The rain dwindled, only softly drizzling by the time the pale green BMW was climbing hills on a dirt path to the lake. As the wheels spun, from time to time getting stuck in potholes, Jaylene sighed and sat up to look beyond the trees, through the glass of the windshield, "Pretty close. We can just walk now." Shrouded by tall pines and sycamores, she parked the 5 Series off to the side of the road. Hearing some laughing and bantering a couple yards away, she smiled to herself and leaned against the closed driver's door.
She'd let them all go off, beside herself. Sure she was excited and could hardly wait but - something wasn't sitting right with her about Brik. And there was no possible way for her to cloak the inklings clouding her thoughts. But one little glimmer of hope named cocaine called to her, promising everything from pleasure to a level head with no worries. Like a loyal little puppy dog to its owner, she came when beckoned.
The woods around her grew quiet as she assumed Brik and Tristan made their way to the noises of their other friends, gathering to drink and have one hell of a night. Her shoulders stooped as she turned around to open the car door and fish out a small, packed to the brim baggy. Her friends all knew she did it, she had no shame really. It was more or less the fact that she didn't want to walk into their little banger with a weight bore on her shoulders that she couldn't shake if sober. Looking up as the stars began to bedeck and bedazzle the clearing, ebony empyrean, she hung her head in reverse.
Her focus swung back to the baggy in her hand, her free fingers grabbing her wallet. Blond hair covered the left side of her face when she bent at the waist to spill a tiny bit of the contents onto the hood of her car, making a thin column that would be pulled up into her nasal cavity via inspires through her right nostril. With shaky, eager hands, she rolled up currency to form a substitute straw.
Being so close with all of her friends wasn't just some generic, cliche high school bullshit. What it did for Jaylene was confirm that people in the world still needed each other and operated beyond the means of money and material. People wouldn't fathom that by looking at her, that beneath the designer fabric and shitty attitude was someone capable of comprehending a life without luxury. Even more over, someone who could interpret the true tenor of real friends. Had she been penniless, she knew her friends would still be there for her. And in retrospect, that mattered a lot more than most things.
But what if one of them was perhaps - hiding something?