Dancing with Molly (10 page)

I pointed out that maybe it wasn't the best idea in history to be blissed out in the middle of a party where there were going to be a bunch of teachers chaperoning and it was right in the middle of that sentence that Pete and Brandon showed up and sat down next to us. When they got wind of what Reid was planning to do they were all for it and told Jess that they wanted in on the action too. I mean, I love doing molly and all, but am I the only person who thinks this is a bad idea?

Carson was waiting for me after band practice today. He and Reid were hanging out in the parking lot next to my car. Ashley was draped over Reid like a jacket and the three of them were talking about how much fun it would be at the party. Reid
and Carson don't have to worry about coming back to school anymore because they're seniors, but Ashley and Jess and I could get in a lot of trouble if we got caught.

After I said that, Reid looked at me like I was trying to run over a puppy with my car and started assuring Ashley that he and Jess and Carson would make sure that nothing would happen to her. I didn't want to start a big fight or anything, but I asked him how exactly he could guarantee that, seeing as he'd never done molly, or even ecstasy, before. That's when Jess came running up and said that Kelly had texted her with news: Kyle, Kelly's brother, is spinning at this big underground after-hours party on Saturday night in a huge warehouse downtown, and he's going to put us all on the list.

The minute Reid heard this, he was all in. He told me that we'd “practice” doing molly at the party this weekend and see how it went, and that way we'd be “prepared” for the graduation party. Ashley seemed to think that this was a great idea. Jess said Brandon and Pete were a go for the party this weekend, too. My only hope is that Ashley will just not like it that much and I'll be able to talk her out of rolling at the graduation party, but something tells me that's not going to happen. If she's anything like me, she'll love doing molly.

I can't help but feel like this is going to get out of control.

Carson and Reid came over for dinner tonight. Mom was in heaven. She was in “coolest mom ever” mode and prepped Make Your Own Pizza night. I think she may have flirted with Reid and Carson more than Ashley and I did. Dad came home from work as we pulled the first round of pizzas out of the oven and jumped in on the fun too. I have to admit, I had a good time—even though it was Ashley's turn to pick out a movie and she chose
Sleepless in Seattle.
Usually that movie drives me crazy, but I actually didn't mind it this time. Maybe holding hands with Carson while I watched it helped. I guess ultra-romantic movies aren't so bad if you feel like it's possible to have that kind of romance off-screen.

After the guys left, when I was getting ready for bed, Jess texted me. She said that Kelly couldn't get molly for the party tomorrow, but that her brother had scored some ecstasy. I feel so bummed about that. I mean, ecstasy is fun, but the molly that we did after prom was so much better. Also, I have this nagging feeling that I'm going to be worried about Ashley the entire time and not really able to enjoy myself or Carson or the music as much as I want to.

Oh well. I guess we can just try it tomorrow night and see how it goes. At least Kyle will be there. He told Kelly that he'd
keep an eye on all of us. Still, I hope there aren't any problems. Jeez. When did I turn into such a nervous Nellie? Who am I kidding? I'm going to roll tomorrow night and have a blast with Carson. I'm sure Ashley will have just as much fun with Reid. It's not like we're shooting heroin or something. What could go wrong?

Wow. I just read the last words I wrote in this journal. If that wasn't tempting fate, I don't know what is. Note to self: Never write “what could go wrong” in a journal. The next entry will be horrifying.

Pretty much everything went wrong last night. I feel like crap—and not just from the ecstasy. Of course, that's really where everything started to go bad. Kyle got these little red tablets that had lightning bolts pressed into them. Brandon, Pete, Jess, and Kelly had just dropped when Carson, Reid, Ashley, and I arrived, so we'd barely gotten inside the door of the party before Jess was passing around the tabs and water bottles. Ashley didn't even hesitate, she just gulped hers down and I followed suit so that we'd be on the same wavelength at least and I could sort of track what she was feeling.

