Crackhead by Lisa Lennox

what she was smoking.
    Tonette looked over at Crystal. Crystal cracked a sinister smile. Tonette turned her attention back to Laci and watched her take another puff. She sat there watching Laci get higher than high and didn’t do a thing to stop it. She felt like a coward for not telling Laci the real deal at this point, but Crystal was her homegirl. Laci was just another stuck-up bitch, or at least that’s what Tonette tried to convince herself.
    Laci rolled her head back and looked up at the ceiling. The cracks in the plaster turned into little streams, which Laci tried to follow, but she couldn’t stay focused. Her eyes felt like they were going in two different directions at once. She looked at Monique and saw her lips moving, but she could only partially make out what she was saying. All she could see was her teeth, which seemed to be sprouting from her mouth at several odd angles.She thought it was a side effect of the potent weed and kept pulling on the blunt roach. In her high-ass state, it never occurred to her that none of the other girls put up a fight or even reached for the blunt. Once she was too far gone to comprehend anything, all the girls sat down and had their own private jokes about the hell that they had just introduced Laci to.

CHAPTER 8
On Cloud Nine
    L ACI AWOKE IN the middle of the night with a headache to end all headaches. Her eyes throbbed as she glared down at her watch. She had been out for at least four hours. That was some bomb-ass weed , she thought to herself. That must be what they mean when they say “chronic.” She tried to stand, but her legs gave out from under her. Laci flopped back down onto the couch and clutched her head in an attempt to stop it from spinning. She searched for something in the room to try and focus on. It was then that she realized she was still at Crystal’s. Laci staggered to her feet and proceeded to look around the apartment. She searched the kitchen, both bedrooms, and the bathroom, but there was no sign of the girls. As Laci passed back through the living room, she noticed a note on the coffee table with a joint lying on top of it.
    Tried to wake you. Went to the club.
    â€”SBB
    Laci sucked her teeth. She really wished that she had been awake, because she was looking forward to partying with the girls for once. A night of dancing and laughing was what she needed to wear her strong-ass buzz off.
    Oh well, at least they thought enough of me to leave some more of that chronic , she thought.
    Laci put the note down, then picked up the joint. She stared at it for a minute before she started fishing around for a book of matches. She couldn’t find any, so she went into the kitchen and turned on the stove. She lit the joint and looked at it.
    â€œPractice makes perfect,” she said before taking a hit.
    The smoke didn’t hit her as hard as the first time. She still gagged, but she was able to hold it in her lungs. The rush from the smoke went directly to Laci’s brain, almost making her dizzy. She inhaled the stench from the blunt and realized that this one smelled even less kosher. She could smell the weed, but there was something else that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Laci finished the blunt and tried to figure out what to do next. For some odd reason, she couldn’t seem to sit still. She felt alive and wanted to do everything at once. It was as if all the sleep had drained from her body and she had a second wind.
    Now, had Laci smoked weed before, certain things would have tipped her off as being not quite right. Weed was a depressant, but Laci felt hyper. Marijuana also had a knack for giving folks the munchies, which Laci didn’t have. Actually, she didn’t have an appetite at all. The signs would be clear for someone who knew what to look for, but Laci didn’t, so she didn’t heed the warning going off in the back of her mind.
    Laci circled Crystal’s apartment three or four times,