“What should we do now?” This question is a recurring one in my life. I can’t drive anywhere like my brother Mike can, Mom’s never around to take me anywhere, and my Huffy got a flat tire last week. A flat tire my 5 year-old neighbor, Grady, decided he could fix and is now completely irreparable.
First, he made the hole even larger by shoving the nail-removing side of the hammer in the formerly miniscule hole, and then he tried to blow it up with his mouth like a raft or something. And get this. The kid even tried to cover the hole with duct tape as fast as he could, telling me “id’ll cost vu five dowers and vu wucky vu get vhe famuhwee discount.”
Needless to say, Grady’s “patch work” didn’t quite fix the flat and when I showed my mom the newly expanded hole, she told me that we didn’t have the money right now to fix it and I’d have to wait until Christmas. What she really meant was that her Viriginia Slims and wine coolers were the top priority for any spare money after rent and bills, and how dare I be so selfish!
Christmas. December 25th. That was July 18th. Five months of no bike. That’s like almost a half a year. So as you see, my dilemma is an unfortunate one. And besides this, I’d been grounded for the past two weeks as well because I got detentions at school. My friends Ashley Bellman, Julie Kraus, and I were making each other pass out in the bathroom by breathing as deeply as we could for like ten seconds and then holding down the veins in our necks to make one another fall to the ground. When you woke up, it felt like you had been asleep for hours. It was so much fun. We actually got away with doing it for a while- that is, until Ashley hit her head on the tampon machine in the bathroom and got a concussion. After that, we were all put into a month’s worth of detention, and almost all of us got grounded at home, too. I guess I can’t complain, though. It’s kind of hard for me to actually be grounded, considering my mom’s rarely here to know if I’m following the “groundation” or not, and my older brother Mike never tells on me. He hates our mom and telling on me would involve actually talking to her.
“Hello…Earth to Kristen…I said what are we gonna do?”
“I don’t know. We can watch a movie.”
“Which one?”
“We can watch Titanic again.”
“God Kris, we’ve seen that movie at least ten times in the past month. No movie. I wanna do something different. I’m so bored with my life.”
Kristen’s two grades behind me in school and all of my other friends in my own grade always ask why I’m friends with her. Really, we only became friends because our moms work together as nurses at the hospital, but she’s actually okay. Most times. Unlike my other friends, Kristen always lets me decide everything. What to watch, what game to play, who goes first, even what to eat. I guess it’s because I’m older and she thinks I’m cool. She tells me that all the time. I like that about her, too.
“I’m gonna call Josh.” I went over to Kristen’s room phone. It’s one of those see-through ones where all of the colorful wires and workings inside are visible. Her parents bought her a separate line. She’s so spoiled. I don’t know who she’d be calling so much that she’d need her own line, however. Maybe that’s why she calls me sometimes and has absolutely nothing to say. She’s just trying to get calls to show up on the phone bill so they don’t take it away. As if they would. She’s an only child. She has her own bathroom.
“Josh?” Kristen starts twirling her light brown hair around her index finger, a nervous habit I always see her mom correcting her for. “Ohhh. Mike’s friend Josh? Oh yeah. Your brother’s cute friend you always talk about.” Always talk about? Well, I guess that’s true. How could I not talk about him all the time? Not only is he, like, the hottest guy I have ever seen, but he’s also funny and smart. He’s over at our house all the time and unlike most of Mike’s friends, he actually pays attention to me. I love that about him.
“Be quiet for a sec, Kristen, hang on.” She’s always asking me questions. She’s like that annoying three-year-old who asks “why” all the time. I’ve learned that sometimes it is best to just ignore her and move on. She doesn’t understand grown up things anyway.
“Hey Josh…Yeah…Uh huh. Okay. I’ll see you in 15 then. Bye.” I hung up the phone and Kristen just stared at me, sitting in her leopard print butterfly chair.
“Where will you see him in 15? He’s not coming here. He can’t come here.”
“Relax. Don’t get all crazy. I’m not meeting him here.”
