Chapter 14: Kiera

Chapter 14: Kiera

Ariel had a phone to her ear. "Fuck. Ok. Yeah. Kashi, do you think you can drive right now?"

"Uhh, yeah, I guess." I patted my ass-pocket for my wallet. "Why, what's up? Is it for work?"

"No, listen… My sister, Kiera… She needs a ride. Can you go get her?"

I was confused. I figured Gordo could drive. Maybe Ariel felt too high. Jocelyn wasn't in the room anymore.

"Sure, yeah, of course, no problem! But who's car am I taking?"

Jocelyn popped her head around the corner. "Mine."

"You don't wanna drive?" I asked.

"No, I'm really, REALLY fucking high, Just be a good boy and pick her up. I really don't think I can right now," Jocelyn spoke rapid fire, an effect of the go fast, her jaw clenched the entire time, a ridiculous amount of hand gestures with each word…

"Good boy, huh?" Gordo laughed, clutching his stomach. Ariel laughed too, phone still to the side of her head.

"Kashi—one of my cooks is gonna pick you up. He's a sweet guy. He'll be there. Just… Be careful, Kiera. Yeah… Ok… Whatever, bye."

Ariel gave me the address to where I was to pick up Kiera. The newfound confidence from the go fast kept me motivated to accomplish this quest, yet I had flashing images of red and blue police lights flashing all around me, filling the bedroom we stood in… Fuck all that. I'm not going to jail today, and I'm not going to be a fucking LOSER by denying the quest.

"Adios," I said.

I saw myself as the object of a music video, spitting words to the music bumping from the radio, totally ignoring whatever the rapper was saying, focusing on just the instrumental…

I thought about a lot during that drive. Like, what if there were no crosswalks, lanes or stoplights? I could drive diagonally if I wanted too… 100mph like the autobahn! That'd be the life, ratchet n clank on that ass… Is that even an appropriate reference? What the fuck is ratchet n clank… Oh shit, I remember that game…

Before I knew it, I was close to the pickup point. It was a pitch-black neighborhood of beat-down crack houses…

"Okiedokie artichokie, where the fuck…"

My phone GPS told me I arrived. I was parked in a shade of darkness. There were two houses on either side of me. One was totally abandoned with boarded up windows. The other looked like an episode of hoarders with the front yard covered in junk. Stripped down microwaves for their copper, a frame of a vehicle, random tools, trash bags everywhere…

Red graffiti was on the house that read TOP OR NOT. What? There were no windows, only waving blankets acting as curtains. No lights… Anxiety filled me for the first time since I took a hit of speed. This was sketchy. I stayed in the car for a minute, deciding whether to call Ariel or not to confirm…

I stepped out, clenching my fists just in case I got jumped and needed to knock some teeth in… I heard some voices near the back of the house but I couldn't discern if it was reality or just my imagination. I walked toward the voices, maneuvering around the knee-high floor of trash.

"Hello?" I called out, my teeth grinding side-to-side. The voices stopped. A shadow peered from the darkness, growing larger until it turned into a beautiful woman with long red hair and dark clothes that covered her skin. Her green eyes glew in the dark like a cat, so green like the most highly prized cannabis in the world, sparkles and all…

The girl crossed her arms. "Can I help you?"

"Yeah, I'm Kashi, looking for Kiera?"

"Oh, thank God." Her folded arms dropped and she waved her arm in a forward sweep above her head. I started walking through the trash back to the Mustang.

I heard a male voice behind me. "Are you the one giving us a ride sir?"

I snapped my head around with a puzzled look. I stared at Kiera for confirmation.

"My sister didn't tell you? Fucking Ariel… Ok. They need a ride, they already paid me and I'll pay you back, sound good to you?" Kiera said in rapid fire fashion. She must've been high just like me. I couldn't see her pupils too clearly in the darkness.

