Gone Too Far West

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Gone Too Far West - book excerpt

Introduction

Lazy, unorganized, unmotivated, unemployed, and uneducated. But I’m not ‘un’ anything. I go to college every week, I have a good part-time job and I’m no lazier than your average eighteen-year-old. I guess you could say I’m not your typical stoner.

My name is Felicity, Flic for short. I live at home with my parents, Stuart and Amanda, and my older sister, Laurie. My mum is very anti-drugs, has never taken any herself and she’s not afraid to tell you that. She’s a small woman with short, dark hair, a pretty face and the smoothest skin you’ve ever seen. She doesn’t shy away from confronting anybody when she thinks they’ve done wrong. And then there’s my dad. He’s one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, everyone loves hearing stories from his past. Like our Mandy, he’s never really been into drugs, he says, but there is one story that slips out every time he’s drunk, about his best friend presenting a bag of weed at my parents’ housewarming party with the words: “Evening, gentlemen.”

My dad is tall and in good shape, despite his gammy knees, elbows, feet and back…

He’s open to drug humour, always asking if I want any ‘devil’s lettuce’ on my burger. Despite this, he’d give me a swift left hook to the throat if he found out just how much I craved a drag of the real devil’s lettuce.

And last but not least, there’s Laurie. We’re closer than any sisters in the world. Why? Because we have the same sense of humour, similar interests, the same parents, and a love for all things that get you high.

Our favourite band is Tenacious Toes, an Australian group who, for me, personify everything that is nice about life; summer, love and times spent lazing around with your friends. And I’m lucky enough to be flying over to the weed capital of the world soon, where the grass is always greener, to watch them perform live. AMSTERDAM. I’ll be living every stoner’s dream.

Laurie looks completely different to me. Sometimes we even question whether we really are related or not. I’m small, with brightly coloured hair, skinny limbs, and attached to my face are numerous nose rings, which my grandma hates, and a pair of black, round spectacles. Laurie is taller, with long, brown hair and bright blue eyes, plus a single nose stud, which our grandma apparently loves. Wonder who’s her favourite?

We spend a lot of time together, going to the pub, playing pool, or smoking weed. No matter what we do, we do it crying with laughter.

As much as I love my sister, however, I spend most of my time with my three best friends: Jenk, Len and Javan. You will find us in our favourite spot in Paradox Park, on a big picnic bench that’s covered in the carvings and graffiti of other stoners who use this bench as their haven. The bench is situated with a vast forest behind it, which goes on for miles, and a large stretch of grass in front, which connects you to the car park and the entrance, so you really feel out in the open, vulnerable, like it’s just us four against the world, we’ve only got each other.

Jenkies, once a shy boy I never spoke to in high school, is now the guy who provides the drugs for our little rendezvous in the park. He is very tall, almost too tall, and lanky as anything. He has shoulder-length blond hair that curls around at the ends, and which is usually sticking out from beneath his lucky bucket hat, red with navy blue flowers sprawled unsymmetrically around it. Your typical stoner, he stays away from confrontation and makes it very hard for anyone to dislike him, with his catchphrase being “finesse, never stress.”

Len, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. He’s always been very confident and self-assured, one of those ‘I’m the best-looking person in this room’ types of people, despite him also being a nervous wreck. Upon his head sits short, blond, curly hair and his face is always plastered with a perfect white grin. He has broad shoulders and a good swimmer’s back, all topped off with the most chiseled six-pack you’ve ever seen. Everybody knows his name, and he’s aware of it. But despite this, he isn’t as arrogant as you would expect. He’s actually more like a giant child, always laughing and telling jokes. He doesn’t take himself too seriously, somehow.

And finally, there’s Javan. He too is very tall; slightly smaller than Jenk, though. His big, sunken eyes are almost covered behind his long, brown, unkempt fringe. The poor boy hasn’t been given the best chances in life. He can’t seem to stay in college for long or hold down a weekend job for more than two months, meaning he never has any money to afford the drugs, and he still owes us all money from last month, too. Because of this hardship, he’s become very depressed, but there are some lengths he goes to that we didn’t even know about. But, similar to Len, he knows how to take a joke, and for a moment he forgets about the difficulties he faces and enjoys the time we spend together.

