Acid Drop by Samantha Barrow

A ring of strawberry lipstick circles the smoothed edge of the blunt as she passes it to me, and I try, I really do, not to imagine what it would be like to kiss her—to taste the berry directly from her lips instead of getting my hit secondhand from this pineapple flavored cigarillo wrapper.

I’m unsuccessful.

Because she’s looking up at the stars hanging high and twinkling even against the bright, ever-present glow of the city and its tall, tall buildings and the monotonous fluorescents that I can’t escape from, not even in this gas station parking lot with its stained asphalt and monitors on every pump that repeat the same advertisements, shill the same products, over and over again. And even if the world was to go up in flame and the rapture came and took us all away, Maria Menudo would still be there on the monitors, wearing her oversized cashmere sweater saying, “We’re all better together.”

And the difference between Maria Menudo and Lacy is Lacy does think we could be better if we were all together. And I would normally scoff at such a naive outlook, would claim her worldview was terribly infantile and talk about how I fear for her mental well-being in these trying times, but I should’ve stopped smoking fifteen minutes ago when I first felt the tingling in the tips of my fingers, and now I feel the weight of every single tall building crushing my chest. And it’s getting harder to breathe as I stare at her pale lashes fluttering against the night breeze and try, I try so very hard, to think of happy thoughts.

“I think I’m having a panic attack,” I finally breathe out as a Ford Focus passes by where we’re sitting on the curb a little too close, and I yank my knees up to my chest. My rollerblades are scuffed, and I dig my heel down in order to keep them from rolling beneath the weight of my arms as I hug my shins.

Red high-waisted shorts pull against my thighs, and I feel the hem of them ride up against my ass cheeks. Rough concrete digs into my skin, and it’s grounding in an uncomfortable way that I wasn’t quite ready for, so I flinch and try to stand on wobbly knees with lungs that are just a few seconds away from bursting.

Lacy turns her attention away from the stars and all their wonder and hits me with her silver-lined gaze. She rises on her own, elegant and lithe, before offering a soft hand to help pull me up.

Her blades aren’t scuffed like mine. They’re white and hot pink with little lavender butterfly stickers, and they look like something a seven-year-old would wear, but they also look—pristine. Taken care of. Cherished.

I’m jealous, and I don’t know why.

She takes the blunt from my hand before gesturing across the street. “Wanna go to CVS?”

My mouth is dry, my tongue is stuck to the roof, and my chest is still being crushed, crushed, crushed. So I just nod, tugging an unsecured strand of black hair behind my ear. The diamond piercing in my cartilage snags.

She takes another puff, inhales the smoke, and lets it settle deep, deep, deep into her lungs before blowing it out in one fluid breath through sticky, berry-coated lips slick with gloss. The teddy bear backpack hangs loose from her shoulders as she leads me across the street, discarding the roach in the cigarette disposal on top of the blue-chipped trash can.

The side of my roller blades hits the shoulder of the road before Lacy pulls me along, creating another rough scuff.

The bright neon swallows up our shadows as she leads me into the twenty-four-hour drug store. It’s blinding, the fluorescence, but she keeps our hands clasped and veers toward the back of the store.

My rollerblades catch on the uneven carpet, and I grip tighter around her slender hand to keep from losing balance.

She squeezes back, letting me know she’s got me, but doesn’t turn around.

She pushes forward until we reach the refrigerated section in the back of the store. Her skates roll to a stop just in front of the chilled glass door that houses the water and sports drinks. Her hip juts out as she pulls the door open, catching the side with her thigh to hold it.

It’d be easier if she used two hands, but she doesn’t. She keeps her right hand locked with mine, and I know it’s for my benefit.

I’m too high. My head is fuzzy, and my pulse is racing, and the buildings are still on my chest, and any minute now, I know they’re gonna pulverize it.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this anxious before in my life, but Lacy—she knows what to do. She always does.

She bends at her hips, and her flared miniskirt rides up the back of her thighs, exposing the lace hem of her panties. I try, I really do, to look away. But the lace is so delicate, and her hand is so soft in mine, and I wonder how much softer she is between the apex of her thighs, at her very core.

I imagine she feels like silk.

My cottonmouth gets ten times worse as I realize I’m still staring at her panties, so I turn my attention toward the end of the aisle. My eyes snag on our reflection in the glass door—her bent over in front of me, long blonde hair falling like a curtain around her face and our hands still entwined, and I can’t deny it.

We make a pretty fucking picture.

Lacy grabs two Gatorades, one white cherry and one cucumber lime. She twists around, balancing both drinks in one hand, and pushes a little to the side. The frosted door swings closed, and she smiles up at me.

It’s a breathtaking smile, the kind of smile that stops you dead—the kind of smile that brings you back to life.

I release a shaky exhale as she offers me the pale green drink.

“Still your favorite, right?” she asks.

All I can do is nod and take the Gatorade with my free hand. The bottle begins sweating almost immediately, causing droplets of condensation to fall to the worn carpet.

Her smile doesn’t falter. She leads me back up the aisle towards the registers where the overnight cashier has been watching us the entire time.

We make it halfway up the aisle before Lacy lifts our joined hands high up into the air and twirls. Both her hair and skirt flare out around her, and I’m mesmerized. Entranced. Enchanted.

When her spin is done, she’s facing me again—her smile just as wide and bright and breathtaking. Her icy blue, silver-rimmed eyes lock with mine, and I notice the tinge of rosy pink dusted along her pale cheeks.

