Jack Jordan said things to her like There’s a science to it one minute, then would say Come on, Summer, this ain’t brain surgery the next. Before coming to a new town, he’d sit her down and analyze each and every step they’d taken, as if he were the only one taking it. He’d talk about the data he’d collected, or try to draw a correlation between how much money they’d made against how much trouble they’d stirred up. However, truth be told, they both stood in the same rocking boat. They both flew by the seat of their pants.

Summer knew better: there was no goddamn science to it at all.

If anything remotely resembling a formula to success existed in this racket, Summer felt she could chalk it up to Being a Good Person or To Thine Own Self Be True, but even she saw through that line of bullshit. Wasn’t nobody true to nothing, least of all thine own self.

Jack, bless his heart, hadn’t the same head for it that she did. Oh, he had a pretty face and was great in a nightclub or a college classroom, or someplace more genteel. He had a head for numbers and the clandestine arts, such as marketing or branding, but put him in a room with more than two people and a mess of drugs and he’d find himself stranded. Alone. He’d get the sweats, or a bad case of the fidgets. He’d draw into himself and suddenly the sharks would circle. He’d be ripe for the picking.

For this reason, among others, Jack insisted he stay behind at the trailer while Summer set out to ply her trade.

“I don’t think your friends care too much for me,” he said as he collapsed into the sofa once they returned to the living room. He reached beneath it and produced a small tray scattered with stems, seeds, and maybe a little shake. “If it’s all the same, I’ll wait here while you run back and sell them those two eight-balls.”

“It’s only been a week,” said Summer. “They hardly know you.”

“So they won’t miss me if I stay home and get high.”

Summer rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid, Jackie. You have no intention of staying home. I bet I’m not halfway down the road before you’re up and dressed and headed to that enchilada joint to talk up that waitress. We’ve eaten there every night since we came to Lufkin and I know Mexican food don’t sit right with you. You came back here so you could see her. Admit it.”

“I came back here so they won’t know we had the shit on us,” said Jack. “Remember, everybody wants to be a coke dealer but don’t nobody want to sell coke.”

Summer nearly tripped over her own feet at Jack’s wisdom.

“Last thing we need,” he continued, “is the phone ringing off the hook at all hours of the night because some redneck hadn’t the wherewithal to properly plan his evening.”

“Unfortunately, that’s the nature of the business.”

“But it don’t have to be our business.” Jack packed a bowl and sparked it. “I say every time somebody wants to score, we tell them we have to get it from our guy. We wait an hour, then roll back with the shit.”

“I thought you were against doing things the hard way.”

“I’m against somebody getting coked up and brave, then deciding to roll over here to try to take it from us.” Jack took a hit and passed the pipe. Summer waved it off. “With any luck, we won’t be driving across town for eight-balls and grams much longer. Hopefully, we’ll be shed of this kilo and settled in with something sustainable.”

Summer did what she could to talk him into riding with her, but it was no use. Once his yen for chips and queso took hold of him, there’d be no shaking him loose of it. She knew there’d be trouble the first time that waitress laughed at one of his shitty jokes. How he’d gone clear out of his way to mention he and Summer were family, not the other. How he’d get up to shake a leak and be gone longer than fifteen minutes sometimes, and Summer would have to fetch her own refills.

So be it. She and Jack had different principles, different goals. They were two different animals. If she fancied she were a creature with a natural habitat, that habitat would be living rooms. Apartments, houses, trailer parks…didn’t matter, so long as it had a living room, cram-packed with people, thick sheaves of green smoke, and idle chatter. Maybe a mirror or a picture frame laid out on a coffee table or text book, with a skinny finger of white powder carved atop its surface and a rolled-up dollar bill. Not Jack. He had considerable more trouble with environments such as those. The first time they’d met, back in Charlottesville, had been in a living room. In he came, wide-eyed, with pockets full of cash, sent by some other boys from the dorms to score. With a different name back then, but in over his head all the same. The two guys in charge were a couple no-counts, and they’d isolated her in the kitchen. Keep him stoned, they told her, and we’ll jack him, then split the money three ways.

