honestly surprised that your mom doesn’t know.” Mariana’s face turned stone cold and her eyes watered. “Wait, the town knows?” I nodded and continued on. “And you ruined me. I want to be an artist, and all of this crap has distracted me from doing what I love. I’m sick of feeling like I have to drink or smoke to be friends with you. I’m sick of feeling guilty for stealing my mom’s beer.” I sucked in one last big breath. “And, honestly, I’m done. You should probably delete all the evidence from your phone.” Then I turned around and left. You see, in the parking lot, a couple days before, was when I finally decided that this wasn’t the life I wanted. Almost getting caught with weed by the police is enough to scare anybody, right? Months passed on, and I became myself again. I deleted every aspect of Mariana from my phone and I continued to talk to Jade. I focused on my artwork, and most importantly myself. I was officially done with parties, drugs, and drinking. I heard that Mariana is in intensive therapy now. I would feel bad, but that is the true cost. Growing up, adults would always tell me about how marijuana was the gateway drug, and how it would kill me and ruin my life, and I believed them. However, as I got older I started to realize something; They weren’t necessarily right. Marijuana is bad, yes, but for a completely different reason. It submerges you into the land of dealers and other drug users. No, it won’t make you addicted to every drug on the market, like the adult would say, but I believe it did something worse to Mariana. It showed her another side of our world, and she took it upon herself to explore it thoroughly. I still miss her sometimes.
// your inspiration
being with them was worse than being with them. Mariana began to sell her body for weed, alcohol, and cigarettes, while she was with Becky and I. I knew what she was doing was insanely wrong, but it seemed as though it was working. Jade had told me once that Mariana was the Titanic, and we were all passengers on it, and I never believed her. But that night, when the three of us were tipsy and Mariana was sending nude pictures to random
guys to entice them to get her drugs, I began to see what Jade was saying. But even though I could clearly see that these people were not the people I should be with, I couldn’t stop being with them, and that was what made me sink. I went from being a happy, outgoing, creative girl to a reclusive, emotionally unstable, mess. I always had a constant craving for cigarettes and drank my parent’s alcohol. “It’s all Mariana’s fault,” I told Jade. “If she hadn’t asked us to smoke weed with her, this wouldn’t have happened.” But I was false. We wanted to go with her, and I could’ve stopped being with them at any time. It was my own fault; I turned into what I never thought I would become. Jade then told Mariana off, saying she was ruining all of us, little by little, but the damage was done. Becky snuck out of her house to do God knows what. I went onto my roof to drink vodka and Jade smoked cigarettes after school. I stopped playing piano and I instead began playing my parents. I told them I was going to hang out with my friends, but I went to smoke weed with Mariana and Becky. My life was what I told myself it would never be. I was a mistake. And I knew it. I couldn’t change my actions, so I embraced them. I should’ve never started smoking or drinking, because it became something that controlled my life. I told Mariana that we should stop hanging out and I cut off all of my ties to my dealers, but Mariana didn’t get it and still wanted to hang out. That’s when I started talking to my longtime friend, Melanie. “You need to tell Mariana off. She is ruining you guys.” She told me one evening after school. I knew she was right, so I went to talk to Mariana, in the spot where she always was, smoking a cigarette. “Hey bae.” She said, offering me a cigarette. I shook my head and started to talk. “Listen, Mariana,” my voice warbled, “I love you to bits. You are like a sister to me. But I can’t deal with this anymore. The whole town knows that you are doing this to yourself and I am
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