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“Yeah, Anna, come on. Stay.”
“Stay, stay, stay!” they all start to chant, and it forces a smile to form.
“Fine,” I concede, and they all cheer, Jeremy squeezing me against him and kissing my temple. He reeks of booze.
“If you’re staying, there’s no excuse.” Derek hands me the joint.
I stare at it, and Jeremy leans towards me. “You don’t have to.”
But in a rush, I press it to my lips and inhale.
It’s mossy and tastes of damp ash. I cough and splutter but try again, inhaling again, before passing it on.
It earns me another round of applause, but it also turns my stomach.
The joint is passed around again, and I don’t miss the other things going between the boys.
The party seems to be moving outside as more and more people fill the cramped garden. A few more draws, and then I pass. It’s enough, although I don’t think it’s affected me.
Jeremy looks happy. He’s having fun, and that makes me happy. We should be at parties, having fun together while we still can. That’s all this is, I tell myself.
I relax as my thoughts focus on him, and I begin to enjoy the noise of the party around me. Being with Jeremy is important, and I don’t want to be the one to stop him from doing things he wants to.
My thoughts seem to start muddling together, and my head grows groggy and tired — as long as Jeremy’s happy.
It didn’t matter that I knew the dangers, that I knew my own mind and didn’t want to be dragged into it. I still took that first step and allowed myself to be sucked in.
It was like opening a box of sweets you knew weren’t meant to be opened. It looked too nice and shiny, and then inside, all the different choices made you want them even more. Only you had no way of knowing what was underneath the wrapper. Would it be delicious and sugary and make you reach for more, or would it be sour and bitter and make you want to spit it out?
Mum grounded me for the period of my exams. Going out and not coming back home until morning practically made her explode in anger, and I didn’t blame her. I didn’t tell her where I was going, although, in my defence, I didn’t know that either until it was too late.
She didn’t need to hear that.
Jeremy was allowed over, but no sleepovers until after the exams.
It was the best call.
Only it didn’t help.
Jeremy came over and spent as much time as possible with me, which may have been a distracting influence. When sitting in the drafty exam hall at school, I wasn’t focused on the papers in front of me. My mind wandered to wherever Jeremy might be.
It was frustrating and annoying, and I hated that after all my work and years of diligent effort, I was allowing myself to stumble because of a boy.
My timetable was mercifully short, and the hideous stress of balancing exams with Jeremy was over.
He was there, waiting for me at the end of the last one, and I couldn’t help but run towards him.
He picked me up and swung me around, and I was thrown right back to when we first got together — when he found me and kissed me in front of everyone.
“What are we going to do to celebrate? No more being grounded,” I ask.
“Party, of course.” He kisses my temple. “I’ve already got it covered.”
I couldn’t stop my face from falling.
“Oh?”
“At mine. And I’m not going to the school’s lame dance.”
