The Cub in the Water

MOVES LIKE JAGGER

While all the stuff was happening at home, a ripple effect was on the loose.

I wasn't the brightest student or the best behaved one, but I still found a way to manage and get through the year without flunking out completely. I was able to get past that and my performance in school started to go up. I was rather proud of myself. I was enjoying my classes, fulfilling assignments, and getting good grades.

I grabbed hold on school as kind of a safe haven where I could just focus on the good, stable, and safe stuff I had going on in my life. However, the pressure building inside me had to come out some other way.

It was one of those afternoons where I was overwhelmed. I was fourteen years old the first time it happened. "Want to grab a beer?" Rox asked.

"A beer? I'm not even..."

"Come on. It will take your mind off things."

I hesitated.

"Don't worry about the ID. I know a restaurant near your place where they'll sell us beer without a problem. I promise you'll feel way better after the first sip."

"Okay, let's go."

This became more common than it should it have. During these whole unstable times, sometimes, her being around became a recipe for disaster.

I mean, don't get me wrong, there were a lot of ways in which she helped me out. She was basically my moral support throughout the ups and downs, and she did check up on me to see if I ever needed anything. She sometimes picked me up from school and gave me a ride home or invited me out to spend time with her family when I felt lonely, and that sort of things. But the fact that needs to be acknowledged, is that our age difference made a huge impact on me when it came to the social activities I encountered when we started hanging out. She was an early college student and I was just a 9th grader when we started drinking together. Her parties and mine were quite different.

When I first started hanging out with her and her friends, she took me to her reunions and I mingled with everyone there. Most of the people thought I was about their age every time I set foot on one of those things. I guess I did the mingling as masterfully as possible.

At first, I wasn't interested in drinking alcohol. I didn't like the taste of it at all. The first time we went for a beer I thought, 'Gosh, this tastes like piss." It was difficult for me to swallow it, but I wanted to seem cool and ready to party.

I wish that taste would've lasted longer.

As I started going to more of those parties, the alcohol effect became surprisingly soothing. Plus, the peer pressure of fitting in and acting grown-up and mature, didn't help much. I started drinking a little too much every time we went out. It all became a routine.

Every weekend was the same story. Most of the times we went out three days in a row, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I mean it wasn't like we ended up super wasted and unconscious every time, still, I was somewhere along the lines of fifteen years old and partying like a Rockstar.

Now, I assume one of the two of us was supposed to have common sense, neither of us did. Soon three days a week became four days every two months as we became obsessed with our soccer team Pumas. We attended the home matches at the stadium on Sunday mornings. We raised our last couple of glasses upon the sun dimming on Sundays afternoons.

My fifteen birthday is the best example I can give you about this four-day extravaganza. The day landed on Thursday. I went to school and afterward I had lunch with my mom and some of her friends. At about six o'clock' in the afternoon, I got a phone call, "Hey, Mia! What are you doing? How's your birthday turning out?" Asked Rox.