Life's an awful ugly place not to have a best friend. (Sarah Dessen)

William understood me a little better than the others and he was clean, which was refreshing. It was always amazing to me how someone could live in LA and sustain from drugs. William had never done drugs. I guess it wasn't so surprising because he was British and with that dainty little accent it was hard to imagine him doing anything wrong.

William drove me to Ice, which was a bar I had just acquired and was going to rename Honey. Cloud dropped by meet with the owner about buying off some of the excess supplies before Ice was closed. Cloud congratulated me on my first bar. I had shares in Super Hundred but this would be the first bar that would be all mine. Cloud insisted I head over to Super Hundred. It was a weeknight, but I went. Cloud wouldn't catch up with us for a bit so William and I sat in the VIP section and drank cool-colored drinks in cool-shaped glasses.

“So you're with Joseph now?” William asked.

I shrugged.

“He doesn't seem to be your type.”

I laughed, “Because he's not you?”

“I was never your type.”

“Oh don't give me that wounded puppy dog bull shit. The only reason you come onto me is because you resent Nicky for getting that soap opera gig after they passed on hiring you. That's when it all started.”

He was dumbfounded. He had no idea I could see through his ploy, but to be fair I didn't realize that was what was happening until Nicky suggested it. Nicky beating me to a conclusion was perhaps the most disappointing realization of my life thus far.

“I think you're great,” William said half-defending his intentions, “minus the carelessness.”

“Carelessness?”

“Yeah, and overall disregard for safety.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Honey, do you think I'm an idiot? We all know what's going on upstairs.”

I gulped. I guess I was being pretty careless. With all the houses I owned surely I could dedicate one to meth production. Imagine how much safer that would be. I would be in the clear, but this was such a good system. No one had complained about it and we didn't have to traffic anything anywhere we just doled it out at our weekly Hundred party. I'd have to talk it over with Tommy.

Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same page over and over. (Mason Cooley)

I loved Joseph. I wasn't in love with him but I did love him. I loved Nicky too though by that point. Nicky was getting some fame now for the soap opera he was starring in. One day while we were shopping on Robertson a lady brought a Soap Opera Weekly up to him and asked him to autograph it for her.

For all my power, I still wasn't famous. So it irked me when I saw Nicky’s fame budding and blossoming beside me. Nicky was never supposed to get bigger than me. He was a lazy nobody. I took solace in the fact that he would never have anywhere near the amount of money I had acquired. Hell, Nicky wouldn't even have the amount of money I had tucked under my bed.

Joseph was the closest I'd came to having a boyfriend, but I suppose Nicky had fit the job description. Joseph was different though. One night I was swimming and Nicky came out and jumped in with me. We shared my big white towel and lay on a tanning chair beside the pool. The cool night air forced us to wrap up cozily in the towel. With whispered words, we caught up with one another. We laughed a little. We kissed a little. I told him how great Joseph was and he accepted that, more or less.

Joseph missed that last little caveat as watched from the window of his first floor apartment. I was busted. Worse than being busted was the fact that I didn't realize I was doing anything wrong. Joseph was hurt and didn't talk to me for days, which was nearly impossible because he was my driver.

“Monogamy isn't one of my strong points,” I defended.

Dancing is a vertical expression of horizontal desire. (Robert Frost)

Speaking of power is a good segway into the next item: Johnson Cloud. He was about to make a strategic move and he wanted me involved. Super Hundred, that was the name of the club he wanted to open. It would also be on the Strip and he wanted me to be a partner. He didn't need my money; he just needed the profile involved with my name to solidify the positioning and success of his club.

I agreed to his offer and Super Hundred opened less than six months later. One of the guys working on the building introduced himself to me as Joseph the architect. He was from Saudi Arabia and I liked him instantly. He was the best dancer I had ever met; he could have been on TV. He had radical politic views and we had longwinded conversations about political and civil unrest in the Middle East and the implications to the world economy. Everyone tuned us out but I didn't mind and I don't think he did either. His eyes were so dark they looked as though they could swallow you whole. I envied his dark complexion and hated how white I looked standing beside him. I hired him as my driver. This would seem to be a step down from architect but as he turned out he was a carpenter.

