Crown #5: "Juice"
A story about appetite—and who actually has to pay for it.
Introduction: In the next two stories, we follow an older Z—from her senior year of high school into her freshman year of college. The first story, Juice, moves her into a more volatile season. It traces a moment of excess and experimentation, when wanting feels urgent and power still seems like something she can control. This is a story about appetite, testing boundaries, and the dangerous confidence that comes with believing you can touch fire without getting burned.
This story contains underage drinking, substance use including overdose, and racialized comments and profiling.
Disclaimer: These stories take place in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some legal references may be outdated. Thank you in advance for indulging the millennial slang, which is also—mercifully—outdated.
Although these stories draw inspiration from real places and experiences, they are works of fiction. You can read the full introduction to Crown and this series here.
JUICE
Juice and I had been friends ever since I gave him my virginity at his bar mitzvah. My cousins dared me to after learning he was going to inherit a large sum of money—and I did it.
He became a man, I lost my virtue, and we built a treehouse with bar mitzvah money.
Mazel tov.
The summer after my freshman year of college, Dre and I invited Juice to Houston to Christmas shop. The summer deals were better than the holiday sales, so my cousins and I often ’tis-the-seasoned in July.
My baby blue Beetle was crammed to the ceiling with bags and bodies. Juice sat shotgun, Apple Maps open, while Dre filled the backseat—stuffed like a melting marshmallow man between peeling leather and crisp black bags. The humidity glued my shirt to my spine. Traffic on I-69 North didn’t move so much as breathe.
“Hop on the feeder,” Juice said. “This rubbernecking goes on forever.”
I inched into the right lane. It fed into another line of cars and a red light that looked personal. In my rearview, Dre’s bald head was bowed over a strip of paper. When he looked up, he was licking a joint sealed.
I stared. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Chill, Z.” He dropped it into an XL Ziploc full of joints. Bits of dank clung to his goatee. “I know the rules. This is a no-smoking zone.”
Juice glanced back at the bag—not at Dre. “How much is that?”
“’Bout twenty grams,” Dre said, clapping the back of my seat. “Can you navigate to 288? Gotta hit the south side.”
“A drug deal?” Juice whispered, like my car was wired.
“A trade-off,” Dre said. “Mary for Molly.”
Every other month, Dre quit another job and went on a dope-selling bender to make rent. He’d used my car for this before. Family favors didn’t come with a lot of options.
“Molly?” I asked. “I thought you were a green man.”
“I am, but we’re enterin’ snowy territory and white kids love Molly. Gotta please the market, cuz.”
Juice threw his head back and snorted. “I’ve never tried Molly in my life.”
“You’re Jewish,” Dre reminded him. “White kids ain’t gonna share with ya.”
Juice was as Jewish as I was Catholic—on holidays and when our parents were watching. We both had ties to Crosby, except he was Newport and I was Barrett Station. When we landed at the same college, we got closer. Study buddies. Fuck buddies. When he rode shotgun, I usually let him hold my free hand or rest his palm on my thigh—small proofs I didn’t offer anyone else. He was never allowed to do it in front of my family. But with Juice, I let myself imagine an easier future—one where I didn’t have to explain anything.
“Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost,” Dre wailed, kicking my seat. “Crank that AC up, Z. I’m dyin’ back here!”
My VW sputtered and wheezed out what cool air it could. “You wanna buy me a new air filter?” I patted the dash.
He tutted. “Shit. I’m broke as a joke.”
Dre never had money, but I never faulted him for it. He worked jobs from here to there—bouncer, mall security, bus driver, short-order cook—never long enough to get ahead. Most of what he got came from the Nation, and most of that went straight to his mom’s dialysis. What was left—if anything—went into his grocery jar for Great Value rice, beans, and biscuit mix, and Jimmy Dean sausage. He didn’t cut corners on the pork.
The light ahead flashed green for fifteen seconds, then went yellow like it was bored of us. Cars trickled through and stopped again.
“How much can you get for that bag?” Juice asked.
“Couple hundred, I bet.”
Juice wiped sweat from his lip. “Market value on weed is a little different from MDMA.”
