Leja

Sofia Murillo

English 9B

May 25, 2015

I'm riding my hover bike, one of my favorite things to do, toward the center of town. I live in Ithaca, NY. I've lived here my whole life and I know there are no chances of leaving because no one in the state can leave. New York is the only state in the US in which marihuana isn’t legal and the state government doesn’t want people leaving and becoming “stoners”. It’s a system of defense, so to speak. Of course that doesn’t mean that people don’t find a way to acquire it. I'm actually going to my dealer right now to get some. Max is one of the very few people who somehow manage to get it into the state even though the security is tight as heck. Sure it gets expensive sometimes but it's not like I buy it too often. If I'm lucky I can get some once a week, and not too much either.

When I arrive at Max's house he's talking to another client and tells me to wait in the living room. I catch my reflection in the mirror. A slim and dark reflection, gloomy in a way.

I'm wearing black classic vans, black jeans, a burgundy shirt, and a black leather jacket. My choppy hair, bleached, which made it look reddish. My skin almost pale but a warm red on my cheeks and in general fairly toned skin. This mirror makes me look like I’m 5’2 or something, even though I’m 5’9. So close yet so far to 6’0.

There's a knock on the apartment door. To spare Max the trouble of halting his meeting I decide to go check it out. It turns out it's my friend, Naja, so I let her in. She’s tall like me, perfect body type of girl. She has short, curly, blue hair and she’s black. She’s probably my best friend of my best friends. We usually buy our weed together, I give her a ride, but today she had to stay after school because she was caught skipping which is actually really unlucky because Naja, Carter, Sage, and I regularly skip class and we've never been caught, only her this one time.

“Hey Leo, where's Max?” she asks me.

“Hey Naja, he's on the business. How did detention go?” I answer, teasingly.

“Oh man it was so boring. There was literally nothing to do, and you wouldn't text me back.”

“I can't drive and text, god.”

“Okay whatever. Leo I’m supposed to tell you something before we meet with Max.” Just in that moment Max opens the office door and walks towards us. “Well not then, I guess.”

“Hey Leo, hey Naja. Have you decided on that offer?” says Max, what is he talking about? This is probably what Naja was going to tell me about.

“Yeah about that, I was just gonna tell Leo about it and then you came to us.” answers Naja.

“You haven’t told him? It’s been 3 days!” says Max, lightly annoyed.

“Hey chill, we can tell him right now,” she turns to me with a look I can’t identify. “Max, Carter, Sage and I talked the other day about a job we could do, the day you were with your family and couldn’t go out. Max told us we could do a little something for him and get a little something for ourselves. So anyway pay attention cause I’m not repeating myself. This job thing we have to do consists of going to Buffalo and back before anyone notices we’re gone. So we have like 2 days at most.” Naja keeps talking and she and Max get more and more serious as she elaborates on the job. We have to smuggle a document that would potentially force the state government to legalize marihuana in New York. No biggie. Except this document is held by this guy, André, and he’s the most wanted man in the state right now. Literally they want him dead because this document he holds has proof that the NYC mayor and pretty much every politic person in the state currently approves of the legalization but for whatever reason they refuse to accept it. So anyway we have to get this document and post it everywhere and paste it on walls and just expose them and then from there we have to start a protest because of it.

“So what do you say? Sage and Carter already accepted. So did I.” Naja tells me. “You’re the brains of the group Leo, we have to do it with you. But hey no pressure.” Yeah right no pressure.

“And what we get out of this is pretty much making weed legal right? Great, I’m in.” I don’t really see why I wouldn’t accept to this. I mean the results are the best and even though the risks are there, the worst thing that could happen is that we get community service for a few weeks.

“I knew you would accept! Now I’ll text you a link with all the details after we’re done here and you head out tomorrowin order to get back before Sunday. We have to get that document public first thing Monday,” says Max, obviously satisfied.

We leave and go to the mall to meet Carter and Sage. We’re gonna plan the whole thing out today so we have everything running swiftly tomorrow.

