I spent the rest of the school week trying to do better in my class work, I studied the notes I was given by Ms. Simmons and tried to be outgoing and ask questions during Mr. Radek's chemistry class. Ms. Farley still has it out for me, so I don't stick my nose out too far in her class but do my best to act like a normal student. A diligent student, wanting to siphon all the knowledge I can into my little brain. The math teacher doesn't really care about us and what we do, so long as we're quiet. For some reason, that's even worse than an angry teacher.
Apparently, my keys got turned in to the receptionist a bit after I came by, but she didn't care to tell me. Anna was the one to turn them in, it must've been when I saw her as the lunch period was ending yesterday. My head felt less groggy during the remainder of the week, and I felt like I was able to talk with Anna and Claire in biology.
That dude who was talking with the redheaded girl is in my chemistry class. He's a quiet guy, but he has this aura to him that makes him unapproachable. When I told Austin about what happened with him and that girl behind the school, he asked me why I'm beefing with Spencer. He told me that we were all friends when we were younger, guess I forgot.
We'd hang around the projects and do dumb shit together, to name a few things; we'd often have what we'd call "Stick wars" where we'd all find sticks and rocks and huck them at each other and try to basically bludgeon our opponents. Spencer would always take it too far and me and Austin didn't like playing with him too much.
There was also the time we were all throwing rocks at cars, hidden behind bushes on the side of the road. There was a time when we smashed some dude's window, and he came running after us. While running away, I tripped and sprained my ankle. Spencer kept running, not wanting to be caught but Austin stayed and helped me up. And that's the story of why I'm a bad runner and don't get into sports.
Anyway, Spencer moved away from our town for a few years with his mom and stepdad, and he just moved back this summer for school. Apparently, his mom finally split with his step-dad, the dude was abusive. I don't want to think about what he'd done to her. But the final nail in the coffin was when Spencer beat the shit out of him. I don't know much about the rest of the details.
Eli hasn't shown his face at school this week.
Anna and Claire are both so knowledgeable about the sciences. They wholeheartedly agreed to help me with biology, and it was nice to be around them, But Claire talks too much about dorky things I don't understand. Seems like Anna didn't know all that much about her niche interests but was encouraging of them. On Thursday, Claire had a "Nyancat" hairpin that she made herself, and on Friday it was a four-leaf clover.
Anyway, after the school week continued and ended, it was finally Friday.
I'm currently at home, it's about 8 p.m. and I'm waiting for a text from Austin. He said he was gonna borrow his dad's pickup truck and pick me up on his way to the party. He asked for 20$ earlier to buy a bottle of vodka, I didn't really mind giving it to him, since mom gave me some spending money as she said I'll pay her back when I get a job. Thanks, Mom.
He finally sends me a text.
"you ready bro?"
As ready as I can be, I don't know what to expect or how I acted last weekend, but I guess I was the life of the party. Must've been a manic episode or something. But I'll try acting like that, not entirely sure what "that" is.
After about 30 minutes of sitting around aimlessly staring at my ceiling and wondering if sleeping would be easier and less energy-consuming he tells me he's outside.
Before I leave, I tell Mom I'm going to hang out with Austin. She dismissively waves at me from the couch. I feel like she's a royal monarch and I've been pardoned of a crime. "You may go" Or something.
I leave through the backdoor, I got my keys now, my phone, and some pocket money. Like 25 dollars, enough to take a cab home just in case I hate it there and don't want to walk home and get jumped. Eli's place isn't in the best part of town.
There's a cool evening breeze, in the distance there are a few kids playing outside. Reminds me of me and Austin with a lack of adult supervision, just doing whatever we wanted well into the night. Mom loves us, but she believes a freedom-based approach is the best way to parent. She had strict parents.
Anyway, I can see the truck parked on the side of the house. When walking up to it I can see there's rust along the tires' wheelhouse. The painted exterior is chipping away along the body. Its engine is loud, but if it works, it works. Beggars can't be choosers when it comes to a free ride.
I hop in the passenger seat, and Austin grabs his backpack that was sitting on the passenger seat and tells me to place it at my feet. The interior is just as ugly, the glovebox compartment is broken. Or rather, there is no compartment box anymore. It's just an empty hole.
He starts driving, stopping at the four-way outside my place and driving towards Eli's.