In rooms such as these, Summer could maneuver. Hunt. Thrive.

Getting in was hardly a problem. Earlier that day, she’d thrown on her dirtiest Grateful Dead t-shirt, then marched down to the campus commons area to dance to no music until finally a white boy in the midst of a Rasta phase stopped to compliment her on her hat. She latched onto him, refusing to let go until he and a couple of his pals brought her to an apartment on the edge of town so they could smoke out.

At the door, Summer ran through the same routine as always. A finger parting the shades, then an eyeball.

“You know you have to tell me if you’re a cop or not,” said the girl who answered the door. Kathy. “It’s the law.”

That was not true and Summer knew it. “I know,” said Summer, “and I’m not a cop. Would a cop have a sack full of this?”

And she was admitted into the apartment. Kathy’s boyfriend was a guy named Matt, three sizes scrawnier than she. Scared of his own shadow, poor thing. He took the bowl she’d packed and hit it, perked up his eyes and said, “This is good weed. Where’d you get it?”

“Duncanville, back where I’m from. It’s south of Dallas. Hey, you’re supposed to pass it to Crunch. Always pass the bowl to the left. Only pass to the right in a time of fight.”

“What?” asked Kathy.

“I learned that following Phish,” said Summer.

“Whoa,” said the boyfriend, Matt. “You followed Phish?”

“For a few years,” said Summer. “No big deal. And I’m not talking about that thing running around right now calling themselves Phish, although I love Trey and Jon and Mike very much. I’m talking about the original Phish. You know, before all the hipsters starting following them.”

Everyone nodded.

“What was it like?” asked Crunch’s friend, Lance.

“It was wonderful,” said Summer. “Imagine, like, all of the love in the entire world, but humming and vibrating inside one amphitheater. It’s like a song heard for the first time, but thirty thousand people know the words to it. It’s like a big hug from Jerry. A big, warm, cosmic hug.”

“Jerry?”

“Oh dear,” murmured Summer, “how old are you kids?”

Kathy butted in. “No, no, no. I mean, why did you call him Crunch? His name is Dario.”

Summer looked at Dario/Crunch and shrugged. “When I met this crazy cool cat back on campus, I told him he didn’t look like a Dario. He looked more like a Crunch. So I named him Crunch.”

“I like this girl,” said Kathy as she took a hit off the pipe. She took another, then passed it. “Let me ask you a question. If you and me were to swap cells one by one, at what point do you suppose I would stop being me and you would stop being you?”

“You just blew my mind!” squealed Summer. She threw her arms around Kathy. “Crunch, you guys told me your friends were cool, but you never told me they were like Tundra cool!”

“Crunch…” Kathy turned her head to the side. “I like it. No, I love it.”

Queen Bee: neutralized.

For the next order of business, Summer turned her sack upside down and dropped the clumpy green buds to the tray full of stems and refuse. “We can smoke this entire sack,” she told the room, “but first we need to make sure I’m able to get more. So who’s got the hookup?”

Summer found these rooms easy to command. At that age, most folks’ belief in who they were or would become was malleable. Even if they had a firm grasp on their identities, who they were while high could still shift like putty in Summer’s hands. Take for instance Crunch’s friend Lance. That guy had been Mr. Chatterbox while on campus, but once inserted into the smoky living room amongst a few folks he knew, a few folks he didn’t, Lance had nothing to say. He took a bit longer to get the joke. He’d stare at things with more intensity than necessary. He’d start sentences, only to abandon them.

Or Dealer, once they’d journeyed to his apartment. Dealer, not because it was a nickname, but rather a surname. Kevin Dealer. He’d said upon meeting her, “If you’re looking for a hookup, I’m in the phone book under Dealer.” He laughed at it a bit harder than the rest of the folks in his apartment, those who had heard it several times before.

