“Where is all of this pent of anger coming from? I don’t understand,” Julia said to Mickey.

Mickey  threw two packs of sour patches onto the countertop of the bodega that was only a block away from his home. He grabbed a mysterious little bottle.

“Look kid- why don’t you put it down,” Mr. Martinez says while yanking the bottle from his hands.

“First of all, I’m not a kid. I’m eighteen, ” Mickey says while grabbing another kid.

“Like I said before KID. Put it down, before you have an even bigger issue,” Mr. Martinez says now walking from behind the counter.

“Mr. Martinez, I’m sorry about Mick today. He’s been having an extremely bad day it appears,” Julie says while grabbing and pulling him out of the store.

“What’s your problem?! What was in that store that you wanted so badly? Obviously, whatever it is you were too young for,” Julie snaps at him with her arms folded.

“Bath salt,” Mickey says.

“Bath salt? Huh? If it was bath salt why wouldn’t he give it to you. It’s crystallized soap for Christ’s sake. I don’t get that one,” she says rambling off and opening the bag of sour patches that she also purchased.

“I don’t get it either,” Mickey says looking out into the neighborhood. The wrinkles in his forehead had begun to disappear because he was suddenly relaxed. “I’ll just get some bath salt later- but um I have to go. See you tomorrow?”

Julie looks at him while raising an eyebrow and scrunching her nose, “Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Mickey walks down the street and walks inside his row home. He quickly  slightly pulls back a peach curtain to see if Julie has passed by his home and gone her way. He notices that Julie looks at his home and quickly let’s go of the curtain. After realizing that the coast is clear, he leaves his home again.

Mickey had the type of parents that were not extremely invested into his life. He stayed out their way and they stay out of his way.

Mickey was always an average looking person, and never had anything about him that was really remarkable expect for one thing- knowledge. Give him any math problem and he had just the smarts to solve it. Despite his smarts, he was very socially awkward and would attempt to hide just how smart he really was. Sometimes people would say inappropriate things to him, but it was no more or no less than any other high school student would have to go through. Mickey was very obnoxious and was free from containing a magnanimous bone within his body.  He privately always had this obsession with popularity. More than knowledge itself he had a craving to be apart of the in-crowd. He had friends that he hung out with and his friend Julie was a very attractive brown skinned girl, who was relatively well known around her school.

They attended together an inner city
high school named, Say-brook High. Say-Brook High was in a relatively decent neighborhood, although Mickey and Julie came from a rougher area. Julie acted as a rock for Mickey and would often be the voice of reason for him. She never understood why he was always angry at the other students. She assumed at times, maybe it was his parents fault that he was such an angry person. People rarely bothered him and he had a few friends including Julie.

Later that night, Mickey comes back to his home and sees that his household is somber and dead pan as usual. Despite them never being concerned with his whereabouts he slowly tip-toed up his rickety staircase and heads to his bedroom to grab a few things. Nearly three minutes later Mickey comes out and heads to the basement.

What Mr. Martinez and Julie did not know was that Mickey never planned on buying the bath salt, instead he looked at it’s active ingredients. Again, Mickey was a smart man that memorized all of the ingredients without having to write one single ingredient down. Another thing that no one knew was that Mickey knew about the ingredients nine months prior. He also stole his parents credit card to purchase the substances overseas. Mickey has a plan and his going and coming out of the basement lasted for two weeks. After not attending school up to about a week,  his parents received several calls from the school. His parents of course did not care, but even Julie stopped by his home to figure out was was going on.

One week later, Mickey showed up to school.

“Where have you been?” Julie says to Mickey after he boldly approached her.

“I’ve been sick,” Mickey says sarcastically.

“Don’t even think about lying to me, all that I know was that I was worried and concerned. Glad to know that you are safe, but I can’t speak to you for a few days,” Julie says walking away.

Mickey couldn’t handle the fact that Julie was not going to speak to her so he followed her and around until she would finally stop to talk to him.

As Julie turned around she heard a student talking about bath salt.

“Ok so what’s suddenly the obsession with bath salt?” Julie says realizing that there is something more going on.

After Mickey walks over to the students, “I’ve got some salt. Meet me at the park.”

Julie slips away and immediately goes to the computer lab. She type in her login username and password.
At first she decided to do some homework, but something made her want to look up bath salt.

“Is it soap?” Julie murmurs to herself.

“Hey!” Mickey says causing for her to jump up and quickly exit out of every window.

“Mickey was is bath salt? Please tell me. We’re friends,” Julie pleads.

“Have you ever taken advantage of your popularity?” Mickey says smiling at Julie. “I mean Julie you are so popular and beautiful that if you jumped off of a bridge, everyone else would too. Here’s the thing though, you wouldn’t have to do it you could just say that you are and they will do it because you said so.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Julie says feeling some sense of alarm.

“Ok so maybe initially you couldn’t convince them to do such a fatal thing, but I could do it. Stir up the school and get them crazy enough- like a drug without it really being a drug,” Mickey says.

“Bath salt? You have some serious issues. Stay the hell away from me,” Julie says pushing him out of her way. “You are going out of your mind. It’s synthetic coke.”

“Julie! I was only playing. I wasn’t serious,” Mickey continued to say over and over.

“It’s a psychostimulant that is legal. It’s such a complicated drug. People will die and you are just the sicko to make it all happen. You have no kind of integrity. You are sick,” Julie says in tears out of both frustration and fear.