“Speaking of scheming,” Marcy continues slyly, producing an Altoids box from her bag. “Anyone wanna get a hit of this?” She opens the box to reveal a joint that looks like it’s been through a dishwasher.

“Oooohh, shit,” I crow, a smile spreading across my face. “I’m wicked down. Where’d you get that?”

“Rooster’s glove compartment,” Marcy informs us without a hint of remorse. “I think it’s pretty old, so I doubt he’ll notice it’s gone.” Things we’ve stolen from Rooster over the years include the first porn I ever saw, $7.86 in change for a late-night Perkins run, a whole truckful of Legos, and one shoddy little doobie before this one. Marcy’s been a lifelong beneficiary of the fact that she’s smarter than her brothers.

We look at Rowie, who looks a little nervous.

“Down. I think,” she says hesitantly. “Lemme just run up and assess the Raj situation.” She darts upstairs.

Even though we like to act like hardened criminals, truth is, our experience with the sticky icky is pretty limited. Marcy’s smoked a few times with her brother, but I’ve only tried it the once before. I didn’t think it really worked, but we did polish off six personal pan pizzas between the two of us, the kind Pops always buys from Anthony Grinnell’s Boy Scout troop. Marcy says no one gets high the first time they do it. Kind of like sex, I guess.

Rowie bounds back into her bedroom. “The news just finished and he’s snoring so loud I’m surprised we couldn’t hear it from here. We’re golden.”

“You wanna call Bob and tell him you’re spending the night?” I ask Marce.

She whips her toothbrush and retainer out of her backpack and grins. “Check, check, dirtbag. No one’s expecting me home tonight.”

“Okay, lemme just give Pops a heads-up.” I dial home.

“Hey, parakeet,” he says.

“I’ve never understood how that became a term of endearment. I hate birds.”

“You should be counting your blessings that I didn’t pick budgie.”

“And I am. Is it cool if I sleep at Rowie’s?”

“I s’pose. Do you have all your stuff?”

“More or less. Marcy can give me a ride home tomorrow.”

“Are you going anywhere but Rowie’s? I’m not saying you can’t. I just want to know where you’ll be.”

“Don’t think so.”

“Then have a nice time and I’ll smell you in the morning.”

“Love you no shit.”

“Love you no shit.”

Honestly, I could probably tell Dad I’m about to go get stoned in Rowie’s treehouse without incurring so much as a brief lecture, but the thing about permissive progressive parents is eventually you’ve talked about your feelings so much that you want to keep secrets just to have a feeling that belongs to you.

“All good?” Marcy says.

“Holler,” I say.

“I call the trundle bed!” Marcy gives a sleepover fist-pump.

If Marcy’s in the trundle, that means I’ve got the other half of Rowie’s bed.

“Looks like you’re stuck with me.” I turn to Rowie. She smiles, doesn’t say anything. I feel warm.

“Let’s smoke that in the treehouse.”

“Treehouse-ho, yo.”

Rowie grabs two blankets and her old camp flashlight and unlocks the basement door. Rowie has the easiest house to sneak out of in the entire world. There’s a door leading out to her backyard ten feet away from her bedroom, her parents sleep upstairs on the opposite end of the house, and her mom works four nights a week anyway.

The three of us tramp across the wet grass to Rowie’s big oak tree. The treehouse is the gift of the previous owners, and it’s ugly as shit but a good third space — something neutral, not school and not exactly home, just a place we go to have someplace to go. It’s not much more than a shack that happens to be in a tree. Recently, we waterproofed it by throwing a tarp over the roof so we could bring electronics up, namely, my ancient battery-operated CD player.

“Why do you even bother calling a bed when we all know you’re just going to sneak out to meet some wrestler later?” I tease Marcy, climbing up behind her.

“Oops, so sorry.” She kicks off a shoe, which smacks me in the forehead, just like she planned.

“Asshole,” I say with a laugh.

Rowie hands up the blankets and flashlight and emerges through the hole in the floor like some kind of backward birth, up instead of down. I spread out a blanket, and the three of us arrange ourselves in a triangle upon it as Marcy loads her M.I.A. disc in the boom box. I feel nervous. Why?

Marcy ignites the joint with a yellow Vikings lighter. She pulls hard to get it lit, resulting in a barrage of coughs. I can tell that she’s embarrassed to cough, that she wanted to be the experienced one.

“Herb for Holyhill,” she chokes, cracking up. I dig the Nalgene out of my Mary Poppins bag and hand it to her; she gratefully takes a swig and recovers.

Marcy passes the joint to Rowie. “Be careful. It’s super dry ’cause it’s so old.”

“Question. Can you, um, talk me through it a little?” Rowie asks bashfully.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t kick any instructions out of bed,” I say, both to make Rowie feel less bashful and to help me do this without looking like a moron.

