Michael snorted. “That’s what you remember the most? I remember you taking off—”
“Bupbupbup,” Cassie warned, frowning at him. She looked at me again and said, “It also made me really appreciate what I have with Michael. It brought us closer together in a way that I never could have imagined. It was like we were in our own little world...and I guess I’d acted like we were, even though we were out in Big Sur with a bunch of our friends.” She blushed.
I chuckled. Shroomed-out Cassie must’ve been even crazier than drunk Cassie. “I see. Sounds pretty fun.”
Cassie glanced at Michael again, then looked at me. “I was wondering if you wanted to join us this weekend? For your first time, you might just want to be somewhere safe, so we were thinking about doing it here. We wanted to keep it chill anyway.”
I chewed on a strawberry and thought about it. I had been wanting to find new inspiration, especially after my talk with my mom, and all the VCs and big shots in tech seemed to swear by psychedelics. Besides, I hadn’t yet decided what my “big thing” for the year was going to be. I’d considered quitting my job and taking three months off to climb around Europe, hoping to rekindle my love for climbing out in Spain or in the Italian Dolomites...and maybe I still would. But I could do this, too.
“Y’know, honestly, that’d be awesome. Thanks so much for the invite.”
◆◆◆
On Saturday, I went over to Cassie’s again and ate a handful of shrooms.
For the first fifteen minutes, nothing happened.
“It takes a little bit to kick in sometimes,” Cassie explained. She’d told me to dress comfortably, so I was wearing joggers, a t-shirt, and a hoodie, the same one that Anna had borrowed on the plane. It was comfortable, but also comforting. I’d wanted both, just in case my first experience with shrooms went south.
Cassie was wearing a green dinosaur onesie, of all things, and Michael wore a matching pink one.
They were disgustingly cute.
“What do you do when you’re tripping?” I asked. Their living room was cozily furnished with a thick, navy blue area rug and light gray sofa set. Michael’s dog, Frankie, lay on the floor by my feet, busily tearing apart a chew toy.
Michael put his hands behind his head and leaned back against the couch. “We usually just like to chill, listen to music. Maybe put on some cool visual stuff to look at.”
Cassie swiped and tapped on her phone, then music began to play from their surround sound speakers. “I like to put on Anna’s playlists. She makes the best playlists to get high to.”
I could see that. Her music was so dreamy and sensual, so different from the repetitive tunes that I heard on the radio. My stomach clenched at the thought of her.
Michael nodded slightly when I put my hand on my stomach. “I see it’s starting to kick in.” In answer to my quizzical look, he added, “It often causes some stomach discomfort.”
Ah, that explained it. Not Anna.
My eyes began to swim, and the lines around the furniture became fuzzy. I closed my eyes against the sudden brightness of the room, and my legs prickled with numbness. I’d been sitting upright in the loveseat, but I abruptly needed to lie down. I sank into their rug.
“Whoa,” I heard myself say from far away.
Cassie giggled, then nestled into Michael’s lap. “I’m starting to feel it, too.”
Newly aware and hyper-sensitized, there was so much for me to examine, even with my eyes closed. My fingers dug into the shag rug, the long, thick fibers dry and slightly abrasive against my skin. The ripe, savory tang of Frankie’s saliva tickled my nose, along with the spicy scent of my own deodorant, which I hardly ever noticed anymore. But the highlight, the most glorious part of the experience, was the music. It invigorated me. I breathed deeply, as if the music were infused into the air, as if it would continue to resonate in my lungs. It filled my core and stimulated every cell in my body.
My cheeks hurt from how much I was smiling.
Before, my practical brain had simplified sound down to mere vibrations of different frequencies and levels of loudness. I’d never before appreciated the sheer range of frequencies, or noticed how moving the interplay of notes of different pitches, tones, and lengths could be. The memories that were attached to them, and that they evoked. The staggering power and emotion of the human voice. How had I gone so long without noticing?
I’d liked Anna’s playlists when we’d listened to them before. They’d always been in the background while we did other things, like cooking, cleaning, or making love. But there, at that moment, they were a focal point. Each synth, beat, and note perfectly resonated with my emotions, and I felt the music as I never had before. I sighed with pleasure at discovering this new power, this new part of myself.
I pulled out my phone and briefly forgot how to unlock it, as my eyes struggled to focus and the screen seemed three-dimensional. Eventually, I unlocked the thing and found Anna’s Spotify profile and hit subscribe. I could not believe that I hadn’t recognized how good her music taste was until just this moment. Had she done shrooms before?
The thought drifted away and my vision blurred once more. I struggled to keep my eyes open.
So I closed them, and remembered.
◆◆◆
As Cassie had described, I felt so at peace. So content. I found myself revisiting fond memories of other moments in my life when everything had felt just right.
I remembered my grandpa walking around the house, shirtless and singing Chinese opera off-key and at