As we're driving, we start having some idle conversations about nothing.
I feel a bit nervous like there's this feeling in my gut that this is going to suck. He breaks the silence and probably notices me being worried by asking me stupid questions.
"Hey bro, what's a completely useless superpower you can come up with?" He asks.
After thinking for a few seconds, I come up with:
"Invincible toenails. Maybe it could have some uses, but I can't think of any." I say to him.
He looks at me with his toothy smile and says:
"Nice, nice. What about uh. Fuck. The ability to teleport your brain to space, but you can only do it once." He says while swerving slightly into the next lane. There's not much traffic so we aren't in any impending danger.
"Like, you can only teleport your brain to space. Or you can teleport your brain to space and then back to your skull, but only once?" I ask him.
"You can be the one to decide that." He says while grabbing his phone and texting when we come to a stop sign.
I don't like the idea of a disembodied brain floating through the cosmos.
"Does it give you an infinite cosmic wisdom?" I ask him while grabbing my phone to check the time.
8:40 P.M
"Nah, you're just a brain in space. Your brain probably gets eviscerated in the vacuum of space too." He says before taking a left at an intersection.
"I'd probably be too impulsive and immediately teleport my brain. It's not for me."
I think we're almost there.
It's pretty dark by this time, the streetlights are illuminating vacant homes. Contrasted by the emptiness of the houses, you can see the shadows cast from the light all the way through the homes. Some places are boarded up completely, with graffiti spray painted on them. There are quite a few children wandering around unattended by their parents. Just like me and Austin would've been.
But the streets feel a bit more dangerous around these parts, when we passed a house, there was a man sleeping beside a garbage can and what I assumed to be discarded needles beside him. And even the roads are unattended to, there are potholes everywhere and each time we hit one we bounce around in our seats. None of this seems to bother Austin though and I just can't see how.
We made it to a house; the front yard is unkempt, and the house number is missing one of its numbers. It says 9 _ 8. I don't know who'd steal a house number, but people have stolen less significant things.
We pull into the driveway; Austin tells me to pass him his backpack that's at my feet. There's a clanging of glass bottles inside the bag when I hand it to him.
The sound of dogs barking and loud music coming from the house is reported to my ears from Austin's open window.
There are a few people outside, a mixture of teenagers and adults. They're smoking cigarettes and weed and gossiping about some drama, I can just barely hear them.
"Your baby daddy really did that?" one girl says to another.
"Yeah, he was with that bitch from 17th. Fuck I hope she comes by tonight, I'm gonna fuck her up!" She says while flicking her cigarette over and over again, needlessly.
"You know I got your back if she does." The girl responds.
They're cackling distinctively amongst the crowd, even louder than the truck we're in.
I feel like my heartbeat is increasing, I don't feel like I belong here.
They turn to us and among the crowd, a man calls out to Austin and me.
"Ayy you showed up! Danny, Austin! Eli's in the house. Think they're already drinking, you're gonna have to catch up." He winks at us. I can't make out his face very well, there isn't a light outside the house. He sounds older than us though, like maybe he shouldn't be drinking at parties at his age. He has a large build from what I can see, his shoulders are very broad and he's about as tall as Austin.
"You guys were fucked up last weekend, ay man you with your girl still? She's here and all over some fuckhead right now. You want me to kick his ass?" He says to me.
One of the girls smoking chimes in.
"I'll fuck that bitch up for you too, ha just kidding. I just wanna fucking fight someone right now." She says while laughing with her friend.
Gross.
"Nah, broke up with her this week," I say but don't necessarily think it's necessary to divulge that information to a strange man outside of a house party.
"Pfft, fucking awkward then. You should go in there and tell her she's a dumb bitch." He starts laughing and turns to the girls who also laugh with him.
I don't see the joke.
"Doesn't bother me if she's with someone else, at least she isn't with me anymore," I say in a stoic tone.
Someone else has left the home and I caught a glimpse of the man talking to us as the light seeped out from inside, he's got green tattoos across his face. I couldn't see the pattern, but it'd be rude to judge him based on appearance. He seems to know the inner workings of my social dynamics, so he must at least care about me a little bit.
Austin tells him we're heading in; I follow behind him.