“No sweat,” responds Marcy, reclaiming her position of superior badassery and puffing up a little. “So basically, first you’re going to suck on the joint, and then you’re going to breathe in a little bit of air to push the smoke down into your lungs. Then you hold it for as long as you can stand it and try to blow it all out before you start coughing.”

“Okay, here goes.” Rowie takes a teensy hit, then sucks in a huge gulp of air. Her brown eyes widen as she holds her breath, making her look astonished at what she’s doing. After a second, she exhales a small cloud of smoke.

“Take one more. It goes puff, puff, pass,” Marcy says, officiating.

Rowie pulls a bigger, braver hit, which doesn’t leave as much room for clean air, and she loses it, coughing herself into a momentary veil of smoke. She thrusts out the arm holding the joint as she hacks, and I take it. Like Rowie, I make my first hit conservative, not wanting to push my luck. I breathe in and hold it. Exhale. Repeat. As I hold my breath, I begin to feel a little dizzy, maybe even a different kind of dizzy than what dizzy usually is. I feel a little surprised to see the thin jet of smoke pluming from my lips. It smells like skunk and incense. This is exciting. I take another little drag and hold it again, and this time the dizziness is palpably stronger.

“So how exactly is this going to make me feel?” Rowie asks.

“First your mouth will start to feel really dry,” Marcy says matter-of-factly, taking the joint from me. “Then you’ll start to feel it all over your body. It’s hard to describe and I’m pretty sure it’s different for everyone, but it just makes all your senses stronger. Music sounds different; light looks different; food tastes different. Not bad different. Good different. Don’t be scared.” She inhales.

“It’s from the earth,” I say. “I’m not scared.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” Rowie asks, but no one responds.²⁰

20. Text from Tess: MashBaum says her mom got the license # of a car registered to Robert Crowther when its passenger stole their Herb for Holyhill sign. Know anything about that?
Me to Tess: I saw the sign, and it opened up my eyes. Hehehehehehee

The three of us fall silent through the next few rounds of the magic stick. “Paper Planes” comes onto the sound track, an overplayed song I’ve heard a million times before, but a song that right now feels more perfect than ever, like I’m hearing it in Technicolor for the first time. I reach up and look at my own hand as if I’ve never seen it before, watch the way it wavers around the edges. Using this new instrument, I pull the tarp over a bit to witness the moon, a half-melon in the dark clear sky.

“I like the way it smells,” Rowie notes as she takes a two-puff turn. “I like it.” She trails off a little.

I look over at Rohini and ponder the vague, dreamy expression on her face, her eyes half-closed and her mouth arched in a sphinx-like smile. I remember how the night I came out in the gazebo last summer, she told me that in Vedic astronomy, there are twenty-seven nakshratas, which are the divisions of the sky — like the Indian version of Virgo and Sagittarius and stuff. Rohini is the fourth, the favorite wife of the Moon.

“Rohini, married to the moon,” I murmur, not totally sure if I’m thinking or speaking aloud. No one seems to hear. I think she must be wearing the music, must be buried so deep in it that I can’t reach her. Just then, the song changes.

Rowie’s eyes open more. She parts her lips as if to speak. I lean forward. Time slows down.

“Hey, do you guys ever think about animals just, like, making out?”

Silence hangs like a dead man for a split second before I start laughing literally harder than I’ve ever laughed before. Marcy begins to howl, slapping her palm on the treehouse floor. Rowie looks startled for a moment, then cracks up too.

“What?” She giggles.

“I — I think it worked,” I sputter.

“Was that really stupid? I can’t tell.” She giggles some more. “This is so funny.”

“What?” Marcy asks as she struggles to catch her breath. “Do you have, like, pervy farm friends?”

“Seriously guys, I have no idea where that came from,” Rowie answers amid a new peal of laughter. “This is so funny.”

“I know,” I say. “Good coaching, Marce. Bob would be proud.”

“Bob!” This sends Rowie into a fresh conniption of laughter. She rolls around on the treehouse floor, convulsing. Seeing Rowie this stoned is hilarious and wonderful and more intoxicating than anything we could ever swipe from Rooster. I can’t stop laughing, either. Marcy is clearly more together than either of us; I think she’s more laughing at Rowie than from the ganja.

Without warning, Marcy rises to go. “Okay, I’m out,” she says.

“What? Why? We were having such a good time!” Rowie looks stricken.

“I know, toots, but I got . . . somewhere to be.”

“Bullshit!” I scream, pointing an accusatory finger at her, dissolving into laughter yet again. “You’re going to meet a boy. You have a date.”

“You want another shoe in the face, Ezbian? By the way, can I call you Ezbian if I promise not to do it at school?”

I can’t help but laugh. “Sure. Ass.”

