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 feed me Valium if I couldn’t sleep.

And then, on October 31st, 1996, it happened.

Pixies’ _Is She Weird_ was playing softly from the stereo, as Ana, Kat, and I dressed up in our Halloween costumes. Ana, ever-creative, sported a green-painted face and black witch’s attire. Kat’s costume consisted of a white blouse, a short white skirt, a drawn-on mole above her lip, and an insistence that she was a ginger Marilyn Monroe. My costume was a drunken idea, a supposed-to-be-funny joke, some sort of pun. Cheap pink wig, Wyatt’s leather jacket, and someone’s sunglasses, and I was supposed to be Layne Staley. I can’t remember who thought it was funny, but I guess it was because of my name.

The Halloween party began at nine-thirty, with The Doors’ album _Strange Days_- much classier than the monster mash- blaring loud over the speakers. Drinking games ensued, everyone in costume.

I flew, laughing like a madwoman, into a wall, pink wig askew. A bruise formed right on the side of my head, and I giggled at my stupidity.

“Hey, Layne!” Called Ray, gesturing for me to go over to him, Wyatt, and Kat.

I lurched over with a grin, singing along drunkenly: _“Love me two times, I’m goin’ away, love me two times, I’m goin’ away, love me two times…”_

__

“You alright?” Kat asked me, holding me upright slightly.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m ok-a-a-a-y…”

“Want some?” Ray held out a couple of pale red pills, discreetly offering.

“_Ok-a-a-a-y…_” I lunged, right knee buckling towards, and clumsily took the pills, downing them with a choking cough. “Thanks, man.”

Wyatt glanced sideways at me and took a sip of his drink. “Cool wig.”

“Oh, thanks!” I giggled, my head suddenly feeling lighter than it had before. “I’m supposta be Layne _Staley_, ya know.”

Wyatt and I ended up in some sort of meant-to-be swing dance, laughing manically as we drunkenly fell into each other, Jim Morrison’s voice crooning _My Eyes Have Seen You_.

The darkened Halloween party began to feel lighter as those pills, whatever they were, kicked in, making everything seem lighter, faster, more agile and almost feline.

Wyatt and I twirled each other around, giggling like children, as in-costume people seemed more and more distant, the music still blasting. And then we were making out in the corner of the room, bodies interlocked, until I had to rush to the bathroom to vomit up bile and alcohol, where he held my wig on my head until I could get up off the floor and get another drink.

The floor was swaying under me, dizzying flashes dancing across my vision, until I could hardly stand up, let alone walk in a straight line. Midnight rolled around and I felt ready to fight a cop.

“_All riiiiight_!” I screamed, crashing into a Frankenstein’s side, who muttered something angrily as I staggered away. I found Ana flirting with a long-haired hippie guy at the bar, and I shouted at her, “Hey, man, where’d hell’s Wyatt? Where’s he?”

“Wyatt?” She asked, squinting her eyes at me. Her eyes, which were hugely dilated and not just from the dark. “He’s… He’s… I dunno! I think he’s with Sky, I dunno!”

“C’mon, help me find ‘em!” I snatched her arm, hauling her off the bar stool, and she tumbled into me. The hippie guy looked confused as Ana and I lurched around to find Wyatt.

It didn’t take long to find him, smoking by an open window with Sky, who fidgeted nervously and compulsively.

I fell into Wyatt, knocking his cigarette, and kissed his neck with a goofy grin smeared across my face. “What’s up, what’s up, what’s up?” I mumbled incoherently.

“We’re gonna split,” he mumbled back. “Sky’s car. Drive.”

“Cool…”

Ana pulled me off of Wyatt and shrieked, “You comin’? You comin’, Layne? Mr. Staley?” She giggled manically at that last part, as to her, it was completely hilarious.

“What? _Yeeaaah_, I’m comin’!” I shrieked back, compulsively giggling back at her.

The four of us stumbled our way to Sky’s car, which was trashed and ancient. Me and Ana took the back seats while Wyatt rode shotgun and Sky, still twitching nervously, started up the car and put in a _Smash_ CD- he was a huge The Offspring fan, as was revealed in one of many late-night, baked as hell conversations.

It was four in the morning on a Thursday, on _Halloween_, which meant long, empty highways to be sped on. Sky hit the gas and we were off, _Self Esteem_ screaming with all the windows down to let in the cold late-night wind, my and Ana’s hair whipping at our faces. I’d gotten ahold of some more of those pills from Ray and my head was lighter than air again.

Sky’s legs were spasming and he wasn’t in the right mind to drive, Wyatt started to scream that he should pull over. We were going to fast; my mind seemed to be flying along at the same speed as the car.

“_Skylar_!” His long hair was flying everywhere, obscuring his sight. “Sky, hey, man! Stop’a damn car, c’mon!”

“Shut up, okay, Wyatt? I’m _okay_.” Funnily enough, The Offspring’s _Bad Habit_ was playing when police sirens began to wail behind us.

“It’s the cops!” Ana started to blubber, bawling something about the law. “It’s the cops, it’s the _cops_!”