“You know my mom won’t ever let us leave! Especially with a boy…and yours wouldn’t either.”
“Get real. My mom is never home long enough to even notice who I leave with, let alone if I even left…Well, just tell your mom that I felt sick and so I went home.” I didn’t know how to break it to her that she wasn’t going to be coming with me. I mean, I like her and all, but she would just embarrass me in front of them.
“Oh right, and you think she won’t call your mom and check!?”
“My mom’s working the night shift. She wouldn’t call her at work.”
“Well, my mom would have to take you home anyway. You don’t have your bike here.”
“Just tell her Mike picked me up.” Before Kristen could argue, I pushed out the screen on her bedroom window and stepped onto the gray roof tiles. I figure it’s better to exit this way than to risk running into Kristen’s parents.
We have been out on the roof before when we’ve stolen wine coolers and cigarettes from my mom’s “special” fridge in my garage for other sleepovers, but this was the first time I reached the ground. I had this escape maneuver down to a fine art at my own house, but Kristen’s room seems so much higher off the ground.
“Throw me the fire escape ladder,” I whispered to Kristen from outside the window, reaching my arm inside.
“But it’s still in the box. My mom will wonder why it was out and I’ll get in trouble.”
“Oh, calm down. Tell her you took it out so that it would be quicker to get to if a fire really happens or something.” Getting impatient, I crawled through the window, back onto the thick cream carpet and grabbed the box from her hands. Surprisingly, she took it back.
“I’ll open it.”
“Okay. Just hurry.”
Kristen passes me the unraveled white safety ladder and I climb down. It’s so not as easy as the chick on the box makes it look, and when my sneakers hit the grass, I throw the rope back up in a big glob of white rope. Not once, but four times, before Kristen finally catches it.
“Bye! I promise we’ll do something fun tomorrow. Whatever you want. We can even watch Titanic again if you want.”
“I hope you don’t get in any trouble, Amanda. Please be careful.”
“O-M-G, you sound like my freaking mom. Now remember, tell them I’m sick and Mike came to get me.” Kids. You have to explain everything more than once.
Sneaking around the side of the house, I reach the road behind Kristen’s house and step onto the black asphalt street. It’s still warm from the 80-degree summer sun heating it all day, and I have the weirdest feeling in the pit of my stomach, emanating through my entire body. I feel kind of nauseous mixed with the anxiety before getting a shot at the doctor’s office, mixed with the feeling you get when you’re standing on the edge of a tall building or looking down from a balcony. The feeling like you may fall at any minute. I always get this feeling when I’m about to see Josh. Even when I’m just thinking about him. Which happens all the time. Because he’s around all the time. Because he has icy blue eyes that make me want to say “touch me here” like Kate does to Leo in the car in Titanic.
At the end of the road, near the entrance to Willowbreeze Estates, I can see the headlights of Josh’s car. I reach into my pocket and pull out my new tube of Dr. Pepper Lip Smackers and take my hair down out of my ponytail, before deciding to put it back up because of the big bump caused by putting it up kind of wet that morning. Act cool, Amanda. Act cool. I take a deep breath, and I continue walking towards Josh's car.
* * *
“Hey Josh....uh…where’s Mike? I thought you said that he was with you?” Standing in the open window of Josh’s Honda I can’t decide whether I should open the door to the car and get in, or wait until he asks me. Wait. Yeah, wait for him to tell you.
“We’re meeting him. Don’t worry. I was just about to call him. Go ahead, and get in.” Crawling into the car, I can feel the slight vibrations of the subwoofers in the back shaking the seats and kinda rattling the trunk. I really don’t understand why they like the bass so loud anyway. Mike’s car is like that, too, and mom always yells at him because she thinks he pisses off the neighbors when he comes home at night.
Pulling out of Kristen’s neighborhood, Josh turns up the music and the bass gets even louder, and I actually like the way the vibrations feel on the seat.
“Where are we going?” I asked as loud as I could over the sound waves.
