Free Elizabeth Basque - Medium Mysteries 01 - Echo Park by Elizabeth Basque Page B

they lived dangerously, and they didn’t worry about consequences.”
    I nodded. “You liked getting high, then.”
    “Oh yeah. I never forgot that feeling, of my initial high, though I never felt that way again. Not that I didn’t chase it, time after time. I couldn’t get it, though. Couldn’t find my way back to that ultimate mellowness . Sometimes, I thought it was because the Mexican pot on the street was such crap, but the truth was, when you do a drug for the first time, that’s as good as it’s gonna get. Ever .”
    I nodded. “Take me to age fifteen, Michael.”
    He took a power boost and continued.
    “ By then, alcohol and I were best buddies, but that didn’t really help much, either. I’d mix hard liquor with pot and end up getting sick. I was trying to find a happy medium between getting a buzz and puking in the gutter. I no longer sang Mr. Sandman to the girls. They knew that I was a stoner. I was fifteen and they were twelve and eleven and in the DARE program. They got the T-shirts and everything. They were Good girls. I detached myself from them a bit. Maybe to protect them from my bad influence.”
    He closed his eyes, thinking, and opened them again. “One evening, after I made chicken nuggets and frozen corn for our dinner, I decided to go to a party. There was nothing else to do. Homework was a joke and Lily and Rose knew to stay home and wait for Dad. Rose was like a little mom to Lily by then and they didn’t need me as much. They had each other. I had booze and pot. But I was lonesome.”
    “I know that feeling,” I said, and Mack looked stricken. “Sorry, please continue,” I said to Michael and shot Mack an apology with my eyes. I felt like an idiot for saying that. His companionship was sometimes my only saving grace.
    Michael continued, “It was at this party that I met the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life. Not only was she beautiful, she was funny. I mean, if a girl could make me laugh, that was shocking, because I was really depressed.” He paused. “You all don’t really want to hear this, do you?”
    “Yes, we do,” Carla insisted.
    “ Okay. So, Renee was the life of the party, cracking jokes and daring others to match the shots of tequila she drank. I watched her from across a smoke-filled room and I knew she was going to be my girl. She was absolutely stunning, like a young Renee Zellweger, actually, and she had crazy social skills that I didn’t. She eyed me from across the room with interest, you know, that look that says ‘I’m interested.’ There was just one problem. Girlfriends cost money and I was poor. Dirt poor .”
    He took a power hit and continued. “I couldn’t get a legal job until I was sixteen, so except for delivering dope once in a while for a few bucks, or mowing lawns, I was perpetually broke. Hell, I had never even bought weed. It was always fronted to me, a blunt here and there, or shared at parties. I had friends, though, and so, my friends saw me looking at Renee and saw I was smitten and broke. I remember I was really embarrassed when they told her I was available. They kind of pushed us together. The next thing I knew, I was outside, kissing her under the moon. I sang a few bars of Just Walk Away Renee , and she giggled and said she wasn’t going anywhere.”
    “ That sounds so sweet,” Julie said. I could tell she was shocked at his story. It was so…human.
    “ It would have been sweet, but I had asked her out to Disneyland because that was all I could think of to impress her, and that was going to be expensive. My friends, heck, nobody made decent money on delivering pot because in Los Angeles you can get a marijuana card and get it legally when you’re eighteen. So, my friend hooked me up with this one trial run as a heroin dealer. It turned into a regular thing.”
    Carla looked sad. “Everyone thinks they are only going to do it that one time and score all this money and not ever touch the heroin. My mom thought