Dancing with Molly (9 page)

When I turned the corner into the hallway where my locker is, I saw Jess first. She was unloading her backpack and talking to
Carson. He was actually leaning against my locker. When he saw me, he gave me the biggest smile over Jess's head, and it made me smile automatically. He hadn't forgotten, and he wasn't a douche. He was actually a nice guy, and we'd had a nice time.

Jess whirled around and saw him staring at me, then looked back at me with a big, mischievous grin on her face. She said my makeup looked hot, and I blushed a little and told her she wasn't supposed to point it out in front of Carson. She laughed and said, Him? Oh, he's just hanging around to ask you out this weekend because he's got a mad crush on the hottest band geek in school.

She slammed her locker and left before I could yell at her.

Carson was laughing, and I told him that I needed to get into my locker. He said I'd have to pay the toll. I asked him how much that would cost me. He said, One kiss, and a date on Friday night.

Then he leaned down and gave me a sweet little kiss on the lips right there in the middle of the hallway.

I almost fell down. I couldn't believe it. Is this my life now?

As I put my stuff in my locker and grabbed the books I needed for English, I asked him if he was serious about the date on Friday. He asked why he would joke about something like that. I just shrugged and told him that if it was just going to be
us, Jess wouldn't be there. There'd be no molly. Carson frowned and put his thumb under my chin and gently directed my face up to look him in the eyes. He said he wasn't into my drug hookups. He was into me.

He says he just really wants to hang out with ME.

Why is that so hard for me to believe? I mean, why shouldn't he want to just hang out with me?

I marched my legs off in band practice this week. I think Mr. Peterson is nervous we're going to slack off during the summer, so he's been like a freaking slave driver.

At least the marching has taken my mind off this whole date with Carson. We've seen each other every day at school, and eaten lunch together with Jess and Kelly and sometimes Reid and Ashley—although Ashley has only let that happen twice. I think she's still pissed about the other night. Anyway, I'm still nervous about being out alone with Carson. Without everyone else around to help carry the conversation, I'm going to be this really lame, boring person.

I know that the whole point of tonight is for us to spend some time getting to know each other, but I sort of wish there were going to be other people on the date. I especially wish
that Molly were coming. (Oh god. That's so lame that I just used the name of the drug like it's the name of a friend.) Is that the way I really feel? All I know is that I wish I could feel all the time what Molly makes me feel when I'm rolling. Maybe not the visual stuff like the eye twitching and the light tracers. I just wish I felt as confident and bold and sure of myself. I'm afraid I'll be a tongue-tied idiot when Carson comes to pick me up.

Mom is way thrilled that I'm going out with him again. She tried to hug me and jump up and down in the kitchen and squeal like she did with Ashley. I was like, Um, absolutely not. She begged me to bring him in when he gets here, but I made him promise me that he would just text me from the curb.

I just think that molly makes it easier for me to relate to people—at least to a hot guy like Carson. I suppose I shouldn't need outside help with that. Ashley sure doesn't. But she's used to being pretty and popular and all that jazz. This is insane. I know I can't go around rolling on molly every time I want to go on a date. I logged on to that online forum and read all these posts by kids who did molly at their actual proms—not the after parties, but actually at their schools DURING the prom. It was crazy to read about it, but I get it now. I understand why it's something that people do. There is this one girl
who was all high-and-mighty and judgmental. She reminded me of Ashley. She was posting all these links to articles about this guy in London who was nineteen and died of a “bad batch” of molly. It was all over the news, and the
Guardian
had several big articles about it.

Still, most of the other people on the forum posted about how those stories are few and far between, and most of the other deaths attributed to molly (or just ecstasy) are because people don't get enough water and get dehydrated. I would never be dumb enough not to drink enough water. And Kelly always tests the stuff that we do, so we'll never have to worry about a “bad batch”—whatever that means.

I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous.

I wonder if it'll change when I see him? Like on Monday at my locker, when I saw Carson there talking to Jess, all my nerves just disappeared.

I'm going to go check my hair and makeup one more time before he gets here. When I got home from band practice, I took a shower and tried to blow my hair out straight. It sort of worked. It's not nearly as sleek as when Robin did it at the salon, but it's not frizzy, which is a step in the right direction.

Last night was not a total disaster. I mean, it definitely got off to a rough start, mainly because I felt completely tongue-tied with Carson. It wasn't too big a deal because we were going to dinner and a movie. We got burritos at Carson's fave burrito joint. It's not superfancy or anything, but he told me the restaurant serves sustainable and humanely raised pork, beef, and chicken products, and it was nice and casual. At least we didn't go to some fine-dining establishment where I would've worried about which fork to use with which course. These burritos came wrapped in silver foil, and we ate them with our hands.

Still, I felt . . . awkward just hanging out with Carson. I wore cute jeans that I think make my butt look good, and some little silver flats with a V-neck T-shirt and a bra that keeps everything lifted front and center. I caught him staring a couple times, which is a job well done on my part. But he wasn't gross or anything—I mean, he can definitely hold eye contact, and maybe that was the problem: Carson is so good-looking that he sort of takes my breath away.

So he kept asking me questions and I'd just catch myself staring at his perfect eyes, or his perfect jawline, or his perfect nose, or his perfect lips, and then he'd say, Yo. Everything okay?

And I'd blush and take a big bite of my burrito and then
ask him to repeat the question with my mouth full of food, and then blush worse because I was talking with my mouth full, then hold up a finger and finish chewing and swallowing and then ask him to repeat the question again, and then, while he was talking, I'd get distracted by his eyes, or his nose, or his lips, or his jaw AGAIN . . . and . . . well. Yeah. So that's how the whole meal went.

