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 clad with his long hair tied in a ponytail.

“Oh. That time is it?” I asked quietly, untangling the extensive knots in my hair.

“Nearly three.”

“In the _afternoon_? Jesus Christ…” I sighed.

Wyatt laughed, and my temples throbbed at the loud noise of it. “What the hell were you _on_ last night? Did you… Black out, or something?”

“Well, I dunno, what happened?” I paused. “Um, I remember doing acid in someone’s van, with Ana and Kat… And drinking, _lots_… And Speed was here…”

“Wait, who’s _Speed_?”

“Oh, he’s a friend of mine. Is he still here? He lives, like, eight hours away… I dunno. I’ll call him later, I guess, if I don’t find him…” I rubbed my sweat-encrusted face, groaning. “Oh my _God_… I am _so_ fucking hungover.”

He carefully put his arm around my waist, dragging my body against his. My head lolled uselessly on his shoulder.

“Hey, how’d that meeting thing go? Yesterday? Was it good?” I asked softly, the memory suddenly popping back into my head.

“What? Oh, yeah, it went kinda well. I dunno, it went pretty okay.”

By seven in the evening, the sun had set, and I’d done nothing but sit around, watch TV, and smoke pot with Wyatt, Sky, Rob, and Kat. We were watching _Alice In Chains Unplugged_, passing around a bong, as a pink-haired Layne Staley sang _Nutshell_ on TV.

My feet twitched- I could feel every molecule in my feet. That’s how stoned I was. And I said, blandly, as I watched the TV vacantly, “You know what? I think I’m gonna cry.”

“_What_?” Everyone turned to look at me.

“It’s just… This song is so _sad_,” I sniffed, rubbing my nose. “It makes me want to cry. The lyrics are… _Sad_. That’s all.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Sky murmured in reply. “I guess it is a pretty sad song.”

And, just like that, _Nutshell_ ended, and the next song, _Brother_, began to play.

“Oh,” I whispered, mostly to myself. My head throbbed still, and my eyelids were heavy, my stomach hungry.

By the time _Sludge Factory_ came on, we were all singing along, too stoned to care about if we got the words right or not, too stoned to care that the pitch was all off, too stoned to care about anything in general. _“Call me up, congratulations ain’t the real why, there’s no pressure besides brilliance, let’s say by day nine, corporate ignorance lets me control time, by the way, by the way…”_

__

We all crumpled into a shared fit of laughter, and someone suggested we go get food, which caused a frenzied search for money. Eventually, we got together enough cash and the five of us swayed down the street to the nearest McDonald’s, where we ate heavenly burgers and ambrosia milkshakes.

“Oh, shit!” Rob suddenly burst out, jumping to his feet with a mouth full of burger. “Wyatt, man, we gotta _go_!”

“Wait, what, where? We got nowhere to be, do we?” Wyatt questioned, confused.

“No, man! Serious! We gotta find Jack and John, you know, we gotta _play_ or else Ana’s gonna beat our asses, you know it!” Suddenly, Rob was feverishly pacing around the McDonald’s. He kept repeating, under his breath, “You know it!”

“Shit, what time is it?” Wyatt didn’t seem to care much. He was just as high as the rest of us, anyway. “Is it ten _already_?”

“No! We gotta be _ready_ at nine-thirty tonight- it’s _Saturday_, man! Don’t ya know? We _opened_ on _Thursday_ so we _open_ on _Saturday_! It’s nine-_fifteen_, man, we got _fifteen_ minutes-”

“Hey, calm the fuck down, Robbie.” Sky rolled his eyes at them. “You guys are stoned as shit anyway. Can’t fuckin’ play for shit, I bet.”

“What? No, man!” Exclaimed Rob, pacing still. “We gotta _go_!”

“Ana’s chill,” Kat added, “She won’t kill ya, she’ll just get someone else to open.”

“Ana? _Chill_?” Rob scoffed, anxiously wringing his hands, bringing to mind a middle-aged mother worrying about where her children are at ten p.m. “Do you even _know_ Ana? She’ll kill us, she’ll kill us!”

“We’ll go over in a bit, okay?” Wyatt muttered with a loud sigh, wearily resting his head on top of mine.

“Yeah, man, calm the fuck down,” Sky added, his voice seething, while his gaunt, sickly face remained blank. “You’re crazy, you know that? Fuckin’ crazy.”

Rob muttered something angry under his breath before sitting back down.

Kat let out a laugh, looked at him, and said, “You _are_ crazy, honestly. Just relax.”

After that dilemma, we slowly but surely made our way over to the beach by the huge lake, which was entirely deserted, seeing that it was nine p.m., and the middle of October.

We wandered along the beach for what could’ve been either minutes or hours- no one knew which- while we talked incessantly.

Kat sat down on the cold, damp sand, muttering something to herself. And, then, we were all sitting down, our legs turned to jello, while the mindless conversation resumed.

“Society is a fuckin’ joke, man…” “You know, it’s crazy that everybody in our group is hot, it’s fucking _insane_…” “Yeah, you know, the world’s probably gonna end in, like, five years, anyway…” “You’re such a dumbass, honestly…” Et cetera, et cetera.

By the time we were all fully sober, it was nearly eleven, and we started to run back to Underground as it began to drizzle a cold, winter-warning rain.

Wyatt and Rob vanished the moment we walked inside, and Sky had wandered off en route, mumbled something about _kicks_ and _bangs_, morphed into nonsensical, run-on sentences that slowly faded out as he disappeared.

Kat quickly hid upstairs with a migraine and some Advil, while I called Speed using the old, yellowish phone beside the door.

He didn’t answer, so I didn’t bother.