like the title said, i am woefully innocent and need the feedback of more worldly people. it is short and at least somewhat entertaining (i hope) and would really appreciate blunt and honest feedback, none of this wishy-washy crap

The path was rough and bare; the sand gritting into my cheek stung. Those moronic football jocks had teamed up on me! Two of then were holding me down and trying to beat the ever-loving shit out of me, and one other was half watching the fight, and half his watch The one not on top of me ventured shyly, “Let’s go guys…. Where going to be late for practice…” the other two muttered as they reluctantly stopped the beating of me into a bloody pulp and walked toward the school, patting each other on the back. I flipped off their retreating forms before getting up of the hardly packed dirt. “You’re lucky I’m on my best behavior…” I muttered to myself, dusting off my front. Back to waiting, I check my watch. 6:50, she should have been here 5 mins ago, but alas, when waiting for Alex, lateness is what you come to expect. I was just picking up my bag and getting ready to leave when I heard footsteps thudding across the path. I waited till the sound of her footsteps caught up with mine, then turned to face her. “You’re late.” I say accusingly. “A wizard is never late. He arrives exactly when he means to” Alex mutters almost incoherently, never looking out from the curtain of red ringlets surrounding her head. Digging through my bag, I pull out a bottle of Excedrin and I hand her my triple espresso mocha, which thankfully had not spilled in the attack. She takes a mouthful of it and I hand her the bottle of Excedrin. She fumbles for a second with the child proofing, then pops 3 or 4 into her mouth. I fumble to catch the bottle when she tosses it in my general direction, then stuff it back in my bag. Apparently the sheer amount of caffeine packed into my mocha was enough to bring the hangover to a dull throb. Feeling much better, Alex raised her head, and I heard the flick of a lighter as she expertly lit a cigarette. The burst of smoke into the air made me hack; ever since my mom died I haven’t been around smokers very much. “When did you start again? I thought you had quit.” I asked her. Silence for a moment, then she says, “last night, I think, not quite sure though. All I know is this morning I needed a smoke.” “Those things are gonna kill you, if the drinking doesn’t anyway. Promise me no booze tonight. Give your liver a break for once. I mean come on, are you trying to give your self cyrosis?!?” “Fine, fine. But does it really matter so much to you? I mean give it a break, you're no stranger to intoxicating substances yourself.” “Ok for one, weed doesn’t count, and second I quit smoking a year ago, so you can to.” “DON’T GET ALL SUCCESS STORY ON ME!” the sudden din coming from Alex’s normally soft-spoken mouth made me jump a bit. “Calm down Alex! God damnit are you drunk now? What the hell is your problem? I’m trying to help you live so I don’t have to go through life without a best friend and of course, because I care if you live or die though you may not, but you are not dying and leaving me behind. And I only said no booze. If you really feel that bad there are plenty of other things to do about it that won’t kill you or your liver.” I felt kinda bad for yelling at her, but she needed to hear it. We walk in silence for awhile then Alex turns to me. “I’m sorry for yelling. I’m still a bit drunk from last night. I didn’t get home till like 4 and my head hurts and I just snapped. I know you care about me, but it’s hard. I mean you’re the most in control of her body person I’ve ever known. You’re a certified fucking genius for Christ’s sake! You don’t think with your hormones, you use your brain and logic. I just can’t seem to remember to do that until it’s too late. For instance --------“

“Stop.”, I interrupt her before she starts dribbling nonsense about last night and what she did, because frankly, I really don’t want to know, it would just worry me to much. “I know, I know how hard it is. You just want anything to make you not think about it. You want to be numb. But there are other ways to do this. For one, think about how you have a future and the people who put u down don’t. You have the most amazing voice I’ve ever heard; in the choir competitions you always are first in the state. You’re going to nationals in 3 weeks. You’re the youngest singer to do that from this half of the country. Are you really gonna screw that chance up? You don’t need to be a genius to know that those will fuck you’re voice up.” I finish, pointing at her cigarette. After a moment of fierce concentration she stomped the death stick into the ground. I hold out my hand and she puts the rest of the pack into my palm. Instead of turning right to get to school, I veer left and head into the woods. As soon as we get to a clearing I stop and pull my hand sanitizer and my Zippo out of my bag. I tell Alex to arrange the rest of the cigarettes into a teepee type shape. As she is doing that I soak them with the sanitizer. Handing her the Zippo, I say three words. “Burn them down” As soon as the little lighter flame hits the soaked paper it goes up in a little whoosh of blue flame. “Sit down Alex.” She sort-of sits, more like plops.” You think I’m so in control, but I’m really not. I feel these things as much as you. I try really hard not to, but I feel it anyway. This is how I deal with things that bother me. I burn them. If I can’t burn the actual thing, I draw a picture of it and burn that. It helps. I don’t know if its just me, but fire makes everything seem better. It shows me that no problem s to big to deal with. Fire is such a strong force yet a little water puts it out” I attempt to emphasize by pouring Alex’s water bottle on it but that makes an even bigger flame that almost singed my eyebrows. “Alex. There is vodka in your bottle.” I say as calmly and slowly as I can. She looks away guiltily. “You know that against our protocol. You don’t bring that shit to school. You know we get searched all the time. The teachers don’t care what you are actually like, they see how we dress and think it gives them probable cause to judge us. The popular ‘good’ kids are even worse than us but have they ever gotten searched? No. They make out in front of the office and don’t even get scolded. If one of us tried to do that wed get suspended for a week. It sucks, but that’s life. You learn to be smart and not get expelled from the school where all our friends go and you do not incur the wrath of your mother. Remember last time when you got suspended for a day because you punched that kid?” Alex’s hand unconsciously went to her arm where the scar from the cigarette burn still lingered.

