‘It’s hard to shake off the feeling that I did something bad. Though I did… but I didn’t.’ ‘It’s okay kid just start from the beginning…’

It was the last day of the school holidays. I was trying to get as much sleep as I could before school. Just as I was about to drift off to sleep at 1:30 I heard a rattling noise in the kitchen. I got out of my bed and went into the kitchen with a cricket bat in case it was a rat or a burglar. I saw a shady figure in the darkness and I raised my bat ready to strike…

Suddenly the intruder turned around and I gave a yelp of fright. It was my brother ‘S████, sorry to wake you. Why do you have a cricket bat?’ he asked ‘Never-mind the bat!’ I yelled as I threw it away ‘What’s wrong with your face!’ He had patches of different colours all over his face and his eyes were foggy and vacant. ‘Listen…’ He said ‘A friend dropped off these new printer cartridges from Nikjet, the printer company, that had some drug that makes you feel weird and happy.’

‘Do you want to try one? It’s legal’ He asked. I felt somehow drawn toward it but my conscience got the better of me ‘No thanks.’ I replied. ‘That was really weird’ I thought to myself as I slowly drifted to sleep.

I woke up the next day and got ready for school. As I went into the kitchen I saw my brother asleep on the ground with at least fifty printer cartridges strewn around him. I was just glad that he looked normal again. I went about my business and got dropped of at my school, ████████████ High School. The sight that greeted me was not welcoming.

It seemed that at least half of the school looked just like my brother. ‘Hi!’ a voice beside me suddenly spoke. I screamed as I quickly turned around. ‘Oh, h-hi Jeff’ I stammered shakily. Jeff is my friend, we’ve known each other since the start of year seven.

‘Why aren’t you on that drug thing?’ I asked him. ‘My mum gets nervous when it comes to drugs so she wouldn’t let me have any.’ ‘Besides…’ He continued ‘Everybody looks weird and I like how I look now. Why aren’t you on the stuff?’ he asked me ‘I don’t know, I’m just suspicious’ I responded. The bell rang to tell us to get to class.

After we got our stuff from our lockers we headed to C6 where our English class was. When we got there it looked like a freak show, one third of the class was on this stuff, even the teacher, Mrs Nella was on it. ‘S█████, Jeff.’ She said slowly ‘Please sit down on the, uh, uh…’ ‘…the chair?’ Jeff interrupted. ‘Yeah, yeah, the chair.’ she responded.

The whole lesson was like that, she would be talking and then completely forget what she said every minute. It was as if her mind was as foggy as her eyes. Hours later it was lunch time and it wasn’t much better than the situation in the classroom. It started out as normal as could be, every boy was arguing about “what sport is better, footy or soccer” but Jeff and I couldn’t concentrate.

‘Do you think the way Mrs Nella acted in class has something to do with the drug?’ Jeff asked ‘I’ll see’ I said as I got up and headed for the nearest person on drugs ‘Hey, name an Australian state’ I asked ‘East America?’ The girl responded. I walked back over to Jeff ‘Yeah, it’s the drug, it seems to make people dumber!’ ‘Hey, you want to come with me to the canteen?’ Jeff asked ‘Sure, anything to get my mind off this.’ I responded

We made our way to the canteen and only walked a few steps before getting to the back of the enormous line stretching from the canteen to the lockers fifteen metres away. Once we finally got to the counter we found out why there was such a big line; just under the chicken burgers on the menu was “Printer cartridges: $6:00”.    I shook my head in disbelief. I moved up in the line and tried to confront a canteen worker but just as I was about to speak the manager yelled ‘I’m sorry but we are all sold out of cartridges!’ There was an army of moans as people slowly shuffled their way out.

When I went around to the back of the canteen I saw a huge pile of printer cartridges and all of the canteen staff going through the cartridges one by one like a pack of wild animals. They all looked at me at exactly the same time. The manager got up and walked to me. He looked like he was going to burst from anger any second.

He quickly thrust his fist up, I thought he was going to hit me but he just hit himself and fell to the ground. ‘Help, help!’ he yelled ‘This kid just hit me for no reason!’ I looked around and saw everyone staring at me with disgust. You could probably understand my anger when I was sitting in the detention room writing out a form about “What I could have done better.” After that unfortunate incident I thought I would just try to avoid going to the canteen.

The next day I got to school and saw everyone on the stuff! Not just a handful of teachers and a lot of students, everyone. When I got to school there weren’t even any students or teachers, just some lifeless zombies walking around the grounds. Now I was getting really curious. How could my school go from half of them on it to all? I started to investigate, I might have gone a bit overboard though because when A█████ saw me I was trying to move an entire locker to see behind it.

‘Have you noticed there are more people on the cartridge stuff.’ ‘No I haven’t.’ I said sarcastically. Okay maybe I was being a bit mean. But the fact that my entire school was on drugs and they were all getting stupider. Just as I was going to apologise the bell rang and we head off for class. At recess A█████ said ‘Look, the only way we can investigate properly is for one of us to actually go on the drug, because I don’t think sarcasm is going to get us evidence.’

I was shocked, and I think he knew which one of us was going to do it. I lined up to get what pretty much every kid was going to buy, but instead of being excited about it like everyone else I was anxious. Thoughts rolled around in my head, amplifying as I got closer “What would it feel like?” “Would I become an addict like everyone else?” “If I did become an addict could I snap out of it?” Unfortunately I was going to find out very soon as I was about to get to the front line.

I put a five dollar bill and a one dollar coin on the counter ‘One printer cartridge please’ I asked the lady, she chuckled ‘You and everyone else.’ She took my money and gave me a small black box with a few colours on the bottom. I walked over to A█████ and he stared at me as I licked away…

For a few seconds I felt a bit nauseous, then all of the colours I could see became brighter and vibrant and I felt like I didn’t have a care in the world! For the rest of the day I couldn’t concentrate because of how much I was loving life. Then I thought that I might as well keep “Testing” like this for a while.

For every time I had a printer cartridge I was able to concentrate less and less. Luckily my addiction was brought to a screeching halt.    Two days later at night I was lying down on my bed pulling at my hair and grinding my teeth, I hadn’t had a cartridge in about 6 hours 48 minutes and 32 seconds… Not that I was counting. Eventually I decided to use the regular one I keep in my printer.

I sneaked downstairs and walked to my printer. I was wanting a cartridge so much I just tore the top of the printer clean off. I yanked out the cartridge and gave it a few licks. I gagged for a bit and then noticed that everything suddenly went from bright and vibrant to black and white and eventually returned to normal. I didn’t have a craving for cartridges anymore, I stared at the cartridge “I might have a solution” I quietly said to myself

The next day I went to school still holding the regular cartridge and staring at it. Trying to understand it like a rubik’s cube. I tapped