Chapter 7: Jason

I started hanging out regularly at Jason’s house. We converted his garage full of old furniture into our smoking lounge.

Over time we started collecting free furniture we saw the neighbors throwing out or someone's family was getting rid of. Our first major addition was a white L shaped couch we found a few blocks away. It took the two of us three trips to carry it all into the garage. Jason thoroughly cleaned it. We each claimed one of the corners as our regular seat. Neither of us wanted to sit on the old couch we had before.

Next Jason was given an antique rounded wood table with cabinets below it from his uncle. It had a beautiful dark stain finish. We placed it in the middle of the two couches. Sooner or later, the top would become covered in crumbs of weed and the rings left from cold drinks.

While working with my dad I had acquired a modern looking green cabinet filled with shelves perfect for displaying bongs. It was something someone had left behind in a rental unit we were fixing up. I convinced my dad to let me load the cabinet on his truck and bring it over to Jason's house.

We had a circle of chairs and couches. A round table in the middle. A large cabinet full of bongs against one wall. Jason eventually hooked up his PlayStation to the old T.V.

More often than not someone would be playing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. At the time this was one of the most popular and controversial video games in the world.

With the weed we took from the garage raid, Jason and I were able to start selling weed. Originally, we just split it and went our separate ways. Once we each sold our share, we reunited to see how the other had done.

We put our money together again to buy more. We did this a few more times before officially becoming business partners.

Jason and I ended up becoming good friends. At first, I wanted to think of myself as his mentor but really this was the most advanced fourteen-year-old you ever met. There are a few things I learned from him.

We actually made a pretty good team. Jason was good at bargaining for a good price. He just had a natural talent.

One of his usual tricks went like this: Jason would hear the price someone was offering him. He would counter with half the price. The dealer would laugh and say no. Jason would get up and act like he was leaving. Somehow the dealer always gave in to his demands. Now he would not always get half price, but it was always cheaper than the first offer.

That is where I came in. I was basically Jason’s opposite. I was good at smoothing things over after Jason had insulted someone with his negotiating. I was good at making people feel like they got a good deal. I had the natural charismatic salesmen skills while Jason was the money man.

I would hang out with Jason in his garage as we both met with our customers from the different schools. Despite his age Jason knew a ton of people who smoked weed at our rival school Mira Costa.

One of his older sisters and his cousin Lil Ron attended school there and often invited Jason to parties.

Jason got expelled from our high school not long after we started hanging out.

Jason was attempting to ditch class with another friend. They only wanted to ditch one class and planned to come back so Jason’s sister gave them her keys and said they could try hiding in her car parked in the school parking lot.

The security spotted them right away. The security told them to get out of the car. They made them empty their pockets and Jason’s friend had a knife on him. Just your typical Swiss army pocketknife. There was no malicious plans or intent. Some people just carry knives.

The school overreacted and made this huge deal. I remember the school newspaper making it out to be like the security guards thwarted terrorism in the school parking lot.

Jason and his friend were both expelled for having a weapon on campus.

Jason was forced to go to Independent Study for the rest of high school. Essentially, he only went to school one day a week. The rest of the time he did homework and special assignments at home.

With Jason home all day, I had a new place to go when I was ditching school.

Halloween that year, Jason's cousin Lil Ron managed to get shrooms aka Magic Mushrooms. He sold Jason and I each a single serving. We both took them with a fruity flavored wine cooler and hung out in the garage playing Pink Floyd and the Gorillaz CDs.

That night, Jason's older sister was hosting a Halloween party for her and her friends. Jason's sister was a straight A student who never drank or did drugs. She was involved in student government and president of several clubs. She was the grade below me in high school but because I hung out with her brother I think she assumed I was a freshman too.

Her party consisted of her and five of her nerdy friends watching horror movies and giggling while drinking soda. They had put up cheesy decorations from Party City. They were all wearing costumes.

"Don't tell my sister we are on shrooms!" Jason told me.

"I won't." I told him.

Jason's sister June was tall like Jason. She did not have fucked up teeth, so she looked a little less like a vampire. She still had pale skin, blue eyes and dark hair. June knew we regularly smoked weed in the garage and did not care. Occasionally she tried to lecture us.

Right as the mushrooms were starting to kick in and feel really good, June and her friends decided to come into the garage and start bugging us. A very obscure song came on the autoplay and for a moment I questioned if we were still listening to the same CDs.

One of June's friends was dressed in a very weird costume. She was wearing a skin-colored body suit covered in fake blood and a bald cap. The body suit gave the illusion she was naked, but she did not look sexy. She had what I could only describe as a long fake umbilical cord hanging from her belly button.

