It was time to shop for a new, rad friend. A boss. One who would propel me to new social heights. And she had to be Goth; I made up my mind that my future was going to be black.

Oh, and it was. Just wait.

I met my best friend Sandy where the smokers hung out, so I threw my badass on and moseyed over to the sidewalk across the street where we smokers got our 10 minutes of nicotine meditation on.

Christie said she was 5’ tall, but she was lying. She was 90 pounds kitty cat wet, but she rode horses so she was all muscle. She could jump horseback hurdles without the fucking horse.

And she was Goth. Openly. At school. She didn’t give a fuck.

The second I met her, I knew she was trouble. It’s what drew her to me and eventually tore us apart.

I watched her flail around as she excitedly talked to a small group about the probability of aliens. And the probability that they had probed her anus. And she was literally bouncing.

She bounded up to me and did one of the best Bill the Cat impressions I’ve seen TO DATE.

How did she know about my obsession with Bloom County? That I had all the books and read them over and over?

My drawings of Bill were as good as her impersonation. I drew Bill the Cat on everything including the notebook I was… holding.

In hindsight, it was quite fitting that the mutual love of a derelict drug addict cat was our bond.

She grabbed me by my notebook and spun me around with great force.

“Cut with me. I have cloves.”

She had me at “with me.”

We walked two miles to the cemetery. It was obvious we were cutting for the rest of the day. Christie sang some song about dead poets the whole way and I realized that I was going to have to bone up on my literature to become Goth.

Christie took me to an unlocked tomb and we crawled inside. It was empty. The sun streaming in through stained glass made it feel like a tiny church. A sense of calm pervaded my senses. When my family lived in Mexico, I used to hide from my abusive father in church. It was the only other time I felt that all over body peace without using drugs and alcohol.

We sat on the stoop and Christie handed me a clove cigarette.*

“Hold the clove between your fingers and then make a circle with that hand and cup it with your other hand. No take a huge hit and hold it as long as you can.

I’d been smoking pot long enough to come off overqualified.

The promise of distorted reality was always a carrot I would chase, even if it meant possible death.

I exhaled and I had a sweet buzz on. The cloves tasted like strawberry. It was a perfect cemetery day.

Signature Christie, right in the middle of my buzz, picked me up and spun me around and around and around. Like a record, baby.

The only predictable thing about this girl was that she was completely unpredictable. And hyper as shit.

“Now lay down, take a power hit and listen to this.”

I lay where Mary Buford made her final resting place. I imagined her 6-feet under me in a coffin. Decaying. I felt so Goth.

I was beginning to feel like a slave to her whims. But of course I would do what she said rather than face the consequences of standing up for myself. This girl was my only touchstone to the world I wanted so badly to belong to. I was no victim in this scenario; I was definitely a volunteer.

The only other person I knew in the scene was Ethan, but he made me want to puke and he wasn’t even Goth.

She put her headphones over my ears. I took the hit. She pressed play on the Walkman. It was My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult – I’d never heard them. The song was A Daisy Chain 4 Satan. Right when the song started, I was floating. I was in the music. I was the music. I felt that peace wash over me again, but this time it stayed.

I knew this was going to save me. I was going to reinvent myself. I was going to be untouchable. No one would break my heart again. No one would know about my deep shame of losing the Brie Lesbian Attempt.

I tried vulnerability. It didn’t fucking work. I suddenly understood why punkers wore those thick leather jackets. I was in need of a shell.

I felt breath on my face.

I batted my spider legs open. Christie was an inch away from my face studying me as if I was her very own science experiment.

“Stay over at my house Friday night. We’ll go to Club Underground and do some fry.”

I felt like Charlie getting the golden ticket to Goth. I had no idea what fry was, but if it was half as good as cloves, I was in.

*Clove cigarettes were illegal in Nevada, but Reno is only a 45-minute drive from the state line. It wasn’t as rad as having weed, but it still meant you drove or kicked it with people who drove, which made you badass.