The man standing outside slaps me on the back and says:
"Hey, don't be starting anything with your ex either. We don't want no drama in the house." Before he pushes me inside and laughs with the women who are smoking.
When entering the home, there are countless shoes scattered about at the doorway. We walk in and take off our shoes, Austin picks up his and carried them with him. I do the same, I'd prefer to leave with my own pair of shoes today. There's some gangster music playing, and people are standing around with drinks in their hands bobbing their heads to the beat of the music and talking.
We get a good look at the situation in the home, the first room we enter from the doorway is the living room. There are three couches facing a coffee table in the living room. A few people are playing a game of cards, and the others are socializing with one another. Eli is one of the prominent figures around the coffee table. In the kitchen is Sarah sitting on some random dude's lap. There are about 6 people on a couch meant for 3. There are two sitting on the arms of the couch and it's seating four people on the regular part of the couch.
The person dealing the cards at the table is wearing a very big shirt, at least three sizes bigger than what's necessary. He doesn't look like he's here to play cards and drink with his buddies, he looks like he's been doing drugs and hasn't showered or eaten a meal in a few days. His front tooth is also missing so when he smiles you can see the darkness of his mouth beyond it.
Austin walks into the house first after surveying the area. He calls to Eli, but he doesn't hear us. Eli looks like he's been wearing the same clothes as he was when I saw him at school on Wednesday. The same muscle shirt which was somewhat clean is now dirty and covered in what I assume to be grease stains and sweat.
I take my time thinking about whether I want to be here, the whole time Sarah is watching me from the kitchen. When I look her way, she looks away from me and towards the kitchen before kissing her new boyfriend, I think may be in an attempt to make me jealous, but it doesn't have the effect on me she thinks it does. Personally, she's not my problem anymore and I'm thankful to you new guy, good luck with her. I can't see beyond the wall that separates the kitchen and living room, but I imagine she's sitting around the table with her friends.
Finally making my way in, I go to stand beside Austin at the table.
We spend a few minutes standing in the living room, the people around us who are drinking are laughing and bickering over their shared pasts. The girls who were standing outside came in and asked Eli something and handed him some money. He gave them a small baggie.
Honestly, I'm trying not to freak out in this situation. It doesn't feel comfortable being here, the floor is a mess, it's sticky everywhere, and smells like fermented booze. More fermented than the booze originally was. A sweet and sour scent fills the air. The coffee table on the floor is barely at chest height while everyone is sitting around it. It has a small wooden frame, and there's a TV stand positioned in the center of the room against the furthest wall, but there's no TV on it. it's been replaced with a sound system that's connected via Bluetooth and blasting music from somewhere I can't see, probably a computer or phone.
When I look at the people around me, they're all sharing various bottles of vodka and whiskey and drinking it together. When drinking, they take a drink of their alcohol, then a drink of soda in one mouthful and gulp it all down together. The ones that are lucky enough to have a pop bottle with them anyway, some of them are drinking their liquor with juice that's been made in a container. Looks like a fruit punch, that sounds awful.
After standing awkwardly for a few minutes, Eli signals Austin by flicking his nose and turning his head towards the hallway. Eli and Austin start walking toward the hall. I follow behind, not wanting to sit awkwardly with strangers. There are 5 rooms in the hall, three on the lefthand side while walking down it and 2 on the righthand side. As we're walking, a few girls emerge from the bathroom laughing about something. They looked pretty, I guess.
Eli calls to someone and when he wanders over, he yells to him in a loud and aggressive voice.
"Ay, watch the door ight, Gary?" He says before opening the door and after me and Austin walk in, shuts it behind us.
I hear a muffled voice coming from outside the door, the man Eli called over says "Who the fuck is Gary?" and that was all I could hear besides the music that was blaring from the living room.
In Eli's room, there's the faint scent of marijuana. Not a fresh scent, but kind of like how cat smell gets on everything, so too does weed when you smoke it inside. The inside of the room is illuminated by a blue light that's been veiled with a thin flag with a marijuana leaf on it.
Eli sits on his bed, there's no bed frame on it. Just a mattress on the floor, there's a TV on the opposite side of the room from the bed that's sitting on a dresser. Just like I have at my house.
There's a window between the bed and the TV, with a flag of a skull with crossbones around it.
"Is Eli a pirate?" is what I think to myself.
