Dancing with Molly by Lena Horowitz Page A

me.
    Ashley has never been one for public displays of affection, but somehow it seemed exactly right. She kept telling me thank you over and over again. I asked her for what, and she said, For this AMAZING NIGHT. I feel SO GOOD!
    Ashley danced near me and Carson for a while, and then Reid jumped off the box and started kissing her. Ashley just melted into him, and I realized that’s exactly what I wanted to be doing. I turned around and saw that Carson had slipped off his T-shirt and tucked it into the waist of his jeans. The whole warehouse was packed now, and we all seemed to be moving and dancing and grinding and breathing at the same time. The lights bouncing off his chest made him glow, and the speed in the ecstasy made my eyes twitch so fast that Carson looked like a big ball of pink, purple, and yellow light. I was feeling a littledizzy, so I reached out to touch him. My hand landed on his chest, right over his heart, and I swear I felt it pounding there against my palm.
    Carson had his head thrown back and his eyes closed, completely lost in the music. When I touched him, his face lit up, his eyes fluttered open, and he got the biggest grin on his face. He stopped dancing and folded his hand over mine, then pulled me toward him and held me close against his body. I could feel him taking deep breaths, and as his body rose and fell against mine, he leaned down and kissed me.
    Our mouths locked together, and our arms pressed our bodies into each other so tightly that for a little while, it felt like we had combined ourselves. I felt like our skin had merged, and we were breathing together as we kissed—each inhale a gift, each exhale a revelation.
    I felt another mouth on my neck, someone else’s breath on my ear. I pulled away from Carson, breaking the spell, breaking our moment. I turned and saw Brandon behind me. I felt his breath on my face as he leaned in to try to kiss my mouth. I tried to push him away, but he kept pulling me toward him. I heard Carson yell, WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE? And saw his fist shoot out past my face and knock Brandon in the nose.
    The blood that sprayed out of Brandon’s nose caught thelight and was sort of beautiful, but it was only beautiful for about a split second, before he crumpled to the floor next to the big block, knocking into Ashley and Reid, who stopped kissing and turned around just as Carson lunged onto Brandon and hauled back his fist to hit him again. I heard someone yell NO! and realized that it was me. Suddenly Pete materialized out of thin air and tried to pull Brandon to his feet as Reid jumped in and held back Carson’s arm, which was ready to fly toward Brandon’s head again.
    Damn speedy ecstasy. I guess this is what those kids on that forum were talking about. They mentioned that every once in a while the balance of the MDMA to the caffeine or speed, or whatever they cut it with, is seriously off. I still can’t imagine anybody throwing a punch while rolling on molly, but maybe ecstasy just affects people differently. Or maybe Carson would have hit Brandon for trying to kiss me stone-cold sober. Whichever, it happened, and all the guys were yelling at each other, while Ashley stood there, wide-eyed, her jaw clenched, her arm wrapped around her stomach like she was going to throw up.
    I went over to her and hugged her and told her it was going to be okay, and Jess came over to us and said, Let’s go get some air. She and Kelly were leading the way toward the door whenwe saw the big metal door of the warehouse fly up and red-and-blue flashing lights. These weren’t part of the light show. They were coming from a cop car and an ambulance. Jess and Kelly stopped dead in their tracks as two paramedics and a cop started shoving their way through the crowd toward us. I was so confused. Ashley yelled over the noise, Did you call the COPS? And I was about to say NO when they pushed past us, and we turned to see them move past Carson, Reid, Pete,