“Sweet. I’ll be back later on. Just leave the basement door unlocked.”

“Who are you meeting?” Rowie makes the mistake of asking. Marcy just shrugs.

“Hey,” I say, remembering, “you’re not driving, right?”

“Naw, I got my bike in the back of the James. No worries. If you fools start to get paranoid, just drink a bunch of water and then crunch on some munchies. Don’t call unless there’s an emergency. Peace.” Marcy disappears through the hole in the floor.

I look at Rowie, wondering what comes next. She looks back and grins.

“Hi, honey.” She tinkles with laughter.

“Hi, honey.”

“I’m pretty sure we’re stoned, honey.” She giggles.

“Yeah, honey, I’m pretty sure we are, too.” She’s so cute like this.

“I’m just glad we know, you know?”

“Know what, funny honey?”

“That we’re stoned.”

I laugh. “God bless Rooster.”

“So how did you, like, know?” Rowie blurts out.

“How did I know I was stoned?”

“No, not that. The other thing.”

“What other thing? You’re being kind of cryptic.”

“How did you know you were — gay? Or whatever.”

“I don’t know. Because Chuckles didn’t exactly get my rocks off?”

“I’m serious.”

“I think I always knew. Why are you asking?”

“I don’t know. I mean — I guess . . .” Rowie stumbles a bit. “I mean, you haven’t ever kissed a girl, right?”

I wonder if I should act more experienced than I am. I decide not to. “Um, I mean — no.” A breeze begins to drift through the night air as we sit spider-legged and confessional in the trees.

“I’ve never really kissed anybody. Boy or girl. Is that normal?” She picks at a hole in her green tights, pulls a thread from the hem of her peach dress.

“What the fuck is normal?”

“I don’t know. But really, if you’ve never been with a girl, how did you know?”

I think for a minute. “I feel like being with Charlie just confirmed something I already knew. I think I’ve always known. Like, for example, when all the girls used to argue about which guy on Gossip Girl was the hottest, I always thought Serena was the hottest.”

“That’s because Serena’s a total fox!” Rowie cries. “I’ve always thought she was really hot, too.”

“Really?” I feel like my jaw must be on the treehouse floor. “I never thought — I just never knew anything like that about you.”

“I mean, I don’t think I am. But I don’t feel like I can really decide until later on, when I have, like, more information. That makes sense, right?”

“Maybe you’re both.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

For a minute, neither of us says anything. Rowie’s never been this candid about anything sex-related before. I suddenly feel like I’m hanging on the precipice of something enormous.

I cock my head to one side.

“Honey,” I say slowly, “can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.” The wind begins to pick up, blowing with more urgency. The treehouse is better insulated from it than I expected.

“You can totally say no.”

“Okay.”

“Um.” I nod, acknowledging that there’s no going back now. “Do you think that maybe, um, I could, like, kiss you? Just, like, to see?” I feel like I’m sitting on a downed power tower, like I’m buzzing.

She looks at me with the same wide-eyed astonishment as when she was holding in her first hit. “I guess — I guess so.”

“Really?” I ask incredulously.

She takes another big gulp of air.

“Sure, what the hell. It’s about time I get going in this department, right?”

I giggle. “Glad to be of service?”

We pause awkwardly for a second.

“So, are you going to —?”

I don’t have the patience to wait for her to finish the sentence before I grab her face with both hands and kiss her. I grasp handfuls of her hair as I kiss her hard. I pull away for a moment, resting my forehead on hers, searching her lips, their improbable color. She kisses back and it frightens me how much I want to keep kissing her. This is an unbearable kiss, unbearable, unreal, unimaginable. Tentatively, I part her lips with my tongue, meeting hers. She doesn’t resist; her tongue tastes sweet. I can feel her beginning to respond. She arches her back a little, and I can feel her small breasts press against mine. I imagine for a moment what they must look like under her dress: brown, round, perfect, her nipples like twin figs.

I feel her hand rest on my midsection, cautious as a moth’s landing. I pull her closer. It doesn’t seem like she wants to let go, either. This is what it feels like to be completely human, I think breathlessly as I grasp her. Rowie’s face is so soft, so much softer than Charlie’s or any other boy’s. Her skin is like warm caramel in my hands. No Camry, no Leinkugels, no cops, just this girl and her impossible handfuls of black hair and her delicate hand on my waist. I tingle inside out; I pull away to catch my breath. I look her dead in the dark velvet morass of her eyes. She is so luminous I can’t speak. Rowie is alive in a way I’ve never seen a person be alive; she emanates something sweet and warm and the color of tea, something that smolders, something I lack. Something I’ve always been missing.

“Does that help?” she asks. She smiles. Her white teeth are chattering a little, terrified and exuberant.

I nod. “What about you?” I manage.

“No,” Rowie says, just before she leans in and kisses me again.