text: She said “you got a lot of things to learn.” We were heading to pick up her mom from the methadone clinic in Lawrence. She was home for the weekend from Phillips. The trip from Andover was only a half an hour by car, but a world away from where she was today. Jamie grew up fast. Her mother was happy for the ride. It was a cold October that year and the couple of miles it took to walk to the clinic were wearing on her. When we got back to her mother’s apartment we immediately clambered into her sister’s tiny bedroom. Her sister got into Phillips as well but it felt too strange for her being there so she left to finish her high school career at Lawrence High. Her boyfriend had stolen a shoe box full of mushroom caps from an ex-roommate at Plymouth University and left them at the house. It was Jamie’s idea to eat them that morning. With her mother locked away for the rest of the day in her room, it felt like a safe opportunity to experiment. Up until this time in my life I had only smoked weed and gotten high on amphetamines, but I was up for whatever Jamie wanted to do. I idolized her. We took a handful of caps each. I didn’t feel anything within 20 minutes so I ate some more, regardless of her sister’s warning. She was going to watch us. Within 45 minutes I was peaking. The world shattered around me and I was floating in space. I felt a commonality with everything in the universe for a while, but the beauty faded when I couldn’t make it back to reality. I knew I had to throw up, but I could hardly make it to the bathroom, I was seeing stars. Hours passed. I begged god to make it stop. It was a horrible trip. My consciousness felt permanently altered. Later in the afternoon I began to feel sane again. Jamie and I went for a walk around her block. I had one shoe on, one barefoot. I needed to feel the cold ground beneath that foot. She was humming to “Sweet Adeline” which had been playing throughout the trip, courtesy of our babysitter dj. Upon arriving back, her sister was alone in her room crying. She said “Elliott Smith has killed himself.