It tasted bad. Horribly bad.

It tasted like burnt tea or spicy leaves. It tasted like- well, she didn't quite know what, but nonetheless it was a horrible taste.

As soon as the taste of the spicy tea leaves hit the back of her throat, she started coughing, her choking drowning out the laughter that was breaking out around her. Her throat grew irritated from hacking up half her lung and she cringed as the taste of blood infiltrated the back of her throat.

"You're doing it wrong," Mel said to her once her coughing fit had ended. The rest of the group was still chuckling, some were imitating her poor attempt, but Mel had stifled her laughter long ago, and her pink lips had settled into a tight-lipped smile. She reached her hand out and swiftly took the joint from Madeline, an amused glimmer in her eye.

"Watch," She said, as she drew the joint closer to her, pausing to make sure the other girl was watching.

Maddie hadn't needed to be told to watch Mel; she had practically been entranced by the other girl the entire night. From the way she carried herself, to the calamity in her voice, and the grace in her laughter, Maddie had begun to forget why she had sought this group out in the first place. She hadn't even had a moment to consider what Dylan would say if he knew where she was right now. Not that it mattered.

Madeline kept her eyes trained on Mel as the taller girl moved the joint between her thumb and index finger. She brought the joint up to her mouth, letting the end just barely touch her plump lips before taking a long drag. As she pulled the joint away from her mouth, Mel closed her eyes and tilted her head back, extenuating her prominent jaw line as the long, black braids that had acted as a curtain fell from her shoulder and danced behind her back in the wind.

A few moments later, Mel let out an ethereal sigh and parted her lips, allowing a cloud of smoke to stream out into the air above her.

Mel's eyes fluttered back open and immediately locked on Maddie's, a smirk stretching across her lips. She held the joint out toward Maddie, offering it to the girl for a second time. "Wanna try again?"

Madeline nodded eagerly, and took the joint back from Mel, keeping her eyes on the other girl. She tried to mimic the girl's actions, putting the joint up to her lips, doing her best not to wince at the horrible taste infiltrating her mouth once again. She took a long drag and managed to fight down a fit of coughs. Madeline angled her head up, the same way as Mel had done, and slowly let the smoke slip between her lips.

She heard a few people making noises of appraisal, but she only looked for acknowledgement from Mel. The girl was smiling, her pristinely white teeth shining and her brown skin glowing a golden color in the dim, yellow lights that decorated the gazebo.

"You're a fast learner," She remarked.

Madeline shrugged, pushing down the flutter in her stomach. "I try."

"A cheer for the fresh meat!" One of the guys declared, holding up his own joint, sandwiched between his fingers and a red solo cup. The rest of the small, quaint group let out one mess of half-enthused cheers before resorting back to their quiet muttering amongst each other.

Maddie hadn't bothered to learn all of their names– half were passed out or too high to make coherent noises, and the majority of the other half just didn't speak. She had only bothered to learn the names of the important people, though she only justified which ones were important based on how much Mel laughed at one of their jokes.

Mike seemed to be Mel's favorite of the guys, or at least the one she was closest with. He sat across from them and was probably the most outgoing of the small group. He had deep-set black eyes that sat above rosy cheeks, and he radiated with excitement and laughter. His hair was hidden by a black beanie, which matched with the rest of his dark clothing.

On Mike's left, there was another guy; his eyes were bloodshot and watery, and he had only mumbled out a few words throughout the night. Madeline couldn't quite remember his name, but he looked like a skinner, more scraggly Pete Davidson. On Mike's other side, a girl laid curled up against him– Cindy. She was pretty, and fit, but hid most of her body with baggy clothes. The brown beanie on her head covered most of her blonde hair, which had been cut into a bob and had the remnants of blue streaks in the back. A mess of silver necklaces and chains hung around her neck, and chunky rings decorated each of her fingers.

