The Pee Bag Night

            “I’m calling the police!” Zoë’s neighbor yelled. We scattered, turned off the lights, and hid. Our smiles turned into frowns, and our laughter turned into silence. There was no way we were going to let the police come inside, especially with Zoë’s aunt upstairs. Nicole, Zoë and Grace sat anxiously beside the door, guarding it with their lives. The rest of us began to freak out. We had never talked to a cop before, what would we say? That we were joking? That it was an accident? There is no way a cop would believe that!

We all know physical education in middle school is a joke. In eighth grade my class would “run” a mile every Thursday. No one actually ran. We walked slowly, until the dreaded sprint we made passed our teacher, to make him think we were running the whole time. During this sunny afternoon, one of the vice principles stopped my friends and I, he asked if a couple of us would show a new girl around school. Of course, we agreed. Giselle and Simone began, “This is the A building, here is the snack-bar, over to the left is the gym…” They continued, and walked around the entire school as me and Nicole finished “running”.

            Zoë, the new girl, turned out to be a fellow eighth grader who moved to Berkeley only a week prior to coming to school.  She was born and raised in a small town in Colorado. Nicole and I ended up having history with her during third period. We thought she might be lonely so we brought her along to the field.  We always sat in the same spot.  Not too close to the fence, not too close to the boys by the tree, but perfectly in the middle.

“Where do you guys sit?” Zoë asked as we stepped onto the brown baseball field dust. “That dead patch over there.” I responded. We killed the grass. We probably left a little too much trash, and sat on it for a little too long for it to survive. After we sat down, Zoë reached into her jam-packed side bag. She felt around the bottom, for a good five minutes. She finally pulled out what she was looking for, some sugar. It wasn’t the typical teaspoon of sugar. It was plastic bag, about an inch full. We were all curious to see what her next move was going to be. While we stared awkwardly, she poured.  In to the peach Snapple it went.  As we begin to scrunch our four heads with confusion, she blurted out, “What! It’s good!”

          Zoë’s life was fairly unknown to us at first.  It was a sort of don’t ask don’t tell relationship. As time flew by secrets began to unravel, mystery turned to reality. Our friendship bubble that never seemed complete was now more well rounded and functional than ever. The final count is nine: me, Zoë, Giselle, Molly, Xihuanel, Miranda, Simone, Nicole and Grace. Zoë’s humor and awkwardness, mixed with her carefree attitude was just what we needed.

Turns out Zoë lived with her aunt on Virginia Street.  After a few weekends went by, Zoë invited us over. When we got there we walked in, looked around, and went to her room. Zoë turned on the lights as she turned the corner; when the light switched on, a pink bulb giving off as little light as possible flickered. We all squinted, and laughed. 

“Why do you have that light?” Molly asked with a confused tone, “I don’t know, I think its cute.” she replied.

This is one among many things we never understood. Why have a bulb that gives off no light, yes its pink, and yes it gives off a nice shade through out the room, but it had always given me a headache.  It made you want to flick the light switch on, even though it already was on, which was just annoying.

After we ate some burnt pizza, and drank some not so refreshing ice water, we ran out of things to do.

“Lets play Truth or Dare!!” I suggested.

“Who wants to go first?” Miranda quickly responded.

“I’ll go!” Zoë yelled as she stood.

“Oh my god I have such a good one! Zoë, I dare you to pee in a bag.” Nicole said excitedly. She was always labeled the "brains of operations.”

With little hesitation Zoë responded, “Okay, shit, why not?”

We all ran upstairs.

“Nicole, do it with me!” Zoë yelled through the door, while we listened to the sound of pee trickling into the Zip-lock bag. It was a sound like no other, almost like the drum beat in the back of the Star Wars theme song.

We all decided to pitch in. Why? Who knows, we were weird, we always did things in a pack. We stood beside the bathroom door, waiting in line. One at a time we entered the room, and peed. We carried these warm bags filled with a lightly tinted yellow liquid down stairs carefully, who knows how strong Zip-locks really are. “What now?” Molly asked for a good reason, what’s there to do with a bag full of pee? Then self-consciously we turned toward the broken-open window in Zoë’s room. A guy was sitting watching TV in the house next door. “I hate that guy! Let’s throw them at his house!” Zoë had no good reason to hate him, but she said he gave her a rude look one time.

As we tossed the bags, I felt no regret. Everything happens for a reason, right? Maybe he deserved it. Well, actually, he didn’t even notice. You could assume that it was for the better, but no, our night escalated from there. “That man must be blind! We need more things to throw!”  Simone said. I ran into the kitchen.  The first thing I saw was a thin slice of the left over pizza from earlier that night. I grabbed it and ran. “Here!” I yelled while handing over the slice to Nicole. Nicole threw it. My eyes followed the pizza as it flew across the yard, it landed on the bricks surrounding the guy’s door, and nothing happened.

“Oh my God what’s wrong with this man? We’ve thrown pretty much all we have! I can’t believe he hasn’t noticed!” Grace yelled, way louder than appropriate.

