“We should be lawyers together,” Aaron said. “Pardis and . . . what’s your last name?”
“Gilner.”
“Pardis and Gilner.”
“Okay.”
We shook hands, maintaining our stride, nearly clothesline-ing a frilled-up little girl walking in the other direction. Then we turned up Church Street and rented this reality DVD, Life Against Death, which had a lot of cliffs, as well as fires, animal attacks, and skydiving accidents. I sat propped in Aaron’s bed, him smoking pot and me refusing, feeding off him, telling him that I thought I was getting a contact high when really I was just feeling like I had stepped into a new groove. At cool parts of Life Against Death we paused and zoomed in: on the hearts of explosions, spinning wheels after truck crashes, and one guy freaking out in a gorilla cage and getting a rock thrown at him. We talked about making our own movie someday.
I didn’t go to sleep until four, but I was in someone else’s house, so I woke up early—at eight—with that crazy sleeping-at-someone-else’s-house energy. I passed Aaron’s father at his computer and grabbed a book off their shelf in the living room—Latin Roots. I studied Latin Roots all morning, for the test.
We kept doing it. It became a regular thing. We never formalized it, never named it . . . but on Fridays Aaron would call and ask me to watch movies. I think he was lonely. Whatever he was, he became the one person I wanted to stay in touch with after junior high. And now, a year later, I was in my kitchen holding my acceptance letter and wondering if he had one too.
“I’ll call Aaron,” I told Mom.
eight
“What up, son? Did you get in?!”
“Yeah.”
“Allriiiiiiiight!”
“Hoooooooo—ee!”
“Biyatch!”
“That’s right!”
“But you studied. I didn’t study at all,” he was like.
“True. I should feel lucky to talk to you. You’re kind of like Hercules.”
“Yeah, cleaning the stables. I’m having a party.”
“When? Tonight?”
“Yup. My parents are away. I have the whole house. You’re coming, right?”
“A real party? Without a cake?”
“Absolutely.”
“Sure!” I was in eighth grade and I had gotten into high school and I was going to a party? I was set for life!
“Can you bring any booze?”
“Like drinks?”
“Craig, c’mon. Yes. Can you bring?”
“I don’t have ID.”
“Craig, none of us have ID! I mean, can you take some off your parents?”
“I don’t think they have any . . .” But I knew that wasn’t true.
“They have something.”
I held my hand over my cell so Mom wouldn’t hear. “Scotch. They have a bottle of scotch.”
“What kind?”
“Jeez, dude, I don’t know.”
“Well, bring it. Can you call any girls?”
I had been in my room studying for a year. “No.”
“That’s all right, I’ll bring the girls. You want to at least help me set up?”
“Sure!”
“Get over here.”
“I’m going to Aaron’s house!” I announced to Mom, flipping my phone shut. I still had the welcome packet in my hand; I gave it to her to put in my room.
“What are you going to do over there?” she asked, beaming at the packet, then at me.
“Um . . . sleep over.”
“Are you going to celebrate? Because you should celebrate.”
“Heh. Yeah.”
“Craig, I’m being honest, I’ve never seen someone work as hard as you did getting into this school. You deserve a little break and you deserve to feel proud of yourself. You’re gifted, and the world is taking notice. This is the first step in an amazing journey—”
“Okay, Mom, please.” I hugged her.
I grabbed my coat and sat at the kitchen table, pretending to text on the phone. When Mom left the room, I invaded the cabinet above the sink, took out the one bottle of scotch (Glenlivet), and fetched from the back of the cupboard the thermos that I used to use for grade-school lunches. That would seem really cool at the party. I poured some scotch in and I put a little water back in the scotch, in case they checked levels, and stuffed the thermos in my big jacket pocket before leaving the house and calling back to Mom that I would call her later.
I took the subway to Aaron’s without a book to study on my lap—first time in a year. At his stop, I bounded up the stairs into the gray streets, slipped into his building, nodded to the doorman to call up, and squished my thumb on the elevator button, giving it a twist and some flair. At the sixteenth floor was Aaron, holding his front door open, rap music about killing people on in the background, holding his metal cigarette out for me.
“Smoke. Celebrate.”
I stopped.
“If anytime’s the time, it’s now.”
I nodded.
“Come in, I’ll show you.” Aaron brought me into his house and sat me on his couch and demonstrated how to hold the cigarette so the metal wouldn’t burn me. He explained how you have to take the smoke into your lungs, not your stomach—“Don’t swallow it, Craig, that’s how hits get lost”—and how to let it go as slowly as you could through your mouth or nose. The key was to hold it in as long as possible. But you didn’t want to hold it too long. Then you coughed.
“How do I light it?” I asked.
“I’ll light it for you,” Aaron was like. He knelt in front of me on the couch—I took a look at his living room, fenced in with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled up with a coffee table, a tall fluted ash tray, a porcelain dog, and a small electric piano—trying to remember how it all looked in case it changed later. The only thing I had done that people said was kind of like smoking pot was go really hard on the swings, and Aaron had told me that anyone who said that was probably high when they were on the swings.
The butane flame went up.
I sucked in on the metal cigarette as if a doctor were telling me to.
My mouth filled up with the taste that I knew so well from Aaron’s room—a chemical taste, buzzy and light. I looked him in the eyes with my cheeks puffed out. He clipped the flame, smiling.
“Not in your cheeks!” he said. “You look like Dizzy Gillespie! In your lungs! Put it in your lungs.”
I worked with new muscles. The smoke in me felt like a blob of clay.
“That’s it, hold it, hold it. . .”
My eyes started watering, getting hot.
“Hold it. Hold it. You want more?”
I shook my head, terrified. Aaron laughed.
“Okay. Dude, you’re good. You’re good, dude!”
Pfffffffffflt. I blew it all in Aaron’s face.
“Jesus! Man, that was big!” Aaron swatted at the cloud that came out of me. “You sure you haven’t done this before?”
I panted, breathing in air that still had the smoke in it. “What’s going to happen?” I asked.
“Probably nothing.” Aaron stood up, took his cigarette back, put it in the stand-up ash tray. Then he reached down with his hand out—I expected a handshake, but he pulled me off the couch. “Congratulations.”
We hugged, mouth to ear. It was a guy hug, complete with slapping. I leaned back and smiled at him as I clasped his arms.