Dancing with Molly

My dad gave me this journal for my birthday last year when I was a sophomore. I couldn't even remember if I still had it or not, but I saw it when I woke up this morning. I can't believe it's just been sitting on the bookshelf by my desk for over a year now, but I remember when he gave it to me I was like, what am I supposed to write in this? Nothing very exciting ever happens around here. So, I kind of can't believe I actually have something worth writing down. I also can't believe I'm really about to write it down, because Mom and Dad would freaking flip out if they ever read it. And while we're on the stuff I just can't believe, I sort of can't believe that I'm sitting upright writing anything at all because when I woke up this morning I felt like the bottom of a shoe. It was like my head was in a vise, and I wasn't entirely sure I could move my arms. All the energy in my whole body felt
like it had leaked out of my spine and dribbled onto the floor.

I suppose the ecstasy had something to do with that.

(Spoiler alert: That's the crazy thing that happened last night that I can't believe I just wrote down in this journal.)

My grandma likes to watch reruns of this old cop show on Netflix. It's called
Dragnet
, and the detective on there is always saying: Just the facts, ma'am. So, here are the facts: I did ecstasy last night for the very first time. At Jess's house. With Brandon and Pete from school, and Jess's friend Kelly. Also a fact: I am NOT the type of girl who would even CONSIDER doing ecstasy. Usually. But last night sort of tested the limits of what I consider usual. So, those are the facts.

Here's why:

Jess called me after I got home from marching band practice last night. (Yes, we still have marching band practice in April. More on that in a minute.) Anyway, she told me to come over and spend the night at her place. We do this a lot, so I didn't really think anything of it. I was especially glad that she called me because at the exact moment the phone rang, I was standing in the kitchen setting the table for dinner while Mom tossed a salad and Dad was going in and out to the deck, checking the salmon he was grilling on a cedar plank. I was really excited because after we all sat down I was going to bust out my big news:

Our band is going to the FREAKING MACY'S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE THIS FALL.

So, I was really excited to tell everybody this, especially my mom, because she's sort of horrified that her oldest daughter is a band geek. She's always heaving these big soap-opera sighs about how ugly the uniforms are. (“I mean, really, polyester? In the twenty-first century? Couldn't they give you kids something that breathes a little?”) Anyway, I was hoping that by GETTING ON NATIONAL TELEVISION with my clarinet I might put some of Mom's epic band shame to rest, but could I do that? Oh no. No, no. Because before I could get the table set, Ashley came screaming in the front door with news of her own. She was in full-blown squeal mode:

I'M GOING TO PROM I'M GOING TO PROM I'M GOING TO PROM AND I'M ONLY A SOPHOMORE.

God. It makes my head hurt just remembering the decibel level of her voice. Needless to say, my mom started crying. CRYING. Tiny tears of joy streaming down her cheeks. She and Ashley were actually hugging and jumping up and down, my mother still holding the salad tongs and flinging baby spinach across the room. I just stood there, holding the forks and watching this until my dad came in with the salmon and looked at me like, What is going on here? I just shrugged and
finished setting the table while Ashley and Mom came back to earth and we finally all sat down to eat.

The irony of the situation, of course, is that I'm a junior this year and I have not been asked to prom. Not that I'd go if I was asked. In fact, it hadn't really crossed my mind that I'd even want to go. But of course Ashley has been asked as a sophomore. By Reid Boston. The freaking quarterback of the football team. Ashley and my mom talked nonstop about this the entire meal like they were in seventh grade at a slumber party. It sort of made my stomach hurt, but I choked down my salmon and salad and then just sat there staring at them while Ashley squealed on and on about Reid and how handsome he is and how he's got all of these football scholarship prospects and how she wasn't sure if he even knew her name before today.

Finally, she took a breath, and my dad looked over at me and said, How was your day at school, and I shrugged and said, Well, we found out that the band is going to the Macy's parade this fall. Even Ashley was excited by this—which is one of the reasons I can't hate her, even as much as I want to sometimes. She started squealing again and jumped up and gave me a hug and my dad was really excited and asked about all the details. Mom, of course, stayed quiet, just munching her baby spinach and smiling and nodding. Dad was trying to
encourage her to get more excited for me, which I appreciate but have learned is a losing battle. He looked over and said, Isn't that EXCITING, Kathleen? And Mom nodded again and said, Oh yes. It's great. I just looked at her and said, Well, it's not a prom date or anything.

There was this awkward pause and I got up and was carrying my plate to the sink when mercifully the phone rang and it was Jess saying I should come over. I had no idea what she was planning. I didn't even know that there were other people coming. I certainly didn't think I'd be doing a tab of ecstasy. Jesus. Who am I?

This is not to say that I am a prude or something. I have a cosmo every now and then when I'm at Jess's house. She likes to make them when she forces me to watch complete seasons of
Sex and the City
. Not a couple episodes—Complete. Seasons. And her mom doesn't really care if we have a drink or two as long as we don't drive. Her mom would TOTALLY care if she knew we were also smoking weed, but we only do that when our friend Brandon is around. He and Jess used to have this weird crush thing going in junior high, but that was before Jess became the big girl in our class the summer after eighth grade. She got boobs and a lot of curves that summer and sort of never looked back.

