Free Bottled Up by Jaye Murray Page A

up.”
    I looked over at Mikey. He was setting the checkers up again.
    â€œCome on, Dad,” he said around a mouthful of Cheez Doodles.
    I couldn’t get away from my father fast enough. He does this flip-flop thing all the time. One minute he wants to play a game, the next minute you are game.
    Mikey will catch on someday.
    â€œThat’s not your jacket,” Bugs said when I was walking away.
    â€œShut up,” I said.

    I remember getting a five-speed bike for my ninth birthday.
    I kept leaving it in the driveway. My father kept telling me if I didn’t learn to park it in the garage or out back, he was putting it in the trash.
    One morning the garbagemen were outside our house. They always dump the garbage, then toss the pails down the driveway. But that morning they were standing around talking about whether or not to put my bike in the front with the driver or try to tie it to the side of the truck.
    It was too nice a bike to trash.
    Anybody could see that.
    I had two full bags of pot. That never happened.
    These weren’t just the small bags you buy from a kid at school—ones with enough pot inside to roll five to ten joints. These were bags I could turn into twenty of those smaller bags. That’s either a lot of money to be made or a lot of partying to be done.
    I shoved one in the back of my closet inside an old boot. The other one I opened.
    I put my nose to the edge of the plastic and sniffed. If I smoked the whole thing right there I could have had a buzz that lasted a week—maybe two. That would have made for a decent vacation from my life, from my head. Sounded good to me.
    The pictures in my head were going crazy. The cop bringing me home; my mother’s face that morning; my father promising for the hundredth time to give me a driving lesson; Claire telling me I had nothing but choices.
    Then I did something I told myself I’d never do. I lit up right there in my room.
    I got a pack of rolling paper out of my dresser drawer, and rolled myself a thick, perfect number. I opened the window and put the top part of my body outside. While I lit the joint I took in the deepest inhale of my life.
    Everything was quiet outside except for some crickets doing a rock and roll concert. It was like nothing was moving anywhere on the street.
    I blew the smoke out into the dark and took another long hit.
    I was starting to feel as still as everything else outside.
    I was starting to feel like myself again.
    Nobody in the house was going to know what I was doing. Nobody was looking for me.
    But I’d never chanced it before. If my parents caught me getting high, my mother wouldn’t want me anywhere near my brother. My father wouldn’t want me around ever again. They’d run my ass to a rehab so far from home, I’d never find my way back.
    But that night I didn’t care. I wasn’t even thinking about all the stuff I was afraid of. All I knew was that I had more pot on me than ever. I had a ton.
    The bag had been calling my name, begging me to smoke it. I could have gone back to the Site or even just down the block to light up. But I couldn’t wait.
    I couldn’t wait.
    The rules didn’t matter, and anyway, the only ones left for me to break were my own.
    I want a photo album.
    Then I could take all the pictures in my head, put them in the album, and close it.

    â€œPip, wake up.”
    Mikey was pulling on my arm. I was in bed, still in my clothes in one of the deepest sleeps of my life. That wasn’t just pot Johnny gave me. That was Super Pot. That was supreme number one ultimate stuff.
    â€œGo away,” I told Bugs, and rolled over.
    â€œI hear them,” he whispered in my ear.
    â€œHear what?”
    â€œBeasties.”
    I rubbed my eyes and tried to get a look at my brother in the dark. He was wearing his red Superman cape and had his pillow under his arm.
    â€œThere’s beasties. Outside. I hear them in the