“Oh, hey, hon.” She smiles. It’s a warm smile that’s also her way of hiding when her brain is trying to figure out what to say to me. “How were your classes?”
“Fine.”
“Yeah? Anything interesting?”
I can see her trying. She tilts her head the same way Cinna does when she’s listening. Except when Cinna does it, it feels natural. When Mom does it with me, it feels like she’s remembering a technique from her counselor training. Active listening. Open body language. Make the client feel heard.
“Just the usual stuff,” I say. I take a sip of water so I have a reason not to explain.
“Are you, um…” She pauses, and I can see her searching for the next question. “Are you eating enough? You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. Good.” She squeezes my shoulder as she passes. “Let me know if you need anything.” She goes upstairs. I listen to the creak of each step and count them. Fourteen. Then the soft click of her bedroom door.
The kitchen is quiet. One of her lavender candles is burning on the counter, and the flame throws a small circle of light onto the backsplash. With a sigh, I rinse my glass and head for the basement.
The basement den is the one room in this house where Mom and June never go. Carter claimed it when he first came to live with us, after my aunt died. My favorite thing about it is the one bare bulb on a pull-chain switch. When Carter pulls it, the bulb throws a small, warm circle across the sectional and leaves the rest of the room alone. It’s dumb, but I like that defined circle of light, and it’s my choice whether I sit under it or not. Carter doesn’t care at all if I hide in the shadows.
He’s on the sectional with his feet on the coffee table, a beer in his hand, his head tipped back against the cushion. The beer he’s technically too young to buy. Dorien is on the other end, rolling a joint. He’s sitting in the bulb’s warm circle, and the light catches his hands.
Carter is half in shadow, half in the bulb’s reach, which is such a Carter position, straddling two worlds without effort.
“Hey.” Carter lifts his beer toward me when I come down the stairs. “Grab a seat.”
I drop into the worn recliner across from them. Dorien lights the joint, takes a puff, and passes it to me. I take it because this is our routine now.
The weed loosens me up. The room’s shadows deepen and soften at the same time, and the bulb’s circle of light on the ceiling looks rounder. My body settles into the recliner and my shoulders drop an inch.
But my thoughts don’t settle. Dorien seems to enjoy weed but maybe I’m doing it wrong? It loosens my body but makes thoughts sharper—and what’s in my head is Morrison saying my name in front of the whole class, the silence that followed, June’s look, and Mom in the kitchen doing her best impression of a mother who knows her son.
The weed doesn’t take any of that away. It just makes me sink into it deeper. My body is so chill all I can focus on is the damn thoughts.
I take another puff and pass the joint back to Dorien. What I want is the opposite. I want a drug that will lift me out of my own head and make the thoughts stop. Maybe weed does that for Dorien, but it’s just not working the same for me.
Should I… try other drugs?
“You’re quiet,” Carter says without looking my way.
“I’m always quiet.”
“Quieter than your normal quiet.”
Dorien lays back on the couch and blows smoke at the ceiling. “Yeah. What’s up?” he asks.
I shove my hands into my jeans pockets. “Something stupid. I got called out in class for not paying attention. It’s art school so I should be allowed to, I don’t know, makeart.”
“What teacher?” Dorien asks.
“Morrison.”
He winces. “Oof. Morrison doesn’t play.” He exhales more smoke toward the ceiling, watching it curl in the bulb’s light. “What were you sketching?”
“Just… some trees.”
Dorien lets out a short laugh through his nose. “Since when do you draw trees?”
Carter smirks. “He was drawing boobs and he knows it.”