After a harsh six hours of planning and pretty much thinking until our minds blow up we have the plan ready and we leave to get some rest before we have to leave. If I get some sleep that will be great but it’s already two am.​I don’t sleep easily. I can’t fall asleep easily knowing that I’ll have nightmares. Especially when the nightmares I have come from real life events that burnt themselves in my mind.I take my sleeping pill anyway, I can’t stop the nightmares but I have to rest before tomorrow.

When I wake up I’m confused because I’m not in my bed. I’m in the guest room which used to be my sisters room. Makes sense I guess, after all, she’s the reason for my nightmares. I don’t remember having a nightmare or coming to this room but I’m used to it already. Some times there’s a blank space in my memory and I forget my dreams, I like those times because that way there’s more of a chance of avoiding a flashback in the middle of the day that can sometimes trigger a panic attack. I guess I’m a messed up kid.

I get ready and prepare a backpack with food, clothes, and supplies needed for the job. Today I’m dressed as a skater hipster kind of.

I pick up Naja and we go to a café at the mall and wait fro Sage and Carter. We see them arrive through TJMaxx, Carter driving. Carter is a blonde and tall-ish dude but Sage is super short and she has natural red hair. It takes them a few minutes to get to us and when they do we are all pumped yet nervous to start the job. Never the less we start our four hourtrip to Buffalo before we regret it. Along the way I open up the sound bubble from my bike and play music. I play Neck Deep because they remind me of the good times with my sister and Naja loves them too. I could really use a smoke right now but we all decided that if we got caught it would be best if they only found the document on us.

We arrive just in time for lunch and we get to this vegan restaurant that we wanted to try out. We also go there because Sage is a vegan and we can’t really go anywhere else if we want her to eat.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a cop car. The cop gets out of the car and heads toward the diner in which we are. We sure are lucky to not have either weed or that document with us yet. When the cop comes in I realize he's not coming to our table anyways, we are safe.

We have quick and easy meals and we head out. We have to do this job fast, a quick in and out. We have to go to a warehouse on the other side of town but we never get there because right in that moment four black vans corner us and my friends and I with sleeping darts apparently. I start to feel dizzy and I black out.

I wake up in a room so dark and so silent that I feel like I'm in another dimension. I have shackles on my wrists and ankles, and a pain in my neck that shouldn't have been there. I hear an electric buzz, as if there was a generator behind me. Where am I? Who brought me here and why?

I hear a door creaking and suddenly there's a blinding light that leaves black spots in my vision. Are those black spots or are they people? I can't tell. I feel sort of high, but a bad high, a tiring high that leaves me with just about enough energy to breathe. Someone turned on the light and I could see a glass wall in front of me and through it I can see the outline of a person but I'm not sure who it is.

The people who entered the room a few seconds ago approach me and I'm suddenly conscious of how nervous I must look. Sweat is trickling down my forehead, getting into my eyes. My legs and hands are shaking, not enough to be too noticeable but the people in front of me must know exactly what I'm feeling. This can't be their first time doing this.

"Leo, is it?" says a black man, the leader apparently. "You could've caused us a lot of trouble if you had gotten that document. We would've ended up in jail." It's better if I don't talk, this guy looks like he would beat me if I talked without being told to. Especially since I'm the one that's captive.

"We have a little surprise for you. You see that room on the other side of the glass?" he told me.

"Yeah I see it." I answer, soft but my voice is firmer than I thought it would be.

"Well that friend of yours, Naja I believe, is in there. While you both were out, we decided to do a little experimenting in order to interview you more easily." What does this guy want? Surely there's nothing I know that would help them in any way. And why is Naja chained up too? I can't let them hurt her, even if that means sacrificing Max or something. She has to be left untouched. What did I get us into?

"The way this is gonna work is we will ask either one of you a question and if it's wrong you both will feel a three second long migraine, a really painful one mind you. We placed a small device right below your skin in your neck and it pretty much reads your brains wave lengths. A magnificent piece of machinery, really." the guy says to me, his tone suggesting that it's far too complicated fro me to understand. Except I can build that "magnificent piece of machinery."

