May 3, 1982

10:45 P.M. MONDAY EVENING

Dear book, I finally, finally did it. After all my years, I, today, came to school high. I was honestly and truly as high as the sky. At 7:00 A.M. I left the house with all my belongings. I lit a joint when I was still inside the apartment building. Surprisingly, to myself, I didn’t care about what I was doing – that this was all illegal and a neighbor could have caught me. I took myself and the joint outside. For about ten minutes. I smoked ¾ of it. Walking back inside, I realize how high I had gotten myself. I got scared. Then I was so sorry I did it. I didn’t know what to do so no one would notice. And I couldn’t believe how high I was. I was as high as I was Friday and Saturday night in Washington, and that was high! So I sat outside, nervous. The bus came. I got on and acted normal – not too happy or too tired. Wayne said that he smelled tobacco and said, “Patricia was smoking.” I said I didn’t like cigarettes. Cigarettes – ha! I opened up the van windows and sprayed binaca in my mouth several times, put on lots of perfume, and put visine in my eyes. I was so nervous! I tried to sleep and read on the bus. My muscles, again, felt very shaky. My eyes burned, and the lids weighed 20 pounds each, yet I couldn’t sleep because of my jittery muscles. It is a strange feeling, and something I couldn’t stand to experience in school. At school, I headed directly for the basement. Maria, I knew, would be there. The night before, I had told her all my problems on the phone. When we met, I didn’t appear to be upset at all, and she mentioned later, that no one could possibly say there was something bothering me. I knew that I was acting weird in her presence. I was high and my coordination and sense of time was ever so poor. It was evident, but probably only to those who could see what kind of a state I was in. If questioned by Mrs. Chasan, I was going to get very upset, maybe cry, and say I was nervous, tired, dizzy, had a headache, and a horrible weekend, my mother was on my back, and on top of all that, I was nervous about my summons and appearing in court. That is enough and all would be true. And quite honestly, on pot, I couldn’t give two shits about any of that. And I really smoked that joint hard. I was being rough on my little lungs too. I went upstairs to my room. Climbing all those steps was surely going to do me in. Mrs. Chasan was not there yet and for a while, I managed to get myself in order and to talk to Minja in the bathroom, who was upset about her perm. I took the attendance for Mrs. Chasan, and gave her a Shakespeare book I found in the locker room. So far, everything was okay. I sort of avoided Mrs. Chasan. I’m sure she noticed that a tad, but she knows that I am also trying to be discrete. I asked to go to the bathroom. My English Book and I trodded all the way back down to the basement, where I was sort of sick, but not really. I met my teacher and class again at Assembly. I was in the corner, reading. Ellen walked over to me. I think we talked. Mrs. Chasan walked over and handed out the alma mater sheets. I took one responsibly. She told me I shouldn’t be reading my English at assembly. I just looked at her, smiled, and said “okay.” She told me to read it first period, study hall. So I closed the book and just held on to it for support of my tired and aching arms. During assembly, I was quiet and discreet. I was not at all obnoxious up to this point at all, or thereafter. Naomi sang a solo. We all listened. It was beautiful and a nice way to escape off into dreamland while standing at assembly. I was still high and wished the day was already over for I was fearing about getting caught. After assembly, I stayed down a while to wait in line to get a drink of water at the fountain. Upstairs, I stopped to talk to Mrs. Colford about the SAT’s. I was still high. Afterwards, I got ready for study and slowly proceed down to Mrs. Chasan’s study in the library. She was standing by the door, checking attendance. I walked past her and into the conference room. She came in and turned on the light for me. She asked me how my weekend was. I had planned to tell her that she didn’t want to know about it, and I followed my plan. She was sorry to hear that. She told me that she was unhappy on Friday night. I was sorry to hear that. She told me about her weekend and kept her distance. She sent Dan W. to get Wendy and inform her that she had study at this time. Wendy came down, sat in the conference room with me and Mrs. Chasan finished talking to me and left. I tried to read my English but couldn’t and put my head down. After a while, Wendy asked me how I was. I said I was fine.