June was dressed as a pirate. She had an eye patch and a fake mustache. On her head was an orange bandana. She carried a fake sword.

"You guys are just sitting in here doing nothing on Halloween?" June asked us.

"We are listening to music." I said.

"This music sounds weird. What are you guys listening to?" June asked.

Jason looked over at me with a dazed look in his dilated eyes. I too was feeling the shrooms. Neither of us could remember the title or artist of the music that was playing. We did not want to make June suspicious so Jason blurted out the first thing he could think of.

"This is awkward!" Jason said to me.

The girl in the weird bloody costume started using her umbilical cord as a jump rope. I glanced over at her and was having trouble comprehending what I was seeing. The white walls in the garage seemed like they went on forever and the room was massive.

"I don't know what's going on man!" I said back to him.

"What is awkward?" June asked.

Jason looked at me and then looked at his sister.

"This is just awkward." Jason struggled to find any other words.

"What's she supposed to be?" I asked pointing at June's friend.

"She's an aborted fetus!" June answered with a laugh.

"I am victim of a political agenda which has been terrorizing our country for decades!" said the aborted fetus.

The aborted fetus continued to talk and explain her political views aggressively but all I could hear was that weird noise adults make on Charlie Brown.

"Waa waa waaa waa waaa waaaa waaa!"

I was tripping balls. Jason and I stared at the aborted fetus blankly as she talked. I just nodded my head every so often. Jason suddenly stood up.

"You need to get out of here now June! This is awkward! You need to leave!" Jason shouted at his sister.

June acted offended.

"Damn Jason, you can't hang out with your big sister? Don't be such a jerk! We will leave. but now you guys can't have any of the punch we made." June said as her and her friend left the garage.

We heard June and her friends walk down the hall and out of audible range.

"Do you think she knows we are on shrooms?" I asked Jason after June had left the room for a few minutes.

"I think she does dude!" Jason replied.

Sometime later we heard June and her friend heading down the hall again.

"She's coming back dude! Let's hide!" Jason whispered.

Jason dove behind the couch and covered himself with some old blankets and clothing that filled boxes stacked in his garage. I ran over to a storage closet and closed myself inside. We heard the garage door open.

"What the hell? Where did they go?" June said to herself.

June closed the door and went back down the hall. Jason and I were dead silent. We could hear June talking to one of her friends in the hallway.

"They were just in there. I don't know where they went. They disappeared." we overheard June say.

We both sat in our hiding spots for quite some time. I will attribute it to the fact we were both tripping out on shrooms hard. The closet was dark and I saw swirling lights and felt a euphoric sensation staring into the void.

Eventually I came out and sat on the couch in front of Jason. I imagine he was having his own hallucinations behind the couch.

"Dude, I think they are gone. Come out!" I told Jason.

Jason appeared from behind the couch holding a book.

"I found my sister's yearbook from last year." Jason told me, presenting the book.

I wasn't really impressed or understanding Jason's excitement.

"So what?" I asked him.

"Since she has a mustache now, I need to update it for her." Jason informed me.

I can remember thinking it was a bad idea at the time. I also thought it was pretty funny. Funny ideas won. Jason was clearly not thinking straight, and he was on a mission. June was very involved with the school, and she had many pictures throughout the yearbook. Jason drew mustaches on them all. We laughed like idiots for an hour.

It would be six months before June discovered Jason's artwork. By then Jason didn't even remember doing it.

At seventeen years old I still had a curfew. I had to be home by midnight unless I was sleeping over at a friend's house. Despite being on shrooms, I still knew I had to get home before my mom woke up in the middle of the night and saw I wasn't there.

I set off for the journey home, but when I stepped outside, I suddenly could not remember how to get home. This was a trip I had taken at least thirty times by now. I grew up in Redondo and knew the town map by heart.

Jason attempted to point me in the right direction. I lived about a mile and a half south from Jason's house. I knew if I kept walking in the same direction eventually, I would see something I recognized.

At the halfway point to my house was a local elementary school. As I walked past the school, I saw several cars on the playground with their head lights on. Upon closer inspection I discovered they were cops. They shined a bright search light in my direction as I passed the playground fence.

I panicked and started running. I found a dumpster near the school cafeteria loading dock and hid behind it. A police car drove down the street slowly. As it went by the light briefly focused on the dumpster before carrying on. I waited for what felt like an eternity before venturing out again. By now the cops were gone.

I found my way home and went straight to my room. I creeped up the stairs as quiet as possible, praying to God I didn't come face to face with my parents. I got into my room and collapsed on the bed with exhaustion. I quickly fell asleep with my clothes on.

Chapter 8: Lil Ron