A Wonderful Trip
Chapter 1
“And that is why drugs are bad for you.”
An hour-long lecture about why you should never do drugs was just not keeping her attention the way the school apparently thought it would. Nothing stuck in her head about the negative effects of marijuana or how unattractive track marks look. All she could think about was the fact that she was going to get to experiment with all of these things tonight at the Halloween party. It was a tradition in their town for the White family to throw an elaborate party every Halloween. They also did the occasional Christmas and New Years Eve bash, but Halloween was their specialty.
“Alice? Alice?” a voice called. A quick nudge from her neighbor had Alice’s full attention. She looked up at the teacher in the front of the room and tried to recall what she was just asked.
“Alice, can you please tell me some ways in which Meth is bad for you?” the teacher repeated. He was irritated, you would be too if you just wasted an hour of your life knowing what you were saying was just going in one ear and out the other. Alice could have sworn she’d even seen this teacher at a party before, and he definitely did not practice what he preached.
“Meth mouth, that’s pretty shitty,” Alice answered. A couple of giggles could be heard from around the room. The teacher nodded and turned his attentions to another student. There were two reasons why they were having this lecture. Not because the school suddenly cared about their well being or out of the goodness of their hearts.
Reason number one: the Halloween party. The police did this every year, they had a giant, “drugs and alcohol are bad” week leading up to the party.
Reason number two: three graduates had just been killed in a horrific car accident, drugs being the main cause.
The news covered the crash for a week, even though all the facts were presented up right and there was nothing new to talk about. Three Liddell High graduates were killed when there Jeep plummeted off Pleasance Bridge and into the river below. At first everyone assumed that the all had died on impact, killed instantly when their car hit the side of the bridge and then just flattened when it fell on it’s top into the water below. That’s what everyone chose to believe when the news first reported. Then the real stories started trickling in just like the icy water into the lungs of the still breathing teens. Delany Jordan’s father was the medical examiner assigned to the case and when she found out that the cause of death of two of the passengers was in fact drowning the town was rocked even harder. The news teams spun elaborate tales of how tragic the deaths were, knowing that they were aware of what was happening to them the whole time. Not being able to free themselves and the thought of what must have been going through their minds was enough to cause the town to go into a frenzy. The school was closed for two days and family business locked their doors so that everyone could attend the mass held for the teens.
Alice felt indifferent.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care, but she didn’t spend anytime thinking about it. Hearing how they died didn’t change the initial story for her, it just added cause of death and answered her questions. She didn’t let anyone know that though. She attended the mass even though she would rather have been at home and she pretended to cry with her friends. At home she locked herself in her room and pretended to feel sorry about what had happened. Alice had known all three of the people in the crash; she had partied with them before. She’d even snorted cocaine off of Andrew Davies abs, these were kids that she had known closely. It was their way of life though, they hadn’t been the first people to die in a drug related accident. This town, the school, the people had been dealing and doing since Alice had been a kid. There was no caution, there was no recourse, there was no stopping it.
The way Alice saw it, they knew their fate. They had know the second they got in that car that they might not make it home. It was how life was around here, you partied without caution and hopefully you made it out.
An hour-long lecture about why you should never do drugs was just not keeping her attention the way the school apparently thought it would. Nothing stuck in her head about the negative effects of marijuana or how unattractive track marks look. All she could think about was the fact that she was going to get to experiment with all of these things tonight at the Halloween party. It was a tradition in their town for the White family to throw an elaborate party every Halloween. They also did the occasional Christmas and New Years Eve bash, but Halloween was their specialty.
“Alice? Alice?” a voice called. A quick nudge from her neighbor had Alice’s full attention. She looked up at the teacher in the front of the room and tried to recall what she was just asked.
“Alice, can you please tell me some ways in which Meth is bad for you?” the teacher repeated. He was irritated, you would be too if you just wasted an hour of your life knowing what you were saying was just going in one ear and out the other. Alice could have sworn she’d even seen this teacher at a party before, and he definitely did not practice what he preached.
“Meth mouth, that’s pretty shitty,” Alice answered. A couple of giggles could be heard from around the room. The teacher nodded and turned his attentions to another student. There were two reasons why they were having this lecture. Not because the school suddenly cared about their well being or out of the goodness of their hearts.
Reason number one: the Halloween party. The police did this every year, they had a giant, “drugs and alcohol are bad” week leading up to the party.
Reason number two: three graduates had just been killed in a horrific car accident, drugs being the main cause.
The news covered the crash for a week, even though all the facts were presented up right and there was nothing new to talk about. Three Liddell High graduates were killed when there Jeep plummeted off Pleasance Bridge and into the river below. At first everyone assumed that the all had died on impact, killed instantly when their car hit the side of the bridge and then just flattened when it fell on it’s top into the water below. That’s what everyone chose to believe when the news first reported. Then the real stories started trickling in just like the icy water into the lungs of the still breathing teens. Delany Jordan’s father was the medical examiner assigned to the case and when she found out that the cause of death of two of the passengers was in fact drowning the town was rocked even harder. The news teams spun elaborate tales of how tragic the deaths were, knowing that they were aware of what was happening to them the whole time. Not being able to free themselves and the thought of what must have been going through their minds was enough to cause the town to go into a frenzy. The school was closed for two days and family business locked their doors so that everyone could attend the mass held for the teens.
Alice felt indifferent.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care, but she didn’t spend anytime thinking about it. Hearing how they died didn’t change the initial story for her, it just added cause of death and answered her questions. She didn’t let anyone know that though. She attended the mass even though she would rather have been at home and she pretended to cry with her friends. At home she locked herself in her room and pretended to feel sorry about what had happened. Alice had known all three of the people in the crash; she had partied with them before. She’d even snorted cocaine off of Andrew Davies abs, these were kids that she had known closely. It was their way of life though, they hadn’t been the first people to die in a drug related accident. This town, the school, the people had been dealing and doing since Alice had been a kid. There was no caution, there was no recourse, there was no stopping it.
The way Alice saw it, they knew their fate. They had know the second they got in that car that they might not make it home. It was how life was around here, you partied without caution and hopefully you made it out.