There were maybe a half-dozen others or so, most of which Madeline identified not by their name, but rather how they presented themselves. Vomit-girl was laying down, passed out, far over on Mel's other side. Cindy sat a few spaces away from the red-flannel girl. Diagonally located from Mike were the three acne-prone stooges, and sitting directly opposite of Pete Davidson lookalike was the Ariana Grande wannabe.

Madeline gave a small smile, not quite used to the dynamic of the group just yet. The sound of the old swing set creaking as the wind passed through their chains could be heard from the other side of the playground, and if she sat up tall enough to peek over the heads, she could see the lights on the top floor of her house just a few blocks away. It felt weird to be so close to home but so far from what she was used to.

Her ears shot up at the sound of a car driving by, and her heart immediately began beating faster. It only calmed down when the headlights disappeared around a bend in the road. She relaxed, slumping back against the wooden pole of the gazebo. She heard Mel chuckling, aware the girl had been watching her silently. When Madeline sent her a questioning look, Mel simply shrugged and took another drag.

Again, Madeline perked up at the sound of feet crushing gravel; she straightened, immediately panicking and trying to figure out a way to get herself out of any trouble. However, the footsteps turned out to be those of an elderly woman taking her dog for a late night walk, and she paid no mind to the cloud of smoke hovering over the poorly-lit gazebo in the abandoned playground.

"You need to chill out," Mel said at last, looking amused by Maddie's frantic behavior.

"If you're so worried you're going to get caught, why are you even here?" Cindy asked, something between arrogance and blunt honesty. From the little she had said tonight, Maddie could tell Cindy always spoke candidly and with little filter. Cindy reminded her of Jason in some ways.

"I'm not worried," Maddie insisted, her voice getting stuck in her throat as she failed to even convince herself she was telling the truth.

"Relax, Cin," the Pete Davidson lookalike said. "We all had first-time jitters once. I remember yours quite well." Cindy only rolled her eyes and flipped him off.

"Do you guys always do this?" Madeline asked, directing the question to Mel.

The girl shrugged, "We do what feels right."

"That's a vague answer."

"You'll learn to live with it if you're going to hang with us," Mel responded, an amused smirk lighting up her face. Madeline found herself smiling back, agreeing to ease up on her curiosity in exchange for being part of this group, and in exchange for being associated with them, especially Mel– even if it was just for tonight.

"So, Maddie," the Pete Davidson lookalike slurred. "What's a girl like you seeking out stoners for?"

"What do you mean?" She asked, her brows lowering.

"He means you're a priss," Cindy explained. Mike elbowed her in the ribs, but no one vocalized any disagreement with her statement.

"I am not a priss," Maddie argued.

"Yeah, you kinda are," Mel chuckled. Her brown eyes shone with humor, and once again, Madeline found she had a hard time disagreeing with anything the girl said. Instead, she attempted to take another drag, and managed to successfully breathe in the smoke without coughing.

"How am I a priss?"

"Should we start with the way you dress at school, or would you like to talk about your prestigious parents?" Mike said, clear mockery in his tone.

Pete waved a finger in Mike's direction, "Or we could talk about her bitchy boyfriend. I mean he just screams p-"

"Ex-boyfriend," Maddie interrupted, quieting both boys who sunk back in their seats. "Whatever, I'm a priss. I don't understand how that's important here."

Cindy pushed herself up from Mike's chest. "Prisses don't usually like other people knowing they're just as fucked up as everyone else," She said. "They like to be secretive about their underage abuse of drugs and illegal consumption of alcohol."

"I'm not fucked up," Madeline remarked. "And I have nothing to hide."

"Alright then," Mel challenged, settling her cup on the ground beside her and turning her body to face Madeline. "Why are you here, Maddie?"

Why was she here?

That was a stupid question. A stupid question that she had been asking herself all night.

The preliminary answer seemed simple enough: Damien had cheated on her– multiple times. However, that of course would contradict her earlier statement that she wasn't fucked up.

The actual answer was a little more difficult: because she wanted to do something rebellious for once; because she wanted some type of revenge against him; because she wanted to know what it felt like to get high; because she wanted to prove she was doing fine without him.