Kevin Dealer was the kind of guy who liked to keep people around him. People like the two guys with multiple piercings through their faces who chattered nonstop in the kitchen. Or the couple townie girls who stared, glassy-eyed, at the other fella who sat alone at the coffee table, meticulously rolling a joint. Summer, Crunch, and her present company increased the population of the tiny apartment by six.

Dealer liked to keep folks entertained. He didn’t care who did the entertaining, but he couldn’t handle a lull in the conversation. Summer had no problem obliging. She understood there was no such thing as too high. If folks weren’t high enough to do her bidding or find her interesting, she’d pack another bowl. Roll another joint. Rinse, dry, repeat, until she got her way.

Dealer twitched again at the lull and Summer was eager to keep him happy. Him and everyone else, so she sat them down cross-legged on the carpet and promised to tell them something she’d never told anyone. Each of them leaned forward while Summer told them all about Luther.

“Who’s Luther?” asked the brunette townie girl.

“Is that the old dude you meet at that Tex-Mex joint over in Lufkin?” asked Crunch.

“No, that’s just Jack. My roommate.” She put unnecessary emphasis on that last word. “Luther is my guardian. My protector.”

“Like a bodyguard?”

“A bouncer?”

“Similar,” Summer smiled, “except that Luther is not from this planet.”

Some of the glassy eyes—not all of them, some—got glassier. She hurried along another bowl with the shake scattered across the tray, then passed it. To the left.

“How many of you believe in aliens?” she asked the room. Some put up their hands, some didn’t. Dealer did his best to steer the conversation toward an episode of The X-Files that he sort of remembered, but Summer refused to give up the reins. “I don’t blame you for not believing in them,” she said. “I didn’t myself, not at first. But I don’t have that luxury no more. Not since I woke up that night and there was an alien standing next to my bed, and ever since, I believe in them, let me tell you.”

“Whaaaaaaaat?” went half the room.

“I’m not lying,” said Summer, picking up steam. “And he didn’t look like they do in the movies. You know, with big heads and big eyes. No, Luther looked a lot like us, except he didn’t have to talk with his mouth.”

“What did he say?” asked the blonde townie girl. “Or not say, I mean.”

“It wasn’t words.” The bowl made its way again to Summer. She kissed it, barely dragging a hit, before quickly passing it again. To the left. “But I knew Luther wasn’t there to hurt me. In fact, he wanted to protect me. And he does, even still. He’s saved my life so many times…I owe everything to him.”

No one spoke. Not even the ones who suspected she might be full of it.

“And I’ve never told anyone that story.”

Everything out of her mouth, of course, was a lie. Especially the part about not telling anyone. In fact, she’d recounted her Luther story at every drum circle and jam band concert for the past ten years. At tailgate parties and curtained apartments or mobile homes in cities and towns sprinkled across the South. Give them a little crazy, she always said, and they’ll love you forever. They’ll make you their mascot. She believed if she offered up her flaws from the get-go, they wouldn’t rush headlong in search of others.

However, she also understood the importance of leaving them wanting more.

“What do you say we step into the other room?” she said to Dealer. “Take care of business in private?”

Dealer agreed. Much to the chagrin of her new audience, they stepped into a bedroom down the hallway. Mattress on the floor, much like his clothes. Tattered girly pictures masking-taped to the wall. A trashcan flipped to be used as a tabletop, the contents pushed into a corner. Atop the so-called table, a tray full of stems and seeds, and an ethics textbook sporting a rolled-up dollar bill.

“Your girlfriend doesn’t live here, does she?”

“Mandy lives in the dorms,” said Dealer, unaware of her point. “You said you’re looking for some weed. I can get you a slice anytime you want.”

Summer was still eyeballing the rolled-up dollar bill, saw the textbook had been licked clean.

