Vodka and a Bottle of Pills

              Staring at the bottle in the medicine cabinet, I rethink what I’m about to do. I reach for it anyways and open the cap and pour 8 pills in the palm of my hand. Examining each on in my hand, before popping them in, I read the label:

OxyCotton: 700MG DO NOT EXCEED 2 PILLS…

                  I pop all 8 in at once and down them with the last of the vodka I had bought yesterday. I stare into the mirror waiting for the painkillers to kick in. Finally I feel that rush I was eagerly waiting for. The smirk on my face gets bigger as my eyes dilate and my heart rate slows. I turn around out of the bathroom and plop myself onto my couch. I turn the channel to “Adult Swim” and the Oblongs are on. When I’m high, there’s nothing serious going on, everything is the most hilarious thing in the world. The neighbors next door to me in my apartment complex yell “shut the fuck up we’re trying to sleep here!” I turn down my volume still laughing but not as loud. I drink up whatever is left in the bottle. Talking to myself I say, “Dammit I’m still fucking thirsty!” I finally fall asleep.

            I’m only 17 and I’ve been taking the same painkillers since I knew how to deviously hide and come up with an excuse to get more. If I had to estimate how many I’ve taken it would be at least 300 bottles that have 100 pills in each bottle. I hate when I don’t have that rush of highness. I have to keep my supply of them up or I go crazy, fall apart and try to commit suicide. When I was a little girl before my dad had left me and my mother, he told me that I should never be like him or mom, and that he loved us both. Too bad that I got into drugs a long time before he left or I probably would have never done them in the first place like he asked. But that day I was so high off my pills that I just nodded and agreed. Sooner or later I tried getting help; I talked to therapists about my problem but never told them the true extent of my “illness”. I only told them that I feel better with the pills and that I only took about a bottle in a month, which is a total lie. They all tried to help me but I always went back to my withdrawal which is filled with depression, anxiety, anti social, and paranoia.  My last girlfriend I had was about two months ago. Her name was Olivia and she helped me through the process of quitting. Throughout our relationship I found out she was cheating on me with another girl. I didn’t want her to dump me or me to dump her because I felt as if I had somebody to live for. My request went unanswered. She dumped me because her other girlfriend made her. She apologized numerous times but the words “it’s fine” or “I'm okay” never came out of my mouth after that day, When she broke up with me, my mind went right back to pills. I got back into my daily routine fitting in school with pills. I take 7 in the morning before school, take 8 at lunch, and 10 after school. I didn’t have many friends. I just had my close girls who sometimes got high with me and my gay bestie who would help scope out new girls who would be interested in me.

      Awhile ago my mother had died because of a brain aneurism from taking coke. She was never there for me and it never was a real big loss. I lived on my own when I was 14 the courts let me because they saw that I was an achieving student at Broadhigh High School. I only did coke once, and when I did do it, I knew never to go back to that shit. It makes you crazy and the side effects are not gorgeous. I stick to my two painkillers, OxyCotton and Vicadin.

      When I run out of Oxy or Vicadin it’s hard to cope with the side effects, I make sure I keep my supply up but if my dealers don’t have my pills I steal them from the pharmacy I used to work for. That doesn’t happen very often though. My dealers are pretty smart when it comes to my pills because I’m the only one who buys off of them the most and they need to keep their supply up or I won’t buy from them. My last dealer, Tony Gonzales went short 5 pills and he never got service from me again. Sadly, he gave me more than 100 pills a bottle, but that was a year ago when my dependence on them were much needed. My dealers now, Jerry and D.I.G, keep my supply up high, literally. It’s funny because they are my 3rd and 4th cousins twice removed.

I wake up, pop in my pills like always and walk downstairs to the corridor where my Purple Porsche Convertible car awaits me. I thank Miles, my care taker; I call him gramps, and start the engine, rev it a little bit and drive off.

            My car is amazing; it’s one of the models my dad worked on when he left me and Sonia. This is the mansion in which he lived his luxurious life away from mom and me. He lived it up in Fortsfield while we were stuck in the ghettos of Palmay. I didn’t figure out that dad lived like this until he died, which was about three long years ago. I started high school that year, there was a lady with long brown curly hair who stepped in Mr. Richards’s class and excused herself asking if he could borrow me and that it would take a while, whispering something in Mr. Richard’s ear. Know this; I was VERY high that day, she signals me to come, I follow her and she takes me to the guidance counselors’ office. She tells me to sit in one of the comfy chairs, and that she has some very, very rough news.

