47. Lydia
Lydia
We’re all singing Blue Strips by Jessie Murph at the top of our lungs on the way to a huge house party off campus tonight.
We’re having a good time together, and everything just feels so…
amazing. I feel like I’m back in my groove, back with my girls, and back to life after a long and pretty damn lonely Christmas break without them.
Also, new year, new me…right? Hell, something like that. I mean, no one said the new me had to be a better me, just…different. I definitely don’t recognize the girl I left behind last year. She was a sad shit-show. Now? Now I’m just a regular shit-show ready to have some fun.
Lani reaches up from the back seat and turns the music down slightly. “I just want y’all to know how much I love you, and how glad I am we all met. This is gonna be our year, I can feel it.”
Simone throws a quick, questioning look back in her direction before turning back to the road. “Lani…have you been pre-game drinking without us?”
Lani slaps her arm, pretending to be offended.
“No! Geez. A girl can’t show her appreciation for her two closest friends?
Damn.” She laughs, and we all start laughing.
“I’m just happy, that’s all. I’ve never had friends I was as close to as you two before.
I mean, I always had friends back home or whatever, but I was never any of their first picks, you know…
so, in turn…screw ‘em, they were never mine either. But y’all are. ”
I stick my bottom lip out and look back at her. “That was sweet, Lani. We love you, too.”
She reaches up and gives me this weirdly positioned side hug before whispering, “I’m so proud of you. You’ve been doing so good.”
Fuuuck.
I pat her arm awkwardly with one hand and force a smile that I pray doesn’t look as forced as it actually is.
You see, the thing is, that day Lani found me, made me promise to stop doing all the drugs and shit.
Well, I might have…kept doing them. I don’t really have an excuse for that other than I was just desperate for her not to say anything to Simone, and I gave her the lie that she needed to make herself feel better about keeping the secret.
I’ve gotten really good at hiding it now, though. I honestly think Lani believes I actually stopped—as if I’m not high as fuck right now.
She watched me for a while, though, very closely, and I always thought she knew whenever I was high, but she’s never said anything.
And so she kept her promise—she never told Simone—even if I never kept mine.
But I never had any intentions of keeping mine if I’m being honest, even as the words were leaving my mouth that day.
I knew I would wake up the next day and get high again.
Lani is looking at me with this soft, proud smile…and suddenly, I feel like there’s a big screen being held in front of me. I see my younger self playing on it. I’m looking at my mom with the same look on my face that Lani is looking at me with.
Fuck.
It jolts me a bit. Pulls me back into a memory I didn’t even know I had, one of me staring over at my mom at six years old, telling her that she looked so happy for the first time…
I think ever. That I loved how much she was smiling and how pretty she looked…
I’m realizing right now, it’s because she was high.
That happiness was fabricated. She was probably so far gone that the pain my father was causing her became a dissociated memory, and she was finally able to breathe again, smile again.
Has everyone I’ve ever fucking known and loved died in some way or another because of drugs? What the fuck. Is that my future, too?
“Why are you crying, Lydia?” Lani asks quietly.
I see Simone look over, concerned. “Are you okay?”
I put that fake smile back on and wipe the tears I hadn’t realized were falling. “Yeah…yeah. Um, they’re happy tears,” I lie. “I’m just…so thankful to have y’all. That’s all.”
Both of them look at me with smiles that break my heart a little. I really don’t want to hurt them the way everyone I’ve loved has hurt me…and left me.
A part of my brain always tries to fight that and tell me they don’t actually care about me.
That no one can care about me that much.
That they would probably move on pretty easily if I were really gone.
That I’ve never been special enough to be cared about in the same way I’ve always cared about other people.
The logical part of my brain tells me they genuinely do love me and would be sad if I were gone, but the louder part always tells me I’m just lying to myself.
“So,” Simone starts, pulling my attention back over to her and out of my head. “What did you end up getting into for the last five weeks while we were away? You know…when you broke my heart and Sarah and Mark’s when you decided not to come back home for Christmas break?”
I roll my eyes, laughing and playing it off. “We talked just about every day, Simone…I told you what I was doing. Mostly just stayed in the dorm and caught up on all the assignments I begged my professors to give me extensions on so I could pass my classes.”
“No parties?” Lani asks, shocked almost. “Not a single one?”
“Nope,” I say, popping the p.
Lani and Simone exchange a look with each other, and I don’t like whatever they’re trying to silently communicate.
“Hey,” I say, pointing between the two of them. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” Simone asks all innocently.
I give her a pointed look. “That…talking about me silently right in front of me with your eyes.”
Lani laughs, raising her hands. “Not talking about you. Just…surprised. That’s all. A little hard to believe that Lydia went five whole weeks without drinking or going out to a party.”
I let out an exaggerated sigh and cross my arms, turning in my seat to look at both of them.
“First of all…I’m not some alcoholic. I don’t need to party and get wasted all the time…
it’s just…fun. Shit, sue me. And two,” I drag out, pursing my lips together and looking up like I might be a little guilty still.
“I never said I didn’t drink the whole time…
I just didn’t need to go to any party to do that.
Had a couple of study kickbacks in the dorms, kids who were in the same position as me.
We would just end the long, hard working nights, drinking a little. Normal stuff, you know. Nothing crazy.”
I mean, give me some credit, that wasn’t a full lie.
I really didn’t go to any parties. My anxiety was pretty high the entire holiday break.
That’s the main reason I changed my mind about going back home for Christmas.
Just the thought of going back there would send me into a full-blown panic attack.
As if I would run into every ghost I left there.
Everything I came here to run away from.
I feel guilty for not spending the holidays with everyone, but I did a good job of convincing them that I really did want to come back, but that I was so far behind on some of my work, I didn’t have much of a choice but to stay and catch up.
And I did go to some study kickbacks. Okay, well, one kickback…
that I ended up getting wasted at, doing a line of coke in the bathroom with one of the girls, and then calling Atlas to come pick me up before I ended up passing out in these random girls’ dorms that I only knew from my classes, and in no way trusted to be unconscious around.
I did, however, spend most of my break trying every new drug Atlas would let me.
He, of course, wasn’t keen on the idea at first, but after convincing him with some worthwhile sex and my convincing persuasion, I was able to get him to stop telling me no when I would ask.
I honestly don’t remember much of the break at this point.
I really didn’t want to keep thinking about how everyone was going back home to their picture-perfect lives and picture-perfect families.
I love Sarah and Mark…even Huxley…but that eagerness I had to bond with them more before leaving for college was quickly replaced with the fear of disappointing them when drugs came into the picture.
Wanting to stay away so they didn’t see how badly I was failing at all of this.
The break was still productive, though, with all the fun new things I tried—shrooms, LSD, Ecstasy, a little fentanyl, and even some heroin.
Although between me and you…I can’t do heroin ever again.
Amazing…but I’m a fucking college student.
I’m still able to fake my way through classes and life on a little Oxy, Addy, and some bars like I’ve been doing.
Heroin? Fuck no. That’s some serious shit right there.
I had to make Atlas promise me, no matter how bad I got…
that he would never let me do that shit again.
Same with Fent, honestly. I need to be able to control this spiral…
and those would take me to a place I couldn’t come back from.
Lani studies me, like she’s trying to figure out if I’m telling the full truth or not.
Spoiler—I never am.
I smile at her, pretending to be excited to distract her. “That’s why I’m so ready for tonight! It’s been too long since I had fun with my girls.”
I quickly turn to face the window, looking outside as we pull up to the house. I let my face drop, dreading tonight, actually. You see, it’s easy to hide the high when it’s on my terms. When I can control what I take. When I only have access to what I’m used to taking.