WARNING: Drug Use.
——-
In 2003 I was in tenth grade. I always held my pencil like it meant something, like a Viking held his axe. I knew it’d be my future one day and I’d wield it like a weapon.
Teachers called me, your test was perfect.
Students voted me most likely to succeed. I loved school. I liked being helpful. I did things safe. Structure. Graduate. Have a goal. Succeed.
But on that Saturday, my life would change, as if fate was playing a cruel game on me. I was walking along the shore, minding my own business, hunting for seashells.
I had to collect enough for my mom, her birthday was that following week, and I wanted to make her a necklace.
It was a perfect storm. The tide was low. I was by the shore. The universe’s timing was flawless. The sand by the cove looked different, like it had been carefully combed.
I had my basket by my hip and the strap from it around my shoulder. I didn’t expect to find many seashells, if any.
I walked along the shore, the morning breeze chilling my skin, when I saw a dead bird half-way buried. I checked it out, picked up a rock and poked it out of the sand.
Beneath it, there was a bag wrapped and tied in a knot around something that looked like a small box tucked under the bird. I thought I found treasure. At least I hoped so, and hoped I didn’t just uncover a missing finger.
I yanked it out almost instantly. I didn’t think twice about it. I ripped apart the knot, unwrapped the bag, it smelled like a trash can when I opened it, water poured out that sat under the container and sprinkled my toes, I rubbed them dry in the sand, and looked inside and saw a plastic square container.
I pulled it out and let go of the bag, the wind took it before it could land. I flicked the container open, and in it were these clear, little baggies, the same ones my mom puts buttons in.
As I stretched the lid back, I saw a name, It was autographed on the inside of the container. I had no idea who the person was. I later found out.
Inside the box, I knew they were drugs, the substance, I couldn’t be sure, I had a suspicion though. White powdery rocks. Pills. Brown powder and a couple of dry cigarettes wrapped in a Burger King napkin squeezed together. It was full to the point the bags tried jumping out when I first popped it open.
The container didn’t appear like it had been buried a minute ago and just pulled out of the ocean floor, it looked like someone packed a bunch of stuff in a little box and placed it there with a bright, white dead bird on top of it, waiting for me to walk by.
I shut the lid and looked around before tossing the container in my basket. I strolled along the shore, continuing my search for seashells, but I couldn’t get the thought of what I had in my basket out of my head.
It only took five minutes of scouring the ocean floor and staring back at my basket every two seconds, before I stopped looking for shells. I reached down and gripped the container in my hand and thought about pitching it back into the sea.
But I wanted to understand what I had first. If I knew then what I know now, I would have never picked it up. I was sixteen though. I was curious.
I ran up to the catwalk, where I left my bike and had my sneakers dangling from the handle bars. I threw my feet into my shoes and hopped on my bicycle, bolting home as fast as I could.
I was darting through traffic getting honked at, at every turn. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home. I had that same urgency sensation like when we went on vacation, the taxi ride back home, that antsy feeling, racing through my body the entire time.
I ghost rode my bike into the fence at the front of our house. Then, I nearly broke the gate, when my finger slipped trying to unlatch it and push my way through at the same time. I bounced off the gate and made my way in on the second attempt.
When I walked through the front door my mom had yelled for me.
I quickly shouted, “gotta use the bathroom!” and ran upstairs to my room.
I locked my door behind me and sat at my desk with the container. I noticed it looked bigger under my light. When I opened it, the baggies sparkled, almost like I was being tempted to taste the forbidden fruit.
I powered up my computer, the dial up sounded like a robot malfunctioning, and waited. Then, I went to AskJeeves so I could search up what I found.
Eventually, I figured out what the white stuff was and how to use it. So I crushed some of it up into a fine powder and started sniffing them with a rolled up coupon I found lying on my desk.
My throat became numb, my senses heightened. I couldn’t hear my mom talking on the phone a second ago. But after I did that, I could hear her talking about me to her friend, and I was able to hear my mom’s friend talking through the speaker of my mom’s phone from my bedroom.
I thought it was the best stuff ever. I kept telling myself that I would throw the drugs out. I didn’t need them. I wanted to be responsible. But then I thought, I could use them responsibly.
I totally forgot about my mom’s necklace. I never got her anything. Every time I used the stuff in the bags, I never felt right afterwards. There was this heavy feeling like I just backstabbed my own father.
By Monday, that’s when my “Straight A” life crashed. It didn’t happen all at once, it gradually slipped, like a plate under the ocean floor.
All my assignments, the corner stone of my life, what would have been the beginning to my life’s work, stopped having purpose. I stared at them like, what’s the point.
I’d tell myself, “I’ll turn them in later,” but later became never.
When I bumped into my guidance counselor, she asked me, “is everything alright, Donny?”
At that moment, a flash of the first time I touched that bag popped in my head, I thought about asking her for help, instead I gave her a nod, “Everything’s fine,” and walked away.
My college plans. My scholarship. Gone. The perfect report cards I had are all just evidence of my failure.
When I ran out, I searched the name on the box. The ocean washed up the container, but it was me that opened it. Whenever I smell the salt from the sea, or get a whiff of the sewers when they’re backed-up, or even the scent of the rain, I remember how Robert Downey Jr’s drugs ruined my life.