Dre clicked his tongue. “What would you know about it?”
“You may not get an exact return on your investment,” Juice said—calm, careful, like he could talk the situation into behaving.
“You worry about your shit, white boy.”
Juice faced forward. “NowI’m white,” he muttered.
Dre made us wait a few blocks from the drop at a Sparkle Burger while he traded Mary for Molly. Juice and I paid for our burgers in quarters, parked under the freeway, and sat on the hood. The air clung to my skin like wet cloth and frizzed my hair. I’d started straightening it in college. Juice was the only friend who knew its natural texture. I tugged my curls under the hood of my rain jacket, trying to keep them from springing free.
“What’re you gonna do when he comes back with all that Molly?” Juice asked.
“Not a clue. I can’t leave him on the curb.”
“I would.”
“Easy for you to say.” I rolled my head toward him. “He’s not your family.”
“You know what happens if we get caught with that shit?”
We’d taken a poli-sci course together in the spring—three weeks on drug crime penalties. I knew exactly where his mind had gone: minimums, maximums, how much damage we could do to ourselves in one bad decision.
I crumpled my wrapper. “Possession of between four ounces and five pounds of marijuana with intent to sell is a second-degree felony. Minimum one-eighty, max two years, ten-thousand-dollar fine.”
“I’m serious.”
“You asked.”
Juice dragged a hand through his hair and slipped off his glasses to wipe the humidity smears. “This would hurt you and me a lot more than it would Dre,” he said, sliding them back on. “Let’s just drop him somewhere. I’m not cool with Molly in the backseat.”
I stiffened. “It’s not your car.”
He muttered something about futures. I ignored him and tore my wrapper into neat little squares.
“You got out of Barrett, Z,” he said. “Stop trying to go back.”
That hit hard enough to piss me off. “I’m not—and even if I was, what the fuck does that even mean?”
“You’re on a full ride at a good university,” he said. “You’re three years from graduating. Studying for the LSAT already. You keep your GPA and you’re an auto-admit to any law school.”
“So?”
“So you’re one family fuck-up away from losing all of it,” he snapped. “Dre’s full of shit, and he’s gonna take you down with him.”
Something hot lodged between my heart and stomach—anger or grease, I couldn’t tell. “Juice,” I said, “you don’t get to talk about my family like that. You’ll never have that right. You’ll never understand.”
He scoffed. “Understand what—that y’all are doomed to be poor? Or doomed to commit felonies trying not to be? That what I’m missing?”
I flung the little paper squares at his face and slid off the hood.
“What the hell are we doing?” he groaned. “What are you trying to prove?”
I jabbed a finger into his chest. “What are you trying to prove? Why do you care so much?”
He hesitated. “Because you’re my friend,” he said. “And, believe it or not, I care about you.”
He turned from me then. I climbed into my Beetle and sat behind the wheel with the window down. Cars roared overhead, the concrete humming with each pass. Juice didn’t get in until it started to drizzle.
We met Dre at Sims Bayou in Sunnyside nearly an hour later. He leaned against a swing set, a thumb-sized baggie of capsules pinched between his fingers.
“That’s it?” Juice laughed as Dre climbed into the backseat.
“Fifteen-six of green buys you one-five of white,” Dre said. He shoved the pills into his pocket and stared out the window, embarrassed.
“Tried to tell you, man,” Juice said.
“Eat a dick, Juice.”
“Now what?” I asked. “Call it quits?”
“We just gotta find some white kids.”
Juice snorted.
“We need—” Dre inhaled, scanning the street, “—like a white girl trap.”
“Don’t say that so loud,” I said. “We’re near the police station.”
“You know what I mean,” Dre said. “Give me a pumpkin spice latte and a Patagonia.”
“The hell is a Patagonia?” I asked.
“It’s July,” Juice said.
Dre and I looked at him.
“Pumpkin spice is seasonal,” Juice explained. “Like September to December.”
Dre cracked up. “You wouldknow that.”
“Well,” I said, patting the steering wheel and catching Dre’s eyes in the rearview, “we’re not gonna find any white kids here.”
“White kids love the hood, Z,” Dre said. “We just gotta be patient.”