Her voice was raw, like she’d been crying before she came to the class. “Jaylyn, this is going to be very hard for you to hear, and I know you didn’t know him very well, but….” She trailed off in her own thoughts.

“Yes?” My highness starting to wear off, figuring out that whatever is about to come out of her mouth is going to make me freak out more than not having my pills.

“Your, your father- Scott West- he passed away just yesterday. I tried to find you but you……” I cut her off, freaking out just like I anticipated.

“HE DIED!? HE FUCKING DIED!? HOW COULD HE LEAVE ME HERE WITH THAT BITCH!! HE ISNT IN MY LIFE FOR 15 YEARS AND NOW THIS!!!?......” I screamed throwing pretty much everything I see, freaking out that my father would leave me like this even though he can’t help it that he died.

She realizes I’m in doubt or something extreme is going on inside my head, being that is, a total breakdown of my life right before this lady’s eyes. She tried to comfort me as best she could but it didn’t work, I wasn’t paying any attention to her. Everything, everything in my mind was going berserk, I needed more pills. I needed to get that rush of high again; I needed to stop feeling this pain that is sinking deep in my chest, this feeling of being sorry that I ever hated my father. These feelings grow, it over takes my body, I run out of the room and through the glass doors of the office towards my locker, breaking down completely when I get there. Tears flowing like river water down a stream along a fast current, my mind overflows. Remembering everything that’s gone on in my life, breakups, loves, guilt, tragedy, everything flows in at once. Trying to open my locker repeating my combination, “12-12-10” I keep messing up. My body shaking equivalent to the shaking of a child having a seizure, I pause. I pause my mind, controlling the movements. I pause my hand and slowly repeat my combination on the lock. Finally with great effort, the locker opens. I shuffle through all of my things, unable to find the bottle. 

The model my dad made was just in testing, I found it in the garage when I first moved out into the mansion. It needed work done, I loved cars. I loved the smell of the interior how they looked when they’re freshly painted. I was now rich so I got all the tools I needed to fix it up and make it run smoothly. Of course I added my own touches to it and made it look like a girls’ professional sports car. When I first started Broadhigh people saw me as a rundown girl who had a crack head mother and a down beat dad who left us. Which wasn’t a lie at all. They quickly learned that my life was turned around spontaneously and lead me to have a really expensive car. Nobody knows how I have that car, they think that since my parents died I sold their things and paid for it that way. Stupid humans.

          Parking perfectly in the front of the school right near the entrance of the school doors, I get myself back together and look around me. Brushing myself off as if I have hair on my outfit I open the door of my car and step out. Fixing my shirt yet again hoping that nobody notices me, I approach the girl I’ve been waiting to talk to for 2 years. Calmly I walk towards her then wink at her, walking away mysteriously. I know she noticed me because I can hear her friends talking about it saying; “She just TOTALLY winked at you” one of her friends exclaim “she did!?” she wonders “YES!!” her other friend exclaims even louder. “Go talk to her!” another one of her friends tells her in exclamation. “Wait, doesn’t she have all my classes though?” she asks. I turn around knowing I’m in the clear to see, she’s smiling quite largely and blushing. Her friend that told her to go talk to me exclaims that even though ‘we’ have the same classes doesn’t mean she shouldn’t chase after me. She bites her lip and sighs looking at her other friends for approval. She turns around and starts walking the way I went so I slowly continue walking to my locker which is two lockers away from hers. She almost starts to run towards me as far as I can tell, and she grazes her hand against my ass and smirks at me and continues walking. Biting my lip I carefully walk up to her and kiss her cheek then walk away to my locker. I could feel her cheeks blush as soon as I kissed her. She walks to her locker and she’s smiling really big again. My cheeks are flushed pink; I take out my books and switch my backpack in my locker. I glance at her and I see that she’s watching me. I flush with an array of reds across my face. I turn back to my locker and bite my lip and turn back towards her and walk up to her and softly but courageously say, “I was wondering if you’d like to walk to homeroom with me?” She blushes her brown hair pulled up into a pony tail, and stutters out softly, “I would love that.” She smiles. I hold out my hand and she takes it without hesitating. We walk to homeroom together. As we’re walking we both start to speak, “I was—” we both pause “if you would---” I let her speak, “be….. Girlfriend?” I stop in the middle of the hallway, and look down at her smiling big time. Unsure if I heard her correctly I ask her blushing wildly, “Did you just ask me to be your girlfriend?” I blush again and continue walking her hand still in mine. She blushes and moves up and kisses my cheek, I move my face on accident and she kisses me. We both blush, and she kisses me again on the lips. “Why yes, yes I did.” She’s smiling wildly with a hint of blush in her beautiful face. The bell rings and we both blush even more than we are already and I take her other hand and kiss her softly. “Good, because I was about to ask you that same question.” 



