The Albino (nanowrimo excerpt)

I leave the club, and when I know I’m safely out of view I start to run. I don’t want to miss the bus. Just when I think I’ve done just that, I round a corner and see it parked on the side of the street. I run up to the door and bang on it a couple times and someone lets me in.

The whole bus claps. “Welcome back” they say. I can’t help but notice that they don’t seem to be treating Matt with quite as much fondness. Another girl must've turned him down.

He was happy to see me though. “Oh, man. You’re not going to believe this,” I say as I tell him about how much Dana and I were hitting it off. “I just didn’t want to leave, you know? I mean part of me wanted to just stay there and see where the night took me.”

“What’s stopping you?” Matt asks.

“Well, I didn’t want to leave you here. I know you were planning on crashing at my place.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me.”

“Seriously, I don’t want you driving home.”

“Well, here, give me your key and I’ll crash at your place.”

“Nah”

“No, seriously. Give me your key. I’ll crash out, but I’ll leave the door open so you can let yourself in.”

I looked at him, as if to say, are you serious.

“Go” he said. “Go!”

The bus starts to roll just as we end our conversation. “Stop the bus!” I scream out as I stumble forward. “Stop the bus! For the love of God, stop the bus!" The bus stops and just before I step out, I turn to everyone and thank them and tell them we should do this again sometime. They tell me that the party rolls every January and that they'll pick me up next year. I suddenly want to work where they all work.

I go back inside and try to find Dana. At first I think it’s a lost cause. It takes me a while for my eyes to adjust and to locate her group of friends through all the smoke and pulsating lights. Finally I see her. “Hey,” I say, “I missed my bus”.




It’s a cold January morning. The wind is beating against the roof and I’m lying in an attic bedroom. The first thing I notice is the plastic stars on the ceiling. At first I think it’s all in my head. These things can’t be real. There’s certainly nothing romantic about sleeping under these stars. I’m freezing my ass off.

I grab for a handful of blankets, but I can never seem to get enough. There’s always some resistance. My head hurts too. I want to get up, take an Excedrin and drink a tall glass of water and go back to bed. But then I remember that I’ve never had stars on my ceiling. I tried once, but one fell down on my while I was sleeping and hit me in the face. Since then I’d sworn off the idea of building a galaxy in my bedroom. But there's some warmth over there on the right side of the bed. That’s right. Dana. I nudge here and she mutters something about having to work. Damn, I think, I’m really glad I don’t have to do that.

I’m thankful for the excuse to get out of there, and I'm glad that nothing really happened. I tell her I had a really good time and that I’ll call her, and I head for the door. All of this is true too. Although I’m not sure I should really call her again.

“How are you feeling?” I ask Matt when I call him. I knew he would end up driving. As pissed off as I might have been, I was too high on sharing the details of last night to give him any grief about it.

“Oh my God,” he says, “what a crazy night.”

“Oh, man, you’re not going to believe how it ended for me.” I told him that I went back into the club to tell Dana that I missed the bus. She said was cool, and that her friend would give me a ride home. It turned out Dana lives a block away from me, and they’re all headed over there. “Things go really well,” I continued, “and then when we get back to her place her friend is asking me if I party. And I’m thinking, yeah, I mean I’m drunk off my ass, you know?”

Matt laughs.

“So it doesn’t take long for me to realize that they’re not talking about alcohol. Something’s going on in the kitchen and I can hear low mumblings ‘he’s cool’ and stuff like that. Eventually I get curious and leave this cushy couch that I was making out with Dana on and head towards the kitchen.”

“Wow. What was going on?”

“They were cutting lines of coke. Three or four of her friends were sitting around the table taking their turns. And it started to seem like an after school special. They kept telling me that I’d like it, and I didn’t want to seem like a complete novice. I mean, I’d done some experimenting, but I just wasn’t interested.”

“Jesus Christ. They were just sitting around doing lines?”

“Yeah, they said they pretty much did it every weekend.”

Matt is still laughing. “Well did you want to try it?”

“Part of me was curious, but I didn’t want to open those doors. Plus I was hammered. It had very little appeal to me. I wanted to hang out with Dana. Or at least I did before all of this started going on.”

“So what did you do?”

“Like I said, it was like an after school special. Four girls. They were absolutely ruthless. I felt like such a pussy, but I knew I could just say no. I wanted to just say no. Finally when they realized that Nancy Reagan had taught me a little something and I wasn’t going to do any lines, they started going on and on about putting some on my lips.”

“On your lips?”

“They said it would make them tingle and feel good.” I started laughing. “These girls wouldn’t let up. It was just ridiculous. Finally, I agreed, but told them to just use a small amount.”

“So they put coke on your lips?”

“Oh yeah, they rubbed it on. Top and bottom."

Matt laughs.

"I just got home and looked in the mirror and I look like a fucking albino. My lips are completely white.”

Matts dying. “What a fucking crazy night. Did you feel anything?”

“My lips got a little numb, but I couldn’t really tell that I had taken anything. She started acting all weird though. I just wanted to get some sleep, and I couldn’t quite tell what she wanted.”

“You weren’t interested in her?”

“Let's just say it brought out her annoying qualities”, I said “I was interested at first, but then when I got back to her place she put on the Dave Matthews and started doing coke. That can change things up a bit.”

“Well, I know how you feel about Dave Matthews.”