I wasn’t, so I drove to Rice Village, where we prowled for white kids.
Thick oaks arched over the streets; brick storefronts wore black serif lettering like credentials. Valet stands and tip jars lined the sidewalks while teenage boys in khakis drifted past. I parked on the second level of a garage. Juice paid for parking with his credit card.
We struck out at Kendra Scott and Banana Republic—both of which Dre swore were white girl traps. Rain chased us into a bookstore just as we were about to leave. Between the record bins and audiobooks, Juice spotted a guy with a blond fauxhawk and red-rimmed, non-prescription glasses stocking disco.
“Meyer, my man!” Fauxhawk said, setting down a box of records and sticking out his hand.
Noah Meyer—that was Juice’s real name. My family were the only ones who called him Juice. He earned the nickname at the first crawfish boil he ever came to, when someone misheard Jew as juice. Everyone assumed it was a nickname. Juice thought it sounded cool. It stuck.
Juice shook his hand. “How’s Tech?”
“Barely survived,” Fauxhawk said, trying and failing to rake his fingers through hair stiff with gel. “You?”
“Awesome,” Juice said. “We really like it.” He flicked a glance at me, and I nodded.
Fauxhawk nodded back—then his eyes slid to Dre and stalled.
Dre loomed beside us—tall and wide, arms crossed, tattoos climbing his forearms, his mouth set in the kind of scowl he wore around people he didn’t trust, which was most people.
Fauxhawk blinked once, recalibrating.
“You party?” Dre asked.
Fauxhawk hesitated, so Dre dangled the baggie between them.
“Oh, shit,” Fauxhawk said, stepping back then tossing Juice a wary look. “College changed you, Meyer.”
“We’re just looking for somewhere to turn up,” Juice said, rocking on his heels.
“You’re in luck,” Fauxhawk said. “Couple friends are heading to a trash party in Montrose. You might find buyers there.”
Montrose: gritty-but-safe, where suburban kids pretended to slum without consequences.
An hour later, we stood in a junkyard in the heart of Houston. The “party” was a showing—trash assembled into art, each piece labeled with the name of an 80s rock song. A crucifix of toilet paper rolls. A gutted Impala pasted with Jackie Brown stills. The artist drifted through it all with a boombox playing Icelandic ambient music—and to Dre’s complete fury, the artist was a green man too and cringed at the sight of the Molly.
The crowd was immaculate and uninterested. No one wanted our drugs. Dre cut the price—ten percent off, then half, then all of it for the price of one.
“Punishment for carryin’ this shit is life,” he muttered. “Gotta get rid of it.”
“You won’t get life for a gram,” Juice said.
“Look it up.”
“Less than four grams of MDMA with intent to sell is a second-degree felony,” I said. “Two to twenty years. Ten-thousand-dollar fine.”
Dre twisted his mouth.
“It’s only life if you keep eatin’ like you do,” I added. “Cracklins and boudin’ll shave it down for you.”
He laughed but his features hardened, like I had said the wrong thing. “Okay, officer.”
“You were worried about the time—”
“Just waitin’ on you to throw the book,” he said. He peeled the bag open and swallowed a pill, then tossed the rest at Juice. “Embrace your culture, whitey.”
A spike of hurt drove into my heart, like I had unintentionally chosen a side—a side I hadn’t realized existed.
Dre glanced back at me then. “You don’t gotta do that,” he said, low, eyes on the bag, like it was already too late to stop anything. Like he already knew me.
Juice held the baggie away from his body. “So much for white kids loving Molly.”
I watched as Dre drifted toward a plastic-wrapped table of beer and Solo cups. Alone. I didn’t want him to be.
I took the baggie from Juice and slid my pinky under the seal.
“Don’t,” Juice said. “Please.”
I tipped a capsule onto my tongue and swallowed. Then I pulled out another and held it out to him.
“You’ve never done Molly,” he said.
“Neither have you.”
He looked at me, searching my face, like my answer mattered more than the drugs. “You don’t know what it’ll do to you,” he said.
“I know,” I said. I didn’t move my hand.
