Thousands of Faces

At EHS, when you join Student Council or a sports team or any student organization, they make you sign a contract saying that you will not consume drugs or alcohol and that you will not attend any party where drugs an alcohol are being consumed. Basically, you had to swear you wouldn’t go to any parties. Everyone signed this piece of paper but no one, I mean no one, took it seriously. We weren't afraid of getting caught because we knew that no one would tell on us. They'd only be telling on themselves. After the Snow Ball, I drove out to the party along with a group of girls who were cheerleaders (signed the paper). At this party was half the Basketball Team (signed the paper), the entire Girls Volleyball Team (signed the paper) people on the Track Team (signed the paper), the Golf Team, the Student Council, the Future Business Leaders of America, The Future Farmers of America... they were all there and they all signed the paper but no one got in trouble but me. I got in trouble because I was doing drugs and they were only drinking. Also, someone told on me.

The party took place at this guy’s house. I can picture his face, what he looked like but I can't remember his name. I'm finding that I’ve blocked out a lot from this night. This is an unfortunate thing to discover in the middle of writing the story that's supposed to be the climax to this serial I’ve been writing. I will do my best...

This guy was in my class and his family was moving. Somehow, he had access to his family’s empty, just moved out of house, very little furniture, etc. and his parents were not around. Perhaps they had moved on without him. Who knows. I went to the party intending not to drink. I don’t know why because I really liked to drink. For some reason this night I was making a big deal about not drinking. “I’m going but I’m not drinking,” I told everyone. (And I didn’t. I didn’t touch a drop.) I was also supposed to be the designated driver for that group of girls I had come with. I wonder how they got home? I wonder how I got home? Like I said, I can't remember.

What I do remember is the very begining of the party, standing in the kitchen of this guy's empty house. People were just hanging out. I was feeling pretty lost. I felt pretty lost most of the time those days because Mag wasn’t around and I missed her and I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. So I was standing in this kitchen trying to talk to someone that I didn’t want to talk to and who walked up to me but Jason Priestly himself, that rat bastard. He started talking to me but he was acting really weird. He keept waving his hands out in front of his face and watching them. Finally I was like, “Jason Priestly, what the fuck are you doing?” and he was like, “Traaaacers”. I didn’t know what tracers were. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I took acid,” he baited me. From what I knew about acid, if he truly was high on it, he would be running around the room screaming in tongues with his hair on fire, trying to jump out the window because he thought he could fly. “No way,” I challenged him. “If you take acid you will die.” He laughed at me, “Well I’ve taken it a lot of times and I'm not dead am I? Do you want some?” I still didn't believe him. “You have ACID. Right now. What, just like right there in your pocket?” Remember, I was still wearing the D.A.R.E. hat. Its magical powers were instructing me to “Just Say No”. I quickly disregarded the hat's instructions. “Let me see it,” I said. He took me into the other room where we could be alone. Once we were in there he stood really close to me. I could smell his Drakkar Noir. He pulled a piece of folded tin foil from his pocket and unwrapped it. “It’s just a tiny piece of paper,” I said to him in hushed tones, sort of staring into his eyes a little, hoping he would kiss me or at least think I was cute. “It is just a tiny piece of paper. Stick out your tongue.” Oh my god. I stuck out my tongue. He put the tiny piece of paper on my tongue. “Now hold it in your mouth.” I did. “Keep it there until it dissolves or you can swallow the paper or spit it out or whatever. It doesn’t matter.” I could tell he was sort of backing off. Unsure about what he had done maybe or afraid that he had given me the wrong impression or probably he was afraid that he was going to have to baby sit me all night. Whatever it was he was leaving the room. “What happens now?” I called after him. “You’ll see in about forty five minutes,” he laughed as he walked away.

Now I wish that I could tell you that forty five minutes later I was like Alice down the rabbit hole, that reality melted away and I stepped into another dimension. I wish I could tell you that I peeled off my skin and my ego, that I met past lives or talked to spirits or read people’s minds or convinced myself that I could walk on water. None of these things happened though. These things would happen to me later on, in a place more appropriate for such things, college. The reason none of these things happened to me that night is because the acid Jason Priestly gave me was not very strong. I said in my previous entry that I was tripping balls but I wasn’t really. I only said that for effect. I apologize.

After a while, I did start to feel something though. It may have been a placebo. I may very well have been faking the whole thing but I started to feel this huge surge of energy. I was sitting on a lazy boy chair, the only piece of furniture in what seemed to be the family room of the house. I was alone. There was music playing. I think it was John Cougar Mellencamp. I remember consciously taking on a sort of loner persona at this point that I would keep for the rest of the evening. Then I started dancing. I was alone in this room dancing wildly and singing loudly. People started noticing me, dancing around and they started to try and talk to me, "Hey La Ketch, nice moves, you're really dancing there." I wouldn’t talk back. I just stopped talking. I was running around, jumping on the lazy boy, running back and forth from room to room. People were like, “What the fuck is going on with her?” Jason Priestly pulled me aside at one point and told me to calm down. I put my hands up and moved them around in front my face, “Traaaacers”. Pretty soon people started catching on that I was high on acid. They started catching on because Jason Priestly told everyone, “She’s high on acid.” He didn’t tell them that he was also high on acid or that he had given me the acid just that I was high on acid. Then people started fucking with me. “Hey La Ketch, there are a bunch of spiders crawling all over your face, did you know that?” No, I didn’t know that! “Hey La Ketch, I’ll bet you could fly out that window.” It was a one story house. I knew they were fucking with me. I didn’t care. My indignance and hatred for everyone was only magnified by the drug. My mode was self destruct.

If I had stopped to think for just one moment about what I was doing, I would have come to the quick realization that I was getting myself into a heap of trouble. It was bad enough that I had taken drugs but now I was telegraphing it to the entire school. I had gotten to this point where I didn’t give a flying fuck. I was taking the wooden ladder I had used to climb to the top of the EHS food chain, dousing it with gasoline and torching it.

My only other clear memory from the evening is of me lying on my back, on the carpet of a larger room than the first. This was towards the end of the party and my straight laced Mormon friend who never drank or did any sort of illegal substance was lying next to me “taking care of me”. The ceiling was that cottage cheese, sparkily spray on stuff and I was staring up at it. She kept asking me over and over again, “What do you see? What do you see?” I thought it was really weird that she of all people would be so interested in my psychedelic visions. Maybe she thought I would be able to see God and she was hoping I would ask him something for her. Whatever the reason, she wouldn’t let up. I told her finally, “Faces. I see thousands of faces.”