 Well after the bell Alex and I walked into health. Our health teacher is a vindictive bastard, and right away moved toward us from his place in the idle of the front of the room. He then proceeded to sniff me. I mean who sniffs people? He didn’t even do it covertly, just a big loud sniff. 

“Ms. Ashlyn Rouge, you smell rather distinctly of tobacco smoke. Would that be the reason you are 20 minutes late to my class?” while saying this he was patting his rotund belly gleefully. “No sir I am late because I was smoking weed in the bathroom.” He looked stupefied at this, not sure how to react. I let him hang there for a couple seconds then continued. “Not! How stupid do you think I am? I don’t smoke. It’s the jacket, I got it at a thrift store. The real reason I was late is because I had more pressing matters to attend to then going to a class that we’ve all taken three times already. I guarantee you that if you gave me the final right now I would be able to pass it with flying colors. Can I have my detention slip now so we can get back to your most likely stunning lecture on the dangers of bulimia and anorexia?” The thing about what I do is that it’s not technically against the rules, so the most he could give me was a detention for being late. So I take my detention slip and move to my desk in the back row. Alex starts to follow me but Mr. Peterson stopped her. “Alexandria Myers. Just where do you think you’re going? You have not given me an answer for your lateness. And you also smell strongly of tobacco.----- ” “You’re not allowed to start a sentence with ‘and’ Mr. Peterson!” I butted in with a sing-songy voice. Completely ignoring me he continued with his interrogation. “ I don’t suppose you got your jacket at a thrift store as well?” “No, it’s my mothers’. She smokes 6 packs a day. I didn’t have any clean clothes to wear since today is laundry day.”
“Well anyway that has no connection with you being late. I don’t suppose you could ace this test like your ‘super genius’ friend.” He actually used finger quotes! How quaint! “No, but that’s why I have her, she tutors me on things I don’t understand and makes them make sense, unlike you for example. When you speak I have no idea what you mean.” Score one for Alex! “Shouldn’t have called her Alexandria!” another musical comment from me. “Just take your slip and go sit down.” He said with a sigh. We did so, and I gave Alex a big high-five. She looks at me with a smile, and we proceed to ignore everything the teacher is saying. She falling asleep, and me pulling out a book. When the bell rang, I had to almost push Alex out of the seat to wake her up so we could go to English. Before we got there, we were accosted by Jett and Seymour, two of our best friends, who just happened to be madly and disgustingly in love with each other. It was the funniest thing, Jett was a midget of a girl, and had the loudest personality ever, and while Seymour was almost seven feet tall, soft spoken, and very introverted. “Hey guys!” Jett exclaimed from Seymour’s shoulders, causing her to hit her spiky black head on the ceiling. She had done that so many times it was a wonder she didn’t have permanent brain damage. “Alex! I’m surprised you made it to school! You were so hammered last night when we dropped you off that you almost killed yourself climbing in your window! Oh! Hey Ash! You should have come last night! You never get out anymore! Don’t tell me you have been actually doing school work!” she finished with a laugh and jumped down from Seymour’s shoulders. “Where are you guys headed?” Alex asked them, with those two you could never be sure. “Actually we are going to class, for once.” Seymour answered with his low baritone. At his words Jett stuck her tongue out at him, making it evident that she was unhappy with this fact. All of a sudden Jett made a heart- wrenching squeal and touched my face. “What happened! You look all beat up!” and with that she pulled me into the closest bathroom, gesturing for Seymour to wait, and pushed a girl doing her makeup away from the sink. Shoving the outraged girl’s makeup away, she me put my head onto the cold porcelain sink and ran the tap. “Seriously who did this do you? I hope your grandpa doesn’t take after your mom.” She muttered angrily as she gently removed the gravel from the stinging cut on my cheek. “No Jett, it was some of the football team. They jumped me from behind.” I replied, wincing as she dug a particularly large piece of gravel out of the gash. I saw her heavily makeuped face scrunch at my pain. “I hoped you kicked their fucking asses, because as soon as I’m done here I’m going to make Seymour do it again.” She almost shouted, causing the rest of the girls who were still using the bathroom to run out in fear. “No, there were three of them, and each outweighed me by at least 50 pounds. Plus I’m on my best behavior because my grandpa is being so good to me, stepping in as my guardian so I don’t have to go to foster care. Otherwise I would have kicked them where it hurt and lit their hair one fire, you know that.” She looked even angrier, if that was possible, when she spoke again. “I will just have to make him do it for you then!” she yelled as she finished cleaning my face, somehow managing to not let her rage affect her fingers. She let me stand up, then fumbled with the wrapper for the Band-Aid she had pulled out of her bag. I took it from her, opened it easily, then stuck it on my face. She then stomped out the door, and I followed, throwing the wrapper in the trashcan. “Seymour! You have to beat some people up for me!” she yelled as we rejoined him and Alex. He cringed for a second, but as he looked up at my bandaged face he put two and two together and silently agreed to do it, not looking to happy about it. “You don’t have to do that, Seymour” I interjected. His look of relief was only equaled to Jett’s disbelief. “But they beat you up, Ash! Don’t you want revenge?” “Of course I do! But I’m going to go about it my way, a way none of us will get in trouble, and one that will be far more evil than just beating them up.” I could feel my face going into a grin, since I actually had thought up and ingenious plan, if I do say so myself. Jett’s face lightened at my words, and jumped onto her boyfriend’s back as we went to our classes. Seymour dropped of his burden at our class, then Jett and Alex left to go to their class. I watched then go with a wrench in heart. This year was the first time Alex and I didn’t have every single class together since preschool. I had been forced into honors classes this year after my perfect PSAT scores. She had offered to come with me, but I refused, since no offense to her, but she would utterly fail. She can barely pass normal English, even with my help. The same thing went for Jett, who, bless her heart, was not the academic type. I opened the heavy door and walked in the classroom and made my way to the back of the room with Seymour close behind me. Alex and Jett were the main conversation makers in our group, and since both of us were pretty introverted, we settled into our usual companionable silence as we took out our homework and our Macbeth books. We exchanged papers while we waited for class to begin as was our custom. The essay was about why Macbeth let his wife’s taunting get to him enough to make him murder the king. Seymour had gone for the insulting his manliness angle while my own was about the sheer superiority of female will over male’s. Satisfied with my friends essay I gave it back to him, and he handed me back mine with a smile; I had the hardest time being as serious as I’m supposed to be in formal essays and humor always somehow slipped in. The teacher entered then, and told us to hand in our essays. Melissa, a girl who sat at our table offered to take ours up. As soon as she, along with everyone else, was back in their seats the teacher, Mr. Ryan, had us read aloud from the book. I didn’t have a part this act, being Macbeth in the last one, so I tuned out and looked out the window. It was funny, but when I joined the honors class I had assumed that it would actually be somewhat of a challenge. Alas it was just as effortless, but with a substantially larger homework load attached. I amused myself by watching the stupefied expressions on my classmates face as they tried to understand the Shakespeare. Finally the tortuous hour was over, and I escaped out the door to my next class. All the rest of the classes I had in the morning were advanced, and so I had to suffer through each grueling minute until lunch. Seymour, my cellmate in this ordeal, was similarly affected and he started shaking as if Jett was a drug and he was in withdrawal without her. Eventually we arrived at our lunch table and Jett ran up to her boyfriend, and with a display of PDA that made most turn away in disgust (including me) and a few males watch with rapt attention, Seymour picked up Jett honeymoon style and carried her off to where we eat lunch. Alex and I followed and laughed as they ran into the wall because they were so absorbed in each other’s mouths. “Nice job doofus!” some jerk yelled at him as we walked out of the lunch room. Seymour turned visibly red at these words and set Jett down gently until we got to his truck and climbed into the bed. I opened the lunch Takura had had packed for me. It was nice, to have the person supposed to take care of me actually care what ha