He shut his eyes, exhaled, then took it, tucking the rest into his pocket.
We drifted from the crowd toward the edge of the junkyard, where the Icelandic music thinned into the bayou slapping a chain-link fence. Paths narrowed between heaps of scrap and recyclables. Juice and I threaded through smoke clouds hand-in-hand. Dre was gone.
Juice pulled off his raglan and tied it around his head. I lost my shoes somewhere in the filth. We found a knot of girls in pastels clustered around a porcelain bathtub turned sofa.
“It won’t fit in my Fiat,” one said.
“But it’s so cute,” another whined.
I nudged Juice and pointed. “Finally. Snow.”
He covered his face and giggled.
“Oh my god,” a redhead said as I wobbled past. “Your hair is gorgeous.” She pinched a curl. The tiny tug sparked my scalp and sent warmth down my spine.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It’s just so pretty.”
I closed my eyes and wished she’d pulled harder.
“Is it a perm?”
“It’s natural,” I said, tossing it over my shoulder.
“She’s mixed,” Juice said, patting my back. “Half Black, half white, half Indian.”
“Choctaw,” I said, eyes on him. “Different Indian.”
The girls oohed.
“How much does it cost to rent a place like this?” Juice asked.
“Nothing,” one said. “It’s just junk.”
He leaned into me. “Still private property,” he muttered. “Sign out front. Does Picasso have permits, or is he pleading the Fifth on serving alcohol to kids?”
“We’re not underage,” the girls said together.
“We are,” Juice whispered. “What’re the charges, Z?”
“Violation of the Texas social host law,” I slurred. “Class A misdemeanor. Fine and a year.”
“Dude,” a golden-haired girl said. “Your pupils are huge. What are you on?”
“Molly,” Juice said, hips shifting toward them, mouth close to my ear. “Want some?”
“No,” she said quickly, fingers worrying the beads on her wrist. The soft clink chimed inside my head.
“Let’s go,” a pink-haired girl said. “People are waiting.”
“Liars,” Juice groaned, sagging into me before sliding down against a broken TV.
I dropped into a mustard recliner across from him. My head tipped over the armrest. My brain sloshed. For a while, we just lay there. I thought about the penalty for one gram of Molly.
“I feel like hell,” Juice said.
I turned my head. He had his whole hand in his mouth, gagging.
“If you puke,” I warned, pointing lazily, “you’ll never be cool. Everybody in my family’s got an iron stomach.”
“This shit’s getting to me.”
“Take another,” I said. “You weigh more than me. You probably haven’t hit the right dose.”
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Do it.”
He pulled the last pill from his pocket and swallowed it dry. His face flushed.
I curled deeper into the chair. It smelled like rot, but it felt soft. I didn’t want to move.
Colors burst. Everything glittered.
The music thinned. If I shifted my head, it slipped away, so I stayed still. When it stopped, the junkyard rushed back in—voices, footsteps, metal underfoot.
“Cops!” Dre shouted.
I was kicked in the hip. Juice was yanked upright.
“Get up!”
I rolled into the dirt, weightless. Seeing Dre drained the color from everything. Reality snapped back. He hauled me by the elbow and we ran—past spindles, car bumpers, crushed bins—until a fence stopped us cold. He shoved me behind him without looking back, taking a beam of light full in his face like it was nothing.
“Fuck!” Dre kicked the fence.
Juice panted, eyes darting between us.
I laughed into the chain links and clapped a hand over my mouth.
Dre tore at the fence. “Get on my shoulders!” He told me.
Juice dropped to his knees and clawed under it, frantic, like a puppy escaping a bath.
Flashlights cut through the scrap.
Juice stacked on Dre’s shoulder next, slipped, fell.
“Fucked, we are,” I sighed, dropping on my ass and kicking my legs as giggles rolled through me.
Dre paced, fists tight. Juice hovered, pleading, muttering penalties like prayers.
I stayed where I was. The beams grew brighter.
Then a sound above me—smack, crack, crunch.
“Juice!” Dre yelled.
I rolled onto my side.
