by N. L. Greene
He wrapped his arm around me and pulled my back closer to his chest and I giggled again. Mel’s head snapped up and she looked at me with narrowed eyes. I crossed my eyes at her and stuck my tongue out.
“Holy shit! You’re high!” she exclaimed; pointing a finger at me.
My brows creased and I tried to pull away as far as I could from James, although not all that far because he wouldn’t let me go. “I am not! I didn’t even touch that bong!” I defended myself while pointing at the offending object.
Mel cracked up. “You are such a dork! You don’t have to actually smoke it to get high. It’s a contact high, you big dummy!” She was still cracking up, and for some reason instead of being offended, I found her insults funny too.
“Oh,” I giggled. Usually I would have been embarrassed over her calling me out like that in front of everyone, but I couldn’t seem to find it in myself to care about much right at the moment. I felt good, silly, and worry-free for the first time in a while. I didn’t even care that James kept nuzzling my neck and kissing my skin, or that his hand on my thigh was probably a little too high up.
“I think I like you like this,” James whispered seductively in my ear.
I leaned back into him, relaxing and smiling, and for some reason enjoying the attention James was giving me. “I think I like this too!” I giggled again. I felt James chuckle and saw Brad and Mel both doing the same.
“Babe, your girl’s a trip!” Brad told Mel.
“Hey! I’m right here, you know!” I pouted.
“I think I like you like this too, Nat! You should get high more often,” Mel said.
“You know, I think I should be offended that you all seem to like me now. Does that mean you don’t like me usually?” I asked with a teasing tilt of my head.
James reassured me first. “No way, baby! I like you all the time.” His voice was low and silky, and he emphasized the word ‘all’ with a squeeze to my thigh that made me feel a little tingly. That had certainly never happened before. I glanced at Mel for help, even though she had no idea what was going on in my head. She was no help though, because she was still too busy laughing at me.
“You know I like you all the time, Nat. You’re just a little more relaxed; less up tight.” She shrugged as if I should already know this.
“I am not uptight!” I objected as I leaned forward again.
“Ooookay,” Brad said under his breath.
“Hey! I heard that!” I yelled at him and stuck my lip out.
He chuckled. “Sorry. But you can be sometimes. Maybe you should hit the bong and see how much looser you can get.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at me, but I didn’t understand.
James chuckled, and Mel slapped Brad a little harder than what would usually be her playful slap. I looked at each of them and tried to figure out what they were talking about, but no one clued me in. James just pulled me back and started to kiss my neck, and I found myself leaning my head to the side to give him more access. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I liked the feeling of his warm lips on my skin and the way his fingers were making my upper thigh tingle. My eyes drifted closed and then snapped back open when I heard Mel grumble something unintelligible. I looked up and saw her vault up from the couch and then grab my arm; pulling me roughly from her brother’s lap. “Come on, Nat. There are better things we could be doing instead of hanging out with these losers.”
I looked at everyone again in confusion. “Huh?” I asked dumbly.
“Oh come on, baby! You know I was just teasing!” Brad yelled, but Mel ignored him as she pulled me to my feet.
“Really Mel? You’ve got to be shittin’ me right now!” James mumbled under his breath. Mel ignored him as we walked into her room and she slammed the door shut.
I flopped down onto her bed and looked up at the ceiling. “What was all that about?” I asked; completely oblivious as to what had happened.
“Nothing,” she answered, while lighting a cigarette.
I jumped up into a sitting position. “Oh, oh, oh! I want one.” Mel tossed me the pack and the lighter. “You know you just called your boyfriend a loser, right?” I asked her as I lit my cigarette. “Right in front of him. Do you think he’ll be mad?” I asked curiously.
She shrugged. “I really don’t care if he gets mad or not. He’ll get over it, and he is a loser.” She shrugged again.
“Then why are you dating him?” I asked; confused as to why anyone would date someone they didn’t really like.
“Because he’s hot,” she answered easily, and gave me a look as if I was incredibly stupid for not knowing the answer already.
“Oh,” I answered back, because I realized that I should have known that. Mel was much more concerned with how things looked to everyone else on the outside. She may not have cared about what people thought about her personally, but she knew what it took to be popular and made sure to maintain her image when she needed to.
“So what was that in there?” she asked me after a minute. I gave her a befuddled look, because I had no idea what she was even talking about.
She rolled her eyes at me and blew a stream of smoke in my face. “You and James? You’ve never let him kiss on you like that.”
“Huh?” I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Jesus, Nat! Are you so high that you don’t even know what I’m talking about?”
I just looked at her dumbly and waited for her to clue me in.
She laughed. “You are! Oh my God!” She kept laughing and I huffed in annoyance. “Okay, okay.” She finally calmed down and told me what she was talking about. “You were in my brother’s lap letting him feel you up and kiss all over you.” My mouth gaped open at her. “And by the look on your face and the way you closed your eyes, I’d say you were enjoying it.”