I cleared an apartment for him and moved him into the building. Tommy had a fit but he got over it. Joseph and I were thick as thieves. There was a lot I could learn from him.

It wasn't all dull conversation, we had a lot of fun too. We would go to clubs on the Strip and dance all night, though I wasn't yet old enough to get in legally. At Hundred Parties we would dance and dance and dance. He would pull crazy moves; people would back up and cheer him on. We would dance up close and personal. Nicky would go ballistic and if he didn't Tommy did. The only time the two them agreed on anything was when they saw me with Joseph. 

Only a guilty man can lay his head down and sleep... (Jason Gideon)

I relished those moments when no one was knocking on my door. When it was quiet, just John Lennon in the background and the white noise of traffic, that was the best. Whether I was lost in a book or watching the watching the world whiz by from my balcony, there was nothing better. I loved lazing around with Nicky on a Sunday afternoon or having dinner with Rider but those people who need to be with people all the time were strange to me. My father once said that was how I differed most from him. He didn't understand my ability to be alone. He could never be alone but I guess he never had. Maybe he was just unfamiliar with it. He had a big family and my mother. People were his life.

I think there was more to our differences than that though. I loved to sleep while it was a foreign concept to him. I liked to ease out of each day with a Zen finish, get a good night of REM sleep, start the next day fresh with an equally Zen start. My father just went hard all the time and slept only when he couldn't maintain consciousness any longer. He lived his life on cat naps. I could never live like that. I was sleeping more and more as time went on. I was so busy and involved with so many exhausting people that by the time I had my dinner digested I started to get sleepy.

Maybe it is strange how easily I slept with a highly combustible meth lab around me because I actually slept better at the apartment than any of the houses. I liked the calm and quiet of the houses but the apartment building was just like my father's house: drugs, rowdy people, parties, more drugs. The apartment still seemed to be my home. The houses just made for a lovely little getaway. They provided me with the mini-vacation I needed to get through the craziness of the week. I didn't have what it took to clear out the houses whenever a search warrant came to one of them so they were clean houses. Aside from an unregistered gun stowed here or there, the houses were drug-free. I had a small scale detox a couple times a week, which helped convince me that I wasn't addicted to anything but power.

I was always leaving so I never felt lonely. (Me)

I guess the next notable event was the first time I flew. I could give you a bunch of descriptive adjectives but you wouldn't understand how amazing it felt unless you were me.

Then there was my first retail acquisition. I loved my building. It was great. However, I wanted some privacy. I didn't like having people in my face all the time. Knock, knock, knock, can you blow my nose? Rider wouldn't like the idea of me being anywhere but there but can you imagine living in your office? What about living at your high school? That was what it was like. Between the business and the drama I was always overwhelmed. I still intended to spend most nights at the apartment but needed my own house to escape to sometimes, even if just a couple nights a week.

I took Nicky with me to see a house in Holmby Hills, I took William with me to see a house in Pasadena, I took an actress named Miami to see a gated house in Newport, and Rider came with me to the Pacific Palisades. I bought them all. I had a live-in housekeeper in each house. I had beautiful furnishings. I had the American dream and it just kept growing.

I had a staff and my staff was growing. There was my realtor, Tanya Nolan; my assistant, Miami; my runner, Martin; my lawyer, Courtney Steinbecker; my financial advisor, Isabelle Deff; my nutritionist/grocery shopper, Zoey; my cook, Cub Chow; and let's not forget my army of housekeepers. There were boys in my life, there were women on my payroll, but I had no friends. I felt like I was always doing the leaving so I never really felt lonely, even without any real friends.

There's a cliché that says that it's lonely at the top but I disagree. I think you're probably alone at the top, sure. But I think you’re only lonely when you're left and that's why the only time I was lonely was the one time I felt abandoned. At that point in my life the only time I had felt abandonment was when my mother opted to stay in Philadelphia when she got out of jail to be closer to my father: that hurt. I was lonely then. I had come so far since then, not physically, I mean I was still in LA but I had moved from Rider's sofa to the proud owner of multiple mansions all over the city. The city was mine. How could you be lonely when you have a city? 

