8/26: Drugs Before School - Khalil Castle

Chan-hee and I are on the road to get the drugs. The catch is, it's after 5:30 in the morning, hours before school starts for us. So since that's currently happening, Chan to my right is complaining her ass off about her lost sleep.

"Do you know how much of my beauty sleep I've lost because of you? Keeping this Korean face pretty is not easy, Khalil," she says to me through interrupted yawns. She never got the chance to fully get herself together before coming along with me. So here she is now, still in her pink silk pajamas, with her back length half-black, half-pink hair that's barely messy even though it's in a ponytail, and she's wearing her pink bunny slippers. The only thing she has with her is her phone. I didn't do much either, but put on a black sweatshirt and a pair of black sweatpants, along with my black boots on.

"Well, aren't you the one that suggested that you would come with me to make sure nothing went wrong?" I say back to her before adding, "It's basically your fault why you lost your so-called 'beauty sleep'." I keep my attention on the road that I can barely see. It's still dark out, and I can only assume the sun will come up after 6 A.M. Besides that, it's so fraught with potholes you can't miss them. With the streetlights that come every now and then while driving, you can see the old buildings that used to be more modern looking from the past. Blue Winter didn't always used to be semi-rich. It only became that way because of Crimson Company, Inc., the place where almost everybody from here worked at.

"Oh, shut up, Khalil. I'm just mad it had to be so damn early in the morning. We couldn't do this like during lunch or during a free period?" she says to me.

"No. Believe me, I would've done it by then. But then this mysterious person that's texting me now told me that I had to do it before school started. So he could get his 'extra money' in the morning," I say, still keeping my attention on the road. That road soon turns into a dirt path, making me assume that I'm getting closer to my destination.

"Oh ok. So where did he say to go to?" she asks me before letting out another yawn.

"Some warehouse belonging to Crimson Company."

"Why there?"

"I don't know, but sooner or later, everything will come out in the end," I tell her just as I slow and come to a stop in front of the warehouse holding the drugs. I know that it's this specific one because the unknown person told me that it would have two things: 1) a pallid green light above the door; and 2) the numbers 042803 in black under the light. I look down a bit and see that the big metal door is slightly open for anyone to slip their hand under and lift it.

"I'll be back. Call me if you see anything," I say to her before watching her nod her head and then getting out of the car.

I close the door to my black Chevrolet Cruise and walk over to the front of the warehouse. I bend down just enough to lift the metal door with all of my strength. I straighten up and walk in just a little to find the light switch on the right and flip it on. When my eyes become adjusted to the new brightness around me, I see an array of different colored couches in front of me. 'How am I supposed to find drugs in here?' I thought to myself as I looked around.

I decided then to pull out my phone from the pocket of my sweatshirt and go to my messages. Under the group chat between Ali, Chan, and me, and a separate chat between Chan and me is the chat with the unknown person.

Me: Hey, I'm here at the warehouse. Where do I look for them?

I reread it before sending it off to him. I turn around and look through the driver's window to see Chan-hee. From this distance, it looks like she's on her phone. I put a slight smile on my face just as I feel my phone vibrate twice in my clutched hands, meaning I got a message from someone. I turn my attention and see it's from the person I expected it from.

Unknown: Look for a red plush couch. Then feel inside it to find your prize. Good luck.

"Drugs aren't prizes," I mutter under my breath. I slide my phone back inside my pocket and start looking around. There are 5 red couches, but I can count out 3 since two of them have patterns and the other one looks leather-like. I go to the fifth row of couches and go to the red plush couch in the middle. Luckily, that's where I find a bag of weed in between the couches. 'Weed, huh? Unbelievable,' I thought to myself as I looked at it.

It reminded me of my dad, seeing as he always smoked weed, no matter the time it was or how he felt. He smoked it like a freight train running all day. The only time I could think of when he didn't smoke was when he woke up from sleep. The one time where he decided he would snort coke and smoke weed one night, killed him. Over-intoxicated his brain it was killing off the brain cells. It also poisoned his lungs.

I snap back to reality when I hear Chan call me from the car. I hurried out of the warehouse, pulled the metal door closed, and got into the car. "What?" I say to her just as she says, " We got company, dude."

She points in front of us and what I see is a pair of headlights coming straight for us. I put on my seatbelt & then looked at Chan just as she turned her head to me. "You're gonna want to hold on for this," I say to her when I switch the gear to 'drive'. I drive forward and then do a quick U-turn, letting the dust fly around behind us as I'm now driving back into Blue Winter.

"Where did you learn to do that?" she yells at me after I look in the side mirror and see that we're moving away from them as fast as the car goes. "When you watch a whole series of The Fast and The Furious and then practice it on your own, that's when you learn how to drive almost exactly like them."

I step on the gas pedal and do a hard left turn onto a road. I'm going 65 mph now as I do another turn, this time right, onto a road that usually leads to where I live. I keep going the speed I'm doing and pass my house on the next road ahead. I decide in my head that I'm going to drop off Chan. I start to slow to a more road-appropriate speed when I look in my side mirror and see that they're not behind us.

After 10 minutes, I finally parked in front of Chan-hee's house. I look at the time on the radio and see that it's already after 6 in the morning. "Just drink some coffee and I'm sure you'll feel better for the rest of the day," I tell Chan just as she opens her door.

"Whatever, Khalil. You just be careful with that... mess." She says, waving her hand off at me.

She gets out with her phone in her hand, closes the door, turns around to mean mug me with a look, and then walks to the front of the house. That look scared me a bit, to be honest. I just know that deep in the back of my mind I better watch out for her. That girl is capable of a lot of things, so who knows what she'll do to get me back. I know she's planning revenge on me.

I shake from that thought and look to my left to see Ali's two-story house. I can see that her room light is on, meaning she's woke now. 'She always was an early bird,' I say in my mind as a smile comes to my face. Yesterday at the beach, when she was on the sand from bumping into me, her big hazel-brown eyes staring into mines, I felt something in me. I don't know what it was, but somehow it felt good with that feeling that ran through my body.

When I realize that I'm still sitting in front of Chan-hee's house, I start driving my car back to my house. On the way there, all I think about is Ali. Alixandria Thomas. The girl I've known since kindergarten. As soon as I turn off the car in the driveway, all those thoughts flow away from me when I see that my mom's room light is on, along with my room and the living room. Oh no. I'm in trouble like hell.