“Oh, I just have to stop at CVS real quick, and then we’ll go meet up with Mike and some of the other guys.”
Josh pulls the car into a parking spot near the back of the CVS parking lot.
“Do you need anything in there?”
“No. I’m good. I can go in if you-“
“Nah. That’s okay. Just stay in here and I’ll be right back.”
Sitting in the car, I can’t help but look through his CD case. It’s all burnt copies of stuff and I can’t even tell what music he likes. I mean, from what I have been hearing he only likes rap and hip-hop, but I’m really interested to see if he likes anything else. Anything that’s considered real music. Maybe I should make him a CD of some music I think he’d really like. My friends love my mix CDs I make them for their birthdays.
Oh, here he comes. Put the CD cases away.
“ Hey. Alright we’re good to go now,” Josh said as he threw a CVS plastic bag in the tiny backseat of the car. “Can you dial Mike for me?”
Josh hands me his cell phone, a flip-phone with a bright blue cover with money signs on it, and I scroll to “Mikey” on Josh’s cell phone book. “It’s ringing.”
“Yo Mike…yeah, I’ll be there in 5…Yeah, I got it already,” Josh says and then snaps down the top of his phone, looking over at me. He smiles briefly before slamming the shift into first and peeling out of the CVS parking lot.
* * *
We arrive at the Steak-n-Shake on 86th street and I can see Mike’s car and some of his other friends. Excited to see other people I know, I jump out of Josh’s car and walk over to talk to Mike.
“What are you doing with Amanda, Josh?” Mike asks while walking up to Josh, who is lighting up a cigarette over by another group of guys.
“Oh, she called me from her friend’s house and said she wanted to leave, so I went and picked her up.”
I can’t hear what Mike and Josh are talking about because they’ve moved too far away from me, but I have a feeling Mike is pissed off, so I walk over to him.
“Go home, Amanda. You shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t you be at Kristen’s? I can take you home now if you want.”
“No Mike! I never get to do anything, you always have all the fun.” As I am talking, Josh walks up and puts his arm around Mike’s shoulders.
“Come on, Mike. It’s just one night. She can go home with us later. And like you said, your mom is at work. It’s cool.”
“Alright, but this is never happening again, Amanda. Do you hear me? God, Josh. I could fucking kill you.”
“Calm the fuck down, man. It’s all good. It’s gonna be a good night.” Mike and Josh were awkwardly laughing, Josh more than Mike who needs more convincing, and start to walk back to Josh’s car.
“Come on, Amanda. Get in!” Mike yelled back to me.
“Where are we going?”
“Quit asking questions,” Mike spoke back to me, borderline yelling at me. “God, kids ask so many questions.”
* * *
“What are we doing at Motel 8?”
“Amanda, I told you to quit asking questions,” Mike repeated. “You know, Josh, I’m just going to take her home. I’ll come right back.”
No way is he taking me home. “I’m sorry, I’ll quit asking questions. Just let me stay.”
“Just let her stay, dude.”
“Fine. Get out of the car,” Mike says, grabbing the plastic bag from CVS out of the glove compartment. What the hell was in that bag?
Mike pulls out a hotel room key, and about three other guys get out of a small BMW who parked next to us. I’ve only met one of the guys, but I guess they’re all Mike’s friends from school.
When we’re walking into the room all I can smell is stale smoke and mold, and all I could see was a trashy print of a beach, a broken down TV with foil on the antenna, a bed that I wouldn’t let my dog sleep in, and a rickety little table with two chairs, which looked like the newest furniture in the room. I sit down in one of the padded chairs at the table, but Mike immediately tells me to get up so he can sit there. Standing in the corner of the room, I can tell that the other guys are wondering what I’m doing there. I don’t really care what any of them think, though. Just Josh. I hope Mike being pissed off at him doesn’t keep him from talking to me tonight. Maybe I should just go up to him now and ask him about the CDs I looked through in the car.