“_Pull over_!” Wyatt, drunk, leaned over to grab the wheel, which caused the car to jerk back and forth along the highway, careening from one side to the other madly.

The police car behind us was shouting at us to pull over, with Wyatt agreeing, with Ana screeching in hysteria. My lungs spasmed and wanted to hyperventilate, stress crammed in every inch of my body. At the top of my lungs: “_Sky_!”

He barreled to the left side of the road, slowing down until the car came screeching to a bumpy halt. A police officer promptly rushed up to Sky’s window, while Ana was still in mad hysterics.

“Is- is she _okay_?” Stammered the officer, a younger guy looking shaken.

“Ana! Ana, calm _down_! Calm the fuck down!” I shook her shoulders in fear, shouting over her until her vocals stopped and she was left heavy-breathing, her hair blown around her head as if styled like Robert Smith.

Sky, irate, shoved his license at the cop, muttering, “I ain’t drunk, man!”

The cop looked over his license, then squinted his eyes at Sky in examination. “Your pupils, Mr. Burroughs, are unusually constricted. Do you happen to be intoxicated, Mr. Burroughs?”

“Fuck no!” _Was he?_

__

“Listen,” Sky snapped, glowering at the officer, “I don’t do drugs, I’m not _drunk_, okay, so can ya fuck off so me and my friends can enjoy Hallo-fucking-ween? Thanks!”

And that’s how we ended up waiting around in a police station at six in the morning on the first of November. And that’s when the worst happened.

Two cops apparently seemed to recognize me, and asked me my name.

“Uh, my name is Layne.” I still had my stupid pink wig on, makeup running down my face, with Wyatt’s leather jacket heavy on my shoulders.

“Full name?” Asked the female officer, with a stern, anxious look that reminded me of my mother.

“Elena, uh, Elmer.” Then, I paused, my head throbbing, and asked, “Why?

“You’re reported missing, Miss Elmer,” the other officer, a large man with a gray goatee. “Were you aware of this?”

I laughed nervously, biting my lip. “I ain’t… I ain’t missing. That must be… I dunno, no, I’m not missing.”

“Well, yes, you are. You’re _underaged_, too, it appears.” The woman looked over something on her clipboard. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to contact your parents.”

“Wait, what? Why? I’m _nineteen_.” I was lying in vain now, my skin itching with anxiety. “I’m _nine_teen, man, you don’t get it.”

“It says here that you’re _fifteen_, Miss Elmer…”

“Well, it’s wrong!” I was getting worked up, my head racing hysterically. “It’s wrong! Please, don’t call my parents- they won’t _answer_, please, don’t bother, please-”

The woman shrugged, walking away, and the man quickly followed after her.

“Jesus Christ!” I said loudly to myself, leaning back in the plastic blue chair. I gazed over the police station, the same as every other one I’d been in. I stared at the _Drugs Screw You Up_ poster for a very long time, until Wyatt flopped down beside me with a sigh.

“Sky’s in the shit,” he told me. “Might lose his license. Might do time. I don’t fucking know…”

“Fuck,” I muttered, mostly to myself, then turned in my seat to look at him, and I said, “Listen, I’m missing, you know that? So the cops are gonna call my parents to come and get me. ‘Cause I ain’t exactly _nine_teen.”

His eyebrows knit together in confusion. “What’re you saying, Layne?”

“I’m _seven_teen,” I lied again, fear-stricken. “I shouldn’t have lied, right, but…” And suddenly, I felt like throwing up from nerves, my heart going so lightning fast that it made me sick. “I mean, I _like_ you, okay, I _like_ you, and I shouldn’t have lied about _anything_ but you gotta understand-”

“So you left home, and your parents want you back now?”

“Yeah. But, I swear- please, can we keep in touch, or something? Please.” My mind was speeding almost as fast as my heart, everything felt like it was going too fast. My stomach acids scorched my throat, bile begging to be thrown up. “I’m _high_, man…”

“Well, sure, we can stay in touch… You’re barely two years younger than me, I mean, it’s not bad or nothin’- wait, what’re you high on?” Wyatt pulled some of his hair out of his face and looked worriedly at me.

“Whatever the fuck I got from Ray!” My vision was speeding, too, at that point. “I think I’m gonna be sick…”

“Ray? What the fuck?” After a moment of silence, Wyatt kissed my cheek and passed me a sticky-note from his pocket, a sticky-note with a phone number on it. “Call me when you get home, will you?”

“Really! Really? Of course, I will.”

Conveniently, the female officer came back and told me that she’d called my parent’s house and they were driving to get me right at that very moment. “Until they get here, you’ll have to stay here.”

And, _bam_! Just like that, me and Ana locked up in a _cell_, with Wyatt and Sky right in the cell beside us.

After an hour, my head had stopped throbbing and my body was slowing down again, but I ended up vomiting in the green-painted sink.

Soon after my vomiting, another cop, a buff woman with the beginnings of a mustache, came and said that we’d have to do drug tests, something to do with Sky and his stupid fuck-up that had landed us there in the first place. The worst part was that all of us knew that we’d definitely been high on one thing or another in the past week.