I was fifteen, it was winter, and I was a Sophomore in High School. I woke up with a bad cold and a horrible sore throat, so Mom let me stay home from school. My brother wanted to stay home too, but he wasn't sick. He argued with Mom until she finally gave in to him. I rolled my eyes. I was so damn sick I just wanted to be alone, and I did not want to be alone with him.
I tried to lay down and go back to sleep, but my throat was on fire. I took some cold medicine, then went down into the basement to get a fire going in the fireplace. We did not have a finished basement, but the area directly in front of the fireplace was set up with a large braided rug on the floor and a few pieces of furniture nearby. I turned on the radio and sat in front of the fire, letting the warmth seep in until I was toasty and content.
My brother came downstairs with a mug in his hand. "I made you a cup of hot chocolate from scratch" he said as he descended. "I'm stirring it with a fork so that the sugar doesn't stick." I thought it was odd that he would bother to do such a thing, because my brother never did anything nice for me for no reason. Though skeptical of his motivation for such a gesture, I had no reason to mistrust it. The creamy chocolate was surprisingly delicious. The hot liquid felt so good to my throat, soothing the inflamed tissue and easing the pain. I drank it all.
It wasn't long before I had an uncontrollable urge to get up and get moving. I headed towards the back of the basement to go through some boxes. My brother came back downstairs and called me over to him. He popped in a cassette tape of one of his friends goofing around and singing off key. It was hilarious, so of course, I laughed. I sank to my knees and fell to my side on the floor, laughing until I cried. My sides hurt and I couldn't catch my breath. I started to panic. I begged him to please turn off the tape. He waited until I was writhing on the floor in agony before he finally turned it off. He made no move to help me up. He headed back upstairs, and I headed back to the boxes.
I was trembling and shivering in waves. I found some notes that my friends had written to me in school, and I laughed and shuddered obscenely while trying to read them. It wasn't long before my brother was back, standing on the stairs, watching me. "Beck, I hate to tell you this..." he began. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I knew there was something wrong with me, but nothing could have prepared me for what he said next. "You're tripping on Acid." The first thing I did was look at the floor. My mind grabbed hold of the word "tripping" and took it literally. My vision rippled like water on the surface of a pond as I looked down at my feet. That's when it hit me...Acid...LSD. My own brother had drugged me.
Horrified, I snapped my eyes to his and blurted out "How could you do this to me?!?" My voice came out whiny, extra high-pitched, and he laughed hysterically. I ran for the stairs and shoved him viciously out of the way as I passed him, frantically scrambling and clawing my way up the stairs in my attempt to get away from something I could not. I fled through the kitchen and towards the living room, gasping and sobbing hysterically. I was dead set against drugs, always had been. It was an embarrassment for my brother to have such a goody two-shoes for a sister, and he never let me forget it. He often told me "Don't you DARE tell anyone at school that you're my sister. If you do, you'll be sorry..."
I ran into the living room and froze. The shag carpeting was alive, writhing and seething like millions of maggots on a corpse, the roar of the wriggling mass deafening to my super sensitive senses. I looked down at my feet. Maggots were crawling all over my shoes, crawling up my legs... I. Freaked. Out. My brother grabbed me by the arm and forced me down onto the couch. He put his arm around me, grabbed my hand and started rubbing the back of it, trying to help me through my bad trip. I shoved him away from me, leapt up off of the couch and wheeled to face him. "What you do with your body is your business!" I screamed. "You had no right to do this to mine! How could you do this to me?! WHY did you do this to me?!" He hung his head and gave me some lame-ass excuse about how he wanted me to be able to say that I had done drugs at least once. I felt sick. I frowned at him in stunned silence for a few moments. "I will never trust you again" I hissed. "Don't ever bring me anything to eat or drink again, I will not take it from you, even if it is sealed. Do you understand me?" I turned my back on him and walked away, bile rising in my throat and tears stinging my eyes. This 'trust me so that I can betray your sorry ass' game that was so prevalent in my family was getting very old.
My brother spent the rest of the day attempting to get me to laugh and enjoy myself while under the influence of the drug. "Might as well not waste it" he said. As if I was going to be able to enjoy myself under the circumstances. What a fucking idiot. He saw me looking out the window when he went to get the mail, so he pretended to slip and fall in the snow by the mailbox. It made me sick just to look at him; it made me sick just to hear his voice. I was so afraid that Dad would be able to tell that something was wrong with me, but he attributed my extra-glossy eyes to my bad cold. If he found out my brother had given me drugs, it would be his death. As angry as I was, I did not want his blood on my hands.
Ever since Dad discovered that my brother was involved with drugs, he had it in his head that I would not be able to resist them either and that I would inevitably follow in his footsteps. It irked me to no end that all of my vows to the contrary were completely dismissed. Dad was convinced that I had no mind of my own and that I would be helpless to resist the influences of the drug culture that was so prevalent at that time. For example, one day some of my friends came to pick me up and my brother asked them for a ride. Dad saw him get in the car with us and freaked out. He chased the car down the road, eyes popping, fist shaking, screaming at the top of his lungs "Don't you DARE get her started on drugs, do you hear me?!" much to my humiliation and shame.
Somehow, I managed to make it through the rest of the day without Dad finding out that anything was wrong. I crawled into bed and closed my eyes in exhaustion, hungry for sleep and escape. Brightly colored arrows drifted in to view from all different angles and ricocheted wildly before my eyes. I buried my face in my pillow and choked back a sob. "Enough!" I cried out to the darkness. "I did not do this to myself! I did not put this crap in my body! Please God, make it stop..." and I remembered nothing more.
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