At first we didn't really feel much. The warehouse was
huge, and there were these totally ripped shirtless guys and girls in bikinis dancing on big cubes all around the dance floor. Kyle waved to us from the DJ booth and we went over to say hi. He told us to “enjoy the lightning” and then we all started dancing. This ecstasy took longer to hit than the other two times, and once it did, it was not nearly the same as the molly. In fact, it was awful at first. My stomach got really upset and I was grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw like crazy. It was really speedy and it made me feel jittery. My eyes twitched so much that Carson grabbed my hand and took me outside where Pete and Brandon were. They were smoking cigarettes, and I sat down for a while, but being away from Ashley made me nervous because I kept thinking about her and wondering if she was okay. I got really paranoid, so Carson brought me back inside to find Ashley.

I shouldn't have been worried at all. By the time we got back inside, Reid was shirtless, and he and Ashley had climbed up onto one of the boxes with one of the girls in the bikinis and were dancing with her. Ashley saw me and squealed, then threw her hands over her head and danced like a maniac. I just started laughing because she looked like she was having a really good time, and I finally started to relax. Jess and Kelly came around with water and Blow Pops. Having that sucker helped
me stop clenching my jaw so much and it tasted amazing.

We all started dancing together around the big box that Reid and Ashley were on. My sister looked amazing. Kelly had sprayed body glitter all over her, and her blond hair was catching the black lights, and for a while it looked like she was shooting lasers out of her head, creating these beautiful patterns. She saw me looking up at her and pointed at me with a big grin on her face. She jumped off the box and came running over and threw her arms around me.

Ashley has never been one for public displays of affection, but somehow it seemed exactly right. She kept telling me thank you over and over again. I asked her for what, and she said, For this AMAZING NIGHT. I feel SO GOOD!

Ashley danced near me and Carson for a while, and then Reid jumped off the box and started kissing her. Ashley just melted into him, and I realized that's exactly what I wanted to be doing. I turned around and saw that Carson had slipped off his T-shirt and tucked it into the waist of his jeans. The whole warehouse was packed now, and we all seemed to be moving and dancing and grinding and breathing at the same time. The lights bouncing off his chest made him glow, and the speed in the ecstasy made my eyes twitch so fast that Carson looked like a big ball of pink, purple, and yellow light. I was feeling a little
dizzy, so I reached out to touch him. My hand landed on his chest, right over his heart, and I swear I felt it pounding there against my palm.

Carson had his head thrown back and his eyes closed, completely lost in the music. When I touched him, his face lit up, his eyes fluttered open, and he got the biggest grin on his face. He stopped dancing and folded his hand over mine, then pulled me toward him and held me close against his body. I could feel him taking deep breaths, and as his body rose and fell against mine, he leaned down and kissed me.

Our mouths locked together, and our arms pressed our bodies into each other so tightly that for a little while, it felt like we had combined ourselves. I felt like our skin had merged, and we were breathing together as we kissed—each inhale a gift, each exhale a revelation.

I felt another mouth on my neck, someone else's breath on my ear. I pulled away from Carson, breaking the spell, breaking our moment. I turned and saw Brandon behind me. I felt his breath on my face as he leaned in to try to kiss my mouth. I tried to push him away, but he kept pulling me toward him. I heard Carson yell, WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE? And saw his fist shoot out past my face and knock Brandon in the nose.

The blood that sprayed out of Brandon's nose caught the
light and was sort of beautiful, but it was only beautiful for about a split second, before he crumpled to the floor next to the big block, knocking into Ashley and Reid, who stopped kissing and turned around just as Carson lunged onto Brandon and hauled back his fist to hit him again. I heard someone yell NO! and realized that it was me. Suddenly Pete materialized out of thin air and tried to pull Brandon to his feet as Reid jumped in and held back Carson's arm, which was ready to fly toward Brandon's head again.

Damn speedy ecstasy. I guess this is what those kids on that forum were talking about. They mentioned that every once in a while the balance of the MDMA to the caffeine or speed, or whatever they cut it with, is seriously off. I still can't imagine anybody throwing a punch while rolling on molly, but maybe ecstasy just affects people differently. Or maybe Carson would have hit Brandon for trying to kiss me stone-cold sober. Whichever, it happened, and all the guys were yelling at each other, while Ashley stood there, wide-eyed, her jaw clenched, her arm wrapped around her stomach like she was going to throw up.

