The Accident

            by Aria Vahdani

 

January 8^th, 2006 would be a date that would change my life for and make me realize that some of the decisions that I was making would start to take my perspectives on life downhill. A typical 17^th birthday party for one of my good friends with people, balloons, cake and ice cream turned out to become one of the worst experiences of my life. With a few of my best friends at the party with me I really believed that nothing would go wrong. A party in Piedmont with neighbors that didn’t mind decibels and good speakers, girls, and the right amount of Bacardi 151; this was going to be fun. Half Berkeley and half Piedmont students, there was this tension that was always between us while we were over there that separated the other kids from our area.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and we were outside on a table with a few other Berkeley kids passing around the burning purple high quality strain from Berkeley.

“Damn my throat is killing me. Aria, what did you put in the weed?” asked one of my baffled friends.

“Pedro I really just rolled it up and didn’t do shit to it. Its your weak lungs.” I shot back as he continued to hit it. It couldn’t have been going better and I felt so carefree, maybe too carefree for my own good. When somebody came outside with the huge golden and red bottle of 151 proof the party began to get more intense. The bottle made a loud “thud” as it hit the table and the girl who brought it outside began to walk away from it as if it had taken the life out of her and she stumbled back inside.

            As the closest person sitting next to the bottle I grabbed it and took a whiff from the top. As I closed up my nose on the top of the bottle a familiar smell began to take over and the stench of some of the strongest alcohol was all I could smell now.

“I bet you would die if you drank the rest of that. I saw on T.V. somewhere that if you drink damn near half a bottle of that then it starts to burn you on the inside.” Remarked Keith who was on the other side of the table.

“Tell you what. If you drink it and don’t die ill do it too.” I said in a joking manner. Mike, the second closest to the bottle suggest that we go get shot glasses from inside and begin the process. As I got up to go inside I began to realize that the outside group was a completely different scene than the inside. When I walked in the door I felt like there was a phasing portal that took me to a different place with different people. There were people yelling and dancing and everybody seemed like they were each on their own level; definitely not that of a normal person. I immediately felt a wet grab on my shoulder that felt like the time when a jellyfish stung me and I turned around. The first thing that I noticed was as soon as I turned around I smelled alcohol, cheetos, and some kind of a mixture of the two with mint gum.

“Heeeeyyyy what are YOU doing here?” A familiar drunk voice said to me directly in front of my face.

“I’m good. By the way you look right now I’m guessing that you’re doing just fine,” I said awkwardly as I kindly escaped to go grab the shot glasses. I opened the closet door grabbed the first three glasses I saw and ran outside to avoid more unnecessary conversation.

I got back outside just to see that somebody grabbed my seat. I wouldn’t have cared if it weren’t such a good seat. It was one of those spots at a party where you can see everybody at the same distance when there is a big circle of people.

“Don’t you have something in the microwave?” I said to the person that was in my seat lounging looking like they were there to stay.

“OH….yea I did!” He said as if I had saved his million-dollar pizza from being overheated by reminding him about it. I never saw that person again after that. After I took my seat I began to distribute the glasses to the three of us. One to Pedro, one to Mike and one to myself. I took my seat once again and I thought to myself why did it take me 15 min to go get 3 shot glasses and come back outside? Pedro took the honor of pouring all of us glasses. I watched the dark brown liquid slowly fill the glass as I had flashbacks of being poured liquor in the past in a similar situation. While Mike’s glass was being poured I saw that we were both eyeing the same lighter that was bright pink cherries on the sides of it. For some reason he stood up and it looked like he began to say something. Instead, he picked up the lighter and softly put the flame to the brim of the shot glass.

“Why would we take regular shots when you can light it on fire?” Asked Mike as if he were advertising lighting alcohol on fire. For some odd reason it seemed like a really good idea. So when he put the lighter back down Pedro picked it up second lit his glass and I did the same to mine.

