Marie was telling Wilson about an English band, X-Ray Spex, and the lead singer, Poly Styrene. Wilson said he knew “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” Sage nudged me. Marie said that Poly Styrene had been singing against consumerism, but now she’d left the band. Wilson said it was inevitable that she’d eventually be disillusioned, even by punk.

“Wow. You’re both a barrel of laughs,” Sage said. I knew she found conversations like this pretentious, and even though she loved Marie, she wasn’t awed by her punk-self the way I was. When Marie dyed her hair black and shaved the side of her head, I thought she was cool, that she was brave to reject what people said was beautiful. Sage said it was just another uniform.

Wilson took out a clear plastic baggie of drugs he’d brought with him. There were tablets of different sizes and colors, pastel pinks and blues and white ones. There were small red pills.

“My mom’s basically got a pharmacy in her medicine cabinet. She won’t miss any of this.” He stuck his hand in the bag and pulled out a very small tablet, which he put on top of our pink chest of drawers and split in half with the tip of his pocketknife. He gave Ellen half. “It’s diazepam, same as Valium.”

“Are you sure you’re giving her the right one? They’re all mixed up in there.” I wondered if powder from other drugs like hallucinogen or something dangerous could have rubbed off on what he gave Ellen.

“It’s diazepam, trust me,” he said. “Diazepam’s the actual drug. Valium’s a trademark.”

“Oh, right. You’re, like, a narcotics specialist?” Sage asked.

“Something like that,” he said.

While Ellen swallowed her half pill with a glass of water, Wilson popped the other half into his mouth. I wanted to scream at Marie to get him out, to get him the hell out of our bedroom and our lives. She was looking at the cassette-tape cover he had made.

Sage leaned over toward me, humming the tune to “Mother’s Little Helper.” I wondered what it was like to have a mother taking drugs. Was it because of this that Wilson was so messed up, or did she take drugs because her son was so messed up? Either way, I wanted him to get out.

Marie started telling Wilson about a job offer she had from Rage Records. He went there, too.

“It’s only minimum wage. My friend Rae has an apartment in West Philly, and she could use help with the rent. My room will basically be the living room couch, but it’s only until the dorms open in August.”

“What?” I asked. “You’re leaving?”

“Yeah. I’m not going to stay out here in the middle of nowhere. I need a job.”

“You can get a job at the mall.”