Once there was a way to get back home. (The Beatles)

Next I drove from Sunset to Santa Monica Boulevard and followed it out to Rider's apartment. He was in Washington. This time it wasn’t for drugs. It was a different sort of business trip. He had become a rocket scientist after finally passing the drug test. The official title was aerospace engineer and he pretended he didn't like it when people called him a rocket scientist but he actually loved it.

I collected the rent that had been dropped into his drop box and placed “friendly reminders” in the mailboxes of the lagging residents.

I got stuck in traffic. I studied as I moved at a snail-like pace on Santa Monica Boulevard, the same street that I soared down not an hour earlier. I couldn't wait for my flying lesson the next day. I was getting excited as I studied. Read, nudge forward, read, nudge forward. Everyone else was angry, beeping, swearing and impatient.

I got downtown an hour and forty-five minutes late for my appointment to view planes. I wasn't ready to purchase one yet but it would be my first really big purchase so I wanted to pick the perfect one. I also loved looking at planes. You needed an appointment to get into the showroom, which irritated me but I enjoyed browsing there. It was retail therapy on steroids. If a new pair of stilettos could make me smile imagine a plane, now that could do wonders.

After that appointment I continued on to east LA and met with the manager of a housekeeping company. My ladies were not pulling their weight.

I stopped for Thai food. I was in a Thai sort of mood.

I picked up some apples and returned to the apartment.

“Did you pick up the hose extension?”

“Nope.”

“Honey, I told you a week ago.”

“We need to get a better system,” I said thoughtfully. “We should just be able to order these things as we need them.”

“Have them delivered here, I suppose?”

“You're right,” I sighed. “We need a runner. I don't have time to run a building, study, and worry about all the little stuff here.”

We had that conversation a lot. I wanted to employ Nicky or one of the other desperate actors, even some kid would work. Tommy hated the idea. He didn't see the value. All he knew was the two of us and a pile of money. We were overextended and we were in a position to screw up if we didn't staff up. We were moving more in a week than my whole family used to move in a year. Just the two of us, imagine. I bet my family would be proud if I told them but I didn't even consider it. I was living my own life now. I missed them when I thought of them but I thought of them rarely. I didn't have time for pondering nostalgic nonsense.

My apartment reflected this lack of nostalgia. It was a cold and emotionless place. I had some paintings and a couple pieces of retro art, but that was as far as my decorating went. There were no pictures or family mementos. It was interesting how my life had changed. They were my life then, one bad day in April, and they were strangers.

I went out to pick up my dry-cleaning; I knew I should have someone running these menial tasks for me. By the time I got back to the apartment I had lost an hour. I went to the balcony to study. I wasn't thirty pages in when Nicky knocked on my door with his “Hey Baby” and bull shit charm. I lost another hour.

I returned to the balcony and another knock. An actress needed an extension on her rent.

“Get a roommate,” I suggested.

I returned to the balcony and pretended I wasn't home for the rest of the night, even for Tommy. I pulled on someone else’s t-shirt, put on side two of Get Back, got high, brushed, flossed, rinsed with mouthwash, laid in bed and fell asleep. I woke up and I did it all again. My life was pretty routine. 

Adventure is worthwhile in itself. (Amelia Earnhart)

Tommy failed a psychiatric assessment and had to spend two weeks in a hospital. I didn't like that, not one bit, because (a) I had to run our meth operation alone while he was away; (b) I didn't know how strong he was, which left all our secrets up for grabs to the therapist with the best interrogative skills.

I evicted an actress two months late on her rent so Tommy could move into his own apartment (as his was devoted to meth production – the original meth apartment). I covered the cost, though the days when he couldn't make rent were long gone. I wanted to make peace with him and I wanted our relationship to be clear. It was business.

The day Tommy returned, I started taking flying lessons. I didn't get up in the air that day but I took the first step toward getting there. Flying became my life. It was all I could think about. I read biographies of pilots, I didn't care if they were fighter pilots or commercial pilots; it was all interesting. I read magazines about airplanes and flying. I spent more time than I had to at the airport. On top of that I, of course, studied my instructive materials feverishly.

After a couple months I could have engineered a plane. At Hundred Parties I would do the rounds and talk to the required people then I would scurry away to my room. I would sit on my balcony, which was jutting off the building as if it were trying to escape from the party. Under my new lamp, I would read and study.

