My 30 Day Challenge

Chapter 15

Sorry, this is up a little later than it was on tumblr :P

Day 4 cont’d: Do you consider yourself to be addicted? Why or why not?

‘So, where is Mike?’ I asked as we got out of the car. There was a party going on inside the house we were parked in front of, and the music already hurt my ears. It wasn’t anything I knew or liked.

We were about an hour and a half away from San Diego, and Vic and I had been silent almost the whole way out here. It hadn’t taken much to convince him to let me come; apparently I was only coming, though, because he didn’t ‘want to leave me alone in a vulnerable state.’

‘Well, he used to be pretty good friends with the guy that lives here, so I figured he’d probably be here, if there’s a party going on…’ he trailed off, sounding annoyed. The door was unlocked, so we headed straight in.

‘Hey, look, it’s Vic!’ shouted some random guy. ‘What are you going here, buddy? I thought you’d sworn off the fun life.’ He and a couple of others around him laughed. They were drunk off their asses and smelled of cigarette smoke. I tried not to look disgusted.

‘Hey, Jona. I know I haven’t been around for a while, I’ve been busy, sorry, man. Listen, have you seen Mike?’

‘Mikey boy! Little Mike! The brooo!’ Jona yelled. ‘He was here before, but him and Oli left. They don’t like us. They’re gonna go to Jordan’s party, aren’t they? We’re way more fun than them. Jordan’s an ass. He told me to – ‘ Vic had stormed out and I had had enough of this drunken idiot. I had to run to keep up with him.

Once we were in the car and on the way to another party, presumably, I noticed Vic was shaking and gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. He was also driving 5 miles above the limit.

‘Vic,’ I said. ‘Vic.’ He ignored me. ‘Vic, you need to stop driving. You could crash. Just pull over and calm down.’

‘I don’t need to calm down!’ he snapped. ‘I’m fine! We have to find Mike!’ I was pretty sure this wasn’t him, and that if we didn’t slow down soon, we would definitely have a car crash.

‘You’re right, you don’t need to calm down, you just need to slow down a little, there might be police around, and if you got arrested, you wouldn’t be able to go get him, would you,’ I invented, keeping my voice as steady as possible.

Slowly, he took his foot off the gas, and pulled over outside someone’s house. He didn’t move to get out, so I assumed we weren’t in the right place. He pulled his legs up onto the seat and hugged them, resting his head on his knees, and I could hear soft crying noises. He looked so small and vulnerable. I wasn’t really sure what to do, so I wrapped my arm around him and just sat there with him for a while.

‘Do you want me to call Jaime or Tony?’ I asked softly. He shook his head gently. ‘Your parents?’ He shook his head again, violently.

And so we sat there. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it, and he didn’t appear to want to say anything. He seemed to get over it surprisingly quickly though; it only felt like a couple of minutes before he turned his head sideways to face me.

‘Thanks,’ he whispered. I smiled.

‘No problem.’ Seeing Vic so sad was like a crime; I felt obligated to do anything I could to make him happier. ‘You’d do it for me.’

He decided he was done with his episode quickly; almost instantly he straightened up and got out of the car. I’d been wrong in assuming this wasn’t the right house, apparently, because Vic just walked straight up to the door and started picking the lock. I scurried to keep up.