The interior of the room has what looks like planks of wood, but upon closer inspection of a hole that's been kicked into the wall, it looks like a thin plastic material meant to imitate the aesthetic of wood.
Eli and Austin sit on his bed, there's a glass table in the middle of the room with powdered stains running across it and a plate with a debit or credit card on it.
Eli begins to speak while grabbing something under a pillow on his bed.
"Boys! Glad you could make it. You didn't jerk each other off on the drive here, did you?" He laughs while adding:
"That's why you give this guy free rides ain't it, Austits?" He says before slapping Austin's man boobs upwards and laughing.
Austin just looks at him in a serious tone and says:
"You better be prepared if you're grabbing my tits like that, I'll fold you like a lawn chair right now buddy." Then he laughs.
When they're sitting upright beside each other, Austin looks like he has about an 8-inch height difference from Eli. Eli is even shorter than me, honestly. He's probably insecure about his height and that's why he acts stronger than he really is.
Now that I think about it, Eli and I haven't known each other long. Not like me and Austin, we probably knew each other since the start of high school. And yeah, he's always been a dickhead like he is right now. I think we only hang out with him since his uncle sells various illegal substances.
Eli says to me:
"Ay Danny, we're gonna do a few lines and then drink for a bit. You still wanna pull another B&E tonight, or what?"
He takes out a baggie from his pocket with a white powder with small white chunks inside. It's probably Coke.
But fuck man, a B&E? Really? We really did a breaking and entering? I know he said it at school, but still. It sucks to hear it again.
Oh man, the shame I feel in my gut. I can't help but feel so guilty, I don't even know whose house it was, but I wish I could give them back everything we stole.
I'm just going to ignore this feeling for a second and give him a joking response, I feel like if I act weird, he'll notice just like Austin did.
"Aight, but we're throwing your skinny ass through the window this time," I say while laughing.
He looks at me with a grimacing face, his eyebrows downturned and there isn't a speck of a smile on his face, not like when he was talking to Austin.
"Fuck you, you're fucking skinnier than I am. You're going in the fucking window first." He says before emptying the baggie on the plate on his table.
He seems like the kind of person who jokes with you and calls you shitty names, but when you try to do it back, he takes it seriously. Must be some sort of inferiority complex.
He begins cutting the chunks of cocaine into smaller bits, then to a fine powder.
While Eli breaks apart the coke, Austin takes the bottle of vodka from his backpack and takes a large mouthful while his face scrunches up, like he just ate something very sour.
"Ahhh... fuck that's good." His expression is contradicting what he's saying.
He hands the bottle to me; it smells like rubbing alcohol. I take the weight of the glass bottle in my hands and examine it.
It says: 750 ml, 50% on the bottom portion of the label.
When in Rome, you know. I take a shot of it and almost spit it out instinctively. It's nasty.
Handing back the bottle to Austin, I begin looking around the room. There are a lot of scattered clothes sitting in a corner of the room, it looks like Eli doesn't bother to do his laundry. There are also empty chip bags and discolored 2L bottles, filled with what I assume to be some sort of juice crystal residue that's stained the plastic bottles. Maybe he drinks that while he's hungover or something.
His bed is a king or queen size, and on the opposite end of where they're sitting, is an upturned bed sheet that shows the mattress portion of the bed. It's stained brown and yellow from what I assume to be sweat.
After they bullshit with each other for a bit, Eli pulls out a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and rolls it up into a straw shape. I hadn't noticed, but Eli had broken the Coke into three discrete lines. He begins inhaling the coke through his nose. Immediately, he begins wiping his nose before handing the bill to Austin while clearing his throat.
Austin does the line in the center of the plate, then tilts his head upwards and begins blinking his eyes. He then takes a finger to the nostril he didn't take the coke in and plugs it and breathes through his nose. Probably to make sure he gets everything in his nose and into his brain.
Austin points the bill to me.
I hesitate to grab it. I feel like I'm being pulled in and gravitated towards the plate. I walk towards Austin and take the bill from Austin. I begin to inspect and scrutinize the plate. I can feel my heart pounding. My hands become clammy and sweaty; I rub my fingers across the palms of my hand to feel the sweat on them.
I've had this similar feeling before, just this week, actually. In Mr. Radek's classroom.
