Semi-true story. Lisa, not Lara. And if her house was 50 feet west of where it sat, she'd probably be alive today. Her house was a skootch over the dividing line between two school districts. Fifty yards west and she attends Norman Rockwell-ian public schools in the same town where my prep school resided. But where it sat? Working class stoner high school (though its more meth-ish than stoner-ish nowadays).
So anyhow, on those lesser school holidays that typically didn't have a corresonding work holiday (Veteran's Day, Rosh Hashana, Presidents Day, Shavuot, etc) some of us would hang out at her BFF Vicky's house while her parents were at work, Liquor cabinets, truth or dare - you know, that sort of thing. So anyways, I'm over there with my friend Steve. Lisa brought another of her friends and they had been there a while before we got there. Mixing whatever cocktails fifteen year olds are able to conjur. Schnapps and 7-Up, Vodka and apple juice and gin, Jack Daniels and Dr. Pepper, whatever.
So we drank too. I'm sure you get the dynamic. Scholarship prep school kids and a couple of trashy girls who stole their dad's cigarettes and were still figuring out how to apply eyeliner correctly. Steve and Vicky and the other girl are off somewhere, I could hear laughing coming from the other room. I'm sitting with Lisa on the couch. Now to this point, she and I had messed around within the context of teenage games - Seven Minutes in Heaven, Spin the Bottle, that sort of thing. But I never thought of her as anything more than that. If I had seen her at the mall, her hanging out with her friends and me hanging out with mine, I wouldn't have even acknowledged her.
But there we were with my hand under her shirt but over her bra, and her mouth on my neck about to leave a very juvenile hickey.
And then she puts her lips against my ear and whispered two things; the first was very provocatively slutty (enough to startle a scared little shit like me) and the second was "Let's go upstairs".
We had clumsy sex on Vicky's parent's bed, with my shirt still on and pants around my ankles. I finished and said we better get back downstairs.
So that became and fairly regular thing. We'd be at some party, run into each other, then go upstairs and fuck. It happens less often when I started dating a girl from St. Catherine's, but she was still nice to have around. But then I started going to different parties than she did. I had heard that she started getting into (a different kind of) trouble.
She died of a heroin overdose when she was 31. I didn't find out about it until almost 3 years later. I ran into Steve at some airport. He had heard about it from someone else and only mentioned it to me in a passing "Hey, do you remember that slutty chick Lisa from high school?" sort of way.
And when I get just the right amount of drunk, I never fail to consider the question......
"What if I, at any point in our 'relationship' had asked her out on a proper date?"
