Ruedelia's Repose

O N E

I don't think I'll ever really understand partying.

The deafeningly loud music, the alcohol, the sex, the drugs—not that I was entirely opposed to drugs.

That would make me a hypocrite.

In fact, I was sat outside on the front stoop of whoever's house this was with a joint between my lips, inhaling long and heavy, filling up my lungs with burning air.

It was an easy way to ease my anxiety and stress, and it put me in a grounded and relaxed state I craved day to day. Though, I only allowed myself the pleasure of marijuana when I couldn't think of a different solution for my inner turmoil because I never wanted to just smoke weed. I didn't want to make the plant the solution to all my problems.

Only when reading or music or physical exertion failed did I bite the bullet and roll a J as a last resort.

I took another puff then put out the burning roll. I'd only inhaled about a quarter of it but that was all I needed. Just a buzz. Just something to take the edge off so I could stop being fidgety and nervous—so I could stop panicking and being insecure about every move I made.

I sighed and began sifting through the contents of my purse. There weren't any lights on outside, so my search was dimly illuminated by the bright, creamy light of the moon that kept dipping in and out of the thick clouds trailing across the night sky. I searched in the natural light with one hand for a while until that didn't work fast enough, so I brought the joint to my mouth and clamped my lips around its filter to free up my other hand.

This time around, my ransacking took less time and I was met with almost immediate success.

My hand closed around the cylinder shape of a pill bottle and I triumphed silently as I pulled out the old ibuprofen container. The tops to pill bottles always sealed smells away completely, so they made getting caught with drugs less probable.

I twisted open the cap of the small bottle, listening to its many ridges click and slide past each other, then sealed it closed after making my deposit. I dropped the tiny storage container back into my bag and sighed, closing my eyes for a moment, then zipped up my purse just as the front door slammed open and Tommy Burrow came stumbling out with two random girls hanging off his footballer physique.

Tommy Burrow was North Oak High School's middle linebacker and a beast of a teenage boy.

We'd known each other since preschool where he'd adopted me as his person and I'd adopted him as mine. He was far from the small boy he'd been back then, however, standing at six foot six with broad shoulders and scary looking muscles adorning his arms and legs.

That didn't change the fact that he was one of the sweetest guys I knew, though. That's why, when he came bursting through the door with his conquests, as he liked to call them, I stood up and immediately made it my job to separate the squirrels from the tree.

Being drunk was fine, but being drunk and engaging in sexual relations with two equally, if not more drunk girls as an esteemed line backer looking to make a career out of football was an entirely different story.

Rumors generated in high schools could be nasty. I would know.

"Go back inside.", I told the girls, and they complained and moaned about how mean I was being but they knew better than to go against anything I said.

Sometimes rumors were true.

Tommy groaned and slumped clumsily against the front door, thudding loudly against the stained dark wood. "Come on, Williams!", he complained, his words lazily pronounced and slurred in a tell-tale sign of drunkenness.