I'm going to be brutally honest like you asked . . I got to the bits about the smoking and jackets and whatsuch before I gave up. You need to work on sentence structure, spelling, and grammar in a bad way. It's hard to make sense of the story while it is written as it is. However, I do think your style shows promise. There are a few phrases or words that stick out at me in a positive way.

As far as believability? What exactly is unbelievable about two high school kids experimenting with cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and other substances and having issues because of it?

Edit I dislike the part about perfect PSAT scores, because those are very hard to attain, and also the stereotypical jocks-beat-up-people mess. You can get a lot more creative than that, I think.

Hmm, like said, there are some grammar and other issues you need to work on; however, I do believe that you're on the right track to great writing. The ending is kind of abrupt, though.

...why are a couple of football guys beating up a girl? FOOLS! D<

just so you know this is a first draft. and yes, it is stereotypical but i wanted it to be, to show contrast to later in the story. all i wanted to know was if the drug stuff was believable because i have no experience with it. thanks for the honesty, i really appreciate it

Yes, drug use is believable. Just keep in mind that if your characters are doing hard drugs, they're going to have side effects like mental and health issues. You could probably Google for that. Drugs change the way someone looks and acts, even when not under the influence.

i must agree with you should probably get someone to beta read for you or put it through MWord and do spell/grammar check but yes it is believable