Juice was on the ground. Ghost white and glossy with sweat. His eyelids were puffing; his eyes rolled back. His mouth hung open, drool pooling at the corners. When Dre tried to pull him up, his limbs stayed stiff—vibrating against the dirt like planks of wood.
“I think he’s OD-ing!”
Juice started convulsing, his body flailing in the trash and leaving angel-shaped impressions.
The giggles in my belly turned into a thousand shards of glass, and suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I crawled to him and cupped his face, trying to steady him.
Voices and beams were only a mound of garbage away.
“We gotta go,” Dre said. He turned to the fence. “The cops’ll take him in. He’ll be okay.”
Tears stung my eyes. I tasted them as they slipped into my open mouth. I realized I was thirsty. Dehydrating. “We can’t leave him!” I sobbed.
Dre looked over the trash mountain. “Go then,” he said. “I’ll wait with him.”
I shook my head and gripped Juice’s skull tighter. Dre shoved me back, but I crawled right up again. “I’llstay,” I said. “I fucked him up. It’s my fault.”
Dre’s eyes widened, his pupils were blown. “You serious?”
I shoved him as hard as I could and screamed. “Go!”
Dre didn’t wait for me to say it twice. He climbed the fence at a speed I would have applauded under different circumstances. As soon as he was over, he took off and didn’t look back. I faced forward and waited for the lights.
***
I was cuffed and detained. I refused a drug test—it was my right—so they held me until Juice’s parents arrived. I wasn’t charged.
Juice was taken to St. Joseph’s downtown. They pumped his stomach, gave him fluids and steroid shots. The Molly was laced, and he was allergic to whatever cut it. He slept for a day. When he woke, the cops charged him with possession. They’d found the thumb-sized baggie in his pocket. Juice didn’t tell them where it came from.
In the hospital, his parents were always there. They hovered, adjusted blankets, asked questions before the doctors finished answering them. We didn’t talk. After he was discharged, I didn’t see him for the rest of the summer. He stayed in the Heights; I went back to Humble. Twenty-three miles apart—wide enough.
When classes started again, I caved and texted him about the sneakers I’d left at his place.
He texted back: Come get ’em.
I was there in ten minutes. I sat stiffly on the loveseat, staring at the wood floor. Juice stretched out on the couch opposite me, a bottle of sparkling water balanced easily between his thighs. He looked good—clear-eyed, intact. Saved.
“My parents paid the fine,” he said. “Got the community service waived. It’s still on my record, but our lawyer’s working on it.” He said it like a report. A box checked.
“That’s lucky,” I said.
“I quit smoking too.”
Juice had smoked maybe three joints in his life, but I smiled anyway. I wanted to be near him, to settle back into the familiar gravity of his presence, the easy safety of it. Relief warmed my chest—and then stalled, crowded by something heavier that wouldn’t let me have it cleanly.
“You hear from Dre?” he asked.
My chest pinched. “They caught him after the party,” I said. “He’s still inside. Nobody had bail money.”
“What’d they charge him with?” Juice asked—too even, like he already knew the answer.
“Possession. Evading arrest.”
Juice nodded and took a sip of water. Something in his face loosened, as if the numbers had landed where he expected them to.
“He could talk to my lawyer,” he said. “His card’s on the fridge.”
It was kind of him to offer. It was also beside the point. My family couldn’t afford his lawyer any more than they could afford bail money on short notice or holiday sales hikes when the season came early.
That night in the junkyard, I wanted to save them both. I believed—briefly—that wanting it badly enough would make it possible. I stayed with Juice, and it worked—he lived—while Dre slipped away into something quieter and longer. A different kind of death.
He would sit until someone scraped together enough money or until his time ran out. He’d come out lighter only where it didn’t count—another job, then another, meetings with a parole officer folded between shifts, the same realization waiting at the end. It was never enough. Eventually he’d call me again, ready to ’tis the season, one bag of green at a time.
I knew the penalties by heart.
Juice watched me from across the room, waiting—for forgiveness, for agreement, for me to admit he’d been right.
I smiled anyway. “Sure,” I said, my tongue thick with it. “I’d like that.”
The Crown Series: TOC
5. Juice
*While the stories are interconnected, they can be read standalone or in any order you choose.