The Luke Brooks Diaries

Chapter 2: Marijuana

Luke’s POV:

I was in the seat next to James, who was driving, looking out the passenger side window as we finally drove into Melbourne. It was a little past 9:30pm and after the awful day I had had I was itching to go out and let lose.

I turned around to face the back seat where Beau, Jai, Daniel, Jacob, and Aaron were packed in. They were all on their phones, paying absolutely no attention to what was going on around them so I turned back to the front, not wanting to disturb the peace. James was just pulling the car into a parking structure and grabbing an entrance ticket as I turned around. We had just found a parking spot on the 3rd floor when the all too familiar smell of weed began to fill the car.

“Jacob!” James shouted turning around to face the back, “I told you no more hot boxing my car! It took me weeks to get the smell out last time!”

“Chill dude,” Jacob replied, un-phased by James’ seriousness, “I got you. All you need is a little Ozium and to keep your windows down over night. I’ll take care of it,” Jacob added, taking and drag from the joint he was holding.

James rolled his eyes and opened the door to get out of the car. He clearly wasn’t in the mood to put up a fight. Jai and Beau followed suit and opened the door to wait outside of the car with James. James and my brothers and I all despised drugs including weed, although, tonight, the smell of the joint didn’t seem as appalling as it usually did. In fact, it actually looked kind of fun.

Beau, clearly noticing that I hadn’t moved to get out of the car yet, turned around before shutting his door. “You coming, Luke?” I turned around to look at him leaning half through the backseat door. “Umm, actually I think I might try a little.” I could see a mix of surprise and disapproval on my brother’s face as he shut the door and went to join James and Jai outside of the car. I knew they were probably already talking shit about me for this. I knew how they were, I mean I was usually part of their little posse that stood outside the car, scoffing at how stupid everyone who had decided to smoke was. But at this moment, I really didn’t care. I was feeling adventurous and I wanted to act before I could talk myself out of it.

“Aye, Luke. Finally decided to come over to the dark side, huh?” Skip laughed as he handed me the joint. “Take a big hit, just like shisha, but try to hold it in your lung for a while before breathing it out,” Skip instructed.

I took the joint between my fingers, bringing it up to my lips and inhaling as much of the smoke as I possibly could into my lungs. “Shit this burned,” I thought to myself as I held in the smoke for as long as I could before I started coughing and all the smoke left my chest.

“Take another hit,” Skip laughed, clearly entertained by my lack of experience.

I brought the joint back up to my dry lips and took another long drag, determined this time to hold the smoke in longer than I had before. I ignored the burning sensation in my throat and the tears that started to fill my eyes as I held the smoke in, willing myself not to cough. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I let out the smoke in a hacking fit. I never realized how bad smoking weed hurt.

I handed the joint back over to Jacob, Aaron and Skip who took turns taking hits until there was barely anything left.

“You want the last hit,” Jacob finally said handing the shrunken joint in my direction. I didn’t know how much more my throat could take, but if I was doing this I wanted to make sure I felt the effects. I took the joint from him and took another long hit willing myself to hold it in longer than I had before. I finally handed the joint back to Skip who put out the spark as the coughing took over me again.

“Damn, Luke,” Skip said looking at me, “you look high as fuck. Better put your sunglasses on because if the bouncer sees how bloodshot your eyes are they’re definitely not letting you into the club.” I obliged and slipped my sunglasses on, even though it was completely dark out. Jacob, Aaron, Skip and I got out of the car and joined Beau, Jai and James who were still waiting for us. We sprayed ourselves down with some cologne to cover up the smell of the weed and then headed out of the parking structure and down to the streets of Melbourne.

The club was about 5 blocks away from the parking structure and as we started walking I began to feel the effects of the drug working its way through my system. The first thing I noticed was how dizzy I was; I felt like I was walking downhill even though I knew that the streets of Melbourne were completely flat. I felt like I was in a dream, like I might wake up any second, and I kept questioning whether what I was seeing around was real. The dizziness was only getting worse and I felt like I might fall over at any minute, especially considering that, as we reached the 3rd block, I couldn’t feel my legs anymore. The streets were getting more and more crowded as we got closer to the club and I felt like everyone around me could tell that I was high. The dizziness wasn’t getting any better, so I tried to focus only on Jai who was walking in front of me in an attempt to stabilize my vision. What was this shit that Skip had given me? Was it even weed? I didn’t know if this was how I was supposed to be feeling and it was starting to scare me. Just as I considered asking the boys to stop because of how dizzy I was feeling we arrived at the entrance to the club. Luckily the rush was over for the most part so there wasn’t really a wait before we could get in.

We walked in and found ourselves a rounded couch to sit on. I plopped down on the couch and felt like I might fall asleep at any minute. At least most of the dizziness had subsided, but I still felt like I was in a dream. While the rest of the boys turned their attention to ordering drinks and scouting out hot girl, I was focusing all of my attention on just not falling asleep. A couple of fans came over and asked if we could take pictures with them. The rest of the boys hopped up from the couch as I sluggishly followed behind.

“Okay,” I thought to myself as I posed for a picture, “I hate this feeling. I am never getting high again.”

Throughout the night, the effects of the weed finally wore off and by the end of it all I was feeling pretty much back to normal, but I was still glad when we finally decided to head out. As we left the club and headed back to the car, I finally picked up on the fact that Beau and Jai were being pretty cold-shoulderish to me. I wondered if they had been that way all night. Had I been too high to notice?

Well, shit, if they were pissed at me I knew I was in for a reaping when I got home. It sucked being on the receiving end when those two decided to band together. Not to mention that after all the shit I had got from all the haters earlier today, I was in no mood to get more shit from my brothers. And that’s when it occurred to me – I hadn’t thought about today’s haters once all night – maybe I liked this weed stuff more than I thought.