Hollywood Lied

Chapter 6: Sour Patch Kids

Saturday felt hollow, the kind of day where the walls close in if you sit still too long.So Marjorie and I made a pact:roller coaster or bust. Anything to jolt me out of the fog I’d been dragging around since that night.

We stood in line, the metal rails cold under our fingers, the air thick with the smell of fried dough and sunburnt tourists. My head still throbbed, but at least the world felt alive again.

I reached into my American Spirit pack, pulled out a cigarette, and held it out to her without much thought.A peace offering.A distraction.Something to do with my hands while the guilt still simmered.

To my surprise, she took it without hesitation.Lit it expertly.Inhaled like it was second nature.

She blew out a slow stream of smoke and shot me a sideways smirk.Turns out we had two things in common now—alcohol-fueled chaos... and nicotine.It wasn’t much, but in that moment, it felt like enough.

"Hey! No smoking near the roller coaster!" the carny barked, voice thin and whiny.I turned to see this kid—couldn’t have been older than fourteen—pointing at me like he owned the place.

I felt my temper flare, heat prickling at my neck. But I wasn’t about to start a fight over a cigarette. Not today.I stomped it out on the concrete, letting the ashes scatter.

God, I hate kids. Always demanding s**t and never giving anything back. And then puberty hits and all hell breaks loose—suddenly they’re hormonal dictators in tiny bodies, and the world just keeps letting them run around like it’s normal.

I shook my head, muttering under my breath, and turned back to Marjorie. We still had a roller coaster to ride.

"You first," I said, giving her a gentle nudge toward the boarding platform.She shot me a grateful smile and stepped forward, excitement flickering in her eyes.

I went next, sliding into the seat with a mix of anticipation and dread. The roller coaster was one of those old wooden beasts, creaking with every bolt and plank—the kind of ride that looked like it could ignite into flames if someone were careless enough to light a match nearby.

Now I understood why that kid had been on our asses about the cigarette.Not that it made me like him any more.But at least there was some faint logic behind his whining.

I gripped the safety bar and waited, the wood groaning under the weight of the approaching adrenaline.

"Oh, crap!" some kid screamed behind us just as the coaster lurched forward.Oh, crap was right—because the damn thing didn’t just start moving.It launched.

We hit what had to be ninety miles an hour in seconds.Ninety.I don’t even reach that when I’m speeding, and my personal record is eighty-five. Eighty-five feels fast.Ninety felt like the universe was trying to rip my face off.

The wind blasted against us in a wall of noise and pure force. My stomach shot up into my throat, and the Sour Patch Kids I’d eaten earlier staged a violent uprising.

"I think I’m gonna hurl—" I gagged, gripping the restraint like it could save my soul.

Through the roar of the air, Marjorie’s voice sliced through like a whip:"Don’t you even dare!"

I clenched my jaw, swallowed hard, and somehow—miraculously—kept everything down.Barely.As in, micrometers away from disaster.

When the coaster finally slowed, I felt like a ghost who’d barely avoided becoming ectoplasm on the tracks.

"That was insane," I gasped, trying to catch what little breath I had left.It wasn’t every day I went to a fair and nearly lost consciousness over a handful of Sour Patch Kids. But right then, they sat in my stomach like molten regret.

I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined they were h****n instead—something that would knock out the noise, the fear, the spinning world. Anything to help me blank out.

But I’d left my pipe back at the apartment. Forgot it in my rush to get out of the house, and now the thought of telling Marj I needed to go back sent a bolt of terror through me.

So I kept my mouth shut.And suffered.

The withdrawals hit fast—sweaty palms, trembling fingers, a deep shiver that crawled up my spine and refused to leave. My skin went cold and pale, and even the damn carny noticed.

"Hey, dude, you okay? You look kinda sick," he said, frowning like he actually cared.

Goddamn kid.What the hell did he know about addiction?He probably smoked reefer once behind a school cafeteria and thought he was edgy.

Me? I’d been smoking h****n since I was sixteen. Over two decades of chasing the same numbness, the same quiet.

For a moment, I suddenly understood Layne Staley—the loneliness, the rot, the feeling of crumbling from the inside out.Except his hell played out in Seattle.Mine was here, in this gaudy, sun-soaked pit of vanity. Materialistic hell. Also known as Hollywood. Sorry—Hollywoo.

"I don’t feel so well," I admitted."I can tell," she muttered."Must be those Sour Patch Kids," I lied."Or maybe all the h****n you’re withdrawing from," she reminded me."Probably the true reason," I admitted.

"Have you ever shared it with someone?" she asked, curious."Once, yeah. But we broke up," I said with a massive frown."I’m sorry for bringing her up," she winced.

"No worries," I murmured, taking her hands and kissing them gently, trying to steady both of us. I didn’t even know what I was doing—whether it was instinct, desperation, or just withdrawal-fueled confusion.

And then everything blurred.

One moment we were standing there under the rattling shadow of the roller coaster...the next, we were in bed, tangled up in each other, heat and motion replacing panic and cold sweat.

Then—black.

I must have passed out at some point, because the next clear memory I had was waking up with my heart pounding and the room spinning, no idea how one moment had led to the next.

The gaps in the night scared me more than anything else.Not the coaster, not the kid, not even the withdrawals—but the empty space where my memories should’ve been.

I guess that’s part of the symptoms too.Losing pieces of yourself without realizing they’ve slipped away.

I crawled under the covers that night with a pit in my stomach, whispering a quiet prayer into the dark—that whatever was happening to my mind would stop,that the holes would stop widening,that tomorrow I’d still recognize myself.

Because I knew what it looked like when memories vanished for good.

I’d already lost an entire year once—my seventeenth year, swallowed whole bysalvia divinorum.Most people think it’s some harmless, trippy leaf you smoke once in a blue moon.They have no idea how it grabs hold of you, how it digs in, how it steals time like it has the right.

It’s a terrible drug—bitter, disorienting, ugly—but somehow it hooks you anyway, pulling you back in even when you swear you’re done.

And that lost year still haunts me.A blank stretch of life I can’t recall no matter how hard I try.A year people insist I lived, even though it feels like someone else wore my skin during it.

So as I drifted toward sleep, trembling and exhausted, all I could hope was that the past wouldn’t repeat itself—that I wouldn’t wake up tomorrow missing another piece of who I used to be.