 

As I watched the three glasses on the table all filled up to almost the same level, I started to think about my life and where it would go from here just for a brief moment, and then my mind shifted back to the party. I thought a lot about where my life would end up every time I was with these people. They can smoke as much weed as they want drink themselves stupid, and still manage to academically do fine.

            I reached for my glass and motioned to the other two to do the same. I was watching the glass slowly just to make sure something wasn’t wrong with the shot, and it seemed to check out fine. It felt a little hotter than it should have been but at that moment in time there was more than one thing that was changing the way I would normally react to this type of situation.

            “Man I really don’t know if this is a good idea but here it goes.” I said with a steady calm tone. As soon as I turned my wrist and my hand towards my face I felt a hot and extremely unpleasant burning sensation above my eyes. Following that I smelled one of the worst smells; burnt hair. Worried that the shot burned my face, I slickly pretended to scratch my eye and checked the damaged area for a sign of a burn. “Ok I’m good,” was I could feel like after I finished my check.

            “That was hella funny. How are you that dumb that you burn yourself like that?” said Pedro as if he took flaming shots as a profession. Pedro was second up to bat, seeming unworried about what just happened to me. As soon as I heard the little “clink” from the glass being placed on the table I heard the sound of a cigarette being put out in water, but instead I turn to my right where Pedro is holding his face in pain.

            “Daaammmn. You good?” I asked.

            “Yea it just burnt my nose hair before I could drink it!” He said disappointedly.

As he put his glass down I noticed that when he moved the glass around quickly there was a brief glimpse of a foot tall green and blue flame coming from the surface of the glass.

            “Check this shit out. That’s why we got burned. We couldn’t see the flame the whole time.” I said. As soon as I said that Pedro held the glass from the bottom and moved it around in a circular motion. We all watched the flame move from side to side as if it were a bowling pin struggling to fall over.

            Mike, the most precautious of the three of us, seemed like he would have learned his lesson from Pedro and I burning ourselves. He picked up the shot glass and began to say a few words.

            “Before I drink this I want to say something.” He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Everybody is standing there watching him about to say what he wanted to say but instead he takes his seat again.

            “What an idiot.” I heard softly from the girl behind me. All I really could do was laugh because she was right. I began to get tired of the whole flaming shot idea so I grabbed the bottle and began to sip it slowly. As Mike goes inside to use the bathroom a number of things begin to run through my mind. Every harsh sip wants to make you wish you hadn’t taken it but the warm feeling that creeps up on you a few seconds later begin to make you at ease about it.

            I heard a crash from inside and as soon as I looked at the door I saw Mike giggling to himself about a joke that he heard on the way back.

            “Aria I know you want to hear this joke” asked Mike in an uncanny tone.

            “Look why don’t you just sit down and shut up ok?” I said back to him in a positive tone. He sat down in his seat and proceeded to his shot glass. There were only a few people left in our outside group so there wasn’t so much pressure to take the flaming shot but the remaining few insisted.
            “OK OK I’ll do it if you stop asking me.” He responded. He picked up the glass, took what looked like a shot, and suddenly it happened so fast I couldn’t react. As I sat there staring at Mike huge flames began to emerge from his face and eyes. He got up in the blink of and eye and began to bat himself with his hands and shirt. At that moment I began to hear screams and people rushing to get water but for some reason I thought I was too in shock to react. For much longer than I should have I sat in my seat and watched his face burn up and sizzle. All that I could think about was how in the cartoons when someone catches on fire he or she turns all black and shrivel up and fall over. Is this actually happening? Am I too high and imagining this? What should I do? All these questions flowed through my brain. In a matter of seconds something inside me told me that there was somebody who needed my help. I leaped up as fast as I could and ran toward Mike whose face was not on fire anymore but was now bright pink with huge peels running down his face.
            “Oh my god somebody call the emergency number!” I heard from one girl. The emergency number? Don’t you mean 911? Wow. There were something’s that I really didn’t understand about people from Piedmont. They all thought exactly the same.