And like before, it feels like I can't hear what Austin and Eli are saying anymore, or the music that's blaring outside the door. Like nothing exists but me and this plate of drugs. I want them so bad.
I start justifying it in my head:
"Just once is fine, right? For fun with my friends?"
Continuing focus on the plate, emotions are welling up inside me. Fear and wanting, like I haven't been complete this week without this. The adrenaline is pumping through my body at an increased rate, spiking a chemical response in my brain. I start walking towards the plate.
With the bill in my hand, I bring my head to the level of the table and place the bill in one of my nostrils. My free hand is plugging my nostril. After the twenty-dollar bill hits the plate, I take a breath.
But not through my nose, through my mouth. I can't do it.
I hand the bill back to Austin, I just can't.
As much as my body yearns for this, I can't do it. Doing so feels like it will violate a piece of me. A portion of my own humanity will be handed over of my own volition to this drug.
I feel lost like I'm giving something up. Something I want more than anything right now, but a bigger part of me feels relief.
I tell Austin:
"I'm just not feeling it tonight, bro," I say and stand back up and lean against the wall of the room.
Eli calls me a pussy and Austin says:
"More for us then" before splitting the line of coke in half.
He takes another shot of vodka before he does the line.
About thirty minutes or so pass of them talking, and me intermittently taking a drink from Austin. Well, at least pretending too. I bring the bottle up to my mouth, keeping my lips sealed tight, and pretend to take a shot. I still feel the residual vodka staining my lips, but it's better than me drinking it.
They've been talking nonstop, just yapping on. Half of the things they say don't make sense. Must be the effects of the coke and the alcohol, I'd probably be sitting there with them talking about fuck all too if I did that line.
They talk about girls and drugs. And how they'll start selling and start their own "Drug entrepreneurship" with Eli's uncle. But it just sounds like Eli is gonna be his uncle's drug mule. Eli keeps offering me some, trying to peer pressure me into doing it, but I just keep refusing and saying I'm fine with just drinking.
While they're talking there's a knock on the door, and Gary, or whatever his actual name is lets them in.
There's a man standing at the door, with two girls behind him. He asks if Eli can give them a line, not buy one, give one.
Eli argues with the guy, telling him "He doesn't know how much it fucking costs to keep the supply up." I don't care much about the logistics of drug dealing.
After bickering for a while, one of the girls he's standing with says to Eli in a seducing kind of voice? I don't know. She got very close to him and made her appeal for drugs very personal to Eli.
They continue arguing, and I'm looking at Austin. He's looking at me in silence, his big goofy head sits on his shoulders, and I make a fake half-smile at the situation.
"Alright, you want a line then? I'll give you a line." Eli says to the guy at the doorway. Gary looks awkwardly into the room, probably thinking it was a mistake to let them in.
Eli walks to his drawer and sitting beside a plate of half-eaten food is a pepper shaker.
Eli grabs the pepper and pours some out onto the glass table, not the plate, and begins to sculpt a line of pepper.
"If you want a free line that bad, do this line of pepper first." He says while laughing.
Austin chimes in, standing up from the bed and reaching for his pocket. He digs through his wallet and grabs a twenty and slams his hand into the table with the money on it and leaves behind the twenty.
"I'll throw in twenty bucks too, do the fucking line!" He says while heartily laughing, his large deep voice is momentarily louder than the music from the opened door.
The guy is standing in the middle of the room, looking down at the table. He keeps making eye contact with the table and Eli and rubs his hands through his shaved head.
Eli sees his hesitance.
"Looks like you don't want it that badly." He laughs and is about to dust off the pepper from the table before one of the girls with him says:
"I'll do it." and begins walking into the room.
When she passes by me, all I can smell is hairspray and perfume. I didn't bother looking at her face, but that smell is overpowering. It's worse than the smell of vodka and marijuana. She's wearing a thin black sweater and blue jeans.
Eli and Austin are giggling with each other on the bed, looking at this poor girl about to do a line of pepper.
She confirms whether they'll really give her a line of coke, and they say yes.
When she hears what she wants to hear, Eli hands her their money straw.
She takes the line of pepper in her nostrils. It's fucking gnarly.