When I’m not out enjoying myself, I’m either in college or at work. All my friends go to the same college as me, but we’re not in any lessons together, apart from me and Jenk getting a few cherished hours in our media lessons, but our breaks are always spent together as a group. I also study drama, English language, and Extended Project Qualification. For those of you that don’t know what EPQ is, it’s a trap they lure you into by saying it will help you get into your chosen university, when all it does is diminish your will to live. For this subject, you are told to write a dissertation, and deliver a PowerPoint presentation to the class. The topic of this is down to you. I chose to write about the effects of different drugs on the mind and the body, where as other students chose things like ‘Is there such a thing as a sustainable city?’ or stuff about Shakespeare, so it’s safe to say that my project sticks out like a lazy, unorganised, unmotivated, drug-fuelled thumb.

I work weekends behind the bar in a local pub. It’s full of creepy old men who ask me out on dates or ask where I live. But overall, I suppose I do enjoy working there. A job’s a job, as they say, and this job pays for me to get high, so I can’t complain.

Already, this year has been the best of my life. We’ve had the hottest summer Britain has seen in years, I met my favourite band in my new favourite city and, most surprisingly of all, the England team were flying through the World Cup. Morale and patriotism were at an all-time high, just what we needed.

Except, after falling ill on holiday, doctors gave me one last feeble year to live and I wanted to make the most of it. But little did I know that something would happen that would test the foundation of every relationship I have and put a strain on the lives of everybody involved. Stories came out in the news, but nobody knows what really happened. I’m the only person who can tell you all. The true story needs to finally be told.

One Month Before:

Service with An Upside-Down Smile.

To start off the summer, my family always have a holiday to somewhere hot, Menorca being the destination for this year. We get to the airport at five a.m. We’re all tired and very quiet, asking each other if we’re excited for the holiday in the most unenthusiastic voices ever.

The flight is over quickly. Everybody is asleep as I watch a couple of episodes of a series Jenk had told me to watch and by that time, we’re landing.

Once we’re in Menorca airport, my dad goes to find the taxi company that’s supposed to be driving us to our villa. He returns with a man who looks more like an ex Spanish wrestler than a taxi driver. He’s massive, and he has a dark handlebar moustache, receding black hair and olive skin. You can also see his pristine white vest top under his thin, white collar shirt with the first few buttons undone, displaying a jungle of curly, black chest hair and a big gold chain.

He snatches the suitcase in front of me, in the urgent Spanish manner that most natives have, and he leads us to the minibus.

Only, it isn’t a minibus; in fact, you could say it is quite the opposite. I stand watching Padre Loco load our suitcases onto an empty double-decker bus.

“Go on then, get on,” Dad says, with a smirk appearing on his face.

I get on the bus and I almost start to walk up the stairs to sit on the top deck, as if it’s the school bus, but instead I perch down on a set of four chairs surrounding a little plastic table. Laurie and mum join me there too.

“What the hell?” Mum whispers as she sits down next to me.

Dad steps onto the bus as Luchador El Diablo finishes putting our suitcases in the luggage hold, on the outside of the bus. He sits on his own on the opposite table to ours.

“Might as well spread out,” he jokes, as he breathes in awkwardly through his teeth, which makes us all laugh.

“Did you know it was going to be a double-decker bus?” I whisper, as El Generico bumbles onto the bus and crashes into the driver’s seat.

Dad shakes his head and laughs.

The bus journey isn’t as long as I expect it to be. Within forty-five minutes we are picking up the keys to our new casa for the week.

We get off the bus and El Mysterio passes us our cases back without a smile in sight.

“Gracias!” I chirp, in my best Spanish accent which I picked up from one year of A-level Spanish, which I then failed and dropped out of. He just nods back at me with his upside-down smile.

The villa’s your typical casa: white walls, tiled floors, orange roof and outdated, wooden furniture. We get changed into more appropriate clothes and chill out in the high temperatures. The scene is bliss. I’m floating around in the pool on my back, looking up at the beautiful, clear, blue sky, the giant orange sun tanning my pale, white skin and warming up the pool to the most perfect temperature. My dad is lying on his back on a sunbed in the shade, reading his book peacefully, whilst Laurie and mum sunbathe in the pool, clinging to the side, stretching their legs out in front of them. All I can hear between the dull droning of the filter underneath the water is the sound of tweeting, coming from the tiny brown birds wandering around the poolside, pecking at anything they find on the floor. I close my eyes as I think to myself, this is the most peaceful and relaxed I’ve ever been… and I float my hands through the clear water, breaking through the still hotness of it, blessing my skin with a much cooler covering than before.

As we’ve been rushing around, unpacking and sorting everything out around the villa, we were too busy to notice the family also moving in to the villa next door to ours. Living there for the next week would be a father and a mother, a grandmother and two young kids, Isaac and Ellamae. We hear the two kids running outside screaming as they’re finally let loose to explore their new surroundings.

