Dancing with Molly by Lena Horowitz Page B

and Brandon, who was standing there with his head back, holding his T-shirt up to his nose.
    It was only then that I saw a circle had cleared on the other side of the block where Ashley and Reid had been dancing. There was a girl with dark hair lying on the concrete floor. As the lights swept across her, I could see that she was twitching, violently, her mouth covered with a weird white liquid that seemed to bubble up from inside her. Soon, the paramedics and the cop surrounded her, and Jess appeared in front of all of us and shouted, LET’S GO! NOW!
    Jess grabbed Kelly by the hand and cleared a path through the crowd, pushing and shoving people out of her way. We muscled our way past the DJ booth, where Kyle was still spinning, headphones on, lost in his own music. Finally we hit the cool air of the outside, and we started running.
    We didn’t stop until we were back at our cars.
    Everybody except for Pete and Brandon went back to Kelly’s house after we left the club. Kelly and Carson drove everybody, and I didn’t really grasp until yesterday morning when we all woke up sprawled across the couches and carpet what a truly terrible idea it was for ANYONE to be driving.
    I thought Ashley would be totally freaked out, but after we got back to Kelly’s we all tried to relax in the hot tub and Kelly passed around a little bong she had packed with some really good weed. It helped everybody chill out and come down from the speedy ecstasy nice and easy. Eventually, everybody crashed. We were waking up when Kyle got home, and Kelly came around with waters and the biggest bottle of Advil I’d ever seen. Kyle told us that the girl who had passed out was a regular at that warehouse party every month. He knows some of her friends and is going to see if he can find out some details about what happened to her.
    When we got home, Mom wanted to know all the details. We’d told her we were spending the night at Kelly’s house after we went to an eighteen-and-under club with Reid, Carson, and Jess. Sometimes I think my mom just wants to believe what we’re telling her so that she can live vicariously through our teenage lives. She didn’t really get to do that much fun stuff whenshe was a kid. Her dad was sort of a mean drunk, and he ran off when she was in eighth grade, so the whole time she was in high school she had to work at a department store to help her mom make ends meet.
    I thought Ashley would be done with her little drug experimentation phase, but she surprised me. She came into my room and told me that she had a really fun time this weekend. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. And the thing is, I really think she meant it. It was weird. She gave me a big hug and called me “sis”—as if that were a totally normal thing or something she’d always called me.
    THANK GOD tomorrow is Memorial Day. Dad and Mom are leaving me alone because I told them I have like a zillion tests this week for finals. Our last day of classes is on Friday, then graduation is on Saturday, but before then I have three papers due—two in AP English, and one in history. I have ZERO idea how all of this is going to get done, but I just have to plow through, starting NOW. I have to get the papers done before Dad makes us all come eat ribs. It’s like his Memorial Day requirement: Everybody has to eat ribs. At least my parents are having friends over so I can just go down, eat a rib, then plead HOMEWORK and come back up here to finish studying.

Tuesday, May 27
    This morning when we got to school, Ashley asked Jess first thing if Kelly was going to be able to get any “party favors” for the graduation party this weekend, and Jess winked at her and said she was sure that Kyle and Kelly would be able to figure something out. I figured that Ashley might have decided she was done experimenting, but apparently she had fun even though we witnessed that poor girl collapse on the dance