Kaleidoscope eyes

Chapter one

Your attitude is like a box of crayons that colour your world. Constantly colour your picture grey and your picture will always be bleak...
-Allen Klein|

The world had become bleak. So bleak in fact that it seemed I was seeing everything in black, white and blending shades of grey.
It was that gap between secondary school and college where most of us teenagers, transitioning into young adults, had nothing better to do except go to meaningless parties, have shallow conversations and live off of short lived highs.
My life was no exception. I was simply throwing it away, at least for the year. I went to houses whose owners I didn't even know to attend parties I barely even enjoyed. I talked to a group of friends I didn't really like about topics I hardly cared about. Lastly, I watched the colours of the world fade into the black grey clouds of the cigarettes I smoked. As I said, the world had become bleak.
The beginning of the holiday had seemed so bright, so full of colour and promises and possibilities. I had filled applications to so many universities and I was so sure I would at least get accepted into two colleges. I was fairly smart, a couple of marks shy of being a genius, but none the less I had pretty good grades. Those first few months were consumed with anxious waiting. I think I almost drove myself crazy as I checked the post office and my email almost every hour. Finally, my inbox binged with the email I had been waiting for. It had been from the only college I had really wanted for some course in psychology. I didn't really care what I would be studying. I simply thought the rest would sort itself out.
I think after that email had arrived was when everything started to go downhill and fast. Most of my friends had been selected to one college or the other so the anxiety had worn off. We met up and thought we needed to make plans on how to pass the rest of the time before college. It was clean, mindless fun those first few weeks. We went to the lake, to the park, to the cinema and stuff like that, avoiding parties like the plague. We thought we were "the good kids", the ones who didn't waste their lives drinking or doing drugs or getting hooked on nicotine. However, the buzz eventually faded. We had no more ideas on how to spend the rest of the holiday and we were getting a little bored, a little desperate.
'You know what we should do tonight?' Samantha stated one day when we were sitting at an empty parking lot on Sunday afternoon.
Kelvin raised an eyebrow, waiting for Samantha to go on. Andrew briefly glanced up from his phone just to show us he was listening. Out of the five of us he was the most reserved. However I got along with him the most.
'What?' Joan wondered.
'We should go to the party Jacob's throwing!' Samantha squealed.
I don't know how it could have gotten any quieter but it did. Samantha looked at each one of us expectantly. We always ridiculed how people wasted their lives at these parties, but suddenly life had become less exciting and we had started getting on each other's nerves. I guess we needed a break, a diversion from the routine.
'No,' Andrew voiced out without any reason as to why not.
'Why can't we?' Kelvin immediately sprung to Samantha's side. 'It's not like we've got anything better to do.'
'I don't know guys. I think Andrew's right,' Joan stated.
Oh Joan, always so shy, always so timid.
Then they all turned to me. I wanted to stay out of this one. I had hoped they would sort this out by themselves but they were equally divided. They wanted me to be the tie breaker.
'How about you, Zee, what do you want?' Samantha asked me.
#
It was only six o'clock when we arrived at the party but the front garden was already littered with tiny Styrofoam cups. The music was too loud and, although we were outside of the house, the heat emitting from the dancing bodies was thick in the air.
'I knew this was a bad idea,' Andrew mumbled under his breath.
Samantha took no notice. She was beyond ecstatic. I guess deep down I always knew Samantha was a party girl. She just got mismatched with us. She was the only one actually dressed for the party. She was wearing a sequined dress that could have passed off as a shirt. It was quite a change from her more conservative outfits. I was sure she'd been waiting for an excuse to wear it.
Joan appeared scared and she clung to indifferent Andrew's arm, the one that wasn't busy on his phone. Kelvin just seemed happy to be able to goggle shamelessly at Samantha's exposed thighs.
'What now?' Andrew asked.
He scowled as someone, just a few feet away, hurled the contents of his insides onto the grass.
'Come on! It's a party.' Samantha remarked, 'Go grab a beer or something. Come dance with me Kelvin.'
With that she dragged him away into the drunk crowd.
'I don't have a good feeling about this,' Joan stuttered.
She really looked like she was going to be sick. Andrew shot her a compassionate look.
'Come on then, let's see if we can go find a non-toxic drink to calm you down,' he offered.
Joan nodded. Andrew gave me a pleading look and I gave him a nod to tell him it was fine. They disappeared too. I groaned wondering if coming to this party had actually been a good idea.
I wandered about the lawn. I still hadn't been inside the house. If the outside was this out of control, I cringed at the thought of the inside. I don't know how long I stayed there, practically just feeling like an outsider, but it seemed like forever. Suddenly a heavy hand placed itself on my shoulder, startling me. I turned around in panic only to be greeted by Kelvin's surprised expression.