But their dad will not be allowing that. “No. No. You come here, Isaac. Only one of you in the pool at a time. Get your armbands on. I can’t look after both of you at the same time. ELLAMAE!”

I lift my head out of the water and turn around to look at my mum and Laurie. They’re already looking at my dad, and he’s looking at me. We pull concerned faces at each other – apart from my mum, who’s rolling her eyes and looks like she’d rather be anywhere else but our own private paradise.

Then, the loud, arrogant father starts to try and teach the little boy how to swim,

“Go on, kick your legs! It’s not all about strength, Isaac, it’s all about technique! If we keep practising like this every day, your technique will get better and you’ll get stronger as well! ELLAMAE, GET OUT OF THE POOL! ONLY ONE AT A TIME IN THE POOL!”

However, Isaac isn’t listening to his dad’s elite Olympic training and Ellamae isn’t listening to her dad’s annoying outbursts of anger. And, unsurprisingly, we don’t want to listen to it, either, so we walk into town with only one thing in mind, a full English breakfast.

We walk past rows and rows of cafés and restaurants, but none of them are offering us exactly what we want. After what seems like forever in the sweltering heat, we finally find a British bar that advertises a full English, with hash browns included. Dad tries to kid himself with thinking that we might find an even better place to eat, so we continue to walk down the road for a while until I order, rather than ask, “Shall we turn back and go in there now?”

To which everybody instantly replies, “Yep.” And we march back to the trusty British bar.

The owner is a middle-aged cockney man named Mark. He comes over and takes our order and chats about the England-versus-Columbia game that’s on tonight, which, if we win, will catapult us into the quarter finals. When the breakfast arrives, it is unbelievable. Everything you could possibly desire was piled up on the plate: sausage, bacon, baked beans, fried egg, toast, hash browns, mushrooms, black pudding – perfect! I sit there, too busy eating to join in with the conversation about returning later that night to watch the England game here, but I agree more than ever that we should definitely return; perhaps tomorrow lunchtime as well.

After we finish our delicious feast, we walk back to the villa and cool down from the long, hot walk by jumping into the refreshingly cold pool. For the rest of the day, the only thing me and dad talk about is how good the breakfast was, which then brings us onto the subject of barbecues. Even just saying the word ‘barbecue’ brings a shimmer of light to my dad’s eyes, like a kid in a sweet shop. He excitedly decides to walk down to the supermarket to buy all the barbecue essentials with Mum, and that’s exactly what they do. I settle down on the green, almost sagging with age, sofa, next to the one that Laurie is on whilst playing a game on her phone.

“Have Mum and Dad gone out?” she asks.

“Yeah, they’ve gone to the supermarket,” I reply.

“Fancy a spliff?” she inquires, without taking her eyes away from her phone.

I don’t bother to question her on how she has this weed, I think I’d rather not know, in fact.

We sit outside on a sunbed in the middle of the grassy area and spark up the spliff. We decide to smoke it as quick as humanly possible to make sure we don’t get caught by anybody.

I have my last drag and sit on the end of the sunbed with my eyes closed and my face tilted up to the sun, Laurie finishing the spliff next to me. I start to feel it more, rising inside of me. The world booms methodically in my ears as if it has its own pulse and I can feel tiny beads of sweat dripping from my hairline. My jaw starts clenching due to the very strange feeling in my teeth and I start to take deep breaths in order to try and be relaxed.

“Are you okay?” Laurie asks, concernedly.

“Yeah!” I quip, thinking I have it in me to pretend like my whole body isn’t melting into a puddle on the floor.

“Flic… I’m going to ask you one more time… Are you okay?”

“…NEED SHADE.”

I run over to the other side of the pool where the shadow of the sun behind the villa shelters a set of sofas outside. I lie down and close my eyes. Being on a harder surface makes me feel a whole lot better since I know I’m stuck to the ground and not going anywhere, and so my head and my heart begin to settle again. I take a deep breath as the cold breeze washes over my face, instantly relieving me.

I sit up and look at Laurie, who’s now laughing and walking over to me.

“That was so scary, but so funny,” she laughs, as she sits down on a chair next to the sofa

“Thought I was going to die, ha-ha.” But the laugh portrays itself as slightly more feeble than I anticipated.

After deciding that I’ll never take drugs in a hot country ever again, we go back inside to pretend as if nothing had happened. Mum and Dad return with multiple shopping bags full of food and alcohol and they couldn’t look more excited about it.

Dad goes straight to the little stone barbecue in the corner of the garden and he starts to set up. I sit back on the sofa that I previously nearly died on and look out into the garden. The beautiful, clear blue skies and the equally clear blue pool water both fight for our attention, competing with each other as to which is the bluest, which is the most beautiful. I can’t decide; they’re both as endearing as each other.

