There's something intoxicating about drugs. That sentence seems too obvious to make any sense, except once you're on them, it does. They don't just mess with your mind like a bad night's sleep or a shot too many. Instead, that white powder transforms you. It builds this buzzing, surreal energy inside you that screams louder than any sensation you've experienced before. Sometimes it makes you happy, so happy you could literally die from an inability to contain it. Sometimes it makes you angry. Your fists punch walls, and they aren't strong enough to make a dent. Sometimes it leaves you feeling so powerful, so in control, that when you're off it the next day you don't have to wonder why so many addicts kill themselves.
"Having fun?" that blonder, less-inhibited (you've learned it's possible) friend of Bianca's asks you while you're dancing. You feel your body start to gravitate toward hers, your arms wrap around her shoulders, lips curl into a smile. She places her hands on your hips and suddenly your pelvises are touching and the wrong (right?) movements occasionally accidentally-on-purpose send electricity like no other pulsing through you. Her cheek brushes against yours and suddenly everything feels possible again. The life is back inside you and maybe it's her and maybe it's the drugs. It doesn't matter.
"I am now," you tell her, feeling her blonde curls against your cheek. You don't realize how salacious this looks, how non-characteristically un-heterosexual this looks until the boys start to cheer.
"Take a picture," Chloe's dark-haired companion says. Bianca grabs Chloe's arm and says, "she has a boyfriend, you know."
"Ah, so we only steal boys from girlfriends, eh?" Chloe winks at her friend, and you vaguely remember hearing some tell about Bianca and Drew in the boiler room. Poor Alli. She's a nice kid. "Stealing girls from boyfriends, now that's wrong, isn't it?"
Bianca shakes her head. "That's not what I meant, Chloe. Anya's not gay."
"Neither am I," Chloe says. "I just like to have fun."
"Well, whatever," Bianca says. "I've got a curfew."
"Buh-bye," your dancing partner says, waving to her friend.
You find yourself pulling away from her. "Wait, what are we doing?"
The crowd of horny guys cheering from the sidelines clears that up all too quickly for you. "Come on," Chloe says. "Let's get out of here."
She takes you back to her place, which surprisingly looks more like a private apartment than a teenage girl's bedroom. You enter through the sliding basement door and are soon lying on a bed with no frame, feeling the room spin around you.
Chloe's hand brushes your cheek. You feel yourself gravitating toward her. You know you're not gay, although you've never had anything against it. It's possible you're bi or pansexual or something or other, but like most things, you've never put it through critical analysis. You don't know why you're here or why she's here, but you know your body aches for her. All the good feelings come from that tiny bag in her purse and right now, they feel like one and the same. You want her and you want her stuff and you want to inhale and you want to lick and you want and want until no wants are separate anymore.
She starts to kiss you, and you kiss back. You remember your first awkward kiss with Sav, which you learned was done after practicing with Mia, and shudder. This is nothing like it. Chloe's tongue feels firmer, more controlled, experienced. Her lips are softer. Her breath is certainly better than Owen's, and she's at least more genuinely attracted to girls than Riley was. All in all, a new experience. Moments later, your bodies tangle together, your legs interweaving, fingers where they shouldn't be if you ever want Owen to forgive you, heart racing at a million miles per second from her and the powder and the way the sensations are blurred. Her breasts against yours feel strange, but her hands pinning down your wrists feel right. Her eyes carry that flare of dominance, that I changed you, you're mine look that only someone who got a good girl hooked on coke has any right to have. It's unbearable and perfect and wonderful and strange.
You touch her skin and feel your body melt. Maybe there is something to that whole "sexuality is a spectrum and fluidity" thing you hear some of Zane's friends talk about sometimes. The pull of her body makes you almost forget how Owen bullied you and coaxed you into bed when your heart was too broken for standards. It almost makes you forget that you wouldn't need him if your best friend hadn't made you fake a pregnancy and incidentally taken the boyfriend you lost in the process. It almost makes you forget Dr. Chris and all the things you're too young to have, yet already too old to arrange your life favorably to get.
When it's over, she hands you a bag and says, "I don't charge friends."
"We're friends now?" you ask dully, taking the bag.
She smiles and kisses you. "Fuck buddies, friends, whatever. It's cool."
It's not completely cool. You know your mother would be fine with you having a girlfriend, but maybe not a coke-dealing "fuck-buddy" friend, much less one who gave said drugs as a parting gift. You know Holly J would think you don't need girls like her "hanging around" any more than you need guys like Owen. Owen would say…you shudder to think what a guy who threw a trans kid through a door and Zane in the dumpster would say if he found out you fucked a girl.
"I won't tell Owen," she says, as if reading your mind.
You nod. "Thanks."
"What happened between you two anyway?"
You shrug. "I don't know. You did. You and drugs."
She smiles. "Yeah, that's pretty much all I do."
You smile back, sadly, and wonder if she used to be like you. If she was a good girl once and saw it getting her nowhere. You wonder if the drugs were her liberation too, or if she's only playing with you, manipulating your weakness just like he did. Or, maybe neither of them used you at all and you are in fact using them knowing they are all too eager to be used.
You look at the clock. 5:32. Your mother will be waking up soon. School starts in a couple of hours. It doesn't really matter.