Yes, and she's a very good writer.
"Try it once."
I was sixteen, and taking trips to the city to get dope had become a regular
thing for me. Every time I went, I was riding with older guys that had been
using for much longer then I had. It never occurred to me that what I was doing
was dangerous and risky and could also get me in trouble.
My affair with heroin had started when I was fifteen. The guys that I hung
around were using it; most used it occasionally, but some habitually. I had
been offered it before, but I was always too scared to to try it. Of course, at
fifteen years old, peer pressure was something that I always gave in to. The
third time I was offered heroin, I snorted a small amount, not enough to feel
it. After my sixteenth birthday, I snorted a larger amount and fell in love
with the feeling it gave me. Eventually, doing it every once-in-a-while, lead
to doing it once a week, which lead to every other day.
Fast forward a few months later, and there I was, in the passenger seat of
Brad's car while we listened to rock music on our way to the city. Justin was
sitting in the backseat, leaning his head on the window with his eyes closed.
"How long have you been doing dope?" I curiously asked Brad as I lowered the
volume of the music.
"Since I was about nineteen," he replied. "So, about five years."
"What's the longest you've gone without doing it?" I looked to him.
"I've gone almost a year without doing it before. I've quit cold-turkey quite a
few times," he told me.
I nodded, watching him as he drove. His knuckles were white as he clenched the
steering wheel tightly, and I guessed it was because he was starting to become
dopesick. He was wearing a black wife-beater that showed off his muscles and
his tattoos. He appeared to be too good-looking to be a heroin addict: his skin
was perfectly tanned, his hair was a shade of dirty blond, and he had those
enviable baby-blue eyes. He resembled an Abercrombie & Fitch model.
My heartbeat quickened as we pulled into the parking lot of the dingy apartment
complex. Brad found a place to park and turned the car off. He took the money
from me and Justin before hopping out of the driver's seat and slamming the
door behind him. Looking in the rear-view mirror, I could see him walk past the
rows of cars and then enter the building.
A very slow ten minutes had passed, and Brad had returned to the car and was
backing out of the parking space. When we got back onto the road, Brad passed
me the dope that I had bought, and handed me Justin's bags to give to him.
On the way back home, I discreetly took bumps from my bag of dope. The taste of
the dope as it dripped down the back of my throat was bitter, but it was a
taste that I had grown a certain liking to. Tasting that bitter flavor meant
the effects of the dope were about to kick in.
I snorted enough to get the warm-feeling in my chest and stomach, but not
enough to nod out. The reason was to avoid returning to my house fucked up and
then having my parents become angry, which almost always lead to a nasty and
relentless fight that involved my whole family.
Our first stop was Justin's house, and Brad pulled up to the curb in front of
the single-family home. Justin grabbed his jacket from the backseat of the car
and then jumped out, saying goodbye to Brad as he shut the car door behind him.
Brad began driving again as Justin walked up the concrete steps to the front
door of his house.
"I've been waiting for us to be alone," Brad said as he drove back toward the
main road.
"Oh, really?" I blushed.
We started talking about other things while he was driving - we talked about
our personal lives, but we talked mostly about heroin.
"Have you ever tried banging it?" Brad asked me.
"No, but I want to," I replied boldly. The pleasurable feeling that the dope
filled me with was beginning to fade away, leaving me feeling drowsy and sedated.
"Well, I have clean needles in here," Brad said, tapping the console between
us. "So, you can try it right now if you want to."
"Uh, I don't know," I answered timidly. I wasn't expecting him to put me on the
spot. The truth was that I had a few passing thoughts about shooting up heroin,
but I had no desire to.
Brad made a left turn and drove into a shopping center parking lot. He parked
the car in the very back, beside a fast food restaurant and away from the rest
of the cars. It was dark outside, but the car was parked underneath a street
lamp that shone brightly enough to see in the car without needing to turn the
interior lights on.
"So, do you want to do it?" Brad said, looking at me with his blue eyes.
"I'm not sure," I answered.
"You never have to do it again if you don't want to, Tori," he said.
"Try it once."
"Let me see you do it first," I replied, trying to buy time.
I watched as Brad reached into the console and got everything that he needed: a
new needle, a spoon, a lighter, cotton, and some water. He set the spoon on the
console and opened up one of the small baggies of dope that he had, pouring it
onto the spoon. He squirted water from the syringe into the spoon, and then
held the lighter's flame underneath of the spoon.
It was the first time I had seen anyone shoot up heroin before. I was used to
watching the people around me snort it instead. I knew of people that preferred
to shoot it, but they never did it around anyone.
While Brad concentrated on finding a vein and shooting the heroin into his arm,
I tried not to get too nervous. I was begging myself to say the words "I'm not
going to shoot it," but they wouldn't leave my throat. Instead, I was getting
anxious because I knew that I was going to give in. And just the though of
shooting dope scared me.
"Okay, ready?" Brad asked me as he took out a new needle from the bag in his
console.
"I'm worried," I said quietly. He laid the spoon down and continued getting my
shot ready.
"I wouldn't let anything bad happen to you," he told me. "Trust me."
And with that, he took my wrist and stretched my arm toward him. I straightened
my elbow as he pointed the tip of the needle upwards and flicked the barrel of
the syringe, pushing out the air bubbles. As he brought the needle to my arm,
my heart immediately started beating very hard and very fast.
"Wait!" I exclaimed, pulling my arm away.
"What is it?" He looked at me, puzzled.
"I don't know if I want to do this," I said. I was so nervous that my palms
were sweating, and my thoughts were racing.
"You will be fine," Brad promised.
"Okay," I agreed reluctantly.
I extended my arm once again, letting him gently grip my lower arm with his
hand. The needle was in his other hand, and he was scanning my inner elbow for
the best vein to use. I turned away and let out a small gasp as the needle
pierced my skin. Two seconds later, Brad had already pulled the needle back out.
"That wasn't too bad," I commented as I looked down at my arm.
And then, I felt it.
It started in my shoulders and my chest, and then tingles spread to my head and
down to my feet. My whole body got warm and amazingly relaxed.
"How do you like it?" Brad looked at me, smirking.
"Wow." It was all I could say.
I had never felt a greater feeling than that. I realized that it was so much
better then how I felt when I was just snorting it. I also realized that
injecting it wasn't as scary or intimidating as I thought it would be.
What I didn't realize, though, is that at that point, I had just crossed a very
bold and definitive line. And that once I crossed that line, that there was no
going back.
http://victorialovething.blogspot.com/2008/06/try-it-once.html