“Oh my God! No I wasn’t! You are so lying! Right?” I felt my cheeks burning and felt like a total idiot. I couldn’t believe that I’d done that, especially with James! I didn’t want him to think I liked him. I didn’t! I didn’t know why I would have let him do that.
“Yes you did, but it’s cool. You were just relaxed and enjoying yourself. No one cares.”
“I care!” I yelled at her. “I probably looked like a total slut.” I groaned and fell back on the bed.
“It was just James.” Mel shrugged. “He knows you’re not like that. Don’t worry.”
I groaned again. “What about Ashley? She likes him. I don’t want her to think that I do, too!”
“Don’t worry, Nat! Jesus. It wasn’t like you fucked him.”
My eyes bugged out and my cheeks heated even more.
“God, you are such a prude sometimes. It’s cool, okay? James isn’t going to say anything, and neither am I. Ash won’t know.”
“Okay,” I said, but I felt horrible. I didn’t want Ashley to be mad at me, I didn’t want James to get the wrong idea, and I definitely wasn’t going to be sleeping with anyone, but Mel seemed to think it was perfectly normal for all of this to have happened. A tiny part of me was bothered by the fact that her brother was hitting on both of her best friends and she was fine with keeping it a secret from the other. I really couldn’t care less what James was doing with Ash, because I didn’t like him, but Ash would care, and Mel was keeping it from her. Would she do that to me too? Keep things from me that she knew were wrong and that would hurt me? I shook my head and pushed that aside when another thought occurred to me. “Is this going to happen every time I do this?”
“What? Act like a slut? Probably,” Mel said with another shrug.
I picked a pillow up and threw it at her. “I am so not a slut!” I yelled.
We both started laughing.
And that was how the next few weeks passed by. We hung out with James and his friends, and sometimes Brad too, while they got high and I got buzzed from being around them. I liked it. I liked feeling good again. I wasn’t upset about the boys who had betrayed me, or the fact that my best friend was a bitch to me sometime
s. I wasn’t worried about excelling at school or my strict parents. When I was high, even if it was from a contact high only, I felt carefree and fun.
But from that day forward, each time we hung out, everyone kept pressuring me to take a real hit from a joint or a bong. Mel and James both (as well as whoever else may have been around at the time) had been teasing me about my contact highs since the first one. They told me that I was chicken for not doing it the right way, and that the combination of smoking that I already did regularly and getting high off the smoke from everyone else wasn’t really any different. When I couldn’t take the pressure anymore, I finally caved in. Besides, if a contact high made me feel that good, how bad could it really be?
The day it finally happened, Ash was over and we were all hanging out in James’ room. James was lying on his bed, Ash was sitting on the edge facing me, and Mel and I were sitting on the floor with our backs up against the wall across from Ash. James was teaching Ash how to roll a joint. By this point, Mel and Ash had been smoking with James and his friends for a while now. Mel hid it from me at first, but James let the cat out of the bag a few weeks before the day of my first contact high. I still didn’t understand why she’d hidden it from me, but I never asked. She would have told me I was just being a baby for letting it bother me, or else told me that I didn’t need to know everything all the time. Either way, I wasn’t going to get an answer, so I didn’t bother trying.
Anyway, the reason I finally gave in was because I knew Ash was going to be there, too. James had been a lot more ‘hands on’ with me since that first day and pulled me in his lap every chance he got, so Mel made me bum cigarettes and pot off him at every opportunity. James and I weren’t together; we didn’t kiss or do anything else even remotely close to what normal couples would do, but he was pretty possessive when anyone other than Ashley was around. When she was around she always made sure to sit by him, so it was during those times when he treated me more like the way he used to; teasing and talking, but no touching or flirting. It was perfectly okay with me. I still didn’t think of James as anything more than a brother, but I knew Ash had more intimate feelings and James knew it too. I thought it was pretty messed up that he would act the way he did toward me whenever she wasn’t around, but Mel told me to keep my mouth shut so I did. In addition, I also knew he wouldn’t try anything with me when my guard was down and Ash was around. I was already kind of loopy when I just had a buzz; God only knew how I would act when I was fully stoned! And the last thing I needed was a steamy make out session with my friend’s brother…or worse.
So James was showing Ash how to roll a joint and Mel and I watched as she did it. I was totally confused about all the steps by the time they finished, but since I doubted I would have to worry about ever doing it myself, I didn’t spend too much time thinking about it. Ash lit up, took two puffs and then passed it to James. That was how it worked - puff, puff, pass - all around the room until it was gone. It finally came to me and the first puff I took was tentative, but then I realized that other than the taste and the need to hold it in, it was really no different from regular cigarettes.
By the time the joint was gone, I was pretty fucked up. I couldn’t stop giggling at the stupidest stuff, but everyone else was in the same state I was in so it was cool. Ash leaned back on the bed in a fit of giggles; her head landing on James’ chest. He glanced furtively at me and I just kept laughing. I may have been high but I knew that if I encouraged the chemistry between James and Ash, he might just leave me alone. He smiled and put his arm across her chest. I glanced over at Mel, who gave me a look…one that asked if I was okay with this. I shrugged and tried to focus on what Ash was saying, but her words didn’t make any sense so I just laughed again. Mel stood up and tugged my arm. I struggled to get up, which made everyone laugh even harder, including myself.
