That One Girl in High School | 2. Death by Mazda
I was twenty-five, a college drop-out working a nowhere job, without a care in the world. I was head-over-heels for a cute, blue-eyed natural blonde, a few months into her 18th year. It was the night of her prom; she would be graduating in a couple of months. She had her dad’s Mazda that night. I don’t remember what model, but it was big and maroon and quiet. Her dad was a psychiatrist and he didn’t exactly approve of our relationship. He said the age difference bothered him, but the fact I was going nowhere in life and happy as a lark about it probably had something to do with it. Anyway, her mom liked me and if mom’s on your side, you’re cool.
Lilly and her friend, Cassandra, went to the dance with a couple of friends. There was no way I was going to that—I never went to school when I was supposed to, I wasn’t about to start now. So, I waited at the apartment smoking a joint with my 19-year-old pixie cousin.
It was still early in the evening—still light—when they knocked on the door. Lilly came in and I hugged her happily and greeted Cassandra with her long, thick, curly hair. They had another friend, Raene, she was younger—sixteen—and had moved to St. Joe. I’d heard a lot about her, but wasn’t prepared for the full package: thin, long brown hair all braided up and gorgeous green eyes; even her teeth were pretty. I had to look away. I was crazy about Lilly and didn’t want to admit—even to myself—that Raene had floored me. She’d brought an even younger friend of hers with her and we all sat in the living room while Justin rolled another joint.
We were both in heaven, getting high with four pretty teenagers in that dimly-lit living room. We talked and laughed and watched a crazy, psychedelic computer-animation video. I’d been trying to get Justin to hook up with Cassandra. I’d decided he needed a chick to get him off the meth. He dug her, but wouldn’t make a move, no matter how hard I pushed. He didn’t make a move on Raene or her friend either. Damn pixie.
We all hung around a while planning a night of glorious debauchery. The pot would just be the start. I would buy gallons of alcohol and we’d drive to St. Joseph, where Raene and her friend would deliver us into a world of decadent anarchy. Justin left us, having to do his pixie thing. I piled in the Mazda with Lilly driving and the other three sitting in the back. I could smell spring in the air; it added to my excitement. We sped north on 29. I have no idea how fast we were driving and didn’t care. The roadside went by in a blur, like the past 25 years of my life. It had gotten dark and I liked it. When it was dark, you could fill the world ahead with whatever you wanted. I smoked and talked—to Lilly and Cassandra and Raene and the other girl. Raene didn’t say much. She didn’t have to. She was in my head.
Eventually, the conversation turned to high school.
“It’s really sad. We’ve spent all these years with these people and now it’s over,” Lilly was clearly melancholy about the situation.
I couldn’t fathom it. If her appearance hadn’t been so melancholy, I would have thought she was joking. Even if I had followed the normal route through high school, I’m sure that seven years later, I would be embarrassed to have the conversation I’d found myself in.
“Well, you know nothing really ever ends,” I said, taking a drag off my cigarette, “things just change.”
“Still, it’s sad.”
A fog had settled in as we reached further north. We cut through it, no big deal—until a deer jumped onto the highway. There was a thud, screams, swerving off the road. It happened that fast. We all got out, shaking. I held Lilly. The girls held each other. The front of the Mazda was mangled. I lit up another in an endless chain of cigarettes—I had learned to inhale them long ago.
Raene looked at me, shivering, “Can I have one of those?”
I handed her a cigarette and lit it. The flame lit up her face in the darkness there on the side of the highway and glinted from her green eyes. Shades of that cemetary a decade ago fell over the night.
We all smoked a cigarette and calmed down before getting back in the car. All momentum for the evening had been lost. I decided to go home and the girls decided to go to Cassandra’s house.
I was still up at 3am when Justin buzzed in. He came in the living room and we watched some shitty late-night television.
“So why don’t you ask Cassandra out, man?”
“Ahh. She doesn’t want to hang out with a pixie.”
“Cassandra’s like one of the coolest chicks I know. She doesn’t judge people.”
“Man, that other chick was hot too! What is it with Lilly and her friends?”
I knew immediately which other chick he was talking about, “I don’t know. Those young ones…”
Justin nodded enthusiastically, “I think it’s because we never got laid in high school.”
“I don’t know. There’s probably more to it. I mean it’s not just you and me. On the one hand society says it’s a no-no. But on the other, those same people send their teenage daughters out in bikinis to wash cars for the cheerleader team. What the fuck is that?”
Justin packed a bowl, took a hit and passed it to me. Criticizing society always seemed to go better with the help of pot.
“Our culture is all about putting us at odds with our own biology,” I let go my breath, everything suddenly clarifying out of the ghostly exhalant, “it’s kind of sick. Actually, it’s like the very definition of insanity. You keep trying to fight your nature over and over, generation after generation and expect some sort of utopia and instead everyone just comes out of it all neurotic and fucked-up.”
Justin’s eyes lit up, “Man, I need some pixie.” He scurried off to the bedroom to do another in an endless stream of lines. He had deeper issues to nurse: an obsession with a local weather man and his pet dog.
I fell silent, sitting there trying to figure it all out.
So when are we getting more of this?
Not that I endorse it, but I’ve used speed after smoking weed in the past and always found it nullifies 90% of the weed high–IMO, it makes smoking weed a bit pointless. What exactly were people’s reasons for doing speed after smoking weed in your state?
well, i personally never did meth, so i can’t really say. but, the people i’m writing about would take pretty much anything that was available just because it was there. the individual in this story would wake up with a joint the way i would wake up with a cigarette. he’d then smoke continuously all day. so… it’s not so much a matter of mixing speed and pot, more like while in the “ground state” of being stoned, he would take speed. although, there were periods where he was doing speed pretty much constantly too. i guess the best way to put it is: “reason” is totally not applicable here.