Finally, off to my next class, with my of course beautiful girlfriend. This time it’s English, my second favorite subject besides lunch. Lunch is my most favorite first of all is because I can pop my pills and nobody see’s. Second of all, I love food.

Mr. Jamonson’s or better known as English know it All- caught a glimpse of me traveling through the class to sit next to Eclipse, he approaches me and asks me why I was so late for class. I show him my hand and give him that look of ‘I’ll explain later’. Instead of him just leaving me alone, he persists. I sit next to Eclipse and try to ignore him as best as possible, but he keeps at it. I go for my IPod and turn it up as loud as it can go, putting the headphones in my ears I reach for my hood to my sweatshirt and before I can pull it over my head, Eclipse stops me and pulls the ear buds out of my ears and tells me to just tell the teacher what happened. I do. I get up put my IPod on the desk, let go of my hood and tell the teacher straight up.

“I broke my fucking wrist beating the shit out of the Carson group. Iight? Got it? Can I get back to fucking work now and you can teach your class?” My fists tense up, ready to hit the next person who touches me. Ready to blow, I calmly say- “Need every detail or are we done here?”

The teacher looked at me wide eyed and turned around, walking to the board. I sigh and look at Eclipse, wondering if I went total crazy ‘mofo’ in front of her. She smile at me and sighed, looking at the board then back at me and made the =/ face. I felt terrible now. I look at her and say “I’m sorry for going crazy like that.” I sigh and make the same face as she did before and put one of my ear buds in and blast it. Eclipse stares at me, and takes the bud out. I ask her why she did that and she just shrugs saying she didn’t care that I did that and that I was protecting her. I smile at her happy to know I don’t look like the monster, even though I know I am under the mask I’m hiding in.

Class ended, and the bell rang- time for lunch. Thank goodness for lunch. It keeps me away from people, except for my amazing girlfriend. The Carson group doesn’t eat lunch at this hour so we’re 100% safe from them, at least until Physical Education. Which is the worse part of the day.

Walking down the hall to our lockers, hand in hand, the Carson group approaches us. Once again, I get ready to fight if they make a move. This time it wasn’t the twins. [They aren’t really twins, they just seem like it cause of their names] It was the other set, this time they were actually twins. They had smile on their face, the kind of smile that shouts- “trouble”. I look at them when they come up to my locker. They slam the locker door before I could get my health book out, and look at me with the face that screams “you’re gonna pay”. I stare them dead in the eye and softly say with a hint of anger, “need me to beat your asses too, or did your friends learn their lesson?”

They keep looking at me, I can tell they have hesitation in their faces but they say with smirks on their faces in sync, “No, we just wanted to say that you’re gonna get fucked up in gym.” They left right after they said that, slamming the door to every locker that was open, purposely missing Eclipse’s locker and push her into it instead.

         My fists knew not to tense because it would cause an array of spiraling pains but they did anyways. I punch the locker, face turning a wash of red, I hold back running after them. I look at Eclipse, who looks scared shitless because I just showed another side of me I wish she’d never seen. My fists relax, and my face turns a ghostly white, I look at her with sadness in my eyes. I light smile appears on her face, then dissipates into thin air, leaving a painful grin on her face as she holds her shoulder that was slammed into the locker. I look at her concerned, “Are you okay?” I press my hand against her shoulder and she lets out a whine of pain. “Yea, I’m fine.” I take her hand and say “I know you’re not, I need to take you to the nurse.” She pulls her hand away and says “No, really, I’m okay.” I sigh, knowing I don’t want to fight with her and agree, “Okay, okay. But, promise me, if you’re still in pain later just go to the nurse?” She looks at me and nods, holding the hand that isn’t wrapped up in gauze and kisses my cheek, “I promise.”