“Come on, fat ass,” Mel said between giggles as she tried to pull me up.
“I am not fat, you bitch!” I said once she had finally succeeded in getting me to my feet. With a lot of support from Mel and the wall, we finally stumbled out of the room and down the hall. I followed her to the kitchen and smiled even bigger when I realized we were about to raid the cabinets.
I had been a little hungry before, but now I was absolutely ravenous. “Oh God! I’m so hungry!” I yelled as I opened the pantry and grabbed the first thing I saw, chewy chocolate chip cookies. I couldn’t help the sigh of pleasure when the first one reached my mouth. It was So. Freaking. Good.
Mel laughed as she snatched the bag of cookies from me. “You are so dramatic.”
“Am not!” I pouted with my arms crossed over my chest.
She looked pointedly at those crossed arms and then back at me with a pointedly raised eyebrow.
“Fine,” I huffed, and then took the cookies back; quickly stuffing another in my mouth.
“So…” Mel dragged the word out enticingly and I looked at her with a mouth full of cookie. We both busted out laughing and I almost spit the cookie out of my mouth in a rain of chocolate crumbles. When we calmed down again, she continued. “You’re cool with Ash and James?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked as I looked through the pantry for something else. I spotted an unopened bag of Doritos and grabbed them.
“Um, well because you two have been, whatever you two have been, for a while now.”
I gave her a weird look that made her laugh. “We haven’t been anything as far as I’m concerned. You know I don’t like him like that, but I can’t tell him that. He’s your brother!”
“So what if he’s my brother?” She took the bag of chips from me and opened them while I took another cookie. Thank goodness for the high metabolism of teenagers or I would’ve been seriously worried about all the junk we were eating. Mel distracted me from my thoughts. “You don’t have to act like that for me.”
“Oh, please!” I snatched the chips and stuffed a few in my mouth. Mel waited for me to swallow so I could explain. “You know the only reason he does half the shit he does for us is because he thinks I like him, and you totally encourage that! It’s like you’re my pimp or something.” Apparently my current state of mind was making me a lot more comfortable saying things I wouldn’t normally have said.
“No I don’t, and I am not your pimp!” She tried to defend herself, but wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“Whatever! Yes you do! Why am I the one always asking him for shit? I’ll tell you why-Because he won’t give it to you, but he will to me because he likes me and thinks I like him back!” I stuffed more chips in my mouth. At this rate, the chips and cookies would both be gone in a few minutes. Poor Ash and James would just have to miss out.
“Just because I take advantage of the fact that James will do anything for you doesn’t mean that I want you to pretend you like him.”
“Look, whatever. I don’t really care. If I did, I wouldn’t do it, okay?” I could see that Mel was getting upset, and I was in too good of a mood to let a silly argument get in the way of everything. “If James and Ash hook up, then I don’t have to worry about it anymore anyway. He’ll start doing everything for her now. So it doesn’t even matter, right?” I tried to raise my eyebrows at her, but knew it didn’t work when Mel started laughing.
“Why are you making your eyes so big?” she asked between giggles.
“I’m trying to do that eyebrow thingy you do!” I tried again. “Is it working?”
“Um, no! Stop doing that!” She pushed me away from her. I started laughing too.
“Hey bitches! You bringing us food or what?” Ash yelled from down the hall.
“Who you calling a bitch, bitch?” Mel yelled back, as we gathered some more food and headed back to James’s room.
“Both of you!” Ash said with a grin when we walked back into the room. Mel dropped her arm full of raided snacks into a pile on the floor, and I did the same. We both took our seats back against the wall, as James and Ash moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Then we all dug into the
food, cracking jokes and talking about everything and nothing for the rest of the night.
Chapter 9
That weekend set the pace for the rest of my freshman year.
Brad started coming around less and less, until he and Mel finally broke up. I started to console Mel, but she didn’t need it. She said she didn’t care because he was a loser, and then she focused her attentions on finding a new guy. I began to smoke pot more and more with Ash, Mel and her brother, and it was happening almost every weekend. My parents didn’t catch on, nor did Mel’s parents, although dimly I wondered if they would even care. My birthday came and went; I turned fifteen and got my learner’s permit. By mid-year the next year I would technically be able to drive, but my parents had already warned me that I wouldn’t be getting a car, so having the right to drive wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be for me. We wouldn’t have to take the bus anymore though, because now Ash would be driving us.
My grades did start to slip toward the end of the year, although it wasn’t anything drastic. I didn’t fear failing or anything like that, but a few of my teachers made comments about my slacking off and obvious lack of studying and preparedness. I just told them that the A.P. classes were getting to be too much, so they looked at me with sympathy and suggested that I take regular classes the next year. It didn’t take much to convince them. My parents, however, were another story.
