“So what’s the fresh addiction this time?” Marie asked me. She rubbed her eye with the back of the hand that held her cards, smearing green eyeshadow up to her eyebrow.
“I don’t actually know,” Jasper answered nonchalantly. “A guy on Fifth Street makes it.” We sat on the hood of Jasper’s car in the woods, Marie and I playing cards for designated driver up to the city, and Tia in Jasper’s lap. He was a small guy, and she was smaller, with angular hips and collarbones.
“He got enough for Teo and everyone?” I asked him. He took the cigarette out from between Tia’s lips and took a long drag before he answered. He made smoke rings and she giggled brightly. I gave him a glare to hurry up the answer.
“Yeah, of course,” he said easily. “The dude doesn’t make for just me, you know.” I spread down my cards on his paint job and smiled wide at Marie.
“Jazz, gimme a beer. I am not driving.” He grabbed a bottle from the cooler on the roof as Marie groaned.

When we reached the city limit two beers later, Marie took the turn onto Fifth. The buildings were all lit up against the sky, which was quickly darkening. People walked the streets in short skirts and glow paint, music and shouts flooded from doors and mouths, and all the air smelled like smoke and grease. Tia sang loudly with the bright pop music on the radio and leaned out the window on her elbows. Jasper kept an arm around her waist to keep her tipsy self from making it the rest of the way out of the car.
“Where the heck is this place?” Marie grumbled into her nails, which she was quickly chewing off. She flickered her eyes from side to side, scanning and put on cruise control so she could bounce her leg.
“It’s the place behind the Laundromat,” I said. I pulled down the visor and wiped the smeared makeup from my face.
“There!” Jasper yelled from the backseat, sticking his bony finger into my periphery and making me jump. I cursed at him as Marie brought the car to a halt with a resistant groan from the shocks. She put her cigarette out on the sidewalk after one last sip of it and as Tia got out of the car, she clung to me for a long moment to get her balance. The neon buzzed “LAUNDR-O-MAT” and lit the sidewalk yellow, along with the fluorescents from inside, which were buzzing just as much. The door opened with a ping and a woman doing laundry in the back looked toward us. She talked into her phone between breaths on her cigarette.
“Jazz, why is it so warm?” Tia asked innocently enough.
“People come to do their laundry in their shorts, so they keep the heat up,” Jasper smiled at her. Marie smacked him and he laughed.
“It's because Lin has an industrial oven in the back cooking meth,” she told the truth. With that, Jazz led the way up a rickety wooden staircase with an open door marked “Employees Only.” At the top was a room that started with a couch. It faced away from us, and towards a coffee table, at which sat Lin. Heat blasted in through the only other doorway on the opposite wall. The room was hot, too hot to inhabit, but he sat cross legged on the floor in only boxers and a medical mask. He looked up and pulled down the mask to meet us with a crooked yellow smile.
“Jazz!” he croaked. He was cutting something with baking power on the table, but behind him on the kitchen counter sat a bag of Tootsiepops. He got up, limbs popping, and sidled up to Jasper way too closely. Marie watched unamused. Tia watched with wide eyes. “That’s $280 for the suns, my friend.”
“For six hits? You’re stiffing me Lin.”
“$260.”
“Try again.”
“$240. I don't have anymore give,” Lin creaked when he spoke. His skin seemed gray, but it could have been the light.
“That’s more like it,” Jazz said and took a wad of twenties from his pocket. As he counted it out, the girl on the couch I had not noticed due to simple immobility groaned. Suddenly Marie took a step or two towards the door and answered her phone. Her voice added to the low hum of the washers downstairs, the buzz outside, and the haze of the house. I felt a little dizzy. Lin grabbed the bag of suckers from the counter and put six into Jazz’s hand.
“Thank you kids," Lin grinned. “Have fun.” With a wave to him, Jasper led the way back down the stairs.

The thump from the club could be heard from two streets away. The car grumbled to a stop, and we could barely hear ourselves slam the doors shut. The suckers were soaked in “something like LSD” and made of “something like crystal” Jazz said, and so he pocketed them past the bouncer, who couldn’t care less that Tia and my ID's were made from laminated cardboard. Once inside it was sensory overload. It was much brighter than outside. The strobes were disorienting, and the music was worse. People sweated and shouted, the floor banged with bass, and the very first thing Tia did was vomit on the floor. The walls flashed and shook, I felt the blood moving behind my eyes and suddenly the world began to tilt. I felt hands come around my waist from behind and I got ready to fight. I spun around and shoved, panicking, only to find Teo. He flashed me a smile as I yelled.
“You jerk!”
“Have you got the suns?” he yelled.
“What?!”
“Have you! Got! The suns!” he tried again.
“Oh!” I said, and then pointed to Jazz, who already had a sucker in his mouth. Marie was gone, along with her hit, and Tia was looking at hers, which she held in her fist. Jazz handed Teo and I a sucker. Teo stuck his in his mouth and crunched away on it. Tia looked me, then started giggling wildly when we both took our hits at the same time. I was instantaneously nauseous. The blood rushed from my head to my feet and then back so fast I lost my balance and gripped Teo’s arm to stay upright. Tia did the same to Jasper, only with both hands. Once recovered, she was laughing so much I thought she would drop the sucker.?

The next thing I knew, I was in the sea of dancing people. It was shoving and sweat, constant movement and more constant noise. Tia had me by the wrist, Teo was behind me, and Jasper was no where to be seen. I felt deaf. Tia was saying something but I wasn't sure what it was. I heard the people shouting and the noise came in big sharp bursts, stark against the drone in my ears. The music was distant, all except the thump of bass in my lungs. I felt suffocated. I tried to say something but couldn’t and my breaths were too shallow. The air dragged every step of the way as I breathed, shaking in my throat and my lungs, causing the rest of me to shake with it. I found Tia's face and she was flushed red, panting hard. The ground shifted and spun, throwing me around and the longer I waited for it to stop the worse it got. The light was inconsistent, white and blinding and then suddenly nonexistent. It flashed in and out with the blurs of people and fought with my eyes. Then the sound completely receded. It was relief punctuated with panic. Following the loss of hearing was the sensation of Tia's hand on my arm, and then out went the light. I grabbed for someone but was too numb to know if I succeeded. I was unconscious before I hit the ground.