Read Online Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. by Christiane F., Christina Cartwright - Free Book Online

marks each. He took out a chillum, which is a wooden tube, like a pipe, about eight inches long. He stuffed tobacco into the top so that you didn't have to smoke down to the wood. Then he mixed some tobacco in with the hash and put the mixture on top. To smoke it, you had to tilt your head back and keep the tube in a vertical position so that none of the hot ashes fell out.
    I watched the others very carefully to see how they did it. There was obviously no way I could say no, now that Piet and Kathi were here in my house. So I played it cool and talked about how much I wanted to smoke some hash that day. And I pretended that I was already an expert when it came to chillums.
    We'd let down the blinds. Thick clouds of smoke were visible in the dim light that still filtered through. I'd put on a David Bowie record and took a drag on the chillum and held the smoke in my lungs until it made me cough. Everybody had grown quiet.They were all dozing off, drifting away into their own worlds, listening to the music.
    I waited for something to happen to me. I thought, Now that you've taken drugs, something really crazy, something totally outrageous should be happening. But I didn't actually feel anything. I just felt a little tipsy—but that was from the wine.
    I didn't realize that most people don't feel a thing the first time they smoke pot. You actually need to “practice” smoking pot before you start getting a high. Alcohol has a much stronger, more immediate punch.
    I saw Piet and Kessi move closer together on the sofa. Piet was stroking Kessi's arms. After a while, they got up, went into my room, and shut the door.
    Now Kathi and I were alone. He sat down next to me on the side of the armchair and put his arm around my shoulders. Right away, I liked Kathi much better than Piet. And I was so happy that Kathi came over to me and showed me that he was interested in me. I'd always been afraid that it would be obvious to guys that I was only twelve and that they'd dismiss me as just a little child.
    Kathi started stroking me. I didn't know anymore whether I was okay with this or not. I started feeling incredibly hot. I think because of fear. I sat there frozen like a stone and tried to make small talk about the record that was playing. When Kathi put his hand on my breast (or at least on the little bump that was growing there), I stood up, walked over to the record player, and started fiddling around with it.
    Then Piet and Kessi came back into the living room. They had weird looks on their faces. They were upset and somehow sad. Kessi was really red in the face, and the two of them were completely ignoring one another. Neither one of them said a word. It seemed to me that Kessi had had a bad experience—one that she didn't get anything out of, one that wasn't satisfying for either of them.
    Piet finally asked me if I'd come with them to the Center House that night. That cheered me up again. I'd accomplished a lot that day. Things had turned out exactly as I'd hoped they would. Piet and Kathi had come to my house—in real life!—and I'd become a part of their group.
    Piet and Kessi left over the balcony. Kathi was still wandering around the living room. I felt something like fear rise up again. I told him pretty bluntly that I needed to pick up around the apartment and then do some homework. Suddenly I didn't care what he thought. He left after that. I lay down in my room, stared at the ceiling, and tried to make sense of it all.
    Kathi was good-looking, definitely, but I'd somehow lost interest in him. After an hour-and-a-half the doorbell rang. Through the peephole in the door, I could tell it was Kathi. I didn't open up, and instead I tiptoed back to my room. I was really afraid to be alone with him. He was freaking me out, and yet somehow I also felt guilty. I didn't know why. It could have been the pot. But nothing ever happened with him anyway.
    As I thought about this, I started feeling kind of depressed. Even though I was