Mason wanted to score some weed and it was his van, so they headed downtown. The teenagers slid around on the sideways seat in the back. Mason parked downtown somewhere. Girl had no idea where she was, but there were tall buildings so it must have been close to the city center. Anchorage didn’t have many buildings over five stories because they were on the Pacific Ring of Fire and got earthquakes all the time. Mostly little ones, but Father had explained how modern and smart the city planners were, and how Anchorage was built up in the seventies when they had the technology to make buildings earthquake-proof.
Mason and Randy left the van for a few minutes and came back with a baggie. The van was filled with cigarette smoke and the windows steamed up from everyone breathing. It was October, but in Anchorage October was cold like Rochester’s winter. Mason used the streetlight coming in the windshield to pack his brass pipe. Suddenly there was a knock on the window. Cops. Fuck. Girl had never, ever been questioned by the police or even known someone who had. She was a geek, and geeks didn’t do anything cool or dangerous or police-worthy. Father was going to kill her.
“Fuck, there’s a warrant out for my arrest,” Randy said. “If they ask, I’m my twin brother, Ricky.”
Girl snorted. “Nice brother.”
“No, it’s cool, he said I could. Ricky has never been arrested.”
The cops made everyone get out of the van.
“Ricky!” Randy hissed as they piled out the side door.
Girl had taken off her shoes when they were driving around, and now she couldn’t find the left one. She hadn’t worn a coat because she didn’t own a cool one, just a big puffy blue winter jacket that she would rather freeze than wear. The pavement was cold under her bare foot, so she tried to stand on one foot, resting the unshod one on top of the other.
“Where is your other shoe?” the cop asked her.
“It’s in the van somewhere,” she said.
“I need to see some ID.”
“I don’t have any ID, I’m only fourteen,” she said.
“It’s the law that everyone has to carry ID, and you are out after curfew,” he told her.
“Curfew? What’s curfew? I just moved here,” she said. Was this a Nazi state? She had never heard of curfew. It was un-American.
“All youth under the age of eighteen cannot be outside after eleven o’clock,” the cop explained. “And you better get an ID.”
Girl shivered and wobbled on her one shoe as they questioned the guys.
“Do any of you have any warrants?” he asked the half-dozen kids. Everyone was silent. Randy sighed.
“My name is Randy Smith, and there’s a warrant out for my arrest. You can take me away,” he said, holding his hands up by his face. Girl suddenly loved him so much she wanted to cry.
“Okay,” one of the cops said to Mason, pocketing his bag of weed and pipe. “We can bust you, or go after the dealer. Your choice.”
“Go after the dealer, go after the dealer,” Mason repeated enthusiastically.
“What did he look like?”
“Um, he was black. Tall.”
“Any distinguishing marks?”
“Uhhh, a red baseball cap.”
“Okay, we’re gonna let you go, but you kids better get out of here, and we better not see you down here again. That van will be pretty easy to remember.”
They got back in the van—even Randy—and peeled out of the parking lot, the tires kicking up gravel. Connor tried to kiss Girl again, but she pushed him away. He was so dumb, she thought, and moved over next to Randy. Randy was butt-ugly but he was so brave.
Mason dropped her off at Father’s apartment. After the near-miss with the cops, everyone was done for the night. She looked all over the back of the van, but she never found her shoe.
the descent
East Anchorage High was huge compared to Girl’s old school, with over two thousand students. They had fifty-five-minute “hours” instead of forty-five-minute “periods” and eleven whole minutes between classes. At first, Girl just walked the halls in loops during lunch period after she bought a cinnamon roll in the cafeteria for $1.40 at the take-and-go window. No way was she standing in the hot lunch line filled with jocks shoving each other and laughing at people. She had had enough of cafeterias.
There was a cute boy in her Earth Science class named Walter. He was as muscled as a jock but wore a smooth leather jacket and had a mullet that just reached his shoulders. She knew he was out of her league but she liked him anyway. When he offered to sell her a quarter ounce of weed for twenty-eight dollars, she agreed.
“This is bud?” she asked him—not because she was questioning his product, but because she had actually never seen marijuana before. Her friend Jim had described “buds” he smoked when he went away to college at sixteen.
“Well—it’s shake,” Walter said, pocketing her money. It looked like oregano but she took it anyway. There was only one problem—she didn’t know how to smoke weed. She’d smoked cigarettes before, but this was something different. She went to the smoking area and went up to the first guy she saw.
“Do you wanna get high?” she asked a kid with long blond hair and too big of a nose to be attractive.
“You got any?” he asked. Girl
