“Easy, easy. Don’t blow up that big college brain of yours. Come, check this view out.”
He patted the ground beside him. Another pat and I relented and sat down. Ezra was likable, even when he was being a jerk. We lay side by side on the ground like kids in the snow, looking up at the patchwork sky.
“So you’re saying,” he persisted, “you’re picky because you have standards. But I wonder. Is. That. Really. It.” He stroked his chin, faux-meditatively. “Or is it more that you’re waiting for someone to look at you a certain way?”
“Who?” It was almost a shout. I could feel my face reddening.
“Who?” he repeated.
“You two sound like owls, who-who-ing,” said a deep voice. Ezra and I strained our necks to see HP standing by our feet.
“Where’d you come from?” My voice sounded squeaky.
“The fire.”
“We’re making pine angels,” I mumbled.
“I see that.”
“I tried to make out with your buddy here, but she shut me down. Rude.” Ezra scrambled to his feet, dusting needles from the back of his pants. “I was just getting to the bottom of why she’d do that, since if I wasn’t me, I’d hit on me. Right?”
“You’re asking would I hit on you?” HP picked up a pinecone, considered it for a moment, then whipped it into the trees.
Ezra paused. When he spoke again he sounded cautious. “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“Skinny-dipping, I think. A dare.”
“Dude! Here, take this.” Ezra tossed a rolled-up plastic bag from his pocket at HP. “I’ll see you guys back at the fire. Or tomorrow, on the other side. Whichever comes first.” He hurried off down the path towards the fire pit and the lake, leaving HP and me alone.
“Skinny-dipping, huh?”
“Yep.”
We sat knee-against-knee, the tree behind our backs. HP was wearing his signature pale-blue hoodie, the crest of his blond hair fluffy from an afternoon swimming in the lake water. The light in the woods was dusky, not dark, and shadows skittered on the forest floor.
“Didn’t want to join her, huh?”
“Didn’t want to make out with him, huh?” HP banged his knees together, bumping mine.
“I’m picky.”
“I told you he was into you.”
“He’s not into me. He’s drunk and eighteen.”
“Shit, Little John. Take a compliment for once.” He unrolled the plastic bag Ezra had given him and sniffed inside it. “Oh, no. That’s not good.”
I took the bag and held it up in the shadows. “What is that? It smells like . . . mold.”
“Magic mushrooms. Want to try some?”
HP wasn’t a drug kind of guy—that one time we got high was an anomaly. HP was too athletic, too competitive, too 10k-run-before-school. He took out a dried, papery mushroom and bit the end of it, chewing like a camel.
“Not so bad. Here, try one. What’s the worst that can happen?”
We stared at each other as we chewed.
“They taste like the stuff they put on your tongue in church,” I said.
“They taste like dusty cow patties.”
“How many of those have you eaten before?”
“How often do you go to church?”
We sniggered and HP took my hand.
“Let’s hold tight,” he said, and in that moment we left everyone at the party behind and it became him and me and the night ahead.
I’m sorry to go on about recreational drugs in a police station, Detective Novak; I know that’s inappropriate. But this is about me and HP. This is our story, even if it has taken enough twists that I’m telling it in here. There’s a unique closeness that comes from two friends doing drugs like that together, and I don’t care if that’s illegal. HP and I were already close—always had been—but with our minds adjusted we clung to each other as if we were visitors on this planet and mutually surprised by it.
Ezra had said once that taking mushrooms was like dipping the sponge of your brain into more water, a metaphor I thought was dumb until I knew what he meant. Every day the world dances around you, a semaphore sending signals, offering beauty, waiting to be noticed, but your undistorted brain can’t process the gifts and sends them back unopened. There’s a whole other dimension on offer every minute, and on drugs your head tilts and shows you what’s out there. I haven’t done mushrooms since then and probably won’t ever again; I had my night. What’s the point of doing something twice when it’s been done perfectly the first time? It’s the same reason I won’t fall in love now.
We spent a lot of that night up on a tree platform, looking down as people milled on the path below us while music pumped from speakers with a bass beat that pulsed inside my skin. HP’s face seemed mottled in blue-green algae, and I was sure the platform was a raft, adrift on a gentle sea. Time blurred unhelpfully and neither of us had a watch. As night pushed further towards morning, the lantern lights in all the trees fizzed and faded like a colony of eyes shutting.
I turned to HP. “I think I can climb down the rope now.” I tucked my hair behind my ears and felt it tickle my earlobes.
“Let’s try. Wow, your eyes are amazing. They’re slate gray. And it’s, like, morning and I’m not even hungry. What’s up with that?”
HP reached forwards and grabbed the top of the rope ladder. Gingerly he stretched down, ramming his sneaker onto a foothold. Then he waited for me, guiding my skate shoe until it felt safe. The pine needles were spongy under our feet as we walked out of the woods past clusters of grads smoking joints, their legs plaited together, girls’ heads on boys’ shoulders.
The fire pit smoked alone, beer cans littering the circle. We walked beyond it holding hands. At the top of the smooth curve of hill was a patch of grass where we threw ourselves onto our knees.
“Tell me something real,” I said.
HP rubbed his jaw, which glinted golden with stubble. “Want to know my first name?” He paused. “H is for Hamish. My grandfather’s a Scot.”
“Hamish Parker.” I grinned. “I can’t believe it took you so long to tell me.”
“Well, you earned it.” He turned his head, squinting. “Although you could have asked the school secretary. I’m pretty sure it’s in all the records.”
We laughed. After a pause I spoke again.
“What was your brother’s name?”
HP closed his eyes. “Thomson. He was blonder than me and funner.”
It was all he’d say.