The Weekly Drug Test
When Miss Twomey, quite illegally searched my bag, she found my little box in which I keep my weekly gram of the white stuff and my little lump of Moroccan. Twomey being Twomey, she obviously made a big drama out of this and Charly’s Aunt summoned me before her. Young Miss, she began. I knew I was in trouble; Young Lady would have meant a severe warning, a rap on the wrist, but Young Miss was ominous. Mum and Dad were subpoenaed , and the upshot was a week’s rustication plus the compulsory Weekly Drug Test until Christmas. Thirteen weeks! They were to arrange it for me, and phone her to inform her that I was drug free. Were I to stray from the righteous path just once, she would have no hesitation in expelling me from Emmeline’s. Becoming an addict wasn’t quite what our patron had in mind when she embarked on her mission to liberate women, she said, pinching her nose. F.U. Harly’s Chunt, (Ch. pronounced like in Chemistry) I did not say aloud.
Mum and Dad are the world’s last innocents. I had to explain to them how the test is administered and the meaning of positive and negative. The first twelve weeks passed without any hitch, and only recently Charly’s Aunt actually smiled at me when we crossed each other in the corridor. There was just one final week to go, and in spite of all my efforts, the test was going to show a devastating result. I had told the parents that positive is a good result, and negative a bad one. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? and they had swallowed my little lie, reporting regularly that “the result was a good positive one.” In the thirteenth week, my supplier had been picked by the cops and I was left high and dry. I had hoped that some of the bad stuff would still be lingering in my blood, but the result was large as life: Negative.
