“Cool,” Kat says. “See you in five.”
We hang up, and exactly five minutes later, the garage door growls open. I smile to myself. Good to know she still remembers the code.
“Murph?” Kat’s voice bounces off the vaulted ceilings, along with the sound of her shoes hitting the baseboards as she kicks them off. “You in your room?”
“Yup.”
“Coming.” Moments later, the shuffle of her socks across the hardwood turns to echoey thuds up the stairs and, finally, the squeal of my door being nudged open. “Knock knock?” Kat walks in, bringing the smell of both Ben and Jerry with her. Some sort of cookies and cream ordeal, if I had to guess.
“Did you bring your ice cream?”
“Nah, I scarfed it in the car,” she admits. “I didn’t want to be the asshole showing up with only a pint for myself.”
“We could’ve shared,” I point out.
“Yeah right. Cool if I borrow shorts?” I’m not sure why she bothers asking, and before I can respond, she’s tugging open the bottom-left dresser drawer, digging for her favorite—aworn-down pair of shorts with my parents’ alma mater printed across the butt. Luckily, they’re clean, and she shimmies out of her jeans and tugs them on before plopping down next to me, my fluffy white comforter giving a puff of air. “It smells like weed in here.”
“Are you surprised?” I hold up the joint in one hand and my Zippo in the other. “Wanna smoke this?”
Her shoulders bounce up an inch. “Sure, I’m not driving. Inside or outside?”
“Inside.” I throw back the covers and swing my feet over the side. “It’s too cold.”
“Your parents won’t mind?
“They would, but they’re not here. We can just blow out the window or whatever.”
I flip the lock on the window and muscle it open a few inches, bristling at the cold air leaking in. “We better smoke fast.” I crouch down, blocking the wind with one hand and holding the Zippo in the other till the joint drooping from my lips crackles and burns.
“God, I missed the Zippo.” Kat shakes her head at half tempo. “I need to buy one. I get so annoyed when the wind keeps blowing it out and you have to…” She mimes flicking a lighter again and again, her thumbnail scraping against the bend of her pointer finger. “You know?”
“Yeah, you need a Zippo,” I agree through the sides of my mouth, lips rolled in and joint firmly in place. When I exhale, I press my mouth as close to the window screen as I can, release the smoke into the twilight, then pass to Kat. “This shit makes me feel eighteen again.”
Her eyes hang low and unimpressed. “You say it like it was so long ago.”
“It feels like long ago.”
“I guess. Things aren’t that different though.” Kat looks me up and down, the lit joint dangling between her fingers. “I mean, you’re still the same.”
“Yeah,” I grunt, glaring at my softball trophies. “I’ve been feeling that a little too much lately.”
“No, it’s a good thing,” Kat reassures me. “And I think I’m the same in most ways too, right? I mean, I think we both changed, like, a little. But in similar ways? And another—”
“You gonna talk or you gonna smoke?”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” She takes a long drag and practically kisses the screen when she exhales. “Anyway, when we were eighteen, we were already smoking in my basement. So this is more like seventeen.”
We’re not stoned yet, but we laugh like we are, then smoke like we desperately need to be. In less time than it took for Kat to get here, we’ve burned this thing down to the filter.
“All right, I think it’s done,” Kat says, coughing between every two syllables. “All right.”Cough. “I think.”Cough. “It’s done.”Cough.
I make the gimme motion, tapping four fingers against my open palm until Kat passes it back.
“Yeah, that’s pretty roachy.” I grind the barely lit end into the only spot in the house my mother won’t notice ash: the little gap of space between the sill and the screen. “Don’t tell Susan.”
“Oh, I’m calling her immediately,” Kat jokes, pressingbuttons on an invisible phone and holding it to her ear. “Hello, 911? Your daughter put a joint out in your window.”
“Wait.” I choke back a laugh. “You called 911, not my mom.”
