It All Started With Him

:: 3 :: I'm done

It's quiet, and nothing prepares me for what I'm going to see after unlocking the stall. The unfamiliar pop hit playing through my earbud became background noise with the first panel of anxiety.

Mentally talking myself through the steps of stopping a panic attack as I see Wes propped up against the wall. It's just us. In the movies they lock the bathroom door. In the real world, not all bathrooms can lock on the inside. As I realise this, I push the metal crash can on the door.

Whatever Wes had used is heavy enough to make him strung out. When he gets out of his high, he'll need someone else with him. In this situation he would have to have me. I sit beside him and wait as my earbud continues to play the background noise.

*****

I must have fallen asleep at some point. The ping of my iPhone goes off. I look to see Annie blowing up my phone wondering where I am. I look over. Wes still hasn't awoken from whatever he had taken. I check one last time before I leave. He's still breathing. Then I lay him down, turning him on his side so he doesn't choke on his own vomit if he throws up whatever is in his system. I send him a text to text me later and then leave. There was nothing else to do.

As approach her locker, she's talking to another girl with black shoulder length hair braided up. Her latte coloured complexion meshing with her green eyes and freckled fair. I didn't have her in any of my classes, leaving me wondering who she was. "It's a date," I hear Annie tell the girl, and the girl chuckles, leaving a crimson blush on her face. This is the side of Annie I wished I could see more of. Not the one that I almost had sex with last night. Though, somehow, in my confused sexual tension, I was still attracted. In all my thinking, the mystery girl had disappeared, as Annie slammed my locker shut.

As we slid into my jeep, I asked curiously, "Who was that?" Earlier, she had asked me who I had been texting. Now it was my turn to take on that role. A country song played over the radio sounded like it was Chris Stapleton's hitting the top fifty.

"Lainey Henderson," she told me after a moment's hesitation, as a smile creeped up on her face. Now leaving us both with secrets. Mine a bit deeper and darker than hers, or so I would guess; in comparison I couldn't find myself telling her about Wes. "We're having," she starts to tell me as she is interrupted by one of her favourite songs reaching the speakers.

"I don't want to know what you and Lainey were planning on doing," I told her; though I knew she would end up telling me over grilled cheese and ranch dressing, one of her go to weed smoking food choices, I had always found it an interesting food combination, promising myself one day to breakdown and try it.

"C'mon it's not that bad. Do you think we're going to smoke some meth and have sex?" she asks me, and then laughs. The mention of meth scares me. Had that been what Wes had overdosed on? Heroine? Oxy? Do you even smoke Oxy? I wasn't sure, but I knew for a fact I sure as hell wasn't about to bring it up now. She didn't wait for my answer before she continued. "Ladies are great, like every skin of gender, they aren't my piece of the cake," she tells me in a tone between sardonic and sarcastic, then it goes quiet between us until we get to my house.

My parents aren't home again, in their place is a note that tells me dinner is in the fridge, do my homework and call them if I need anything. Come figure, parent figures and I aren't aren't in the same time zones, leaving to contemplate life decisions and normal teenage talk to Google, and Annie. Right on que, Annie steps out into my room, sporting her usual, grunge band baby doll tee, her pierced belly button ring, in addition to her usual "sex panties" she's also sporting a strap on dildo. A new chaotic theme of hers. Maybe she's imploring her identity and I'm quite okay with that, she's human she has a right to.

"You like it?" She asks as she plays with her hair, trying to find the right vibe to fit with the fake penis. "It might be a little much," she adds, throwing in her insecurity of the idea. This is something very different for both of us to be seeing, but I can't tell her that she's rocking it.