LUCID

Chapter 1

My attention was broken by crackling. Without a second thought of where it was comeing from I storm towards my sister's room. Her door has a sign with a Nirvana symbol duck taped above the the handle. Honestly, I don't even understand why she has that there I bet she's only heard one song by them. Not that I'm the expert on that type of music, just saying that's a perfect example of how fake she is. The reason it's there is because her druggy boyfriend always talks about them.            

As I’m making my way to her room I can feel the vibrations of her music underneath my feet. I don’t know why she can't just use her earphones. It’s one thing having her listening to songs like that and another making the whole house into her own private metal/rock/punk concert. Besides I don’t want to go deaf like her. Seriously, it’s hard having a normal conversation with her while she’s asking "what" five times in one sentence. Ever since the rumors that she was pregnant spread through our entire school and her good girl image was destroyed. She’s decided to plummet that bright future down the drain. Gone.                                                                                                                                                      

We weren’t the closest but sometimes in the summer when we were in our rooms and it was so hot you could feel your skin boil. We would open up the window (which our mom never let us do) and she would sing to me the songs she made up. Her voice was smooth and gentle. I don’t hear her sing much anymore, just yelling. Yelling at everything and everyone, sometimes just to scream at herself.                                                                                                 

 Not to my surprise, she was smoking something in a long translucent cylinder at the end there’s something burning in a sphere. I don’t know how I heard the crackling from the cylinder over her music because now it seems so quiet, but this is definitely new. When I say new I mean she's never smoked something in this. Never have I seen this before except maybe in middle school health class. Somewhere that picture was on the board with a red slash through it and a teacher explaining all the health issues you’ll receive after smoking anything in it. That same thing is in my sister’s right hand and her lips on the end. Slowly breathing in the toxic smoke of whatever’s is burning. Next to her is that creep of a boyfriend, laughing at my face which at the moment is giving the grossed-out- that-I’m-related-to-that-thing-considered-‘my sister’ look.  That hysterical chuckle from his mouth runs chills up my spine, he’s high. If he moves a muscle I’m going to kill him. I don’t want him a bit closer to my sister.                                                                                        

She hands him the glass tube and gets up and starts walking to me with wobbly legs. I can hear her swearing something under her breath. She puts one hand on my shoulder for support and looks everywhere but at me. “Look Cotton, it was a onetime thing,” Cotton is her nickname for me. It used to be something to taunt me with but one day it just stuck and neither of us ever really took the time to think how strange of a name that is. “I swear I won’t do it again if you don’t tell dad.” Her breath smells rotten like the acid from your stomach mixed with mold. I’m tempted to puke on her, that’s what she deserves. Instead I just glare at her and silently step away.                                                

Although I want to scream at her and shake that stranger into the girl I used to know, I don’t. This isn’t the first time she’s done something like this, and when I yell at her she just blocks me out more. So instead today I’ll play along and see where it leads me. Maybe even back to my old sister that I loved.  I’m too credulous with her.