"Sure, yeah…"

"Thank you, sir!" a female voice responded. Kiera and the two figures followed me into the car. They were grimy and smelled like trash with dirt in between the wrinkles of their faces. They looked like the type of duo you'd find dumpster diving when you threw your trash away. I'll take that off your hands! Ugh…

Let's just get this over with, shall we?

The ride was quiet except for the music from the radio along with the commercials. It was getting harder to drive as I felt the g funk pulsing through my veins, urging me to speed up and do some skids. What I really wanted was to get back to Ariel's and smoke some more with Jocelyn, and maybe, find a quiet place to—

"So, how do you know Kiera?" the female asked.

"He's my sister's friend," Kiera interjected for me.

"How long have you known her? Where do you live? Is this your car? It's nice… Do you have a job? Where do you stay?"

I was getting rather uncomfortable as this crackhead lady interrogated me from the backseat. The dude was eerily quiet… The girl stopped interrogating me briefly, only to give me directions on where to turn, then continued. We were in a pitch black area in the middle of nowhere, somewhere on the outskirts of Buckeye.

"Stop, right here," the man finally spoke. I stopped the car in the middle of a bridge built to sustain the monsoon season. The two stepped out of the car and rubbed their hands on the seats as if to ensure they didn't drop anything.

I looked around at the emptiness around us. Only a clump of desert trees. "Uhh, you sure this is good?"

They shut the doors. I rolled down the windows.

"Yes, thank you, sir!" the girl said. The duo hopped over the bridge railing. In the darkness I could only see the trees behind their dark apparitions. The girl hit the guy and whispered something.

"Hey! Wait! Excuse me, sir!" the guy said.

"What's up, man?"

"You wouldn't mind coming here and helping us out?"

"Help? With what?"

Even Kiera seemed to get anxious as she tapped my shoulder, but I kept my eyes on the guy.

"Ahh! You're spoiling the surprise. Fine. I—we, got a gift for ya! It's right back here. Right, Kiera?!" He pointed toward the trees.

Kiera hit me again. "Drive."

I was scared and confused… "There's nothing out here," I said to the man.

"Come on, man! It's over here! Help us… You'll be alright Kiera, if you help us…"

Kiera stuck her head past me. "Fuck you, asshole! DRIVE! DRIVE!"

The man pulled an object from his pocket and ran toward the car. He bumped into the railing like he forgot it was there and stumbled over it. I looked toward the road and stepped on the gas, revving the engine and releasing the clutch late so the tires spun before we moved. Kiera flipped the bird past my face and out the window, her hair brushing against my face. Through my fear I could still smell her sweet fragrance, a chemical citrus…

I don't know how he didn't catch up to us. Maybe it was the guard railing that bought us a few seconds of time. I slowed down 15 seconds later, knowing he couldn't catch up at this point. The man's mangled face spewing a psychotic bloodlust was stained in my head. I was terrified, panting, the radio still playing at a low volume. I shut it off.

"Holy fucking shit," Kiera said. "I'm so sorry."

I was too shaken up to respond.

"What's your name again? I know Ariel told me, but it was like, Asian or some shit, sorry."

"Kashi," I replied, keeping my eyes focused on the road.

"I'm Kiera, as you know. Kashi and Kiera huh… Two K's, what a coinky-dink?"

"Yeah," I managed to force a smile, my flesh still heavy with adrenaline. It subsided into triumph and excitement, primarily due to the dope. I felt even more high, my visual clarity enhancing beyond 20/20…

"Mind if I smoke in here?"

"Go ahead." I realized how tense my jaw was and tried to relax it but couldn't for longer than a second. I had been clenching and grinding my teeth so hard since my first hit of g funk. I put a finger to the side of my jaw underneath my earlobe. It felt like my jaw was out-of-socket or dislocated, raw to the touch…

I caught Kiera in the corner of my eye looking at me with a curious amusement. She lit her cigarette, took a drag, then provocatively set it in my mouth. I inhaled and could've swore I could taste her lips on the filter. She kept the cigarette there after my first hit, so I took another…

"Better?"