"Because I didn't know where else to go," She responded, finally.

Mel hummed, disapprovingly, "That's a vague answer."

Maddie shrugged, bringing the joint between her lips again, like the motion had become habitual now. "You'll learn to live with it."

Mel placed her hand beneath Madeline's chin, gently pulling her head closer. Madeline thought it would feel good– she had been silently begging for it to happen all night. However, as soon as Mel grew close enough that her warm breath fanned across Madeline's face, she jerked back.

Mel's brow dipped, the smile on her lips never faltering. "Something wrong?"

Madeline shook her head. "I just– my ex."

"Why'd you break up?" Mel's hand fell from the girl's face, but the intensity in her eye still remained. Madeline shook her head, choosing not to answer– there was no reason to plague someone else with it.

"He hurt you?" She asked, the question sounding almost rhetorical. She nodded. Mel sighed, her braids falling forward creating a wall between them two and the rest of the group. Her hand came back to the side of Maddie's face as she nudged herself closer.

Maddie's hand grasped around Mel's wrist. "Are you gonna kiss me?"

"Only if you want me to," She shrugged. "It might make you feel better– kissing someone else."

* * *

Stupid.

This was so fucking stupid.

She let out a frustrated groan as she rolled over onto her other side. When she still couldn't manage to find a decently comfortable position to lie in, she pulled herself up from the mattress and whacked the pillow a few times, hoping that would be sufficient to solve her insomnia.

Once her pillow was fully free of lumps, she settled back down and closed her eyes. It wasn't long before her irritation spiked again, as sleep, or even the mere feeling of drowsiness, refused to come.

Again, she opened her eyes agitatedly, staring out the window to assess the color of the sky. However, the blinds were always drawn almost fully closed in Carson's old room, and she hadn't bothered to fix them before settling down in the bed, so she had to squint in order to make out the pitch black sky, dotted with only a few stars.

She decided that it couldn't be that late if there still wasn't a hint of sunlight, even if it had felt as though she had been laying in this bed for half of eternity. She grabbed her phone from the nightstand to check the time, and grew even more frustrated upon finding out it was hardly past one in the morning. She had only crawled into bed two hours ago, and, since sleeping didn't seem like it was an option tonight, she still had six or so hours of staring at the ceiling to go.

There was no point in even trying to sleep, she decided. It had rarely come at all over the past two weeks, and it certainly was not coming any time soon. It wasn't because she wasn't tired, or because she had taken too long of a nap during the day. And it certainly was not because every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was the heart-shattering look Carson had on his face when she broke up with him. Definitely not.

With another groan, she pulled herself out of bed and slipped into a pair of sneakers that had been haphazardly kicked off at the foot of the bed. She grabbed a hoodie– one that was obviously too large on her and smelled faintly of musk and a familiar cologne– as well as her phone, before storming out of the room, determined to do something that would take her mind off of the lump of guilt anchored in her stomach.

As she made her way down the stairs, walking as quietly as she could and praying that her parents happened to be on-call tonight, it occurred to her for the first time she had no idea where it was she was escaping off to. However, at this point, she just wanted out of the house.

She made it all the way downstairs and snuck out the front door without a bit of remorse. She eyed her car and quickly decided against it; it would make too much noise to start up, and, internally, she knew what she was looking for was within walking distance anyway.

Her feet carried her to the destination that her mind had refused to acknowledge. She stared down at the sidewalk, studying the array of chalk drawings from children in the neighbourhood as well as the ugly cracks, some of which people had tried to beautify with flowers or cover up with cement filling.

She didn't want to think what Dylan would say if she knew where she was going again. I mean, she could probably guess what he would say, but she didn't want to know, nor did she want to care. She settled on distracting herself with whatever arbitrary thoughts she could conjure up while she continued on, following the curve of the sidewalk onto the next street.

They never had a set meeting spot, at least that's what they told her when she asked about it once. When she asked where she could find them, and their answer was as vague and as insubstantial as anything else they ever said: they could be found where the cops weren't. But they lived in a small city, and during the day, you were probably never more than a mile away from the nearest policeman. However, the crime rate was pretty low, so, there was usually only ever a few cars patrolling the streets at night, and they stuck mostly to main roads or largely populated areas.