I became obsessed with Amelia Earnhart. I was always impressed with a woman who wasn't afraid of greatness. There is something about a great woman that is so much better than a great man. There is more adversity in a woman’s achievement and that makes the greatness greater.

80% of success is showing up. (Woody Allen)

My days were busy. They had always been busy but life had become busier than ever. Every day was different but there were common threads. For example, one such day I woke up at dawn. I rolled out of my delicious 800 thread count sheets and pulled on a bikini. I walked barefoot down to the pool and dove in. As I swam one of the actors emerged in running shorts. He stretched by the pool and tried to start up small talk. He had a hideous southern accent but his facial features, physique, even his thick wavy blond hair, were all perfect. I would never be able to get past that accent though. An actress bobbed out of her apartment in short shorts and a skimpy tank top.

“Hi!” she chirped. “Am I late?”

“No, no, right on time,” he practically cheered.

I ducked my head into the water and ploughed through a few purposeful laps. When I surfaced the beautiful people were gone. I left wet footprints all the way up to my door.

I cut up a pink grapefruit and laced it with meth. Then I had a shower.

I studied on the balcony then I woke Tommy up on my way out to a morning meeting.

Johnson Cloud, the owner of Lifestyle, one of the best nightclubs on the Sunset Strip wanted to have a sit-down with me. Several of the Sunset Strip tycoons had met with me about the Hundred Parties and tried to align with me. Everyone wanted a piece of the Hundred Parties. Sunset clubs will always be successful but it was flattering that they felt the effects of my parties and I loved to sit there at their empty clubs in the day as they tried to be cool and proud while admitting to a little girl that they wanted to merge forces. To me, they were admitting that I was better than them.

Cloud was an interesting cat. He was Hollywood old. It was impossible to know his age. He could have been thirty, sixty or anywhere between. He was wearing a suit, which I'm sure was expensive. He hadn't shaved that day and the stubble was tinged with gray. His hairline was receding but he was so confident that it looked okay. Being old didn't seem so bad to me but perhaps it was because I was always so much younger than everyone around me. Age was poisonous there.

I pulled up beside Lifestyle in my little white BMW and strutted in like the club was mine. I sat at the bar and Cloud was out in a moment.

“Honey,” he announced as he entered, throwing his arms up like he was welcoming a new baby into the world. “Let me get you a drink!”

I gestured toward the bartender. “He's getting me a Mimosa.”

He sat beside me and started talking. 

That was the worst thing about having a relationship with someone, even a pretend relationship. You opened up, let someone in, and when it was over, they had all the ammunition they needed to completely destroy you. (Sara Manning)

They didn’t catch me that time. They didn’t have a search warrant so the ten apartments of meth production remained our little secret.

“That was really stupid,” I told him as he lay in the hospital bed.

“How could you do that to me, Honey?”

“Do what? You did this to yourself, in my bathroom no less.”

“How could you choose him over me? He didn't even know you were in high school. We have a business together, an apartment, we're together. Why do we have to do this to each other? Hurt each other like this?”

I didn't understand that but I just let him say his piece. As far as I was concerned neither of us had hurt the other. He had made things inconvenient and messy, that was all. 

It seems like years since you've been here. (The Beatles)

I felt a wave of clarity calming the seas that were drowning me just a moment before. I barged up to my apartment. I didn’t creep in. I swung open the door.

Tommy wasn’t there, which I thought anticlimactic. The place was a mess though. I wondered if I shouldn’t be paying my maid less. I climbed out of my destroyed prom dress and started picking bobby pins out of my hair. I cranked up a Beatles record. The trail of bobby pins followed me to the bathroom.

Here comes the sun. I opened the bathroom door where Tommy was laying lifelessly on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

Don’t get excited, he didn’t die. He tried to kill himself but he even failed at that. For a second I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to deal with him but in an instant I was scared at the thought of running this operation without him. I hated to admit it but he was the brains behind the production.

He went to the hospital for a healing of sorts. The police were sniffing around the “crime scene”. There’s something very uncomfortable about your most personal space being a crime scene. Obviously I didn’t let them in with anything lying around. The recreational supply and my handgun were both stowed away in one of the meth rooms.

