful of Care. That's good. No choice. Gotta stay awake, even now. But my muscles are stiff and angry, and my body feels like a spent battery. My battered bones and fighting bruises scream bloody murder.

Five minutes since I checked on her. Maybe twenty. I hobble over and she's still out, but breathing better than before. My limp is getting better but each step is misery.

Back to the mirror. My face is white. It seems thinner, sickly, almost grotesque. I wonder if my skin doesn't look rougher. Some punch bruises have begun to show on the sides of my face. The outlines of everything wobble gently from drugged exhaustion. My jaw aches and my teeth feel ready to fall out of my head.

A rap at the door rocks my heart, panic, and fear heat shooting from my chest. I look to the door, waiting, hoping the noise was hallucination. A longer, harder knock follows. My head turns to Care's stall helplessly.

I pull the baton from my pocket, flip it open with a zipper sound, hide it behind my leg. Swallowing, I walk to the door reluctantly. My teeth set hard on one another as I twist the deadbolt and leap away.

The metal door creaks open to a blinding silhouette in the cold morning light. I stretch out my hand to block it as my eyes water.

Vision slowly clears as I shake in anticipation. Not a cop, but a startled old Hispanic man standing in the doorway. He looks to my weapon and then me.

"Ahh, need to clean here," he says in a thick accent.

Quiet steps sound behind me. It's Care, holding our bag. "Yeah, of course. We were just heading out."

The janitor nods slowly as we hobble past, his world-weary face half-shocked. I close my baton on the wall and pocket it.

"Nice of you to finally wake up," I say. "You okay?"

"Better," she answers weakly. "You?"

"Worse than you last saw me. I was up all night on this stuff so no one found us both passed out with you drowned in your own vomit." My shaking hand pulls out the baggie. She takes it and I light a cigarette.

"What's this?" She opens the bag to taste it. "Woah, never seen speed like this... And where'd you get that cig?! Why's our bag so heavy?"

We stop on a hill overlooking torn baseball fields and a rusty playground. She plops her ass and the bag on the ground with a big clank. She opens it and squeals at the sight of all the liquor. "Tequila, gin, vodka, wow! Ew, think I'm done with rum for a little while, though."

"Look under." I put a cig in her mouth and light it.

She looks like she's about to faint from joy, seeing the bag of drugs. She cuts off her own "ohmygod" by smacking her hand over her lips.

"I was taking the 'amph' powder in there all night to stay up," I say. "It was fun at first but now everything hurts and I feel like shit. Am I even alive?"