After fixing my hair in a dirty mirror hanging on the wall that was rusted along the outer edges, I hear the crinkling of the CVS bag, and look over to see Josh and Mike taking three red and white medicine boxes out and emptying their contents onto the small wooden table between the chairs. Looking around at the other guys, they all start to put out their Newports in the green motel ashtray, and walk over to the table as well. What’s so cool about some medicine from CVS?
I walk over to see for myself what they’re doing and see that each of them are popping the little red pills out of their foil and plastic encasements and downing them with Dr. Pepper. Not one or two, as directed on the box, but like twelve each! Next thing I know, Josh is handing me a packet with about six left and he tells me to take them.
“What the hell, Josh?! Don’t give those to her. She can’t take fucking Skittles. Are you fucking crazy?” Mike pulls the packet out of my hand. Skittles? What?
“Whoa. Sorry, man. I only gave her half of what we’re taking.”
Mike just walked away pissed off, and went back to drowning more of the little red pills with the Dr. Pepper. After taking the pills, some of the guys sit down on the disgusting bed and start to watch the jank TV that only picks up NBC and CBS, despite the advertised Free HBO! Occasionally some other static-filled channels come in when the rabbit antenna was turned the right direction, but they all seemed content with whatever they could get. The other guys were standing by the table smoking.
About five minutes later, Mike’s conscience gets to him, or possibly the pills, and he decides he needs to take me home.
“Give me your keys, Josh. I’m taking Amanda home.”
Josh tosses Mike the keys. “Hurry back.”
Walking out of the hotel room door, the warm summer night air hits my face and I start to feel the same nervous anxiety I felt walking towards Josh’s car earlier that night. I had managed to swipe two foil packets of the “Skittles” whil the guys were all looking at the TV, and I put my hands in the front pocket of the hoodie Mike gave me to keep them from rattling.
After Mike unlocks the passenger door, I slide into the seat and reach over to turn on the music.
“Don’t touch that, Amanda. Jesus.”
“God, why do you treat me like such a baby in front of your friends?”
“Because you are. And by the way, you didn’t see anything tonight, do you understand me? I picked you up from your friends and I took you home, and you went to bed. Got it?”
“Yes. Geez. I got it. You don’t have to be so mean to me about it, Mike.”
I hit the button on the door to roll down the window and reach my arm outside to feel the air. It runs through the little blonde hairs in my arm, and I lie my head back on the headrest and think about Josh. He must really like me if he wanted me to stay.
* * *
I remember reading the boxes in the motel room, and “skittles” were actually called Coricidin Cough and Cold medicine. I have been talking to Kristen about them the past couple of days at school and she’s agreed that she will try them with me tonight since my mom is working the night shift again and I’m staying over there. I just had to promise her that I won’t leave this time. And when I told her “I promise” I made sure to cross my fingers, because if Josh calls and wants to meet up I am so out of there.
At five o’clock my mom drops me off at Kristen’s house on her way to work, and Kristen and I go immediately out to the swingset in her backyard.
When we get back inside, we go down to the basement to play video games and get on AOL like we normally do, and I hide the pill packets I stole from the motel in the drawer of the toy cash register. We used to hide my mom’s cigarettes there, but Kristen’s mom found them one time and took them away. Apparently she never said anything to Kristen. I’m sure she figured it was me who brought them there anyway.
After eating Papa John’s with her parents, a tradition we have every weekend I sleep over, we went back down to the basement. It was about 8:30 p.m. by now, and that was about the time Kristen’s parents disappeared into their bedroom, or as her dad goofily called it, “the Cave,” while holding up his claw-hands with an idiotic expression on his face. Nerd.
When we get downstairs, I walk over to the cash register and open the drawer to take out the Coricidin. I suggest she should turn on a movie so that we can’t be heard upstairs and they just think we’re watching a movie, and Kristen pops in Scream 2. Walking over to the couch with the foil medicine packets I tell Kristen,“Now the guys took twelve each, so I guess since we’re younger and we’re girls we should only take like eight. And if we don’t feel anything, we’ll take more.”