“What is a slice?” she asked.

“Eighths,” said Dealer.

Summer crinkled her nose and squinted her eyes. “Why do you call them slices?”

“Because they slice into a quarter.”

“Why not just sell a teenth?”

“Because this is Nacogdoches, not SMU. Folks around here don’t like paying for teenths. They like paying for slices. But I can get you a quarter sack if you want one.”

“I’m looking for a bit more than a quarter sack,” Summer said. “As you can tell, I got my habits.”

“If you give me enough notice, I can maybe get you an ounce. Let me see what I can do.” He commenced texting on his phone.

“I don’t want to pay for four quarters to get that ounce, if you catch my drift. Shit, I can remember the days when I thought it was called a quarter sack because it cost twenty-five dollars. Those days are long gone, ain’t they now?”

“Sweetheart,” said Dealer, “this ain’t schwag I’m slinging. This is Snowcaps.”

“Snowcaps?” Summer shook her head. “Save that chatter for the freshmen, man. I don’t fall for cute little names. Why the hell do you call it Snowcaps?”

“Because when you smoke it,” he told her, “you get so high you can see the tops of the mountains.”

Summer laughed through her nose. “I don’t have time for all that. What I want is some real weight. Because I smoke a bunch, man. I smoke a bunch, and if I want to sell off a little to pay for my habit, then what’s the harm? Right?”

“I feel you,” said Dealer, “but I ain’t the one who sells that kind of weight, bro. I’m in grad school. I ain’t Joe Pot Dealer.”

“Maybe you can introduce me to the guy.” She unrolled the dollar bill on the makeshift table and ran a finger along the inside of it. Tasted chalk. Knew she had the goods on whatever shit they rolled through town. “I can make it worth your while.”

“I…I don’t know,” said Dealer. “These guys are real paranoid.”

“Everybody’s real paranoid,” said Summer. “Now hit that pipe again.”

 

AN HOUR later found her in yet another living room in yet another apartment, this one across town. Her group, having grown by four members, like a stoner snowball hurtling down a mountain, then shed, as Dealer warned her not to travel in a crowd. Not to meet these guys.

“But Crunch is harmless,” said Summer of the people she’d only just met.

“Yeah, but Gumm and Little Jon aren’t.” Dealer stood on the landing and waited to ring the doorbell. “Best ditch them here and you and me head out alone. These guys here, they’re the sort that can get you anything, anything at all. You know, one time I heard they got a guy a kidney.” He lifted her chin with his finger, brought her eyes up to his, then said, “A kidney.”

This apartment was a world apart from the others. This one, spic and span, everything in its place. The walls, clean and white, with only a framed picture of a velvet bullfighter on a corner wall and a photograph of Nolan Ryan on the opposite. One couch, two recliners, and a TV with a stereo setup from another planet.

Little Jon was Orca fat, a big guy stuffed into a La-Z-Boy with nary a single intention other than the screen of his video game. Gumm was more go-get-em. He dressed preppy. Penny loafers. Khakis. Socks barely kissing his ankles.

Gumm paced the carpet.

“A new year brings new friends.” Gumm’s voice dripped molasses. “I’d rather live nowhere else than a college town, truth be told. Can you imagine living amongst the same people, year in and year out, until someone was kind enough to sweetly die? Not I.”

Summer’s fingers fumbled as she plucked from her sack to pack a bowl, but Gumm motioned her away with his hand. He reached into a crinkled brown paper sack and pulled out what had to be a pound, shrink-wrapped tight except for one end which had been torn open, almost as if chewed. Bricked. He scratched off a good bit, then loaded an oversized glass pipe. He handed her the lighter.

“And there will always be a living to be made in a college town,” continued Gumm. “So long as there are waiters and bartenders, bouncers and cab drivers. Or hookers, DJs, college professors trying to recapture elusive youth and free thought. Freshmen, burnouts…Young Republicans and Student Democrats. You know what every one of them has in common? They are all looking for new ways to get shit-faced.”

