Emma loved getting high. Loved. Getting. High. And I loved getting Emma high. We'd be strung out for days, dizzy with lust, alive with passion. We were gods, floating, immortal. Safe inside the insulation of a white-hot haze, life was a joke that never stopped being funny.

We also fucked a lot when we were high.

It became very obvious, very quickly, that Fridays were not enough. We spent more and more time at the ravine, more and more time with people who could get us drugs. Eventually we started spending alot of our time at Amy's house, because her mother was a drunk and always at her boyfriend's. In Amy's run-down apartment, we could do whatever we wanted, without fear of judgment or interruptions. It was our own little sanctuary, our own little family, where we were all focused on the same goal: getting as fucked up as possible.

After four and a half months of hanging out with Emma, we had established a routine. Amy's apartment felt more like home than our own. Emma's other friends, friends who didn't do drugs, seemed to fall out the picture. I guess mine would have, too, if I had had any. It was me and Emma, always together, always fucked up, hanging out with Amy, her little brother Sticky, and the string of assorted iceheads that passed through.

Toby was always around, too, which was weird to me. But he had some kind of thing going on with Amy. And he seemed as hard core about meth as Emma did. They took to it quick, I guess because they'd never done other drugs before. I kind of understood. Emma and Toby… neither of them were the same after Rick died. Neither was I, I guess.

It was a pretty typical night, that night. Emma was sprawled out on her stomach, staring off in a daze with a fluid smile on her face. I sat beside her, stroking her hair, laughing at all of my racing thoughts. It was like watching cartoons in my head. Colors and noises floated around me like runny eggs. My foot tapped wildly along with the beat of the hip hop music on the stereo.

Amy and Sticky were arguing. Every other word out of their mouths was "fuck" or "dude." Amy gnawed aggressively at the red sucker in her mouth as she bantered feverishly with her little brother. Viscous crimson coated her lips.

"You know what's fucked up?" said Sticky, his voice cracking. His hair was buzzed and green; his skinny arms and gaunt face looked humorous in comparison to the giant black ICP shirt he wore. "What's fucked up, dude, is fucking cigarettes. Like, who do they think they are, telling me I can't buy cigarettes? Are they worried about my health? Because that's just fucking retarded. I can go out right now and get some fucking heroin, bam, like no problem. I can get my hands on any fucking shit I want, except cigarettes. Cigarettes are the hardest fucking things to buy in the world, if you're underage. Fucking harder to get cigarettes than heroin. What the fuck is that about?"

We laughed.

My fingers couldn't let go of Emma's hair. I wrapped the golden strands around my fingers, and then unwrapped them. Again and again, watching with wonder each time.

I glanced over at Toby. His eyes looked dead, and he was shaking just a little. He didn't look right. There wasn't a lot of color in his face. "I feel like I'm standing outside of my body," he said suddenly, wrapping his arms around himself.

Sticky laughed at him. "Sounds like somebody burned the fuck out."

I cringed. I didn't like the way Toby looked. I didn't like the way the room felt, all of the sudden. I didn't want to think about burning out. I didn't want to feel anything but good.

Amy smacked Sticky in the back of the head. "You're a fucking douchebag, Brandon," she said. She tossed the soggy white stick from her sucker to the stained carpet. "We're out of suckers," she added.

I touched Emma's face softly with my hand. "Let's go, babe," I said. "Let's go get some more suckers."

Emma jumped up immediately, wild with excitement. Even the most mundane errands could be adventures when you were all wound up on ice. We wove our fingers together and left the apartment, unable to contain our jitters as we walked the streets.

Time sometimes moved strangely when you were fucked up. I couldn't remember much about the journey, but I found myself standing in the convenience store, staring at the long counter of slushie machines. The array of frozen colors sparkled as they churned in their plastic containers.

"There are eight different colors," I said out loud. I noticed Emma beside me, with a bag of suckers in her hands. "Do you think we could carry eight slushies? I kind of want some of each." I wasn't even hungry; we were never really hungry. But I wanted to feel each of the colors on my tongue. I wanted to just sit them all together in a circle and watch the ice crystals melt.

Emma laughed, and then I laughed, and then we kissed. Those were the golden days. Making out in a convenience store, tweaking under the fluorescent lights, finding joy and life in everything. It didn't seem like anything could go wrong.

But that's because we didn't know what would be waiting for us when we got back to Amy's apartment.