The movie was just okay. It was based on one of those books where the world is a dark and gloomy place and impossibly gutsy girls and impossibly handsome boys fight battles to the death to outsmart evil alien overlords. Somewhere in the middle of the film, Carson jumped when one of the evil alien overlords dropped out of an elaborate set of twenty-second-century ductwork in the core of a spaceship that was housed in a grain silo somewhere in Nebraska. (Yes. Nebraska is apparently where the alien overlords will set up their silo-hidden space fleet in the coming nuclear winter.) Carson jumped so high that I think his entire body came off his chair in the theater.

For the first time all night, I felt the tiniest bit brave, and stopped wishing I had the chemical courage of a dose of molly for just long enough that I was able to reach over and grab his hand, which was white-knuckling the armrest. And you know what happened? He glanced over at me, smiled, and whispered, Thanks!

After the movie, we were mostly quiet on the way home. Carson put his car in park by the curb about a block away from my house. He asked if we could talk and I said yes. Then he asked me if anything was wrong. I'm not sure what came over me, but I decided to just be completely honest with him. I told him that I feel like I'm just really bad at going on dates—especially the conversation part. He said that I wasn't bad at it when we went to prom, and I told him that was because I didn't have a week to be nervous about it. It just sort of happened that night—and then we danced, and had the pot and the molly to help me relax.

He reached over and put his hand on my leg, and kissed me, first just a peck, and then I leaned into him again and we kissed for a long time—until the console between the front seats started digging into my side, and I guess something wasn't sitting so well in his pants because he was digging at his fly for a second, and whispered, Damn, girl. You got me all riled up.

I laughed, and he smiled at me and grabbed my hand again. That little moment—where he wasn't afraid to laugh at himself—made me say something else. I blurted out: I've just been nervous all night that you don't like me.

He just shook his head and looked at me like I was crazy. He said, How could I not like you? Then he explained that
if he didn't like me he wouldn't be here, and told me that he wasn't into playing games. He said he was relieved that we'd talked about it because he was afraid he'd been turning me off all evening. I practically yelled NO! at him, and assured him that he was one of the sexiest human beings on the planet. I couldn't believe that HE was worried about ME liking HIM. I mean, in what world does that happen? As if I could EVER not like him. . . .

I told him I was sorry I had been so weird and the conversation had been so screwed up over dinner.

He leaned over and kissed me again, long and hard on the mouth. I leaned into him and kissed him right back. His tongue on mine still tasted like peanut M&M's from the movie theater. He whispered, Conversation is overrated anyway.

I have to say that I completely agree.

So . . . I was just in the middle of texting with Carson. He sent me a text that said:

Thinking about you.

Then another one that said:

Thinking about kissing you.

Then a third one that said:

Let's do more of that.

I was about to text him back when Ashley came into my room and closed the door behind her, like she was being chased. I asked if everything was okay, and she looked haunted, like she was afraid to walk across the carpet in my bedroom because it was actually not carpet but a pool of acid that might eat away her feet if she moved from the door.

Finally she ran over to my bed and jumped on it next to me like she was a little kid. She had this weird, guilty look on her face. I mean, I don't know what else to call it. She looked like she had eaten a whole cake or broken a window or something. I told her to hold on a second so I could text Carson back. Just as I was about to press send on a text that said:

More kissing could be arranged. . . .

Ashley blurted out something I never thought I'd hear her say: I want to do ecstasy. Or molly. Or whatever you call it.

I just stared at her and blinked, and forgot all about the text I was going to send. Ashley immediately started explaining in a low voice that Reid had been bitching and moaning ever since prom about how he didn't get to roll with us, and putting pressure on Ashley to roll with him at the school's graduation party, where everyone stays in the school and gym so nobody kills themselves drinking and driving around to parties.

Anyway, turns out Reid is really keen on Ashley rolling with him at this party (which, I think sounds like a TERRIBLE idea—rolling at a school-sponsored party), and so she started quizzing me about ecstasy and molly, and what the differences were. I told her all that I knew about it—just that ecstasy was usually cut with something and that molly was supposedly “pure” MDMA, which Kelly tested to make sure of with her little kit.

I told Ashley about how I felt when I was on ecstasy. She thought maybe it made you trip and see scary stuff, like acid would. I told her that the only visual stuff I'd experienced was pretty—like lights dancing around—and that coming down was no fun the first time, but that it had gotten easier since then. Also, that coming down from molly didn't seem like a big deal at all.

Ash asked if I was nervous about it hurting my brain or
dying, so I showed her the online forum I'd been reading, and she lay on my bed and read several of the threads. Then she asked me point-blank if it was “fun.” I told her that molly was more fun to me than regular ecstasy. I said that when I was high on molly I felt the way I'd always wanted to feel: confident, pretty, in control; like I loved everyone, even people I normally didn't like very much, and also like everything was going to be all right.

After a while she closed my laptop and nodded. She told me she wasn't sure if she wanted to do it or not. Suddenly I was the one who felt guilty. It's one thing for me to do drugs, but it feels like a completely different thing to encourage my little sister to do them. I told her that she shouldn't let anybody pressure her into doing anything—especially not Reid. I don't think she took that very well, because she sort of narrowed her eyes at me and huffed out of the room.

I can't help it. I think Reid is a big tool.

I hit send on the text to Carson after Ashley left my room. He wrote back immediately:

YEHAAAW!

Which made me LOL.

I told Carson that Ashley asked me about molly because Reid was trying to get her to do it at the graduation party. He told me that Reid had been talking to him about the same thing. The whole thing snowballed when Ashley and Reid joined me and Jess for lunch. Of course, Jess thinks it's the best idea in the world, and immediately said she'd ask Kelly about getting some. I tried to put the brakes on the idea of doing drugs at a school-sponsored event, but when I did that, Ashley took it as her cue to act like I was trying to tell her not to do molly, and started insisting that she wanted to.