Marsha was a tall, light-brown-haired girl with hazel-brown eyes that always looked tired to me. Like Lily, she had her hands on her hips, and turned her shoulders as she stepped close enough to me that I could tell she hadn’t brushed her teeth or eaten a mint after her last cigarette. She looked like she could punch a hole in the wall with her elbows.
This was clearly what everyone meant by “getting in your face.”
Marsha was one of those white girls who, for some reason, were always trying to act and sound tougher than anyone else. I imagined she hated herself.
“It’s not a matter of being too good, and it’s not a matter of being too smart, Marsha. But it is a matter of being wise enough to avoid serious trouble,” I said calmly, which only annoyed her more.
“Wise enough?” She grimaced as if I had just made her swallow sour milk.
I knew I sounded like Albert Einstein, but I couldn’t help it. Truth, facts, clinically proven statistics—they all had a habit of spilling out of my mouth. At any given moment, I could recite most of Wikipedia.
Suddenly, I surprised Lily by plucking the pill out of her palm. Then I held it up between my thumb and forefinger so all the girls could see. Their attention was fixed on me now, anticipating that I would just give in and swallow it, but I was going to disappoint them.
“If this is really what Lily thinks it is, what whoever sold it to her told her it is, it’s probably MDMA.”
“No, it ain’t,” Lily said, wagging her head at me. “It’s X.”
“That’s what X is supposed to be, Lily, methylenedioxymethamphetamine.”
“Huh?” Agatha Looman said. She was right beside Lily now. Aggie, as she was better known, was a broad-shouldered black girl with a pretty face smothered under her fat jelly cheeks. She had very big breasts, heavy hips, and thighs like fire hydrants, and she was proud of that, no matter how many lectures M
rs. Turman, the school nurse, gave her about being overweight. She might as well tattoo her arm with high blood pressure and diabetes.
“Can you talk English? How can you expect us to know what that is, much less say it?”
“MDMA,” I said, still holding up the pill, “if this is indeed it, and it might not be, is a semisynthetic member of the amphetamine class of psychoactive drugs. You don’t really know the dosage. You didn’t exactly get it from a sanctioned vendor.”
“Huh? Sanctioned vendor?”
“Yes, it might make you feel really good, or it might cause brain damage, serious brain damage. It’s been known to cause severe depression, panic attacks, and frightening short-term memory confusion, among other things.”
I paused and put the pill up to my temple like I would the barrel of a pistol. “Taking any drug someone sold you on the street is like playing Russian roulette with a thirty-eight-caliber.” I put it back in Lily’s palm and added, “You could end up in a wheelchair, drooling, in some institution.”
For a moment, no one spoke. My description had taken the steam out of them, as they contemplated their own mortality, but, like with anyone our age, it lasted only a moment.
We don’t get sick.
We don’t have bad trips.
We don’t die.
Lily smirked, shook her head, and stepped back as if I breathed disease. “Man, if anyone could spoil a good time, it’s you, girl. When you finally have sex, you’ll probably ruin it by telling the dude exactly what’s going on in his boy body and what’s going on in you while you’re doing it.
“You know what I mean,” she said, now playing more to her friends. “Those sperm fishes swimmin’ around those eggs.” She stepped forward again, used her right hand to illustrate by moving it like a fish in my face, and then stopped to add, “Yours are probably poached, anyway.”
The girls laughed.
“She’ll probably have a textbook out with some illustrations showing him exactly what’s the proper way,” Marsha said, quickly picking up where Lily left off. She spoke through her nose to imitate Mrs. Turman in health class. She pressed her forefinger against her thumb and held her hand up. “You know, you put your thing in here and stir . . .”
“And of course, she’ll tell him the safe way,” Aggie said. “Corliss always gotta do what’s safe. She’s probably too scared to ride a roller coaster, even.”
“Roller coaster? That girl’s too scared to ride a bike,” Marsha said. “Even a three-wheeler.”
The girls laughed. The bathroom was their classroom. They could feel superior. In it, they were the teachers, and I was the student.
“Think whatever you want,” I said in a tired tone. I was angry with myself for even trying to help them.
“You hopeless, girl,” Lily said, wagging her head with a sincere expression of pity.