The Luke Brooks Diaries

Chapter 4: Cross Faded

Beau’s POV:

“Oh hey Aaron,” I said as I pulled open the front door and gestured for Aaron to come in. “What’re you doing here?”

“Luke called me over,” Aaron replied pulling something out of his pocket, “said he wants to have a little fun,” he added pulling out a bag of weed and waving it in front of me with a wink.

He shoved the drugs back into his pocket and headed to the living room, making himself at home on the couch. As I followed I remembered what Jai had mentioned last night and if Luke had really called Aaron over here to smoke weed then maybe we did need to be worried.

I heard a door open and knew it must be Luke coming out of his bedroom and heading for the living room. I got up from the chair I had just sat down on and turned into the hallway, stopping Luke before he could reach the living room.

“Why’s Aaron over here with weed saying you ‘wanted to have a little fun’? Was it your idea? Is getting high your new idea of ‘fun’?” That came out more harshly than I intended it to.

“Fuck off, you dickhead,” Luke said, shoving me out of the way.

I watched as he walked past me into the living room. I followed him in as he greeted Aaron who was up off the couch now.

“See you later, Beau,” Luke said as he and Aaron passed back by me and out the front door.

I didn’t even know how to react – I wasn’t sure if I was annoyed or sad or scared. All I knew was that I had a bad feeling about what Luke was getting himself into. Maybe I should’ve taken Jai a little more seriously.

*****

Luke’s POV:

“What the hell was that all about?” Aaron asked as we headed out the front door.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “Beau and Jai are just being nosy ass bitches.”

Aaron laughed as we headed down the street towards the park. It wasn’t the safest place to smoke, but it was better than doing it in our backyards.

“Shit, I forgot cologne,” Aaron said looking in my direction.

“Eh, we’ll be fine. You can just borrow some of mine back at the house before you head home,” I replied.

We walked up to the park and found a bench out of the way from where most people would be hanging out. It was getting dark anyways, so aside from the smell, I wasn’t all that worried about people noticing us. Aaron pulled out the bag of weed from his pocket and started to pack the pipe he had brought while I waited, watching for anyone who might be headed in our direction. Luckily, it was dark enough that no one was at the park anymore. Finally, Aaron looked up and held the pipe out to me.

“You want to start it?” He asked.

I took the pipe from his hand as I pulled the lighter that I had stolen from my mom’s room out of my pocket. I placed the tip of pipe between my lips, inhaling gently as I brought the flame to the open end of the pipe. The newly familiar taste of the weed filled my mouth and travelled down my throat. The burning wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been the first time, but the taste of the weed was much stronger than the stuff I had smoked the night before– I wondered if it was a different type of weed.

Aaron and I passed the pipe back and forth inhaling until there was nothing left to smoke. We finally got up from the bench, Aaron slipping the pipe back in his pocket and me grabbing the lighter as we head back in the direction of my house.

We walked through the front door of my house 5 minutes later to see Beau and Jai in the living room with a bottle of red cordial and a couple of cans of bourbon. A drunk Beau looked back at me, his faced flushed bright red with alcohol.

“Lukey-pooky” Jai called out cheekily as he looked back toward me and Aaron as we walked into the living room. I was glad that, at least for the moment, I wasn’t going to have to deal with Luke and Jai scolding me.

“Woooooaahh,” Beau said as he got up from the chair he was sitting in and unsteadily walked over to me. He put his hands on either side of my face and looked me dead in the eye, his face just a little too close for comfort to mine. “Has my baby brother been crying?” he said, clearly noticing how red my eyes were.

“Nah, he’s just high,” Jai said staring at whatever was happening on the television.

“Bad baby brother,” Beau scolded me, heading back to his chair, stopping for a swig of red cordial on the way.

I walked further into the living room, grabbing a can of bourbon off the coffee table as I sat down on the couch next to Jai. Aaron followed and took a couple big gulps of the red cordial before plopping down next to me on the couch. I was pretty high, but not nearly as bad as I’d been last night – I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to be that high again.  I did want to get drunk, though, even if I wasn’t exactly sure what it would feel like to be cross faded. I started pounding down the bourbon and it wasn’t long before I started to feel the alcohol working its way through my system.

“Well this kind of sucks,” I thought to myself as I sat on the couch. I had been drunk loads of times and I felt like the alcohol had completely overpowered the weed. I pulled out my phone and opened Safari.

“Easy ways to get high at home,” I typed out the sentence and hit “search” on google. I didn’t think I was really looking to get high, but I was just curious. I opened a link to Yahoo Answers and read the first answer. “Computer cleaning dusters will get you nice and high,” I read off my phone screen.

I got up and walked into the room that Jai and I shared. I looked over toward the desk where the computer that Jai and I had bought years ago sat and walked over to see exactly what I was looking for – a yellow aerosol can with a log straw sticking out of it reading “3M Spray Duster.” Okay, so maybe I was looking to get even higher than I already was. I picked up the can to look at it closer. “We must have bought this stuff years ago when we first got the computer,” I thought to myself. I put the straw in my mouth and pressed the button on top of the can, inhaling deeply as a bitter taste filled my mouth that nearly made me vomit up the can of bourbon I had just sucked down. The bitter taste made me reconsider how safe this was – I mean, I realized that huffing wasn’t safe ever, but something about the taste made it seem especially toxic.

Within minutes, though, I was already feeling lightheaded from the spray. I put the straw back in my mouth and inhaled another big breath of the chemicals before putting the can back on the desk exactly how I’d found it and heading back out to the living room. I sat back down in my seat on the couch and looked at the TV where Jai was watching “Adult Swim.” No one even seemed to notice that’d I’d left and I was glad, too. I was already starting to reconsider if huffing had been a good idea, although I couldn’t deny how amazing this high felt mixed with the comedown from the weed. I laid my head back on the couch and closed my eyes, enjoying the feeling.