The Rules of Life

I hated parties. And this one was just like every other goddamn high school party in the history of forever. There was loud music that was awful but nobody cared because either they were a) high off their ass, b) hammered beyond the point of noticing anything, or c) they owned the place and therefore actually like this shit. In reality, it sucked. The smoking wasn’t confined in one room and so a heavy cloud hung thick in the air giving everyone a slight, secondhand buzz. People danced—and by danced, I mean they dry humped each other like fucking monkeys—in the living room. It was a pretty trashed living room. A lamp lay in pieces on the floor and the occasional drunk person would stumble upon it and flip the fuck out when they cut themselves.

Oh yeah, I was having a real fucking good time.

The getting ready hadn’t been so bad. Paul had told me to stay out however late I wanted to. Like he could enforce a curfew anyway. Unless his therapist had given him superpowers. Travis had picked me up and driven me to Sophia’s house. Like a typical boy, Travis had just pulled in clean clothes, ruffled his hair a bit, put on deodorant and called it good. So he and Dash were in Sophia’s den playing xBox on her little brother’s gaming system. We could hear them shout at each other and cuss out the TV from upstairs.

After a voice that distinctly sounded like Travis screamed, “Fuck you, motherfuckers!” followed by an Indian cry, Sophia closed her door and put on some music.

She rolled her eyes. “Boys,” she said. I nodded but truthfully, I hadn’t been around many boys in their natural environment like this and so I was in uncharted waters. I was perched on Sophia’s bed as she rooted through her closet again. She’d taken one look at me and deemed my jeans and tank top has inappropriate party-wear. Travis suggested I go naked. Sophia had scowled at him and sent him off the play video games with Dash, which is what they were doing now. And that explained the piles of clothes thrown around the room. Every rejected outfit was tossed carelessly to the floor and it had created an ocean of fashion.

Sophia was already ready to go. Dressed in a black leather micromini with fishnet stalkers and a flimsy white halter that bared her flat stomach and pieced bellybutton, she looked dressed to kill. Her lips were painted crimson and the heels that were waiting by the door were dangerously high. Dash hadn’t seen her (“It’s bad luck to see the girlfriend before the party!”) but I figured that whenever they got to the party, they’d disappear pretty quickly. I’d specifically told her that I didn’t want to dress in something super revealing and after a lot of finagling, she’d finally given in. But that, she’d said, didn’t mean I couldn’t wear things that were revealing without baring skin.

So that’s how I ended up in skintight jeans and a Green Day T-shirt two sizes too small. I kept pulling on the hem because it would ride up and expose my pale stomach. Sophia had put my hair into loose, messy curls and done my make-up dramatically, making my blue eyes appear darker. It was more rocker chic, which wasn’t too bad. But I still felt like a robot since moving in these clothes was nearly impossible. Travis had said I looked good, though. Of course, I could wear a potato sack and Travis would probably shit rainbows and sunshine.

I was surprised to find that the party was about a block away from Matt’s house. We passed it as we drove and the lights were on, illuminating what I took for Matt’s tall, muscular form. He was drinking something. As we passed his house, another figure, smaller, slighter, feminine, appeared and wrapped her slender arms around his neck. I turned away quickly and grabbed Travis’s flask, downing about half of it.

“Hey!” Travis said. “Don’t take it all. Jesus.” He took a swig from it and maybe we should have been worried that drinking and driving was illegal, especially for underaged teenagers. But we were pulling into the driveway moments after so it wasn’t a big deal. We got out of the car and Travis grabbed my hand, pressing hard, rough metal into my palm. “I’m gonna get fucking crossfaded, Kinley,” he said. “You’re in charge.”

Fucking fantastic. Designated driver. I came to this party to get fucked over and now I was DD. And so now, three hours later, I was semi-buzzed from the one and a half drink I’d had and was getting increasingly more annoyed with everyone. For fuck’s sake, I needed to be drunk to deal with all these people! Travis was in the kitchen tossing back shots with some other footballers. He’d already smoked a dub on his own and the weed, if the smoke was an indication, was pretty good. I could feel the effects a bit but the more I breathed it in, the more potent it was.

I went into the kitchen to ask Travis if we could leave but he wasn’t in there. I hunted around the house a bit, stepping over a couple who was literally having sex right there in the hallway. People were fucking crazy. Travis was in a bedroom with a few other guys. They each had a girl draped over them and Travis pretty much shoved April Tanner off when I walked in. She glared at me and stumbled out of the room, tripping on the carpet when her heal got stuck. The guys all laughed.

