Home | Contest | Write A Book | Write Ebooks For Cash | Be A Travel Writer | Write Children's Books Write For Newspapers | Write An Ezine | Write A Blog | Writing Skills & Tips | Novel Writing Software Please take a moment to bookmark this site and join our free hot tips list. Read & Rate Our Writing Contest Entries! See what other people have written, and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5. This is an opportunity to view a wide variety of short stories and see what kind of original material is being submitted to us on a daily basis. After you rate an entry, you will be randomly redirected to another entry to rate. You may read and rate as many entries as you wish! The user-rating system is simply a fun way for writers to receive a public opinion of their work, and does not affect the judging for the cash prizes. If you wish to enter the contest, you may enter for free here. Rate This Contest Entry: Contest: June 30th, 2005 Author: Olivia Diamond It was a bright, clear sunny day. I was standing under a tree next to Papa Murphey's. It was my first trip back to Marin County in nearly 5 months. It is said to be the Beverly Hills of Northern California. I suppose that is true. I looked up and paced beneath the tree. I watched bikers' speed by me in their spandex uniforms. Never have I seen more obnoxious bikers in all of my life than in Marin. I smiled as an elderly couple walked by me, they reminded me of my own grandparents, married for sixty-four long and amazing years. People watching kept me from being overly nervous. Then I saw it, a black truck pulling up. I looked down, trying not to make eye contact with her. Ali slipped out of the car. Her long blondish-brown hair was trailing down behind her back. She seemed so tall with her high-heels, which made her tower over me. Her face was splotchy from a bad spray-on tan she had gotten in Hawaii, and she had black eyeliner all around her eyes. Her hair was dyed a fake blonde, probably an 8-dollar bottle of Dove hair dye from Rite Aid. She had been my best friend since fifth grade. Since we we had gone to the same small school, and been in the same small class until eighth grade. She ran over to me, and I picked her up and swung her around, like the old days. Andy and John got out of the back. “And my hug…” John said to me. I laughed, his black sweatshirt hood over his head. I gave him a hug. His hug brought back old memories, but I never let on that I was still in love with him. I got in the back of the truck, Ali's dad sped away. I was prepared to go to Telegraph Street in Berkley, but evidently, Ali was talking me to Haight Street in San Francisco. I got out of the car, blinded by the sunlight. I overheard John and Andy talking about how much pot they had smoked earlier that day, and how long the ride had been. Ali came back over to me with my ticket, then without warning she took my hand and pulled me up towards the bathroom. The bathroom was musty with flickering lights, I felt like I was in a terrible horror movie. She reached down into her chic Marilyn Monroe purse and pulled out a clear container with white powder inside. She walked into a bathroom stall and left the door open and motioned for me to come inside. I walked into the stall and watched as she made a line on the toilet seat with the razor. My world suddenly came to an abrupt halt as she kneeled down, pulled out a forth of a straw, and snorted up the white powder. “I hate how cocaine makes me break out.” Those were the words she used to break the silence. I just stood there in silent shock, not that I had never thought that drugs overpowered teenagers, but just the day before she had called me sobbing, and told me that she had done too much cocaine and her friends had left her lying in the middle of the Redwood field. She had said that she couldn't move her legs and that her heart was pounding a mile a minute. She had told me over and over again that she kept hearing voices and that she kept seeing things that weren't really there. She had been completely stoned and swore her hand was gone. And she had repeated over and over again that she would never do cocaine again. Obviously her promises from yesterday were mere memories today. Ali and I walked out of the bathroom, and John and Andy were running around acting like five-year-olds, not sixteen-year-olds. People walked by with their kids, and paused to look at them, laughed, and walked away. They had no idea that these innocent people were completely under the influence of drugs. All of us walked up the stairs and down the dock to the ferry, through the massive doors, and all the way to the bottom. There was no one there, which I realized was the point. Because we all sat down and Andy pulled out another container and started making lines of cocaine for Ali and him to snort. I felt like a complete outsider to their drug addictions and all I wanted to do was help them get better, but all I could do was sit back and watch their lives be destroyed by drugs by the second. I sat there thinking, “Why the hell does she have to be doing this in front of me.” I kept telling myself, “I guess she has no idea what it is like to watch the best friend you think you have completely screw up her life.” After we got off the ferry we made our way across the street, to the bus station. On the way, Ali nearly got hit by a car, but we eventually ended up in the Haight. It seemed like the perfect place for them to be, mixed in with crowds of heroin addicts and alcohol abusers. I, on the other hand, felt completely out of place. I spent the day trailing behind them wishing I were somewhere else. While I was in the midst of my daydreaming, Ali turned around and looked me in the eye and said, “I need help, I think I am a cocaine addict.” I wanted to start crying. It is so hard to watch someone who you thought was your best friend, change for the worst. I thanked God it was nearing the end of the day, and the end of this terrible trip, which changed my perception of my friends and the people around me. It is hard to elaborate and dig deep to get the exact feelings I had during that day. It was almost like I was numb through the whole thing, an audience watching my life fly by. It felt like I was watching my life on TV, and I could yell and scream all I wanted, but no one would ever hear me. Ali never said anything about her 'addiction' again. She had no one who cared about her. Her mom was a complete mess and her dad couldn't care less. Finally, after call after call from her when she was high on anything from “shrooms” to coke, I gave up. I had tried everything to help her, but there was nothing to be done. So after being an outsider in our friendship and on the ferry, it was done. The memories are all locked up and saved, but there is nothing left of our friendship for the future, and sadly that is how it ends. 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