The Tribuo - 51. Part V, chapter 5

- V -

By the end of the day, I felt like crying and screaming. I couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong with me. It felt like every single nerve in my body suddenly turned into a live wire. Every little thing would piss me off. By five o’clock, I was ready to bite Patterson’s head off after he gave me one of his gentle smiles and said:

“See? I knew you could do it! You just needed a little motivation, that’s all.”

I imagined grabbing him by the back of his scrawny neck and slamming him headfirst into the blackboard. The image made me feel slightly better.

“I gotta go,” I muttered. “I’ll see you Monday.”

“Have a good weekend, Jessica!”

I walked away, thinking that my weekend would be a hell of a lot better if I found out that he was hit by a bus. Paul was waiting for me outside.

“You okay?” he frowned when he saw my expression.

“Tired,” I said shortly.

This morning, while we were sitting by Starbucks, I was trying to figure out what exactly about him I found so damn cute on Wednesday night. This morning he didn’t look cute at all. He looked like he needed sleep as badly as I did, if not worse. I also wondered when was the last time he got a haircut. Seriously, his hair would make Shaggy Dog weep with jealousy.

“What do you wanna do tonight?” he asked, and I shrugged.

“Go home and sleep,” I tried not to sound too nasty. After all, it wasn’t his fault that I felt like crap.

“Sleep is overrated,” he snorted.

“Right, like you would even know,” I said sharply, but he didn’t seem to notice my intonation.

“I don’t waste too much time on sleep,” he agreed and pulled a pack of smokes out of his pocket. “Want one?”

I hesitated for maybe two seconds.

“Yeah,” I said finally.

Screw it. My mood, it felt, hit rock bottom. I dragged on that cigarette like my life depended on it. I smoked the damn thing all the way to the filter, but nothing changed. I felt as crappy as before.

“What is this shit?” I frowned and threw the butt on the ground.

Paul blinked.

“A cigarette,” he said slowly.

“Ugh,” I sighed with great frustration. “What happened to Chinese herbs?”

At first, he looked like he had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Then his forehead smoothed out.

“Oh, right,” he hemmed. “Yeah, I don’t have that in smokes anymore. Was mostly for the party.”

“I see,” I said, thinking that it was probably for the best. But I felt even shittier than I did before.

“Well…” he looked thoughtful for a second. “If you want… I have some at my place. Not in cigarettes though.”

I almost told him to forget it, but then thought what the hell. I’ll stop this after today. It’s Friday, I’ll be able to sleep it off until Monday.

“Let’s go,” I said as shortly as before, and he grinned.

“Want me to drive?”

“I’ll follow you,” I shook my head. “I need to get home by seven.”

“All right,” he shrugged.

His apartment was a mess.

“Do you ever clean this place?” I muttered, kicking an empty pizza box out of my way.

“Sometimes,” he said indifferently. “My roommate used to get on my ass about the whole cleaning thing all the time…”

“What did you do?” I stepped over something that looked like a pile of garbage, and followed him into his room.

“Changed the roommate,” he grinned. “Don’t worry, my room is not too filthy… Just the living room. And, well…” he scratched the back of his head. “Kitchen too… And the bathroom.”

“Lovely,” I muttered.

I was surprised when his room indeed wasn’t filthy. I mean, it wasn’t spotless, but it didn’t look like a dumpster. Paul threw his backpack on the floor, walked to his desk, and dug in its drawers for almost a full minute. Finally, he pulled out something that looked like a light bulb with a tube sticking out from the inside.

“What the hell is that?” I frowned.

“Some asshole stole my pipe,” he said darkly. “It was a good pipe too. I had it for years. I’ll buy another one, but I don’t wanna get some cheap, lame-ass piece of shit, you know? This will do for now.”

He pulled a little plastic bag from another drawer. The bag was half-filled with something that looked like small white crystals. I frowned again.

“I thought you said it was an herb.”

He looked at me and shrugged.

“It could be.”

“Paul, what is this?” I asked gloomily. “If I will get addicted to this shit…”

“Pffft!” he snorted and threw a couple of smaller crystals into the light bulb. “Do I look like an addict?”

“Well…” I shrugged. “I don’t know. You do look like you need a haircut…”

“Right,” he muttered and pulled a lighter from his jeans pocket. “That’s, like, addiction sign number one, right there… Bad haircut…”

I laughed at that. He smiled and switched on the lighter, holding the flame underneath the glass.

“You’ll burn your fingers,” I said.

“I won’t,” he muttered. “Believe me, this is not my first time…”

I noticed that he was holding the bulb by the tube that was sticking out of it, and not by the glass itself.

“There…” he said after a minute or so. “Almost there…”

I just looked at him. I had no idea what he was doing, and how I was supposed to use it. He looked at me and sighed as if I asked him out loud.

“Like this,” he said, and then wrapped his lips around the tube, inhaled slowly, and let the smoke out of his mouth after two or three seconds.

I waved my hand in front of my face when a cloud of strange-smelling smoke enveloped me. It didn’t stink or anything. In fact, it was almost odorless. I thought it smelled a little like burned marshmallows.

“Now,” he was saying. “This is not pot, okay? Don’t hold it in for too long… Count to, like, three and let go.”

“Three…” I muttered, thinking that I was probably beyond dumb for doing this.

“Okay,” he grinned. “When I say exhale, you exhale. Got it?”

“Got it…”

I stepped closer to him and he moved the tube closer to my face. I tentatively took it in my mouth, thinking that since I already sucked Paul’s tongue a couple of nights ago, it was pretty safe for me to do so. I mean, all the germs that he had in his mouth were in mine anyway by this point. I inhaled very carefully, and he pulled the bulb away.

“Exhale,” he commanded after three seconds, and I let a cloud of smoke out of my mouth, and immediately coughed. He started laughing like it was the most hilarious thing he'd ever witnessed.

I felt the effect almost immediately. Unlike the cigarette, this was like an instant hit to the brain. My mood went from zero to a hundred in a matter of seconds. I watched Paul inhaling more, and wondered if I should do the same. Once again, he read my mind.

“One more won’t hurt you,” he said. “But no more today after this. You are a lightweight, remember?”

I looked at his grin and thought that I was right on Wednesday -- he was cute. I inhaled once more and felt like I was ready to take over the world.

…After a while, I completely forgot that I had to go home; completely forgot that I told Lex to come over at seven; and I completely forgot all about Russell and his photograph. I think it was around seven-thirty or maybe eight in the evening, and I had at least two more hits by then. I didn’t think about anything, I was too busy pulling off Paul’s clothes. I felt like I could devour him right there, on the spot. Seriously, I couldn’t remember the last time I craved someone’s body so much. It was one of the greatest feelings in the world.