"Yeah. Fuck, that was crazy…"

"I know. They're fucking sketchy. I didn't know they were going to do all that. I was just there to get some stuff. Sorry, again."

"It's not your fault," I said. She put the cigarette to my lips again as I moved the steering wheel.

"Sooo, I take it you smoke jib, right?"

Jib… I remembered Gordo calling it that in the beginning. "Go fast?" I said.

"Yup yup yup, but I call it jib," she bragged.

"And why is that?"

"Because once you start smoking, no one understands what the fuck you're talking about."

"Ohh! I get it, gibberish!"

Kiera shouted, "Yes! See, finally someone gets it! Ariel's like 'that's stupid', but she still calls it that even though she's a bitch-ass HATER!"

I laughed. Kiera reminded me a lot of Jocelyn.

"So, Kashi. You're quiet for a jibster. Clearly you're on one. What's up?"

"You can tell?"

Kiera laughed. "No fucking shit. Your eyes are huge. Don't get pulled over! You can't keep still, your teeth are grinding…"

"It's my first time. Tonight."

"No shit? Ok, I get it now. We're gonna have such a good time," she said mischievously. I wanted to bring up Jocelyn, just in case Kiera was getting the wrong idea… But I left it alone.

"I've been up for 2 days," I said.

"No shit? When's the last time you took a hit?"

"Um… Around 10, 11 pm. I did molly yesterday, g funk—jib today."

Kiera laughed darkly. "Here, get on the freeway. Don't worry, we can get to my sisters from here. Yup." I merged on the freeway. Kiera grabbed something from her pockets. She pulled out a one inch straw with the end cut at an angle, the other exit-hole melted shut. It was a makeshift scoop. I darted my eyes back and forth from the road to this strange tool in her fingers as she held it up like a gemstone.

"I'll teach you how to make one of these… A real handy dandy pooper scooper, I tell you what." Kiera had a baggy of shards in her hand. She filled the scoop to the brim.

She placed her hand on the steering wheel. "I'll watch the road. Take the scoop. Carefully!"

I slowed down the car slightly as we cruised on the highway. I took both eyes off the road for only a few seconds as I inhaled the shards through my nostril. It hurt like hell; literally like I snorted broken glass and it was cutting up my sinuses upon entry. I kept sniffing through my nostril, trying to clear the burning sensation to no avail. 

This was an entirely different feeling from smoking it. While the pipe hit me like a steady wave that carried me out into the sea, this was like being dropped from the firmament straight into a whirlpool, every bone in my body shattering upon impact as I kept submerging deeper and deeper…

"Holy FUCK," I said, shaking my head like a dog drying its coat. I handed the straw back to Kiera and reclaimed the steering wheel. She pointed to the next exit as she took her bump.

"Whoo!" Kiera flung her neck back then stretched her mouth open like she was at the dentist. Her jaw popped louder than the music coming from the speakers. She moaned from the sensation and stuffed her things back in her pockets.

My body was doing stuff on its own; punching the air to the beat of the music, squeezing my glutes against the seat in rhythm, grinding my teeth back and forth, bumping my head forward and back like a caffeine addicted chicken, all at the same time…

Gordo, Ariel and Jocelyn were standing around the firepit in the backyard.

"What up what up!" Kiera said. Ariel introduced Jocelyn and they shook hands like business partners. I wanted to speak up about what happened with the crackheads. The feeling to express it was bubbling within me…

"You're not gonna believe what happened…" Kiera explained everything. Jocelyn seemed a bit upset that two stinky fiends were in her backseat, like she needed to sanitize the fabric now or check if anything was stolen.

Gordo shocked all of us. Apparently, word on the street was that Rick and Gretchen were involved with two murders in the West Valley area. He never thought they'd try something with one of his 'associates', and that he'd have to 'deal with it' later.

Kiera was distressed that she'd just been hanging out with two psychopaths. She was angry that she was kept out of the loop. It was all to get some jib, and that's exactly what she needed to smoke right now. We all went inside to try the new stuff, leaving out the fact that Kiera and I were already the first partakers…