“Damn, this is good shit,” she said, holding her breath. “Man…it’s really good.”

“We get it from this old boy down in Austin,” said Gumm.

“What do you call it?”

“I don’t name weed,” said Gumm. “That’s for children. You want some? I can get you a great deal.”

Summer blinked twice. She blinked again.

Said Gumm, “Anything you want.”

“You guys get Molly?”

Gumm nodded. “We get something way better than Molly. We got ecstasy.”

“I thought ecstasy and Molly were the same thing.”

“No, ecstasy is the real deal,” said Gumm. “Molly is ecstasy cut with bath salts or some other bullshit. The stuff we can get is one hundred percent pure.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You’ve got to meet Matlin.” Gumm looked over his shoulder at his roommate, yet to look up from the video game. “L.J., don’t you think Summer and Matlin would get along well?”

If Little Jon heard him, he did not let on.

“What about coke?” asked Summer, dipping in her toe. “Y’all get into that at all?”

“Who doesn’t like coke?” smiled Gumm. “How much do you want?”

“How much for an eight-ball?”

Gumm sussed numbers in his head. “I can get you one for two bills, no problem.”

“No problem for you, maybe,” she said. “But it’s a problem for me if I don’t want to pay two hundred.”

“This isn’t Austin, baby,” said Gumm. “You’ll have a rough time finding coke on the cheap out here. Maybe every once in a while some undergrad gets in over his head and has to move a large chunk on the fly, sells it cheap. That stuff goes pretty quick, and it doesn’t happen often.”

“Funny,” she said, “but I met a guy today who said he could get me an eight-ball for one-fifty. Anytime, night or day.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch, so far as I can tell,” she said. “He said if someone wanted two of them, it’s only two seventy-five.”

Gumm whistled low.

“Things break down the higher you go, I reckon,” said Summer.

“How much for an ounce?”

“I ain’t never asked him for an ounce,” she said. “Me? I’m kind of small time.”

“You mind asking?”

“I don’t mind at all,” she said. “But he’s going to want to know you ain’t goofing around.”

Gumm side-eyed her. “How do I know you ain’t a cop? New in town and all of a sudden you’ve got the best hookup?”

Summer shrugged and dropped an eight-ball onto the coffee table. She tapped out a touch of blow, scraped a rail with the edge of her driver’s license, then took it up her face. She stood, wiping her nostril, and faced him.

“I ain’t no cop.”

Gumm looked over his shoulder at Little Jon, who had paused his video game.

“Then I suppose I’m not goofing around.”

Aaaand just like that: Kingpin.

So yes, Summer knew her way around rooms such as those. When the joint or bowl or bong was being passed, when things like hygiene and pest control and homework went out the window in favor of a good buzz, when folks got chatty or quiet or weird…Summer knew how to handle herself. She could walk into any of those rooms with nothing and step out with a new lease on life. Someone’s life, anyway.

For long ago, in a room such as that, halfway across the country, she had met Jack Jordan. And she had called him outside, pulled him into the hallway of a dingy student apartment in Charlottesville, Virginia and told him the score. Told him he may think he knows everything, but he didn’t know shit because he and his money would soon be parted. She watched his face burn and his cheeks flush and listened as he made several promises to the heavens about what he would do and how he would do it, but she put her hand on his arm and told him otherwise.

“If you really want to teach them a lesson,” she had told him way back then, “you’ll let them cheat you this one time. You’ll let them cheat you this time and hell, maybe even the next time, and when we’re ready to make our move, they won’t see you coming.”

Stepping outside the door of Gumm and Little Jon’s apartment, she felt much the same way. The same exhilaration. One that never got old. The first of many scores in a small town. How she could walk into any strange town, reach down to pull up her bootstraps, and make something of herself.

She ran home to Jack to tell him the good news.