“Uh…okay. Hang on, let me go get something to drink with them.”
“Do you have any Dr. Pepper?”
“Uh…yeah.” Kristen says as she pulls out a can from the mini-fridge in the basement kitchenette.
When she gets back I already have the pills popped out of their foil seals, and we each pop them into our mouths, chasing them with cold Dr. Pepper. After taking all eight pills, it becomes a waiting game.
After about twenty minutes, I start feeling really drowsy, and I see Kristen about to fall asleep on the other side of the L-shaped brown suede couch.
“Kris, wake up!” I yell in a whisper. “We can’t fall asleep. I think we need to take more. These aren’t working.”
“I just want to sleep. Let’s just go to bed.”
I walk over to the cash register and I take three more pills out of the foil and plastic pack, popping them out one by one and chasing them again with the Dr. Pepper, and lie back down on the couch across from Kristen.
“Amanda, I think I need to go tell my mom what we did. I don’t feel well.”
“No, no, no. We can’t do that, Kris. Just give it a minute. I’m already starting to feel something. You should take more, too. Hang on.”
I pop out three more pills for her and she swallows them, still laying on the couch in front of Scream 2.
About five minutes later the sleepiness lifted, and Kristen sits up on the couch and starts giggling. “Yeah. I think it’s working.”
My head is pounding and my vision is all blurry. I feel like I’m almost outside of my own body, looking in on myself, and it’s a really euphoric feeling. Like I’m floating or something.
Every sense is heightened, and Kristen and I just sit on a bundle of pillows and blankets on the floor and crack up to Scream 2, a movie that usually scares the shit out of us.
After the movie’s over, we walk around the basement trying to find new “cool” things we’ve never noticed before. Eventually, we make it back to the mounds of pillows and blankets and pretend they are gigantic mountains we can climb, and one of the misfit Barbies hanging around the basement climbs them with us.
At about midnight, Kristen’s mom came downstairs to check on us to make sure that everything is okay because we are usually upstairs by that time when I stay over. The first sound of her coming down the stairs makes me tense up, and my heart begins beating faster than I have ever felt it before, and the double, maybe triple, vision returns. I can actually hear my heart and I think it’s going to pound out of my brain, not my chest.
When she turns on the lights, this feeling gets even more excruciating, and I realize that if I am feeling this bad, Kristen must be experiencing it times a million. By the look on her face, I’m right. Her mom looks at her daughter first, then at me, and she has a panicked look in her eyes. Darting over to Kristen, she holds Kristen’s face in her hands and stares closely into her eyes, forcing her to look back.
Then she looks at me with the same fierce look, the agitation of a mom who just figured us out. The look of a mother who actually cares and isn’t fucked up herself.
“What is wrong with you, Kristen?...Kristen, answer me! Why are your pupils so big?!” I couldn’t help laughing. So inappropriate, but I just bust out laughing at the situation, and Kristen can’t help herself either and joins in. We’re laughing, rolling on the floor, and reapeating “taste the rainbow,” unable to catch our breath.
Fed up, Kristen’s mom told us to sit on the couch while she searched the entire basement, trying to talk a confession out of the both of us. Finally, she finds the mostly empty Coricidin packets, and picks up the phone to call my mom.
Shit. She’s calling her at work. She’s going to be so pissed at me for being bothered at work. Grounded again. Shit.
After she hung up the phone, she looked over at me, holding her hands on her hips, one leg popped out.
“Dave!” she yelled to her husband, and he emerged from the “cave” and stepped into the living room. “Dave,” she said sternly, now holding Kristen’s head and stroking her hair. “The girls have overdosed on cold meds and I’m taking Krissy to the E.R. I’ve seen this before and I think she needs her stomach pumped, and I have no idea how much she took and-”
“And what about Amanda?” Dave interjected.
“Well, Marcia told me not to take her in and she’s sending Mike over to pick her up.”
“That incompetent, lazy-”
“Dave. Not our place…you stay here and wait for Mike, and I’ll call you when we
get her in the ER.
