Junk - Melvin Burgess [39]
I said, ‘We’re having a party!’ I mean, why spend all day making salad and hash cookies, and then go out? What for all that beer and wine? My last party on earth and they go and wreck it by opening a squat!
Tar was lost. He was beaming and smiling and I suddenly thought, Something was happening to him. His face seemed to be stretching out and it looked as if his teeth were escaping out of his mouth and his eyes were rolling around.
‘You look really weird, are you all right, are you all right?’ I said, but he dashed off to organise a squat committee or something.
I started stuffing more salad and thinking to myself, This is unreal, this is a squat, and they’re running away from their own party!
Then Tar started to follow me about going, ‘Is anything wrong? What’s the problem, Gemma?’
And I was going, ‘Oh just shut up, why can’t you leave me alone?’
I was going much too fast, smoking joints and pouring booze down my neck just because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Later on more people turned up and it livened up more and I began to feel a bit better. Someone made up a punch. God knows what they put in it… and whoa! Everything got very fast very quick then and… well, I could tell I was going to be really ill if I carried on like that.
The place filled up suddenly. Suddenly you couldn’t move. Everyone was screaming and shouting and dancing. I was feeling so strange. I had a dance but my head was still spinning faster and faster. Then I had a couple more joints and… and… So I went upstairs and sat in the loo for a bit. Then someone wanted to come in so I went into a bedroom and lay down for a few minutes on the bed until my head settled down.
It was horrible – like someone was stirring my stomach with an electric spoon faster and faster and faster and faster…
*
I lay there for ages waiting for it to stop. When I felt able to sit up again the music was still thumping away downstairs but I had no idea how late it was. I still felt extremely… well, extremely extremely. I didn’t feel drunk or hung over, but there was still this horrible tight bubble in my stomach and it felt like at any minute it was going to swell up and go… Pop!
I got up and looked out of the window. All I remember is, everything was orange and it looked like cats and weasels and things were creeping round out of sight behind the dustbins and lampposts. I don’t mean I could see them but they were there out of the corner of my eye. I looked around the room and all the things – the wardrobe and the chest of drawers, even the window frame – they all seemed to be looking back at me, like they were alive. I was thinking, What’s going on? And I suddenly realised – I’m stoned! That’s what it was, I was stoned out of my tree…
I thought, Hash cakes! The cookies, of course. Richard had told me not to eat too many and I thought he was being wet because he looks wet, but he wasn’t. I’d eaten ten times too much and now I was absolutely flying.
I thought, Wow, this is something, although I wasn’t enjoying it all that much.
I went down to see what was going on.
Downstairs was half empty. Little groups sitting on the floor talking, odd people sitting in chairs, crashed out. I looked about but Tar was nowhere to be seen. I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. I had a mouthful of rice; it tasted so good I started eating and eating and eating and eating. When I’d finished it all up I had another glass of punch and went back into the sitting room.
A couple of new people had turned up. There was a guy standing talking to a couple of people from the squat. He looked different from the rest. And there was this girl.
She was dancing. I mean she was doing things and dancing at the same time. She’d go and put on a new cassette, or find a better track on the old one or just look through what was there, then she’d go over and pinch a fag or a joint off someone, or tidy up fag ends or paper cups or something