Of course, when they gave that answer to her when she was fifteen, she was naive enough to find that answer to be wild and alluring; now, found it was stupid and, well, to some extent, still alluring.

Going somewhere they wouldn't be found, or somewhere people wouldn't mind their presence, limited them to a few spots within the borders of the city. There was the lake, but most of them hated getting sand up their ass or in their drinks; there was the condemned apartment building, but that was on the opposite side of the city and looked like something right out of a horror film; there was also an old drive-in movie theatre, but the crowd there depended on the night– more likely than not, there was an old, grumpy woman just waiting to call the cops on a group of sketchy-looking teenagers.

That really only left them their favorite spot, and the one they most often frequented. She followed the dim illumination of lights into the gates of the abandoned playground, and made out a cloud of smoke hovering in the sky before hearing or seeing the group themself. She walked past the vacant gazebo, which looked just the same as it had the last time she had come, if not more worn down, and walked toward the roundabout next to the swing set, where a small group of people sat.

As she drew closer, someone must have heard her footsteps, and one of the guys looked up at her; she paused for a brief moment, feeling like a deer caught in headlights, or like a wave returning to the shore after abandoning it once already. The guy squinted at her with narrow, black eyes, trying to make out who she was, before his face lit up and his lips cracked into a lopsided smile.

"What do we have here?" He mused, as Madeline drew closer. "Is Miss Priss finally making her return to the stoners?" He certainly looked a lot different than she remembered. HIs hair had grown much longer, almost reaching down to his shoulders, and he lost a fair bit of weight in the face.

"Shut up, Mike," She responded with a roll of her eyes. "Don't pretend you haven't missed me." He shook his head playfully and shot her finger as she found an open space on the roundabout, choosing the spot right next to a girl that smelled familiarly of a combination between weed and lavender.

"Well, well," The girl said, her familiar pink lips curling into a smirk that Madeline couldn't help but return. Mel looked the same as always– the same high cheekbones, the same heart-shaped lips, the same air of calamity. "Never thought I'd see you here again. Another heartbreak?"

"Please," Madeline said, rolling her eyes. She took the blunt Mel offered her, immediately bringing it to her lips and taking a long, skilled drag. She inhaled the smoke reverently, like it was some sacred object she had forgotten to worship.

She was aware that most of the group, which seemed to have whittled down over the years, was all looking at her, either with curiosity or confusion.

"I see you all haven't changed," She noted after a moment. She brought the blunt back up to her lips, and took in another drag, desperate to finally feel the buzz she sought.

"Why would we change?" Mike asked.

Madeline shrugged, "Fair point."

"You've certainly changed," He remarked.

"How do you figure?" She prompted, taking yet another drag, aware that Mel was studying her every move.

"You got hot."

"I was always hot."

He shrugged, "Fair point."

"You're certainly not as innocent," the Pete Davidson lookalike (whose name, she learned, was ironically also Pete) chimed in. "You don't look like you're half-convinced smoking weed will kill you anymore."

Madeline hummed, "No, I got over that." Then she added sarcastically, "Right around when I found out Santy Claus isn't real." Pete chuckled and shook his head.

"What happened to that other girl?" Madeline asked. "Rianne?"

"Dead," Pete answered stoically.

"Seriously?"

"No," He responded, smirking cheekily. "She was in the year above us. She's at Providence now."

"Ah."

"Well then," Mel started, her eyes glancing around the small circle before settling back on Madeline. "We've answered your questions, it's only fair you answer ours." Maddie nodded her head as she blew out another puff of smoke, a small cough escaping her as the drug began taking some influence. "What brings you back?" Mel asked.

"Who says I left?"

"Don't tell me you've been cheating on us with other stoners," Cindy, who had been quiet up until now, feigned a gasp, bringing a hand to her chest with a dramatic flair.