“Kinley, baby,” Travis said. He pulled me onto his lip and passed me a joint. “Relax, baby girl.” Apparently he’d forgotten I was the DD. “Come on.” I shook my head. He took a hit off the joint and kissed me, breathing the smoke into my mouth. Instinct had me inhale and when I exhaled, Travis smiled triumphantly. Dash and Sophia were tangled together on the bed, nuzzling each other and sharing a pipe. I preferred pipes myself. But I was tired of resisting and that one hit felt so good. So I snatched the joint from Travis’s fingers and inhaled. I took four hits before I passed it back and boy, it was strong. I felt it working its way throughout my body, making my limbs tingle and my thoughts stopped forming straight lines.

In the back of my mind, there was a fragment of a thought. But I pushed it away and kissed Travis. He kissed back hungrily, tasting of weed and vodka. It was only after I pulled away that the memory came to me. Travis, on top of me, both of us sweaty and gross, my pants yanked down to my ankles. I remembered how the room spun and carnival lights danced along the ceiling. I shook my head and the memory faded away but there was a fly buzzing by my ear. I swatted at it but nothing was there even though I could hear the buzzing right there!

My eyes widened. “Fuck,” I said. I scrambled off of Travis’s lap. A pink cat meowed at me from the doorway and I walked passed it. My shoulders hit the walls as I swayed. Fuck. Fuck! I knew this feeling all too well. This weed was laced. I didn’t want to be here anywhere. I pushed through the crowd, occasionally sidestepping sparkly bubbles that pretty much appeared out of nowhere. I tripped down the front porch steps and gripped the grass, a funny shade of blue, digging my fingers into the soft earth. Where could I go? Not home. I had no idea how to get there from here. There was one place I knew.

I pushed myself to my feet and slammed into Travis’s car. I scratched up the side a little bit before I could properly get the key in the door and then it turned out that the car wasn’t locked anyway. It took another few tries to get the key in the ignition and I had to wait a few minutes for the gears to come into view. Which one was backwards? N? Not forward? I put it in neutral and gave a sharp squeak when the car rolled backwards. I slammed on the brakes and jolted forward. Okay. Slowly now. I knocked over a few trashcans in my attempt to back out of the driveway. I may have accidently grazed another car. But soon I was facing the direction I needed to go. I put the car into drive and eased on the gas.

At least, I thought I eased on the gas. I flew forward and with a scream, I hit the brakes again. This time, I barely tapped the gas pedal. I wasn’t going too fast but a tree flew up in front of me and I barely reacted in time. Only, once I’d stopped, the tree disappeared. There was a sound between a sob and a laugh that fell out of my mouth.

“Come on, Kinley, keep going,” I murmured to myself. Another tree. Another screech. It disappeared after a few moments. My heart raced frantically, way too fast to be normal. I was almost to his house. I had to be almost to his house. Again, I gave the car some gas and drove on, keeping track of trees that popped out of nowhere. I thought I saw his house so I turned towards it. There was a big bump that rattled the car and another tree flung up out of thin air. I waited for a moment, foot pressed hard against the brake, for the tree to go away. But this time it didn’t and I started crying because I could have almost died. I sobbed against the steering wheel until I remembered what I was doing here. Matt. I was going to see Matt.

I opened the door and crawled out on the ground that moved up and down. The gravel bit into my palms but it was hard to stand up. Eventually, using the car for support, I got to my feet. It was hard to navigate the ground that just wouldn’t stay still. I nearly tripped up the driveway and slammed my knee against the railing of his porch. The light flicked on as I stumbled towards the door. I banged on it loudly. What would I say to Matt? Nothing. I wouldn’t say anything. I’d just kiss him. The door opened suddenly and I took a step back. But the ground was moving again and I crashed to the porch floor.

“Oh my god! Matt! Matt, get out here!” The voice was decidedly girlish and somewhere I thought maybe this was Matt’s girlfriend. But there were no connections in my brain and so I let the woman get me into a sitting position. “Listen, are you okay?” I looked up at her and nearly cried. The hallucinations were awful and my sobbing echoed loudly in the partially enclosed porch. “Oh my god…”

The light shone back on her face and I reached for her. I took her shoulders in my hands and stared into the eyes of someone that I’d once lost.

“Mom?”