The Boy I Met On the Roof

Puppy

Things have been calm, which is equally good and bad; calm means that something horrible is going to happen soon.
Things had been calm before he had been sent here; his mom and stepfather hadn't yelled at him as much, preferring to ignore how he existed at all. Things had been calm before he got beaten by Sterling for the first time, things were calm before Alex died.
He never liked things calm, never liked the quiet, because it meant uncertainty. If things were loud and violent, he knew to brace himself, to walk around on his tiptoes and to level his breathing because like a panther, they pounce on you the second they notice you, notice your fear and insecurity to use it against you. Over time, Dustin had perfected the art of seemingly disappearing; it's about how you carry yourself, how your shoulders are just a bit curled in, breathing only through your nose and only in shallow breaths as you step on your heels first and then the balls of your foot to reduce noise.

Noah had gotten two 50-millilitre bottles of liquor through the guards, making puppy eyes as he shoved a fifty into the leader's hands. Embarrassing to watch, but effective.
"You ever done shots before?" Noah asked, unscrewing the top of his bottle.
Dustin shook his head; he never liked alcohol, both taste-wise and in the sense that he had an irrational fear of vomiting.
It wasn't like he ever had a traumatic experience relating to it, quite the opposite; back when he was little, he used to go out in the winter without a jacket, hoping he would catch a cold so that his mother would have to stay home and not do whatever she was doing, considering that woman never kept a job for more than two months, being unemployed more often than not.
Whenever it got really bad and he ended up throwing up, his mother would make his soup and stew from scratch, something she never did. Those times were the only times when he didn't eat frozen shit.
But that stopped when he turned six, and after that, there wasn't anything positive about him being sick. Ever since then, he had to avoid thinking about vomiting, because he got afraid, and then being afraid would make his stomach turn, and then he got more afraid because he felt he might vomit.

"Tough luck, you have to grow up eventually; just close your eyes and try not to cough."
With that, Noah hands him the bottle; the label had been long scraped off and the glass was scratched and cracked.
Doing as he was told, Dustin closed his eyes and threw his head back; it tasted bitter, the liquid burning as it went down his throat and esophagus. Despite being told not to, he doubles over and starts coughing, lungs twitching and throat burning worse than before.
"That was horrible!" He exclaims in between coughs, spitting on the ground to get rid of the taste in his mouth.
"It's not supposed to taste good, it's supposed to work," Noah corrected, seeming unaffected.
"Well, I'm not feeling anything." he hissed back, panting.
"Of course not, that's nothing. I have some shit from the brewers that'll get you going," he said, grabbing two bottles from under his bed.
"That shit is so unsanitary, I'm not drinking that." Dustin knows exactly how it was made, and he also knows that bedsheets don't filter out all the molds and bacteria.
"I paid for two, so you owe me drinking it at least."
Noah looks annoyed like he is talking to some bratty toddler and not someone barely younger than him.
Now, like every other teenager, he had the whole "peer pressure" talk; hell, he even had a cop show up at his school to tell them to not do drugs, as if it were that simple. Everyone always talks about drugs as if they were only evil and destructive, as if they don't have any upsides at all. The truth is, drugs make life easier, and maybe if everyone was less of an asshole nobody would turn to them, but no, let's blame the consumer because that's easier than admitting we fucked up.
Plus, the talk from the police officer wasn't effective at all; when the class was asked if they had any questions, everyone just wanted to talk about his gun.

Sighing, he rips the bottle out of Noah's hands, unscrewing the top and taking away a long sip; it tastes like mold as much as it smells like it. Spitting some of the alcohol out mid-sip, he groans: "This tastes even worse!"
Giggling, Noah calls out: "You should have seen your face! You looked like you had bitten on a lemon or something!"
"Man, fuck you." Dustin hisses, playfully smacking his arm.
"You feel anything yet?" the half-brunette asks, leaning in so that their shoulders touch: "The brewer's stuff is either a hit or miss; there's no way to know how many percent it has."
After a moment of thinking, he answers: "A bit, I'm like...warm and thinking a bit fuzzy."
"That's good, I don't want you to be all fucked up yet, we've got other things I want you to try."
"Like what?"  Dustin asks as Nosh pulls out a small plastic ziplock bag.
"MDMA. Not my favorite but worthwhile."
Strewing the powder on the windowsill, he uses his expired healthcare card to manipulate the fine crystals into two lines.
Noah silently hands Dustin a rolled-up five-dollar bill, bending down handed to snort the upper line, and rubbing his nostrils afterwards, grumbling about how he must be out of practice.
On a logical level, Dustin knows that this is a bad idea, not just health-wise, he couldn't care less about that, but he knows that being high means being unable to defend himself. He knows that he has no self-control anymore and that if he ends up liking the feeling too much, he will end up doing things he won't like doing. Some of the girls, especially the prettier ones, didn't get away from substances after they got here, and they always ended up in the same situation; servicing the guards and other students.
The male students end up as thieves more often than not, but the more androgynous ones aren't far away from the same fate either. A group he more or less belongs to, depending on how you look at it.