The immediate backlash of snorting pepper isn't something I'd like to witness again. She immediately recoils from the table and stands up and begins involuntarily sneezing repeatedly. One, two, three, I lost count after the 10th time. She can't even stand up straight. She's bent over on the table and holding onto it for balance and sneezing. There's snot dripping from her face, and she makes attempts to catch it in her hands but can't keep up with the amount of overflowing mucous. Her eyeliner has become cheek liner by this point, and her friends keep saying they can't believe she did that for 20 bucks and a line of coke.
Everyone is laughing at her, but I just feel awful. Austin and Eli are pushing each other around on the bed crying with laughter.
She grabbed the twenty dollars, and a baggie Eli threw on the table and makes her way out of the room, disoriented and sneezing, and enters the adjacent bathroom. I can still hear her sneezing over the sound of the music.
Eli pours out another line of pepper and says to the now duo of man and woman if they really want a line, they refuse the pepper and leave the room. Gary shuts the door behind them after being scolded by Eli.
Eli points at the line of pepper and says to Austin:
"What about you Austits? You want a free line?" and laughs at him.
Austin replies that he'd rather lick his grandpa's taint then kick back a line of pepper.
Honestly, I feel out of place here.
This sucks. I don't want to drink anymore; I don't think it was even a real want of mine. I haven't been talking much with Eli and Austin. It feels like I'm trapped here since I caught a ride with Austin, I don't even know if cabs will come to this part of town.
I recalled there being a taxi driver who was threatened with a machete and got a portion of his ear removed by said machete not too long ago, and multiple people avoid paying them around this part of town.
Don't even know why I remembered that.
After a few minutes pass, Eli asks me why I'm so quiet and not wanting any coke. I tell him I've got a drug test for work on Monday, and I can't drink because of it. Obviously, this is a lie. I just know if I'm offered drugs again, I might not be strong enough to resist the urge.
He asked me if I was being a little bitch about Sarah hooking up with some guy and if it were him, he'd have started shit on sight when entering the house. I honestly forgot about that, and he didn't like my response when I said:
"Nah, don't really care honestly. It's good that she can move on quickly, it's better for both of us."
After I told him that he stopped offering me any drugs.
"Pfft, fuck you're a pussy." He scoffs at me.
I need some air, man. This room and house and environment are all suffocating, I'm just gonna go stand outside for a few minutes and see if I can get a ride home or just walk.
After leaving the room, Gary nods at me and crosses his arm, Eli calls him into the room after I leave.
There seem to be more people now than there were when we entered the room, it looks like I'm walking into a warzone, there are a few men arguing with the skinny guy with the oversized shirt from before. I stand in the hallway becoming a bystander to the impending violence.
There's a man accusing someone of taking their alcohol, or drugs. I don't know, it's hard to hear them over the music.
"Hey! I know how you fucking act. You pulled this shit last week too!" One of the men says to the boy in the oversized shirt. He begins to fasten his belt buckle and pull up his pants.
"I didn't do shit, where the fuck is it then? Huh? Fucking prove it because I didn't take shit!" The boy begins to walk towards the front door.
He's stopped by and pushed by someone out of my field of vision at the door.
"Where you going, huh?" The man pushing him yells.
The boy looks back, knowing his exit is cut off and the only thing waiting for him here is an altercation. The initial man who was talking to him pushes him up against the wall and says something unintelligible.
The man releases the boy from his grip and reels back his arms for a punch, but the boy kicks him in the stomach, using the wall as leverage to put his full weight into the kick, but this makes him fall to the ground. After this, the two men who were surrounding him immediately get on the ground and start beating him senseless, fists flying as they repeatedly strike him across the face.
He's already been knocked out, but they aren't stopping. Someone turned off the music when they began fighting, the woman from before who was smoking outside is trying to pull them off of him.
"He's just a kid, get the fuck off him!" She attempts to pull one of the men away from him, but he pushes her back.
The sound of screams and multiple people talking starts to jumble together and not make coherent sentences I can make out. I'm still standing in the hallway, watching as a bystander.
After the girl was pushed off the man, she walked out of view and grabbed a glass bottle half-filled with what I assume to be whiskey and puts her weight into ramming it into the man's head who had just pushed her. He falls down and his hands begin to clutch his eye.