“I love this song,” she says by way of explanation.

I only register her melodic voice and little pants of breath.

“I don’t hear anything.”

They’re the first words I’ve said since I told her about my panic attack, and they come out in a rasp.

Her eyes twinkle in the fluorescence. “You don’t have to hear it to feel it, Sophie.”

She twists back around, leading me towards the registers once again, only stopping to scoop up a bag of Swedish Fish on our way.

“Isn’t it a little late for you girls to be out?” the cashier says when we set the drinks and the sour candy on the counter. His limp, mousy brown hair falls into his beady eyes as he stares at us.

I bite down on the inside of my mouth.

Lacy squeezes my hand one more time before dropping it to reach into her teddy bear bag and pull out a crisp twenty-dollar bill.

“We always look out for one another, sir,” she says with a smile, her voice barely more than a wisp of cherry flavored air. She throws her bag back on her shoulders and takes the red and white CVS bag in one hand before grabbing mine with her other. “Keep the change.”

She propels us forward, leading us towards the automatic doors and the glowing pulse of downtown once more.

I twist around, catching our reflection one last time in the glass case of perfume off to the side, but it’s not just us in the picture this time. The eyes slide over our skates, our legs, our asses, and finally he catches me staring in the glass.

I turn away.

My mouth still tastes like cotton and cherries.

The circles she skates turn into figure eights as she corrals me into the center of the deserted residential road. The sky is slowly waking, changing from black to blue with a kiss of violet, bruising both in color and in the realization that this night is almost over.

And it kills me. Makes me nostalgic for a time that is now. Forces me into a sad state of melancholia I fear I’ll never truly escape—because I’ll never truly recover from Lacy.

She blows little pink lemonade bubbles as she skates by me, but their pops are barely heard under the rustling of trees caught in the late summer breeze and the rhythmic rumble of our rollerblades—pink and white and black and blue.

The streetlights capture the pale highlights of her hair and the sparkles in her skirt and the lavender glitter of the butterfly stickers, and I can’t help but think this is it—this is all I’ll ever want—Lacy Garner making me the center of her universe. And even if it’s just for tonight, even if it’s just for this insignificant moment in the middle of Carlton Drive, even if it’s just because I smoked too much weed and she’s worried I might face-plant on the asphalt, it doesn’t matter. Because I’m lucky enough to be in her orbit, and that’s my nirvana, my heaven, the only evidence I’ll need of a higher power or divine fate or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

This is everything.

And I don’t deserve this—don’t deserve her.

I’m just a mall-rat fuck-up with an expensive haircut and scuffed rollerblades, and I shouldn’t be able to call her my best friend. Shouldn’t be able to call her my anything, in any capacity. Because she’s so funny, and sure, and beautiful, and alive, and I’m just here—existing the best I can, which is trying not to face-plant on the asphalt of Carlton Drive at 4:30 in the morning after I’ve smoked too much weed and lost all my inhibitions and maybe even my mind. Because I saw my best friend’s panties and all I wanted was to know how they felt beneath my hand, over my fingers, in my mouth, between my legs.

I’m nothing and—

This.

Is.

Everything.

She is everything.

So, I bite the inside of my lip and swallow back all the words unsaid. I sit and wallow in the nostalgia, the melancholia, the inescapable dawn that comes creeping over the horizon. We stumble into her yard, taking our skates off in the driveway so we don’t dig holes into the lawn, and tiptoe in our socks over dewing blades of grass that are cold and seep in too fast, faster than we can walk. We slide open the window that we left unlocked hours before and maneuver our way through the dark den and up, up, up the carpeted stairs that moan and give with our weight, and we finally, finally make it into her bedroom. She shuts and locks the door and turns around, slipping out of that flared miniskirt, and stands in front of me in nothing but her oversized top and those fucking lace panties—and I don’t, I swear I don’t, think there’s anything to it.

But then she gazes up at me from beneath those pale, fluttering lashes that go out, out, out and up, up, up but only in the right light, and she says, “Take off your pants, Soph.”

And I’m so violently reminded that I am nothing.

And this is everything.

“I’m sorry, what?” I stutter as I brace myself against the white door frame.

She smiles, not missing a beat. “Take off your pants.”

I sink into the wood, the glossy paint cool on my back.

“Are you gonna have your way with me?” I mean for it to be a joke. It sounds like a plea.

My knees wobble when she steps forward and puts her opal nails on the brass button of my shorts.

Her breath ghosts across my temple as she whispers, “Yes.”

I don’t take my top off. I keep the black straps hung loose across my shoulders as Lacy’s lips trace the edge of my brow to the slope of my nose to the curve of my mouth. And then she’s kissing me. Really kissing me. With soft lips and a slick tongue.

And everything is berry.

My panties aren’t lace but a dark satin. I bought them three years ago from the Victoria’s Secret semi-annual sale. I bought them while picturing rough, callused hands and prickly stubble. Because that’s what I was supposed to want. That’s who I was supposed to let see me this way. Bare and naked and vulnerable. I bought them with a man in mind.

But instead of rugged and scratchy, I get Lacy.

Lacy—

With her berry lips and short nails and pale lashes and soft eyes.

Lacy.

Lacy.

Lacy.

The answer to the question I never dared ask myself.

Until now.

Samantha Barrow

Image: Pink and white in line skate boot from Google images.