You should have picked me. You’ll never have the chance again.

The simple suicide note was the most productive of Tommy’s efforts. It turned the alleged crime into a cut-and-dry suicide attempt. Once they knew he was going to live, which was touch and go for a while, they didn’t have much reason to stick around. LAPD had been waiting for an excuse to get into the Hundred Party apartment building for some time and they wanted to capitalize on their in. 

You have no idea how high I can fly. (Michael Scott)

Ironically enough, I think it was my attempt to control things that was pushing my life so far out of control. My life was like the jar on the top shelf. I was reaching for it but I could just touch it, not grasp it, and as I did I nudged it further and further away.

The only thing that really mattered to me then was the only thing that ever mattered: power. But I felt more powerless than ever before. Hell, the man who tried to kill me was living in my apartment. I was messing with a pair of roommates. I was living in an operational meth lab. Though my life was admittedly overwhelming, I was determined to keep my head above water.

I walked out of the boys’ apartment. I stood in the empty courtyard covered with the debris from the Hundred Party the night before. I inhaled the sweet smell of spilled cocktails sticking to the cobblestone.

“What now?” I said aloud to the empty courtyard. “What do I want to do next? I can’t return to my apartment.” I sighed. “Big picture: what do I want to do? I’ve been accepted to study business – I’m already a tycoon in my own right. I’ve been accepted to study political science – I could be quite the politician, maybe president. I’ve been accepted to study law – being a lawyer could be quite beneficial to my lifestyle. What do I want to do? What do I want?”

I stood there and was perfectly still for a moment.

Then I whispered something to the world.

“I want to fly.”

So how can you heal yourself unless you've hurt yourself? (Brendon Urie)

“Things are weird,” I offered. “He loves me, did you know that?”

William half-nodded.

“He met my family yesterday. I almost got him killed.”

“By your family?”

“Two separate situations, sorry.”

“So you two are dating now? Like more than friendly friends?”

“I love your accent. British people sound so intellectual.”

“Diversion.”

“No, we're still friendly friends.”

“Does he know that?”

“Listen Will, I know what you're trying to do.”

“Me? What am I trying to do?”

“I don’t know.”

He put his arm around me and his terrible morning breath tinged with the smell of coffee tickled my nose as he asked, “Do you remember–”

“I remember how you made out with me because you were angry that Nicky got a part that you wanted. I remember how you reported it to him victoriously afterward. I remember all the gory details but I don't remember the actual kissing. I guess you weren't that memorable.”

“Let me remind you.”

He kissed me and I just let it happen. Nicky didn't come out of his room but he knew it happened. My life was turning into a mess of mind games and sexual warfare. I had learned from a young age that abusing my body brought instant gratification and when I gave up drugs I transferred the abuse from drugs to sex. The implications were different but the principles were the same. Sure I started doing drugs again but meth wasn't the same as heroin. I guess habits are hard to break. Habits become your life. Perhaps my life was beginning to spiral out of control. 

For he went west and she went east and they both lived. (Carl Sandburg)

I slept at Nicky's apartment that night. I wasn't sure where Tommy went and I didn't want to investigate. I felt much safer at Nicky's place. He was weird. He was shaky and nauseous. We should have gone to the hospital I guess.

I slept on his sofa instead of sharing his bed and he didn't contest it. I think he blamed me. I didn't sleep much that night. It was nearly dawn when we settled away for the night and I seen most of the sunrise through the modest view from his window. I slept an hour, two at best.

William was up early and he made a pot of coffee, which he shared with me. He sat beside me on the sofa.

“Cheers,” he said and we clinked together our mugs of black coffee. “Good night?”

I tucked the blanket around me and curled my legs underneath me. “It was eventful.”

“Not magical?”

I laughed.

“Are you and Nicky fighting?”

“No, I just wanted to sleep out here.”

William didn't believe that. 

When you blame others you give up your power to change. (Douglas Adams)

Nicky drove back to our building and we kissed at the bottom of the stairs. He wanted to come up but I knew Tommy was in my apartment.

I needed an out.

With my prom dress still on, I ran. I dove in the pool with a titanic splash.

He laughed. “What are you doing? You're nuts.”

