Other Sides: 12 Webfiction Tales

Mifflin County Cokes Blues by Isa K

Jake can remember the stars as they are: not as little pinpricks of light but as bright clouds of smokey blues and grays, clusters of twinkling heavenly bodies hovering silently among flecks of glittering space dust.

This is the kind of view of the stars one only gets when vast communities have opted out of electricity. Jake can hear the refrigeration system humming with the milk cows from all the way down the field precisely because it is a foreign sound. This is always the way he remembers the stars: full and detailed with contrast and depth, humming in the barn and the occasional moo.

"Did you get it?" he asks as footsteps break stale dry blades of grass coming up the hill.

"Better," the voice answers.

Jake frowns. He does not want "better" he wants the ignorable trespasses. Beer he cannot have because no one is really sure how his body will react, but there's no risk in girls, music, cellphones and marijuana.

He sits up. "What do you mean 'better'?"

And then Danny shows him, the small vial pinched at the top between two fingers. He walks closer and Jake can start to make out what's inside: white ... powdery ... like sugar but so obviously not sugar.

"What's that?" he says as a reflex.

"You know what it is," Danny laughs ... and he does. He knows exactly what it is. "Come on there's no protein in it, I checked."

"Oh, did you ask my doctor about it?" Jake replies sarcastically.

"Nah I looked it up online."

"Where? You don't have a computer."

And there would be little point in getting one either. If his parents weren't going to accept on-the-grid power or a telephone line, a broadband hook-up was completely out of the question.

"At your Uncle's."

"My Uncle let you use his computer to look up the per serving protein volume of cocaine?"

"I didn't exactly tell him what I was doing."

Danny's thick hair is tousled and he is wearing an appropriately "English" shirt: no collar, faded but colorful AC/DC concert logo splashed on his chest. He wears traditional trousers and suspenders along with it, which make a perfectly ridiculous picture: half punk half farmer chic.

"Come on," the other boy coos at his reservations. "We're 16, we can do whatever we like and they can't touch us."

"Not anything," Jake answers as he flops back onto the grass.

"Well..." he dangles the cocaine vial over Jake's nose provocatively. "We can do this."

Jake stares at the stars through the edges of a fine dusting of narcotic and thinks. For as long as he can remember everything in his life has been carefully controlled. Everything. And for a while it seemed like even this simple rite of passage would be denied him. Just too dangerous! Not just his immortal soul at stake but his very life. As if he couldn't figure out what in the devil's playground was likely to kill him or not.

Finally his parents acquiesced and his teenage years looked like they would begin in earnest.

"Fine," he sighs. "But how do we ... do it?"

"Look." Danny is too excited, he bounces as he sits down and unscrews the top. "There's a tiny spoon inside! So neat!"

"Huh..."

##

"Oh wow...."

"Jesus Christ."

"Don't curse Yacob. You'll go to hell."