CHAPTER 2
Me, on the other hand—my hippie ass was turning hippier than ever those days. I wore my tight, elephant, bell-bottom pants with the pattern of zebra, red, orange, and yellow, along with my notorious crop top. We finished putting our masks on (makeup) and strutted ourselves down the hallway toward the second building of the hotel to find our tribe, who we planned to follow into the festival. We sort of made it sound like we were gonna travel as a quadrant the whole night, but I had a plan in my head to veer off from them. They intimidated me with their drug consumption, which actually means no trust had been firmly established between Mary and the gang; they were only acquaintances. The intimidation came with a question. Were they going to give me the right dose? Would they actually be there for me if something bad happened? Did they actually care about me? Perhaps they didn’t know enough about me to fully care. My intuition sensed that. I just wanted to experience a new realm with my best friend.
After ten minutes of trucking through the hotel, Aiden and I knocked on the door with a timid sort of knock, and as Mary opened the door, I saw a loud, long, brown-haired dude with a headband and a scarf designed with all colors of the rainbow was snorting lines of cocaine off the hotel room desk like it was nothing, his presence commanding the room, acting as hyper as heck like he was ready to run a marathon. Or maybe five.
The people in the hotel room were super nice, but our lifestyle didn’t compare with their histories. Aiden and I were partiers, like “take some shots at a local bar and go home at one a.m.” But we had officially walked into some foreign and terrifying land. I looked at Aiden. “Uncomfortable” is a soft word for her state. She looked distressed and agitated, ready to jump out the window. So did I. Though of course I acted cool and like I’d done this a dozen times before. I had to pretend like I fit in, right?
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