felt jealous of Susan. Faithful was not a word Dolly would use to describe most of her boyfriends. She made it clear to them that she was a one-man woman and expected the same in return. Somehow, it never worked out that way. Dolly took a deep breath, cleared the shadows of her failed relationships from her mind, and turned on her electric smile. “A Bud, please,” she told the bartender.
“Lone Star for me,” said Chrissie.
Dolly picked up her longneck and clinked it against Chrissie’s. “Bring on the cowboys,” she said, as the two of them toasted and looked forward to a night full of old friends, new hopes, good country music, and a lot of dancing.
Dolly and Chrissie moved from the bar to the entrance of the dance hall. On the stage, a popular local band was just starting its second set for the night. With his great girth held in check by a two-inch-wide brown leather belt and an enormous Confederate belt buckle, his graying hair pulled back in a ponytail, and his deeply tanned face filled with wrinkles, the good-natured fiddle player looked like a cross between Willie Nelson and Charlie Daniels. Three musicians playing banjo, guitar, and an electric autoharp rounded out the twangy quartet. A tall, long-haired redhead in a red-and-black blouse and gold-embroidered vest added a honey-sweet, Flora-bama flavor to the songs.
The band broke into a romantic Western waltz. The redhead sang, “May I have this dance for the rest of my life...?” Chrissie turned and whispered Dolly’s ear, “You’re off to a fast start, Honey,” as a tall, tanned man in gray snakeskin boots, jeans, and a black Western shirt and hat approached from her right. “Evenin’ ladies,” he said. “My name’s Ron.” Turning to Dolly, he said, “Would you like to dance?”
5. Myrtle Beach High
Myrtle Beach
Twenty-three-year-old C.B. “Cue Ball” Correlli ran his fingers up and down his red braces – April called them suspenders, until he corrected her – and tapped his black, steel-toed boots on the floorboard as he waited for April in the street behind her apartment building. When she jumped into his car, she kissed him and ran her hand over his shaved head. It was smooth as a cue ball – and the source of his nickname.
“Hi,” he said. “How’s my girl?” April wrapped her arms around him, kissed him again, and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” C.B. handed her a pill wrapped like candy. April greedily took a swig of his beer, swallowed the Ecstasy tablet, and unwrapped a chocolate lollipop. Then C.B. reached under the seat of the car. Pulling out a thin, clear plastic wand, he bent it into an arc, and it made a small crackling sound. Immediately, the crystals inside the wand glowed an eerie, psychedelic green. April laughed and bent another wand; it turned a bright, fluorescent pink. The Ecstasy magnified the colors a dozenfold.
“Party time,” C.B. said as he put the car into gear and popped the clutch.
“Where’s it goin’ to be tonight?” April asked.
“We’ll know soon,” C.B. replied. April smiled at him, leaned her head on his shoulder, and waved the wands in front of her dilated pupils, enjoying the rush of energy that surged through her body.
In a few minutes, C.B.’s phone alerted him of a text, he glanced at the message, and then punched some numbers into his cell phone. “Yo,” he said to the caller, then listened for the brief instructions. “Cool,” he said, hung up, turned the car around, and drove north toward Myrtle Beach. Ten minutes later, he pulled into the driveway next to an unlit, deserted building off King’s Highway. In the headlights from his car, the fading sign nailed to the boarded-up window of the former T-shirt warehouse said, appropriately, “Fire Sale. Everything must go.” Ignoring the scorched front of the darkened building, which had suffered a small but smoky fire the year before, C.B. drove behind the building. There he parked among the fifty or so other cars whose owners had also just gotten directions to the rave. Its carefully guarded location changed weekly and was announced by beeper to the rave community only minutes before the action started. The system worked well. Myrtle Beach raves were seldom discovered by the police.
Outside the back door of the building, a 6’5”, 270-pound, heavily muscled bouncer with a massive chest, narrow waist, yellow/red/green Mohawk, seventeen pierced earrings, an eyebrow ring, a tongue stud, nine tattoos, and wraparound, yellow-lens sunglasses passed judgment on the mass of teenagers and twenty-somethings who flocked to the door. His name was Thud, and he never smiled. He worked out pumping iron four hours a day, seven days a week at a local weight-lifting club and steroid saloon. A nod from Thud and your money got you in. A grunt from Thud and you were on your way elsewhere. Everyone knew that if you were stupid enough to give him any grief or tried to argue your way through the door, his name was the sound you’d make when he decked you with one punch. Few people were that stoned or stupid.
C.B. nodded in respect, passed Thud a twenty and an eight-ball of crystal meth, and escorted April through the door. A wall of sound assaulted them as they entered. At the front of the building, every crack through which light could pass had been covered with cardboard and taped. To the left stood trash barrels full of ice-cooled beer. On the right, a DJ cranked out high-energy music fed into massive amplifiers, loudspeakers, and subwoofers powered by a gasoline-fueled electric generator. Red strobes and white laser lights illuminated the room, lending a disconnected, psychedelic, time-warped feeling to everything that happened there.
The sound level was mind-numbing – which was exactly the desired effect. Talking was far beyond impossible. Everything was communicated through sight, motion, touch, and the exchange of money and drugs. Two hundred bouncing, writhing, supercharged dancers filled every square inch of the place. A half-dozen carefully screened dealers openly dispensed marijuana, Ecstasy, crystal meth, PCP, LSD, heroin, and almost any other drug du jour for twenty to fifty dollars a hit.
Like most serious drug dealers, C.B. didn’t partake or deal directly. He paid for a beer and took in the sights, while his fellow Skinhead, Skank, dispensed the goods and collected the money. April, with the full rush of the meth and Ecstasy roaring through her, wanted only to dance. Her heart pounded. The sweat poured out of every cell of her body. Every light was surrounded by a bright, shimmering, multi-colored, crystalline halo. C.B. dumped a glass of ice water over her head to cool her off. April didn’t even notice.
The rave was already filling the warehouse with bouncing people waving lights and sucking lollipops. The Ecstasy stimulated their enhanced perception of light; the lollipops lessened the damage from the tooth grinding that the Ecstasy produced.
In the middle of the frenzied crowd of dancers, a girl staggered over to April and yelled something unintelligible into her ear. It was Wendy Hickson, her eighteen-year-old fellow Skinhead and friend since grade school.
“Where’s C.B.?” she asked in a dreamy, slurred voice.
“What?”
“Where’s C.B.? I gotta get some more stuff.”
“By the beer.”
“What?”
“Over there, by the beer, talking to Suzi,” April yelled into her ear.
“I love you,” Wendy mumbled as she staggered off through her psychedelic haze to find her lover/dealer.
“I love you, too,” April replied in a slurred voice, her head spinning from her own chemical cocktail. She immediately returned to her frantic dancing, oblivious to the fact that Wendy had draped herself over C.B. As he drank his beer and talked to his friends, Wendy patiently waited for him to finish talking to their fellow young roommate, Suzi Vetter.