 

For the few seconds that it took me to rush out of my chair to get to him there were people running around and people telling other people to call the police. I figured that if everybody wanted to call them at once it would be busy and they would never come. As I approached Mike he stepped back from everybody for a second and let out an

            “I’m good. Don’t worry about it. He sat down and clenched his bright pink face that looked like he had just put his face on a George Forman Grill.

“Wait what does my face look like?” I really expected a little more than the answer he gave everybody.

            “Man you really did it this time. You know that looked like you were going to die for a second.”  I said

            “Die? Hahaha I think I’ll be ok for now at least.” He said with a tone that made everybody believe that what just happened didn’t affect him at all. As girls and others slowly approach him he is bombarded with hugs and “are you ok?” looks on everybody’s face that came to help Mike out. I could already tell there were a few guys in the party that looked like they were about to burn themselves just to get the attention that Mike had just received from all the girls they were hitting on. As we walked inside I turned around and looked down at the broken shot glass on the ground and the bottle of Bacardi sitting on the table. As I went to grab it to put it down inside I admired it for a moment; from it’s metal cage covering the spout with little room to pour, to the ‘extremely flammable’ warning on the back and thought to myself how much damage something so little could cause.

            As everybody begins to go inside with Mike to see if he’s ok I began thinking about a lot of things. One of the thoughts that ran through my mind was what the hell just happened. Another was weather anybody was stupid enough not to call an ambulance just because he said he was ok. As we approach the bathroom door I look back at Mike who has stopped walking and opened his mouth slowly.

            “I feel hella dizzy right now.” And suddenly right after he had said that you could see his eyes roll back into his head and his body slowly collapsing like a tree that just got cut clean through at the bottom. He had collapsed from shock and was now laying unconscious on the floor with a look on his face I will never forget.

            “Godamn somebody really needs to call the ambulance” says Pedro with an urgent tone to the group of people watching

            “Lets get him into the bathroom right now ok tell everybody else to start cleaning up.” I said. Pedro, two girls and myself carried him into the bathroom and sat him down on the toilet seat and began to wake him up out of his deep shock. A few slaps and “Mike wake up!” and we got a response from him.

            “I don’t remember anything that just happened…why am I in the bathroom?” said Mike as if he had been kidnapped and had no idea where he was.

            “Look right now you need to be cool and just be right here for now ok? You burned your damn face so sit right here.” I told him.

            Meanwhile there was a loud siren sound getting closer to the house so I go outside to check it out. The ambulance. Finally he can go get checked out by a real doctor and get some help. I go inside and get Mike to come outside and greet the paramedic.

            “How are you doing? Wow those burns look pretty bad. Come with me.” Said the paramedic.

            “So how do I get in this thing?” I asked

            “You can’t come. It’s a policy for minors. Sorry.” And before I could go inside and get my phone to get the number of the hospital that he was going to, they left. Shit. What to do now. I went inside to find Pedro cleaning dishes and I joined him.

            “What a day huh?” I said

            “Yep you got a smoke?” Pedro asked. We made the signature eye contact, which meant we knew it was time to go outside to have a cigarette. If there was a better time for one than after what had just happened than I would be surprised. I pull out a pack and take out two and light them.       

            “EVERYBODY GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” followed by a crash and a scream was the next sound from inside I had heard in a while. Confused, I went to peek inside only to find a man in a pinstripe suit and a cane that was collecting people that were at that party and calling their parents. He had come in response to the ambulance and wasn’t there party. I saw him grabbing people and putting them down on the couch and telling them to call their parents in front of him. So as a natural reflex to these types of situations we ran since we were outside. Pedro and I ran so far and fast that we got lost. As we walked to a bus stop we finally called around and found out that Mike was at Alta Bates. It was a long and tiring ride to the hospital. The whole way there I didn’t know whether I was mad, upset, worried, and tired but it was a mix of all four. I thought about the man in the pinstripe who had walked in. Who was he? Why is he a party crasher? What happened to the rest of the people? That day was filled with unsolved mysteries.