So (obviously) I extended my hand for him to help me out. He acted surprised when I pulled him in but, come on, he had to see that coming. We splashed and kissed. We didn't notice Tommy emerge from my apartment and we definitely didn't notice the hairdryer in his hand. Nicky lifted me out of the water. With his hands on my stomach, he balanced me above his head and spun me around as I extended my arms out like I was flying.

I saw Tommy coming. I could tell that he was strung out before I saw the hairdryer dangling from the cord wrapped around his hand. I realized what was happening and I yelled, “Look out!”

I dove headfirst into the water and hoisted myself out of the pool. I was reached for Nicky. He was almost out. My hand was firmly around his. But his escape wasn’t complete when the hairdryer electrified the water. I felt the shock sear my synapses through Nicky's body. We collapsed beside the pool. I felt burnt and not in a good way. Nicky was twitching but he hadn't been completely submerged when the hairdryer was dropped in. Nicky was still alive and he would survive. My prom night ended with attempted murder.  

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. (Jonathan Safran Foer)

My parents came to the apartment and took all the necessary pictures. We drove out to the beach and Rider met us. He got in his required uncle-niece picture. It was bizarre to think of those dynamics now after all we had been through. I felt so disconnected from the number sixteen. I felt like I had lived so much that I was miles away from my age.

Nicky and I left my family with Rider. I almost cried because they were heading back to Philly that night and I didn’t know when I would see them again. I had been so long without them that I don’t know why it upset me to be away from them again. Maybe I wasn’t as far from sixteen as I thought.

I let Nicky drive my beamer to the hotel where prom was being held. It was interesting to sit in the passenger seat. It was interesting to cry. It was interesting to remember how close I had been with my family and how far I was from them now.

“I’m not addicted,” I told Nicky. He glanced over at me then looked back to the road. “I’ve only done meth once a day all week and today I haven’t done it at all and I feel fine.”

“That’s good,” he said.

“You think I’m addicted.”

He shook his head but he did think I was. All he did was drink. Maybe a line of cocaine if he was too drunk to know the difference but that was it.

I laughed with my “friends”, accepted my crown, danced with Nicky and cried. I’m still not really sure why I cried, I wasn't nostalgic.

We must be our own before we can be another's. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

My entire family got out of jail just in time for my high school graduation (so much for a ten year sentence). They clapped and cheered proudly when I walked across the stage with my honors sash draped over my gown.

All the kids loved me. Though I was never there and didn’t participate in the lunchroom politics I was voted prom queen. There’s something about being a sixteen year old drug lord that makes you incredibly popular.

Nicky and I were having an afternoon rendezvous when I remembered prom was that night. That was when I asked him if he would be my date. I got them mixed up. I forgot that Tommy was the only one who knew I was in high school.

“Prom?”

“Uh, I flunked out of high school so I just went back to get my diploma.”

“I thought you were in college.”

“I lied. I didn’t want you to think I was dumb.”

“Honey, I think you’re… I love you.”

There’s something about love that used to really freak me out. When Nicky, who was still just a friendly friend, told me he loved me I wanted to run. If I hadn’t been naked at the time maybe I would have.

“Why are you going to prom with a bunch of strange kids though? Won’t that be weird?”

I shrugged. When I was named prom queen I think he was suspicious but I didn’t care at that point. I kind of wanted to tell him I was sixteen just to freak him out. I was so uncomfortable around him after the whole love thing came out. Nicky Martinez loved me, how strange. 

I've had great success being a total idiot. (Jerry Lewis)

Despite the fact that the place with filled with young tenants who loved nothing more than to party hardy, the building was actually fairly calm most of the time, peaceful even. People floated in the pool, read in the courtyard, the usual. The newlyweds moved out, two of the UCLA students moved out, (Tommy flunked out of UCLA), actors and actresses failed and moved back to the mid-west, but Tommy and I did the math, even with the astronomical rate we could charge for available units it was still more profitable to convert the apartments to meth labs. It got to the point where aside from my apartment the entire second tier was producing crystal meth. That is dangerous, flammable, what-have-you, but if you seen the money it turned over you would have went for it too!

