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 was under a microscope and everything was a thousand times brighter and larger.

Hours passed like seconds and then: “Layne! Layne? Hey, man, we’re _here_.”

“Where?” I asked, blinking rapidly. “Where are we?”

“_Here_!” Kat shoved me out into the cold nighttime air of Hardcore Underground’s parking lot. A shiver hit my spine, my shoulders tensed. I sneezed.

“Hey, man, you good?” Ana’s side knocked into mine, and she was giggling like a madwoman again. “Layne?”

“I’m great, yeah!” I giggled in reply to hers, shaking slightly.

Ana crashed behind the bar, pouring drinks left and right, uncontrollable, confused. Kat disappeared as soon as we got inside, while I was overstimulated, people pushing me around as they danced, clapping and whistling, at Eye Twitch, who were playing covers of some Veruca Salt song on stage.

Wyatt’s sunglasses kept falling down my face, as elbows and hips knocked into me every half a second. I could barely breathe, barely see over the crashing lights and wild sounds that I could see, flying through the air, everywhere.

_Whack!_ And then, my little red party cup went falling, slow-motion, through the air, vodka sloshing down my shirt- no, I was wearing the shirt that Ana had lent me, it was _Ana’s_ shirt. And where was that flannel I’d been wearing? It didn’t matter; it was a thousand degrees in there, anyway.

I swayed to the music, my bare arms waving in the air, as Carrie belted out some _Bruise Violet_ from the platform, as the raving lights magnified every feature. “Liar! Liar! _Liar_!” She shrieked, and people around me shrieked along.

My feet murmured about how sore they were, but my body was numbed with acid and alcohol. I felt nothing and everything all at once- sweltering and frozen, fixed together and broken, claustrophobic and alone.

Someone crashed into my side, grabbed my arm, and screamed over the music: “Layne? Layne? Layne, gorgeous?”

I rolled my eyes upwards to look, and there he was, Speed, with his wraparound sunglasses and dark hair. “Layne!” He yelled, his voice barely audible over the blaring music.

“Hey, look, it’s Speed!” I burst out into laughter, my words slurring slightly. “You made it, you _made_ it!”

“C’mon, let’s go to the bar, okay, gorgeous?” He gripped my arm and dragged me out of the partying horde, sat me down on the only open stool at the bar.

“Hey, Layne!” Ana grinned, went in for a high-five and ended up hitting me in the face. We laughed it off, and then, she asked, “Is this your friend who you said was coming? Whatshisname, your friend?”

“Oh, this’s Speed,” I told her, but I couldn’t stop staring at her long, loose braids, which looked like two Medusa’s snakes.

“Who’s this?” Speed asked, suspicion in his voice.

“My friend, Ana!” I started up in laughter, which ended in a fit of coughing. “We’re friends, right, Ana, we’re _friends_? _Fr-r-r-e-e-nds-s-s-s_…”

“You betcha! You’re neat, man! You’re neat!”

“I’s spilt a drink on your top,” I muttered, licking my chapped lips. “Sorry.”

Ana looked down at her shirt. “No, you’re good, man, you’re good.”

“No, _no_, on _this_’s shirt, I split a drink.”

“Oh, whatever.” We laughed it off again.

I snorted in my fit of giggles, and Speed whispered to me, “You aren’t _just_ drunk, are you? Layne?”

“_What_!” I replied, loudly, louder than I should’ve been. “No, man, I’m on acid!”

“Wait, what?” 

“Hey, Ana, can I get a drink?”

Ana shoved another red cup in my hand, and I downed in almost just as quickly.

Speed whispered in my ear again: “She didn’t even ask for ID?”

“What? No, man, I’m _nineteen_!”

Some time after that, the screaming music and flashing lights became less intense, less violent and _there_, and life felt like it was draining out of me.

I lurched into the bathroom, coughing up bile, vomiting up the alcohol I shouldn’t’ve drank. My throat burned, my stomach empty and curdled.

A huge laugh escaped my mouth, all of a sudden, as my hand groped for the flusher, as the toilet lid slammed shut. I was seizing with sickly laughter, my hands shaking.

Things started to make less sense.