New Idea (bxb)

Chapter Three

After that, Augustus and I started spending more time together. It was as though neither of us could get enough of one another. We'd meet behind the library after class and kiss each other breathless until he suddenly realized he had somewhere to be and left me with a sheepish smile. It reminded me of the way he would disappear at parties after a point, and of course, he still did whenever I managed to catch him when he wasn't busy. Once I saw him do a drug deal with a kid just before he left, and I began to suspect that's what this business of his was.

I near confronted him about it the next day, but he off-handedly asked if I'd like to try acid with him and I realized that he was actually the one buying. So, it seemed I was back to square one. I hadn't even realized that I was paying so much attention to it until that moment. Well, the trip was alright but he had a scary hallucination--vision, he called it, he kept insisting it was a prophetic vision--and I decided that I wouldn't do it again, or let him do it again, so I flushed the drugs down the toilet and told him that we must have lost them somewhere somehow.

There were a lot of nights like that where we tried all sorts of things, mixed together all sorts of drugs, and ended up collapsed in his kitchen, pressed against each other. If I hadn't insisted that we have nothing to do with needles or anything that was too commonplace, I think he would probably have become a heroin addict or something. He was more addicted to adrenaline than anything else. Once, when we were doing coke that we bought off a parking attendant, I told him quite suddenly:

"You know, you're like the embodiment of the crazy Russian stereotype."

He stared at me a moment, then pouted. "Who told you I'm Russian?"

I had laughed until he told me I looked insane, because it was such a weird and marvelous way to finally figure out where he came from--I really had thought it would be someplace more obscure, like Lithuania, or I thought that maybe he was lying and he was Polish all along.

Maybe it's surprising to you, then, that when Augustus decided to "give the sober thing a try,"--his exact words, if I remember correctly--I was wholly supportive of it. He told me that I was allowed to drink my wine if I so pleased, but I stopped drinking, too. I had never enjoyed alcohol as much as he did; I only ever drank to have fun with him, and I was a lightweight. It only took a couple shots of vodka to get me rather quickly buzzed, and buzzed was all I ever allowed myself, as being blackout drunk seemed rather unglamorous to me.

The only vice Augustus allowed himself was cigarettes now, so we spent even more of our time smoking. Perhaps to make up for his innumerable swigs of scotch throughout the day. He was sharper with people now--the girls in art class were brushed aside, and when one cornered him alone between earlier classes, she left crying--and, even with me, he was much quieter, and less cheery. I had been warned, of course, but I hadn't expected him to become so sullen and sarcastic.

When he was sober, though, he put himself back together and showed his intelligence through much more interesting means than the long speeches on whatever topic crossed his mind. Once, while we were behind the library, something I said reminded him of something and he mentioned it. I had no idea what he was saying, and he rolled his eyes before explaining it was a practically useless mathematical theory from the nineteenth century and a problem he had tried many times to solve.

"The problem is," he said, giving me one of his smiles that were becoming incredibly rare, "I'm a dreadful mathematician, and the only math that really stuck with me is the knowledge of how to cut drugs and poisons."

"Well, that seems useful," I drawled.

"For murder and gang shenanigans, sure, but they all but booted me out of med school."