We all sit round the outside dining table and chow down on one of the finest barbecues I’ve ever had. After that, we all relax a little bit more before getting a shower and getting dressed ready for the World Cup match.

Laurie and I walk ahead of our parents and we laugh about the near-death experience that I had today.

“I honestly didn’t know what to do, I thought you were dying.”

“Well, thankfully I didn’t, as that would have been hard to explain to Mum and Dad.” I laugh.

Too busy being immersed in conversation, we don’t notice that we’ve walked directly into the middle of a roundabout with multiple cars approaching

“Nearly dying has made me so hungry. I wonder what we’re having for dinn-oh-my-God-we’re-in-the-middle-of-a-roundabout!” I shout, with my words stringing together towards the end of my proclamation.

We both laugh in fear, confusion, humour and multiple other nouns as we stand on the grassy island waiting for the cars to pass by.

Finally, our parents catch up to us and they look at their two adult daughters stranded on a roundabout island of disappointment. I shout over for help with a feeble voice crack for added comedic effect, and it works because Dad shakes his head and laughs at the floor.

We decide to eat dinner in the small Italian restaurant directly next door to the British bar before the game starts. It’s empty apart from one other English family on a long table at the other end of the restaurant. The waiter comes to the table to take our drinks order. Dad asks for a small beer, Mum sticks with her trusty Bacardi and Coke, and I with my Malibu and Coke, and Laurie attempts to order a Tequila Sunrise, except the waiter doesn’t speak English and just decides to reply with a nod and ignores her order.

Three drinks arrive on a silver tray carried by the same waiter, a small, skinny boy with one of those upside-down smiles.

“Excuse me, we ordered a Tequila Sunrise as well, mate, could you bring it over?”

He just looks at Dad and blinks a few times before whispering, “Mmyes” and walking away slowly to speak to an older member of staff behind the bar.

“Who’s Chuckles? Has he ever heard of service with a smile?” Dad spits in irritancy.

“He was smiling, Dad, just the wrong way around,” I explain

The older waitress comes over to the table and asks Laurie to point out the drink on the restaurant’s menu, which she does. The waitress reads the menu and instantly realises what it is she’s asking for,

“OHHHH! Ha-ha, si, si,” she laughs, before rushing back to the bar to mix the cocktail.

We finally get the drink and plenty more where that came from.

I get up and order us four caramel vodka shots at the bar, and she looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Caramel vodka,” I repeat.

“Eh?” she shrieks.

I point to the bottle of caramel vodka behind her. She rotates her head ninety degrees and turns back with a big smile on her face.

“Aah, vodka caramela!” She laughs, rolling her eyes and hitting me on the arm like I was being an idiot.

“Ha-ha… Yeah,” I mutter, with a pathetic smile.

Once the football starts, we move across to join the rest of the rowdy English crowd.

If we beat Columbia, it hurtles us into the quarter finals, so the atmosphere is extremely tense once the game ends 1-1, taking us to penalties.

Dad and I stand up at the back of the outside terrace, shoulder to shoulder in a sea of England shirts and red and white face paint. I look around and see people cowering behind their hands as they can’t bear to watch.

First to take a penalty is Radamel Falcao, with Jordan Pickford in net. He scores with ease and the crowd seem to lose all hope for a split second. First to take a penalty for England is Harry Kane, the hero of the competition so far.

“There’s no way Kane’s missing this!” a lad next to me says to his dad, whilst they are both walking up and down the terrace in panic and anxiety.

Thankfully, he doesn’t miss, and he smashes it into the bottom left corner of the goal and the whole bar goes insane, including the staff. But it’s short-lived, as Johan Mojica takes Columbia’s second penalty and it soars right into the top corner. Marcus Rashford steps up to the mark and Dad says something to me about being doomed, but I’m not listening, I’m too engrossed in the tension unfolding on the screen in front of us. He teases us all by side-stepping past the ball before approaching it, the ball flying in a similar way to Kane’s penalty. The keeper was very close to making contact with the ball, but he doesn’t quite get there, and the crowd cheers again, jumping around and grabbing on to anybody close enough for us to reach.

The next Columbian player scores his penalty, creating an atmosphere so full of tension that you could cut it with a spoon. Next up for England is Liverpool player Jordan Henderson, who Dad and I know all too well. We both voice our displeasure to each other, and some members of the crowd have similar reactions. The keeper reads his movements and jumps and saves the shot. My heart sinks to my stomach and I rest my hands on the back of my head.