Dancing with Molly - Lena Horowitz Page 0,38

tell if I’m worried about getting caught or just excited about doing molly. It’s weird, but I think there’s not a lot of difference between feeling keyed up about having fun and terrified about getting caught having fun.

Carson just texted me:

We’re on our way!

Sunday, June 1

I cannot believe how screwed I am. Note to self: If you have a feeling like it’s a bad idea, PAY ATTENTION. I don’t even know where to start. . . .

I guess at the beginning of the whole ridiculous evening and the party itself. The graduation bash is always a theme party. This year it was a Knights of the Round Table theme—King Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere. The school booster club decorated the gym and the hallways to look like a medieval castle, but with lots of balloons. When we walked into the gym, there was a huge castle facade built across the front of the room with a drawbridge that let you walk across a moat, which was this big tank of water with fountains in it. It was actually really elaborate, and it must’ve taken a small army of people to pull off. I know a bunch of alumni who were back from college helped build it. Reid’s dad is a contractor, and he headed up all the construction with his big crew.

Not that Reid could’ve been bothered to care about it at all. The moment we arrived he started badgering Jess to hand out the molly. Jess told him to cool his jets. We needed to let the place fill up a little and get the party started so it wasn’t so obvious that there was a group of kids rolling.

We all went to get punch and explored. There were areas set up with board games, and another room with a bunch of carnival games like Skee-Ball and Whac-A-Mole. There was a big candy shop where you could raise your blood sugar by one billion points, which apparently half the kids had already done, because when the band started playing there was this mad rush to the middle of the dance floor in the gym.

The band was just okay. They sang covers of oldies and classic rock and a few more recent pop songs, but it was sort of like a bar mitzvah band, or one of those bands that sing Journey songs at wedding receptions. Still, Carson thought they were hilarious and he dragged me out onto the dance floor. Jess followed us and we all did these ridiculous dances. At one point, Jess was pretending to break-dance, and a circle formed around her as she did dance moves that were so funny, I was gasping for breath I was laughing so hard. Then Reid and Carson started dancing “back up” for her, and the whole thing looked like a Saturday Night Live sketch.

When the band took a break, the DJ the school had hired was all set up, and he started spinning some really cool mash-ups that were fun to dance to, but Reid was back to badgering Jess about the molly. Jess had been glued to her phone the whole night, and said that it was almost time. She was texting with Kelly about their planned rendezvous near the band room. There was a storage room we used for old timpani and music stands, the chairs the orchestra used, and lots of other stuff. It was a big room and had two doors that only opened from the inside out to the back parking lot. They were meant for loading and unloading equipment when we went to competitions. Tonight, Jess was planning to use the room for sneaking Kelly into the party.

The gym was packed at this point, and Jess took Ashley into the bathroom first. When they came back out, Ashley had this grin on her face, and danced up to us like she had done something spectacular. Reid told Jess and me to hurry—he was itching to roll like nobody I’d ever seen. Carson leaned down and gave me a kiss, then told Reid to cool his jets.

In the bathroom, Jess locked us into a stall, then fished the little baggie carefully out of her bra. She handed one little wad of molly to me and I popped it into my mouth as far back on my tongue as I could get it. I took a big gulp of water and felt the little bump sail down my throat. I took another swig just be