Dave’s comments get me ina rage. Even though I’m completely aware my mom is like the shittiest mom ever, I can’t handle hearing it from someone else, particulary loser ass “caveman” Dave.
Thirty minutes later, Mike shows up at Kristen’s door. Dave takes Mike aside to talk over what his wife found while I sit on the couch, really drowsy and on the brink of passing out.
Mike walks over to me and helps me off of the couch, holding me up with one arm, and we walk to the front door.
“Thanks again, Mr. Schwartz. My mom said she’ll call you in the morning. I’m sorry you had to deal with this.” Sorry he had to deal with this. Sorry my ass. You got me into this.
* * *
When we get home I see Josh’s car sitting in the driveway. Josh must be staying over tonight. We walk inside, and Josh is sitting on the couch. Mike tells him what happened and I go into my mom’s room, which is closest to the living room, and crawl under her covers.
I wake up and roll over to look at the clock and it’s 5 a.m. My mom should be home any minute. I get out of her bed and see Josh lying on the couch, still watching TV.
“Where’s Mike?”
“Oh, he went to bed a while ago. Are you feeling any better?” Josh sits up on the couch and moves closer to me. “You know, he was really worried about you tonight.”
“Yeah, he’s always worried about me. He doesn’t think I can handle anything on my own. We were fine. Just having some fun, just like you guys.”
I look over at Josh and he’s looking down at his cell phone. “Who are you calling?”
“No one. I think I’m gonna go home. I just can’t sleep right now.”
“Don’t go. I can’t sleep either. I’ll watch TV with you.”
“Yeah, but your mom will be home soon and who knows how that will go.” Then Josh stands up, grabs his cell phone and wallet off of the coffee table, and stretches with both arms in the air. He starts to walk towards the door and I follow him. “I’ll walk out with you. I need some air anyway.”
When we get to the driveway, near his car, I tell him bye. Standing on my tiptoes, I reach around the tops of his shoulders and Josh hugs me, lifting me off of the ground like he always does. But this time, when he lowers me back down to the ground, I don’t let go. I hang on around his neck and I start kissing him on his neck. Then we start kissing on the lips for about thirty seconds before he pulls away. He wipes off his mouth with the back of his hand and stares away from me, down the dimly lit street.
“But I thought you wanted this…you picked me up that night…and you wanted me to stay that night. You like me, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Amanda, but you’re Mike’s baby sister. I’m sorry you got the wrong idea.” Josh pulls my hands off of his shoulders and holds them together between his palms as he pushes them back towards me. “I think you should really go inside and get some sleep…I’ll see you later, k?”
And he climbs into his Honda, and drives off without looking back.
* * *
When I walk into the house, I turn off the TV and walk upstairs to the bathroom I share with Mike. I step into the bathroom, turn on the shower, and strip off my clothes. Looking in the mirror at myself, tears start running down my eyes, blurring the mascara that I wore that day. I pull out a washcloth, hold it under the showerhead to get it wet, and scrub the makeup off of my face so hard that my cheeks and forehead turn bright red. My mom is home now and I can hear her knocking at the door, yelling at me that we are going to have a “serious discussion because I am getting out of control.” Blocking her out completely, I wash my face and step into the shower and feel the warm beads of water running over my by now swollen eyelids, and I sit down in the bottom of the tub, my head between my knees, and let the water run down my spine. Washing me. If only it could wash away this pain. The pain of messing up everything with Josh. The pain Kristen is feeling getting tubes shoved down her little throat. The pain of Dave’s words. The pain of it being the truth.
When I get out of the shower, I dry off, throw on the same clothes, and go into my bedroom. I hear my mom’s footsteps climbing up the staircase and I quickly lift up my window, pop out the screen, and step out onto the roof tiles, down to the plush unmown grass, dizzy as I’m coming down from the pills, dizzy from coming down the side of the house, dizzy and spinning. Spinning out of control.
Author: Heather Horton- All Rights Reserved