'Hey man, you look like you've seen a ghost,' he said.
I just looked at him disregarding his comment. He had a Styrofoam cup in his hand which explained why he appeared a little tipsy.
'You should really try this.' He pointed at the cup, 'It gives you this whoosh feeling. All that boredom washed away with just one sip.'
He passed it to me and I looked at the horrible brown liquor. It smelt like cheap alcohol. I wrinkled my nose at it. My real father had been an alcoholic. Every time he was drunk he terrorised my mother, my older sister and me. My mother finally filed a divorce and two months later he died of liver failure. About five years ago, my mother found love again and remarried a much more loving and, most importantly, a much more sober man. I liked my step father, Brian, as much as I loathed my real one. Kelvin knew this story. He also knew my disliking to alcohol.
'Come on Zee, you are not your dad. You won't regret it,' Kelvin coaxed me.
Maybe I wanted to know what the fuss was about or maybe I just easily gave into peer pressure, but I gulped down the contents of the cup. It burnt my throat and tasted horrible. I was instantly spitting the rest out. Kelvin was wrong; regret was scorching my throat more than the drink itself.
'Maybe alcohol really isn't your thing,' Kelvin winced, 'but follow me companion. There's so much "magic" here to keep you high for life.'
He gave me a small shove towards the house. It was unbelievably hot inside. The living room was packed full of sweaty dancing bodies but Kelvin manoeuvred us to the kitchen which was less crowded. On the kitchen counter were arranged lines of fine white powder. Samantha and a couple of other people were snorting the powder up their noses with a straw.
'You could try coke but that's bad juju right there.' Kelvin advised as he ransacked the fridge and took out a canned beer. 'I tried to warn Samantha but she wanted to try it all.'
I cringed at the sight of Samantha. She seemed like a dazed wreck.
'Have you seen Andrew and Joan?'I asked realising they were nowhere to be seen.
'I think they left. Something really freaked out Joan or something,' Kelvin replied as he gulped a bit of his drink and squinted his eyes. 'Buzz kills.'
The beer clearly burnt his throat and I wondered why he was still drinking that awful stuff.
He continued to walk towards the other door leading out the kitchen out to the backyard. There, I was instantly greeted by clouds of smoke.
'Hey Jimmy, pass me a cigarette,' Kelvin said to one of the many people who were smoking something. When had he even met these people?
Jimmy, I supposed, took out his pack of cigarettes and gave one to Kelvin who in turn passed it to me.
'Go ahead,' Kelvin remarked, 'Try one.'
For the second time that night I went against my better judgment and found myself swayed by Kelvin's words. As I put the cigarette in my mouth and as Kelvin lit it, I wondered if my life had actually reached a point where I was willing to try things I thought I was against.
'Just take a simple drag,' Jimmy advised.
I did just that.... And choked on the smoke.
'Try again.' Kelvin encouraged.
'He's right kid,' some other guy threw in. 'Nobody ever gets it the first time.
So I took another drag. This one went down a little more smoothly and I puffed it out. It felt a bit relieving and as I watched the smoke rise up, the world seemed a little more interesting. It wasn't an out of control high or anything, but it was definitely amazing. However, I didn't want to fall in too deep so I only smoked two.
When I got home that night I felt a little bit better. The world seemed more exciting. Kelvin promised to drive a very drunk and doped up Samantha home and I thought it would be nice of me to check what had happened to Andrew and Joan.
Joan's phone was disengaged and I had to call Andrew's number three times before he finally picked up. He wasn't really happy to speak to me. In fact he said he never wanted to talk to me again. He briefly explained what had happened to him and Joan and I cringed. He blamed me for everything. He said that was the last time him and Joan ever wanted to talk to me, Samantha and Kelvin. Then the phone went dead.
#
Sometimes when I sit alone or when I smoke on a cigarette I remember what Andrew said, about how this was all my fault. If it hadn't been for me, maybe Joan wouldn't have been indecently attacked by some rowdy boys at the party while Andrew was getting drunk. Even though Andrew showed up just in time before things got out of control, maybe it was my fault Andrew felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. Samantha and Kelvin called them rigid and boring and I wondered if they had any empathy. Maybe that was my fault too, that we all broke apart. Maybe if it wasn't for me Samantha wouldn't always be high in two states and always seeking the next thrill and Kelvin wouldn't have become an alcoholic. So the fact that I smoked a cigarette a week to make my dull world livelier was my own doing too. Maybe all this could have been avoided. Maybe the five of us could have still been "the good kids" that stayed knitted together and didn't attend meaningless parties or live off of short lived highs if I hadn't taken Samantha and Kelvin's side that one party wouldn't be a bad idea.