Christmas came and went. Nothing special. Nothing particularly bad and nothing particularly good. I was still bored, apathetic and tired of life. Christmas cartoons, turkey, and a quiet end to the quiet month of December.

January was approaching, and I was stuck in the house for all winter break. One day, my mom sat down to talk to me, pensive and serious.

“Listen, I know New Year’s Eve is soon,...

It was nearly winter break by the time I’d caught up on all my missed work, and my grades were still terrible, my life still boring and lonely. Everything felt like it was going downhill.

One frozen Wednesday in December, I was sitting in my room, flipping through this pretty underground magazine, when I saw it: _The Paranoids_, an italicized heading along the mid-section of the paper.

My jaw fel...

Monday morning came too quickly. I spent the whole weekend sleeping, staying home from school Friday because I’d only gotten _home_ at two a.m. I was stressing out about school, having three weeks worth of work to complete before winter break. I’d grown a fear of having to repeat the tenth grade after a series of stressful conversations with my parents.

I got The Looks from almost _everyone_ as s...

It was about eight in the morning and the way I started off November was by pissing into a cup in a dirty police station somewhere near the U.S. border.

I was still nervous and jittering, my heartbeat swift, but I was coming down and exhausted still. Ana was in hysterics the whole time because, due to her “harboring a runaway,” she was facing “legal issues” that made my eyes fall away guiltily. S...

Almost every day until Halloween was like that: wake up at two or three in the afternoon, watch TV and get stoned, until the sun went down, when coffee would be drunk, and then, if no party was going on in Underground, we would head off to whatever parties, bars, or shows would have us, until the early hours of the morning, where I would make stupid decisions and end up in Wyatt’s bed, where he’d ...

After an Ana-ordered midnight shower in the previously-unknown upstairs bathroom, I was exhausted, and sat down on the couch, opposite the strung-out pair of Ray and Sky, who were watching _Rebel Without A Cause_ with constricted pupils and half-closed eyelids.

I watched the movie sleepily, braiding back my damp hair, while James Dean acted all angsty and smoked cigarettes and stuff.

People stag...

I blinked my eyes awake, the evil taste of unbrushed teeth and too-much vodka stuck in my mouth. I licked my too-dry lips and pulled myself to sit up.

Apparently, I’d fallen asleep on one of the couches upstairs, face burrowed in a pillow with my legs over one of the armrests.

“Finally, you’re awake.”

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and looked up- Wyatt was sitting beside me, leather-and-denim...

I gaped at the lamp. It looked like it was glowing… Dust floating, visible, through the rays of magical, man-made sunshine. Was it _meant_ to glow like that? And I gaped at all the colours of this van: rich, leprechaun green, sea-and-sky sapphire blue, blood-like, lava red, bold, sunshine yellow. It was like a magnified geometry class for the opposite of colour blind people. It was like the world ...

I stared at the crumbly, stucco ceiling, laying on my back on the mattress, which sat, desolate, on the floor. My mind was numb, yet racing, and my heartbeat was flying, bipolar, all over the place. I was fiddling violently with the frayed edge of the thin blanket that fell over me. It was probably about eight in the morning, and the sun had just risen, shining cool rays of light into the dusty, s...

Not knowing where to go, I ambled over to lurk near the stage, eyeing the band members of the band that I guessed was The Paranoids. Lots of hair, I noticed, and lots of swearing.

I got kind of distracted, absentminded, and was jerked out of my thoughts when a skinny Indian girl jumped on stage and started screaming about the band and how we’d all better have a good time. Everyone started clappin...