But then I noticed something peculiar. Every time I came home I saw Lucia sitting on the steps with Russell. He’d bring her Cokes and bags of chips, and she would lick the salt off her fingers like Midnight.
I asked her if there was anything going on.
“What?” she said, totally innocent. “We’re just friends.”
I felt bad, like I was always pushing things on her, suggesting impropriety where none existed. I couldn’t help it. Once a kid had pushed me against a wall and pressed his body against mine while I struggled. He was thin, and the front door of the building opened, so I was able to slide out from under him, but that kind of thing stays with you.
“Bobby lost his job,” Lucia told me. “He feels really bad.”
Now I understood why Lucia was hanging out with Russell. Bobby was probably home all day getting slowly blitzed and watching TV.
I hung out with them too when I had time. We’d go up to the old playground by the pool and swing high into the trees. Once they had been nice but now the pool was green and slimy with algae. The playground, made of sturdy steel, fared much better. But it was so overgrown with weeds and encroaching foliage that parents of little kids didn’t let them go there. It was left for the older kids, who smoked weed and drank beer and made out with each other.
When they weren’t there, we went crazy. Had contests to see who could swing highest, going so high the chain almost folded in on itself, went down the steep slide headfirst and backward. Russell spun us so fast on the roundabout I couldn’t see anymore and I had to fall down on the ground until the trees stopped turning like a wheel. We chased each other and made piles of leaves to jump into. We could be stupid kids. And then the older kids would come and kick us out.
One Saturday when Lucia was gone to the cabin, Russell asked me if I wanted to go to the playground.
“It’s freezing,” I said. “Let’s just stay here.” We were sitting on the steps. My parents had started working on Saturdays too. I had been telling Russell more Bible stories. It would be Christmas in a week, so I told him about the Wise Men and how they followed a bright star.
A lanky boy knocked twice on the front door and Russell jumped up, and they both went around the side of the building, where Russell sold him an eighth. When he came back, he said, “I want to talk to you about something. But not here.”
“I’ll go if you let me try it,” I told him. I had asked him before.
“No way, China,” he’d say. “It’s not for you. Trust me. You’re too smart to start messing with this stuff.”
“Come on. I know it’s not like coke. I’m not going to get addicted or anything.”
“Oh yeah? How do you know you won’t love it?”
I shrugged. Pot just didn’t seem like a big deal to me. Whenever I saw a stoned person they seemed mellow and out of it, spaced out, blissful. Would it be so bad to feel like that?
But this time he looked at me skeptically. “You really want to try it?”
“Sure,” I said, my heart racing.
It was about three in the afternoon but terribly gray. It would feel like midnight by five. We crossed the back parking lot and climbed a small bank to the playground. It was cold. We both straddled the swings and faced each other.
Russell blew on his hands to warm them and then pulled a pouch from his pocket. He rolled a quick joint, lit it, blew out some puffs of smoke, and then handed it to me.
“Take it easy,” he said. “You don’t need to take a big puff. Nice and little.”
I closed my mouth and breathed in as much as I could. But real slow like a hose half full. Right away my eyes watered and I wanted to cough but held it back.
I could see Russell thought I’d be a cougher.
I let the smoke out in one long, thin stream and gave a quiet little cough at the end, which I quickly smothered. I passed the joint back to Russell.
“Not bad, China,” he said approvingly. “Not bad at all.” He smoked in threes, puff puff puff, hold, exhale. We passed itback and forth until it was so small, it burned my lips. Now I understood what a roach clip was for. I’d always thought it was a decorative holder.
For the first ten minutes I didn’t feel anything. I was just thinking that maybe I was impervious to it, that I was missing something, like the gene or chromosome or whatever it was that my mother lacked that made her face turn red when she drank plum wine. Some had it and some didn’t. My father had it; he could and did drink as much as he wanted.
But then I noticed a subtle feeling of disconnection that somehow made me feel more connected to everything. I felt aquiver, like antennas were out all along my body, picking up many signals at once. I smelled snow coming, heard both the fluttering leaves in the trees and car doors slamming loudly, saw and felt darkness falling, and noticed for the first time that the cold metal in