Once again, you could assume that this was for the better, but no, this was unsatisfying, at this point we wanted him to notice. I never knew how addicting throwing things could be! There was no time to think about the guy. I mean if I were that innocent guy, I don’t know what I would do. It would be pretty awkward to walk out of your house and find bags full of pee and pizza on your front lawn. Without thinking, we continued.

“Here Julia, fuck this lipstick, throw it!” Zoë handed me an old, crusty, dark red, sparkly lipstick. I threw it. At that instant, as the lipstick left my fingertips, I felt a release of anxiety; even if this man didn’t do anything to me, at that moment he deserved it. Seconds later, the lipstick bounced off the side of the guy’s living room window ending with a big bang.

This is when I began to experience the feeling of regret. We watched the guy; I thought he wouldn’t move a muscle like the previous times, but this time his reaction was different. He stood up from his soft, grey lounge chair and walked toward his back door. We started to panic. “Get down!” Zoë cried out. We were in complete silence. I didn’t know what to say. Was I supposed to apologize? It wasn’t my fault that I ended up with the old ass lipstick Zoë handed it to me!

The guy came closer. The five-foot gap between the guy and his sliding glass door to the backyard rapidly turned to four, then three, then two, “Turn off the lights! I don’t want him to see us in here!” Zoë said as we crawled into a huddle attempting to hide our silhouettes. Maybe he is getting up to turn off the TV, it can’t be that serious, what would he say to us anyway? There’s no way he could prove it was us. I convinced myself that we were safe.

With every step he took, my heart pounded harder and harder; each random scenario I came up with to explain why the guy stood up quickly got torn to shreds. The door slid open. The screeching sound made my body shiver. “Fuck. What are we going to do?” I whispered. No one answered. Everyone was in a frozen state of mind; there was no time to respond.

We got on to our knees and began to spy. He stepped onto the wet-looking grass that was between his house and Zoë’s. He was wearing a pair of slacks and a button down shirt, with slippers. Who wears slippers with their fancy clothes? Well, whatever. He walked into the middle of the yard and said sternly, “I’m calling the police!” That’s all he said. These four words changed our entire night. It was such a buzz kill. We finally got up, turned on the lights, and rushed into the entryway. I couldn’t stop shaking; it was like I was standing in freezer, but I wasn’t cold.

Zoë, Nicole and Grace sat by the door waiting for the knock of the officer. “Grace! Will you check again?” Nicole asked as she swayed from left to right in horror. I watched Grace open the door and look out. She swore it was clear, for the third time. I was so glad I wasn’t the lookout, it was dark and cold, plus, what would you do if you saw the police walking up the stairs? There wouldn’t be anything to say. It would just be really awkward and really scary.

I walked back into the bedroom to check on Molly, Simone and Miranda. “The coast is clear,” I told them as I entered. Our stress was released; we all finally took the deep breaths we desperately needed. For the next hour and a half we sat wide-awake. Not much was said; we sat silently and tried to comprehend what just happened. There was no way I was going to be able to fall asleep with out an end to our night.

“Dude, I can’t believe we just did that.” Zoë said, with that, my heavy eyelids were sealed shut.

I woke up the next morning feeling stupider then ever. The whole night was a blur; I felt like I had just woken up after a crazy party, but we actually were just having a sleepover at Zoë’s house. Did we really throw bags of pee at someone’s house? What the hell were we thinking? I couldn’t even remember how it happened.

 “I feel bad, we should go clean everything up!” Zoë said mid yawn. We tiptoed toward the house in a line, and I was third. “The bags aren’t even open!” Molly said, as we got closer. We picked up the bags, the pizza, and the other crap we threw, and walked back to Zoë’s house. It was our walk of shame, our heads hung low and our steps were as slow as a snails; we must have looked like we had just gotten egged or something, thank God he didn’t see us.

The guy lied and it worked. He taught us a lesson, I’m not exactly sure what it was, but I did learn something. I can truthfully say that I’ll never do that again. I can’t keep a straight face when this night is brought up. When I think about how my friends and I became such good friends, I realize that these are the nights that I love to remember, the nights that were so horrible that they were fun. The nights when I wake up and say, “What were we thinking,” are moments that make life interesting and unpredictable.

Zoë came to California because of her lack of family support. In Berkeley she got much more than she hoped for, a group of friends who couldn’t love her more. Since then her movement hasn’t settled. She lived in Berkeley until the end of our freshman year, and then she moved to Palm Springs to live with another aunt. Two years later, she moved back to Colorado to live with her mom, where she struggled to stay in school, and stay out of trouble. Now, after her eighteenth birthday she decided to move in with a friend she met in Palm Springs.

At first I was mad and frustrated with her decision; I thought that we were supposed to be her best friends, why would she want to move back to Palm Springs to live with wanna be punk rock kids? Of course I wish Zoë would have chosen to live in Berkeley, but hearing her point of view, I realized there would honestly be no legitimate place for her to call home. She made logical decision that I have learned to respect. Without her our group still stands strong, but we truly do have a piece missing in our puzzle.

“I know I’m not the sharpest crayon in the box, but that’s part of my charm.”

-Zoë Balog