Twisted Mix

When I was 9, I met a girl named Xaina. She was older than me by two years in age, but light years in Life.

Xaina’s parents were, I guess, hippies. They were pretty wild & psychadelic. There were no rules in their house. But I wasn’t allowed to go to that house often. Actually, I was forbidden completely. But I went anyway. Every chance I got.

Xaina was just too fascinating to stay away from.

She was the most mesmerizing kid I’d ever met.

Everything about her was inky…big black eyes, long black eyelashes, thick black brows, and wild black hair that flowed all the way down to the backs of her black-scabbed knees. Even her voice was inky – it had a gritty quality to it, like oil seeping through gravel. I always tried to talk like her, but I couldn’t get my Tinkerbell voice to obey.

Xaina was wild.

Like, WILD wild.

She jumped off high cliffs into rocky rivers. She ventured deep into caves where other kids had disappeared, never to be found. She loved swimming in the ocean while the tide was sucking out. She feared nothing, knew everything, and did drugs with her parents.

That, blew my mind.

I didn’t even know what drugs were, really. But I knew they were very bad, and parents were supposed to keep them away from you, not give them to you for Christmas. But Xaina got drugs for Christmas.

From her parents.

Her mom would stitch them into little tea bags for Xaina to dip into whatever she was drinking. Both her parents had their own tea bags, too. They filled them from a little jar of what I thought was confectionary sugar. I wanted one, but Xaina would never let me near her tea bags. She’d look at me with those inky, all-knowing eyes and say, “I like the way you are. I don’t want you to be like me.”

I had no idea what she meant by that. It confused me because I wanted more than anything to be just like her – fun, fearless and wild. But I was always afraid to jump off the cliffs with her, or venture as deeply into the caves. And I always swam in long before the tide started sucking out.

Truthfully, it wasn’t that I was afraid, really. It was more that I could see the possible consequences. My dad had always taught me to “look past the pretty.” What if I jumped off the cliff with Xaina and landed on the rocks instead of between them? What if I followed her deep into the caves and made a deadly wrong turn? What if I didn’t have the strength to swim back in after being sucked into the middle of the ocean?

Anyway, I liked Xaina. And she liked me. She wouldn’t play with any other kids, she always protected me from bullies, and she slashed our fingers so we could smear our blood together and be “sisters until we die.”

I thought she was the most amazing kid on the planet.

I realize now that Xaina was suicidal. She wanted to die.

And so she did.

Drug overdose. At 12 years old.

We had a year of friendship, Xaina & I. A year in which, logically, she should have died at least once a week. But her parents told my parents that, by our friendship, I had kept Xaina alive a whole year longer than they expected.

They knew she was suicidal.

That’s why they were giving her drugs, they said. It made her feel good, and stopped all the suicide attempts.

To this day, I don’t understand exactly what happened to Xaina. I don’t know how she overdosed. I don’t know the whole story of her family dynamic. But Xaina’s eyes were darkened by more than their inky color, I believe…

Anyway, I wrote this song for her in junior high – after I’d learned the real deal about drugs. And though my family had moved by then, the next time we went back there to visit, I went to Xaina’s grave to sing my song to her.

I think she heard me.

Because as I was walking away, a breeze blew the paper with the song out of my hand.

It landed right on her grave.

.

TWISTED MIX

Lick your lips until you crack,

Shoot that monkey off your back.

Sniff and blow your cold away,

This twisted mix says it’s okay.

Don’t you wanna play the game of Life?

.

CHORUS

Twisted mix

In a fix

All I wanna do

Is get some kicks.

.

Twisted mix

White lie

All I wanna do

Is fry.

(Help me!)

(I‘m here! We’ll be sisters…until we die.)

.

Open wide but don’t say ahh,

Took a trip and went too far.

Life is sweet and so bizarre,

Twisted mix in a little jar.

What’s the matter? Don’t you wanna play the game of Life?

.

CHORUS

Twisted mix

In a fix

All I wanna do

Is get some kicks.

.

Twisted mix

White lie

All I wanna do

Is fry.

(Help me!)

(I‘m here! We’ll be sisters…until we die.)

.

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