Austin and Eli come out of the room in the commotion and Eli runs to the living room and begins screaming "This is my fucking house! Don't fuck around in my home you stupid fucks!" The man who beat the boy up has already stepped away from him and is huffing and puffing in the area between the kitchen and living room. He looks like he's ready to swing at Eli next.
Eli yells "Ain't no fucking way..." before walking back to his room and shoving me against the wall while he's doing so.
I and Austin are now standing beside one another in the hall, his towering appearance is contrasted by my shorter stature in comparison. I nudge his shoulders and say "Man, let's get the fuck outta here." And before Austin can reply, in my peripheral vision there's a figure of a man moving towards us quickly and with purpose, he looks pissed.
When I turn to face him, the next thing I knew, I was the one being assaulted.
"I saw you fucking look at Sarah you little bitch!" He screams after punching me square in the jaw.
He's clearly intoxicated and maybe got tangled up in the violence that happened in the living and thought now's his chance to join in.
I fall onto my ass and feel the immediate daze of being punched. Instinctively I put my forearms across my face to prevent being hit again. There's a loud ringing in my ears and my eyes feel like they can't focus or see straight.
"You think you're better than me, you little pussy!" He tries to get on top of me and continues swinging at me.
Miraculously, I block one of his punches.
I can't help but think that I don't think anything of him or Sarah.
I don't think I've ever been in a fight before, and in retrospect, whenever my fight or flight response starts, I always choose flight.
Then, just as quickly as he started to attack me, his punches stopped. I heard the loud crackling of bone against bone and remove my arms from my eyes to see Austin standing above him.
It's as though I lost a few seconds of time from the adrenaline rush. Austin continues feeding the guy shots to the face and when I'm looking past his back, there's Sarah standing at the end of the hallway smiling at me and laughing before walking away into the kitchen.
Eli returns from the room, I still can't hear or focus well, but I can clearly see the handgun in his hands.
He's waving it around and screaming at the people in the house after walking past me and Austin, he didn't bother to look at us.
Then he fires a shot into the ceiling, the loud piercing sound is met with the clashing of movement in the home and out the doors. Fuck, the sound made my ears ring even more.
The bastard's gonna give me tinnitus.
People start leaving in droves out the front and back doors of the living room and kitchen, a figure of a man begins approaching Eli, the same man with the face tattoos that was outside, and he slaps the shit out of Eli and begins cussing him out.
Austin had knocked out the guy from before and lifted me up from the ground by my armpit.
He puts my arm over his shoulder and starts walking me out of the house and into the truck, everything is moving quickly, and I feel like I'm only seeing images happening in a succession of one other of the house and front lawn.
The girl who snorted pepper walks past us; her sweater is covered in strings of white snot. I couldn't tell if she was still sneezing or not, but we shared a glance, and her eyes were bloodshot like she'd been crying in the bathroom.
I'm still not thinking properly when Austin begins backing out of the driveway, I look outside the window of the pickup truck to see people walking in all directions away from the house. I can still hear screaming from what I assume to be Eli's uncle and the people walking down the street are making some noise.
One of the figures walking was the initial instigator of the fight, he was yelling "Don't nobody fuck around with me! Nobody, fuck all you!" while looking back at us and he continues yelling obscenities at nothing as he walks away down the street.
It's dark outside, there's a mixture of adults and teenagers walking away from the house asking each other where they're supposed to drink now.
Before we leave the house, Austin says that he forgot his bag in the house and hits the brakes before running out of the truck and back inside.
After he runs inside, a group of people stop at the truck and ask us if we can drive them to another party. I don't know what to say, when Austin comes back, he tells them to get the fuck away from his truck and peels out of the driveway, and floors it down the road.
I can feel my face swelling up as we drive, the puffiness and heat being emitted by my jaw is awful as the adrenaline starts to die down. It strings, a lot.
If anyone laughs at me for the bruise forming on my face, at least I can say "You should see the other guy." Even though I didn't do any of the fighting.
To add insult to injury, besides getting my ass kicked, now we're driving while Austin's high on coke and drunk. While he's driving, he turns on the radio and begins to swerve and move into the center of the two lanes on the road.
I don't know what song is playing, but as it is, I stare at the passing streetlights and rundown houses and think about how I never want to be a part of something like this again.
By some miracle, we make it to my place. We take a few minutes to calm down, or at least I do, and Austin lets me relax in his truck seat for a few minutes.