I drove over to Jess's place in my crappy little car. I guess I should be grateful for it, but I wish I drove something besides an eight-year-old hatchback. It's just like one more thing—you know? One more way that I'm a little less cool than the other girls in my class. I feel like there are all these ways that I don't measure up, starting with my weird curly brown hair and small rack and big hips. I mean—none of these things are things I have control over. I can dress it up and I used to try really hard, but after a while it just became exhausting. All the hair straightening and eyelash curling in the world just doesn't matter when you show up in a Fiesta with a dent in the side. At a certain point, I just decided I couldn't give a shit anymore. But still, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to look like Ashley and step out of a cool car and turn heads in the parking lot. Instead I'm just this girl that nobody notices. At least when I stopped with the makeup and the outfits, the cool girls stopped making fun of me. They just ignored me instead. I was just one more band geek in jeans and a hoodie.

Is it better to be mocked because people feel threatened, or just ignored because you don't even register? Am I not even worth making snide remarks about anymore? And why do I care so much?

Jeez. I have to go get some more Advil.

Oh my god. I feel so much better this morning than I did yesterday. My head still feels a tiny bit cloudy, but it doesn't hurt. And the muscles in my jaw and neck feel a lot better.

So, yesterday I wrote the facts about what happened at Jess's last night. I guess I should write the details, too. I'm still amazed that it happened. It all feels like a weird dream. AND, MOM AND DAD, IF YOU'RE READING THIS: THAT'S JUST WHAT IT WAS. A WEIRD DREAM. I DREAMED ALL OF THIS.

One tab of ecstasy and suddenly I'm a journaling psycho.

So, the details:

Got to Jess's house on Friday night and I saw Brandon's Volkswagen out front. How a burner is allowed to drive a Jetta, I'll never know. Brandon was there with this guy Pete who transferred in last semester. Jess said her parents weren't there because her dad had a big work meeting in Texas and decided to take her mom along. I'm not sure who in the hell wants to spend a romantic weekend in Houston. I guess Mr. and Mrs. Watson.

We were all downstairs on the big sectional in Jess's den, where her dad's enormous TV hangs in the middle of this giant entertainment center that's surrounded by books and pictures. Across the room is a big slider that opens onto the back patio,
where there's a hot tub and a lawn that her mom is crazy about. I have literally seen her trim parts of the grass with scissors. No lie. Hands and knees. Scissors. She claims that new growth is too delicate for a lawn mower.

The guys were passing a pipe back and forth and smoking a bowl. Pete is supertall and superskinny with a buzzed head. His eyes were really bloodshot and I could tell they'd been there smoking since school got out. He had this dopey grin on his face and passed me the pipe. I was like THANK. GOD. And took a big hit. Jess just started giggling. She asked me if Queen Ashley had struck again, and I told them the whole story about how my gorgeous little sister, who is the exact opposite of me body wise (big rack, tiny hips, straight blond hair), is going to prom as a sophomore.

Jess knows this whole routine. She's practically been part of my family drama since we were kids. After my story, she decided that we needed drinks and jumped up to make them, but Brandon stopped her by saying, Hey, I've got something better than booze. Pete's dopey grin got even bigger and Brandon pulled a baggie out of his pocket and tossed it onto the table. Jess stopped and came back and was like, Holy. Shit. Is that X?

Jess immediately called her friend Kelly, this little Asian chick who goes to St. Theresa's. They met at this restaurant
where they were both hostesses last summer, and we've hung out a couple times. Kelly looks like an anime character when she's wearing her little Catholic schoolgirl uniform. She hates the comparison, so she's got a big pink streak in her jet-black hair and most of the time when I see her she's wearing crazy clothes—like cutoff camo cargo pants and itty-bitty tank tops with sequins all over them and combat boots.

While Jess was on the phone, I picked up the baggie. My heart started racing and I felt a little nervous just holding it. There were six pills inside, each one about the size of an Altoid. They were a light green color and had little aces—like the symbol on a playing card—stamped onto them. Pete asked me if I'd ever done E and I said no and that I wasn't about to start. He just frowned in this kind of cute way and said, Aw, why not?

I shrugged and said, Oh, I dunno. Maybe the long, long line of cops that have visited our school every year since I was in fourth grade and talked about the Dangers of Drugs?

Brandon snorted. He said, Oh please. What they don't tell you is that this shit was legal until the eighties. Pete confirmed that this was true and said that shrinks used to use MDMA with their patients in therapy to help them get past traumatic events and feel better about things. Brandon said, You know those cops also showed us pictures of terrible car wrecks and talked about
the dangers of drinking alcohol and you seem to have successfully navigated that danger. It's just about being responsible, like not drinking too much and jumping into a car, right?

I don't usually take advice from potheads, but I had to admit that they were both right. I could handle a few drinks. Every adult in my life had always made it sound like the moment I swallowed a sip of alcohol I'd wind up a vegetable in a head-on collision. I knew from experience that this was not the case.