I went over to her and hugged her and told her it was going to be okay, and Jess came over to us and said, Let's go get some air. She and Kelly were leading the way toward the door when
we saw the big metal door of the warehouse fly up and red-and-blue flashing lights. These weren't part of the light show. They were coming from a cop car and an ambulance. Jess and Kelly stopped dead in their tracks as two paramedics and a cop started shoving their way through the crowd toward us. I was so confused. Ashley yelled over the noise, Did you call the COPS? And I was about to say NO when they pushed past us, and we turned to see them move past Carson, Reid, Pete, and Brandon, who was standing there with his head back, holding his T-shirt up to his nose.

It was only then that I saw a circle had cleared on the other side of the block where Ashley and Reid had been dancing. There was a girl with dark hair lying on the concrete floor. As the lights swept across her, I could see that she was twitching, violently, her mouth covered with a weird white liquid that seemed to bubble up from inside her. Soon, the paramedics and the cop surrounded her, and Jess appeared in front of all of us and shouted, LET'S GO! NOW!

Jess grabbed Kelly by the hand and cleared a path through the crowd, pushing and shoving people out of her way. We muscled our way past the DJ booth, where Kyle was still spinning, headphones on, lost in his own music. Finally we hit the cool air of the outside, and we started running.

We didn't stop until we were back at our cars.

Everybody except for Pete and Brandon went back to Kelly's house after we left the club. Kelly and Carson drove everybody, and I didn't really grasp until yesterday morning when we all woke up sprawled across the couches and carpet what a truly terrible idea it was for ANYONE to be driving.

I thought Ashley would be totally freaked out, but after we got back to Kelly's we all tried to relax in the hot tub and Kelly passed around a little bong she had packed with some really good weed. It helped everybody chill out and come down from the speedy ecstasy nice and easy. Eventually, everybody crashed. We were waking up when Kyle got home, and Kelly came around with waters and the biggest bottle of Advil I'd ever seen. Kyle told us that the girl who had passed out was a regular at that warehouse party every month. He knows some of her friends and is going to see if he can find out some details about what happened to her.

When we got home, Mom wanted to know all the details. We'd told her we were spending the night at Kelly's house after we went to an eighteen-and-under club with Reid, Carson, and Jess. Sometimes I think my mom just wants to believe what we're telling her so that she can live vicariously through our teenage lives. She didn't really get to do that much fun stuff when
she was a kid. Her dad was sort of a mean drunk, and he ran off when she was in eighth grade, so the whole time she was in high school she had to work at a department store to help her mom make ends meet.

I thought Ashley would be done with her little drug experimentation phase, but she surprised me. She came into my room and told me that she had a really fun time this weekend. You could've knocked me over with a feather. And the thing is, I really think she meant it. It was weird. She gave me a big hug and called me “sis”—as if that were a totally normal thing or something she'd always called me.

THANK GOD tomorrow is Memorial Day. Dad and Mom are leaving me alone because I told them I have like a zillion tests this week for finals. Our last day of classes is on Friday, then graduation is on Saturday, but before then I have three papers due—two in AP English, and one in history. I have ZERO idea how all of this is going to get done, but I just have to plow through, starting NOW. I have to get the papers done before Dad makes us all come eat ribs. It's like his Memorial Day requirement: Everybody has to eat ribs. At least my parents are having friends over so I can just go down, eat a rib, then plead HOMEWORK and come back up here to finish studying.

This morning when we got to school, Ashley asked Jess first thing if Kelly was going to be able to get any “party favors” for the graduation party this weekend, and Jess winked at her and said she was sure that Kyle and Kelly would be able to figure something out. I figured that Ashley might have decided she was done experimenting, but apparently she had fun even though we witnessed that poor girl collapse on the dance floor.

At lunch Pete and Brandon stopped by where the rest of us were sitting. Carson got really tense, and sort of snapped at them. He told them to just keep walking. Brandon sneered and asked who died and made him the sheriff. Carson jumped up so fast his chair fell backward. Pete pulled Brandon away, but before he did, Carson said in a really quiet voice that the two of them had better back off. I get that Carson is upset about Brandon kissing me, but I didn't realize he has such a short fuse. I guess I thought he was a little more progressive than that. I mean, it's not like we've had a talk about us being boyfriend and girlfriend. It's not that I want to date anyone else—I don't. I just don't want him to think of me like I'm his property or something. At the same time, I don't want to make him think that I'm into Brandon or Pete or something.