The backstreets behind my place are quiet, there's still the sound of dogs barking and music playing from somewhere in the distance, but it's relatively tame in comparison to Eli's place.
Austin is tapping on his phone and asks me if I wanna check out this other place to go drink, I obviously tell him no, I just wanna toss some ice on my face. Fuck, it hurts.
While we're sitting in the truck, he puts down his phone on the dash of the truck and looks through his bag, the clanging of glass bottles hit against one another, and he has a sigh of relief. He looks straight ahead without saying a word, seeing his high beams are on he turns them off and looks lost in thought, with his face scrunched up and eyes squinting together like he's trying to look at something in the distance before saying:
"Bro, that chick's sweater looked like a fucking cum rag." And then he starts laughing, I join in, I guess it sort of did, didn't it? Gross.
"Hey, is your brother still trying to become a boxer?" I ask him, bringing up his brothers isn't something he's usually happy about.
"Pfft, fuck him anyway. Dude's a dickhead." He says back, adding that he'll spar with him occasionally, but he never holds back when he fights.
"You think I could join in?" I ask. Never been interested in sports or fighting, but I don't want to feel like this again. Getting my ass beat and not being able to do anything about it.
"Yeah, probably. Text me about it when I'm sober 'cause I won't fucking remember this." He says before removing his keys from the truck and standing outside to stretch.
"Hey man, you still got that shit from last weekend?" he says in a labored tone, he looks out of breath. He keeps taking long sighs and deep breaths, and his eyes look like they can't focus. He's rubbing his forehead with his index finger and thumb.
"What shit?" I ask him.
"When we did that B&E, you said you'd keep what we stole at your place. If my dad found it, he'd have just sold it himself, but if your mom found it she'd just yell at you, that's what you said anyway." He says to me.
Ahhh fuck. I forgot about that part. I don't remember stealing anything, but there's a guilty feeling in my gut when I hear the word B&E.
He starts walking towards my place, the lights are off in the living room and kitchen. I walk behind him into the backyard, then unlock the door with my keys. Nobody's downstairs, and we make our way up the stairs to my room.
I try telling him to be quiet, he's staggering his way up the stairs and almost slips walking up them.
When we get to my room, he walks to my bed and lifts the mattress. I turn on the lights since he didn't bother to.
Under my bed, there are multiple electronics, phones, some jewelry, and some cash. Looks to be about 200$ or so.
He grabs it from under the mattress and places it back down before throwing everything on the bed.
"Ight, so let's split this shit real quick. I need some money if I'm gonna keep partying tonight, probably gonna head back to Eli's and check on him." He says while swaying back and forth in my room.
I feel bad for whoever we took this from, maybe it was karma that I got my ass kicked tonight, it'll get you like that. Or maybe it won't, I don't know.
"Hey, you can just take it all. I don't want any of it, I don't wanna break into any more houses either." I tell him.
He looks a bit surprised, but happy about it. He quickly tosses the money in his pocket and the small items, leaving behind a phone. He said he couldn't get into it because of a password, so it's just a brick of glass basically, can't use it so he left it. Afterward, he says he'll see me at school and leaves down the stairs, knocking over something in the kitchen before leaving.
When he's gone, I drop into bed and sprawl out my arms and legs. It really felt like a wake-up call, getting my ass kicked, hating every second of being at that house, Seeing Eli pull out that gun, stealing shit from people's homes.
I don't feel like myself, ever since I woke up Wednesday, it's like my personality changed. I'm not happy with all the drinking and drugs, or hanging out with the crowd I've got myself wrapped up in.
What even am I right now? I just want to do better for myself, for my parents who sacrificed so much to raise me, I wanna make them proud, you know? I feel like if I keep hanging out with Eli and by extension, Austin, I'll grow up to be a useless son. I basically am already.
I say a small apology in my heart to the people I've wronged and promise not to do it again.
The only real step you can make is forward if you want to change, where "forward" is, is up to you. I seriously need to sleep; I'm talking about a future as though I have one.
Before I go to sleep, I check my phone one last time. There's a text from a nameless number that says:
"thats what u get :p" presumably from Sarah.
I get up and turn off the lights and lie down and eventually fall asleep. It feels warm at home.