I still paid Rider as if the apartments were occupied. He was none the wiser but just to be sure I went to his apartment for our monthly family dinners now. My mobility was another thing that was new. I was the proud new owner of a shiny new BMW. German engineering has produced my favorite things: from heroin to Bavarian Motor Works, Germany gets me.

Rider wasn’t an idiot or living under a rock. He knew about the Hundred Parties but he was okay with it. He thought it would be good for business as long as it was under control and he got his name on the list. I took that opportunity to tell him I had some money to offer toward the family debt. I gave him a sizable but sum, but not too sizable as to raise his suspicions. I pretended it all came from Hundred Party admissions. I had done the math, it was believable.

“Do you think it’s enough?”

Rider was at every hundred party after that. I wasn’t too impressed because I had to be on my best behavior. I’ll admit my best behavior isn’t exactly angelic but I had to be sober. Oh did I forget to mention that? At this point I was head-over-heels in love with crystal meth.

My addiction didn’t screw anything up though. I still graduated high school a year ahead of schedule in June of that year. I don’t care what doctors and textbooks say. I was a successful drug addict. I was acing school, running an apartment building, running a crystal meth empire, taking care of my family financially, balancing – albeit poorly – several guys. I was an entrepreneur and a budding academic.

All you need in life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure. (Mark Twain)

Tommy and I were watching from my apartment, trying not to seem desperate as a couple of the girls sipped drinks by the pool. They got up to leave and when they we in the gateway they spoke with the bouncer. I didn’t know what he said but they turned around and started marching right toward my apartment.

“Oh God,” I said and backed away from the window. The sun was still setting and my apartment was a dim shadowy orange. “I think the bouncer is holding people hostage.”

“I knew this was going to be a disaster,” Tommy fretted and collapsed onto my bed, well, our bed as of late.

They knocked and I reluctantly opened the door with a big fake smile. “Hi girls!”

“Is there a hundred dollar cover to get into this party?”

“Um…” I stalled. I couldn’t tell them I was expecting a hoard of high school kids.

“There’s a bouncer at the gate and he told us if we leave we have to pay a hundred dollars to get back in.”

“Oh that’s just for people who aren’t on the list,” I quickly fabricated. “As a tenant you obviously wouldn’t have to pay to get into your own house. It’s just for the people who aren’t on the list. They actually have to pay the entry each time they come in. But once this gets going no one will want to leave.”

“What about my friends? Can I get my friends on the list?”

“Depends.”

“On who they are, we’re not just going to let anyone in. I guess if they come in with you it would be okay but anyone outside of that I’ll need to screen or they can just pay the hundred dollars.”

Suitably impressed, they stayed. People began to emerge from their apartments. Tommy was still discouraged but at 10:30 on the dot, as if it were written on the poster, a swarm of high school kids stormed the courtyard. The teenage girls looked like movie stars and the varsity boys carried themselves like they owned the place. I tried to count the underage heads: cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching. The courtyard was full and everyone was having fun. I noticed a big smile on Tommy’s face and any worries I had left were gone. I figured cover alone must have raked in at least five grand, but it ended up being just over ten thousand.

Without even trying I had got over a hundred paying patrons. Cover charges just scratched the surface. Tommy moved our entire first batch of meth. 

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. (Soren Kierkegaard)

I was worried that our launch party would be a flop. The tiki hut rental company (yes, tiki hut rentals constitute a lucrative business in LA) came and set up the bar in a tiki hut. Tommy and I strung lights around the courtyard.

As a recluse I was anxious about this whole event. Not to mention the fact that this was the debut of our crystal meth business. On top of all that, we were inviting high school kids in at a hundred dollars a head. Though I hired a bouncer to guard the door and collect the cash, it seemed inadequate risk management for the dubious event.

I guess I shouldn’t have offered entry to the teenagers at all. It turned this easygoing pool party into a more formal event. I was practically shaking when the bartender and DJ showed up. This party had already cost me my salary as property manager for an entire month. If it failed, it was going to be one hell of a disaster.

Tommy was even more anxious than I was. I guess he had more riding on it. Plus he was sure we were going to get busted before this business got off the ground. We had people manning the stations and Tommy had pockets of pre-packaged, ready-to-move, Grade A, homemade crystal meth.