"Are you at least gonna tell me why I'm here? And who you are?" I ask the guy, maybe I get something that's worth it.

"You ask too many questions boy. That's my job and we should probably get started." He's starting to lose his patience. "So, first question, do you want marihuana to be legalized?"

"What kind of question is that? Of course I do. Why do you think I was going for that document?" I probably shouldn't have talked that much, now he's gonna think he can get easy answers, although to be fair he will probably get his answers if he actually hurts Naja if I lie.

"I'm glad we can agree on something. Next question, who is your employer?"

I stay silent for too long and I feel the sharp pain in my temples and before I black out from pain I see Naja screaming upwards, her ears bleeding.

I'm standing on the roof of a warehouse, the warehouse in which the guy with the document was supposed to be. Through the glass windows I see guns on the floor. What the heck? I see bodies too. I try to see if my friends are amongst the dead but I can't identify them, I have to get closer.

The stairs are on the otherside of the roof so I run over but halfway there the glass below me shatters and I'm plummeting down. When I hit the floor I feel like my tendons just snapped.I lay on the ground for some time, waiting for the pain to recede.

I walk over to the bodies and I see Max, the guy who was supposed to have the document and I see Sage and Carter. They're dead. What happened here? Why was I not here when this happened? I turn my head to look around and I see Naja. but then her face changes and it melts into my sister's face, a nightmare. This has to be a nightmare. Then the face is Naja's again and she's hanging from a noose. This can't be true, this is the exact way I found my sister so many years ago. I approach her and try to take her down, lay her on the floor, but my hand goes right through. It's as if I as nothing but a faint mist. I try again and again but I can't seem to get a solid hold of her. This has to be a nightmare. It has to be.

I stay there, miserable, for what seems like hours. I start to hear faint voices, Naja's voice. Saying something over and over. I can't make out what she's saying even though I have all of my concentration on her voice. Over time it starts getting clearer and I feel relief. She's saying something about how I couldn't die, how I had to be alive. But what does she mean? She's dead. She's gone and spirits don't exist, or at least that's what I thought. Suddenly I feel like I am falling, like when I fell from the roof, except this is much more intense, faster, the vertigo gets the best of me. Then I am laying back on a bed. I see the ceiling right in front of my face, am I on a bunk or something? I start to notice the things around me, like that I'm not on a mattress, I'm in the back seat of a car. One of those cars that are bigger on the inside than on the outside. I see wavy blue hair in the front seat, Naja's hair, she's driving. I try to sit up but I'm strapped down.

"Hey would you mind untying me?" I tell Naja. She turns around hope and shock on her face.

"So now you decide to wake up! I've been trying to wake you up for like 3 hours. Oh and you're free now. Max sent some people who owed him so favours and those people killed the ones who kidnapped us. Then they gave us this car and disappeared. Carter and Sage are in the trunk sleeping. Apparently they were kept awake the whole time, which was like 2 days, and they were also hit with that migraine killing thing so they're pretty much exhausted. They look a little bit like zombies actually." Says Naja, updating me on everything.

"Great so I pretty much missed all the action. Damn it."

Leo..." she had an expresion of hurt as ssif someone had broken her, "When we went to get you at your cell I thought maybe you... that maybe you were gone. I panicked, you were barely breathing and I was really worried. In that moment I went numb. I thought of all the things I hadn't told you. Especially one thing. I'm not even gonna stutter. I want you to be my boyfriend but I am lesbian so I'm really confused, You are the only guy that I've ever liked and probably the only one I will ever like. I don't know if you feel the same way but I hope you do because this was actually really hard to say and-"

"Naja, I reall like you too and yes I do want to be your boyfriend. This is like the best day of my life!"

Suddenly a truck hit us from the side and my only thought was how lucky I had been because I'd finally told Naja how I felt. But I could feel the consciousness leaving me, little by little until it finally did, taking all of me with it.