Roy turned on the large flat-screen monitor on the far wall of the library and stabbed at the power buttons on the four remote controls that he didn’t know how to use.

“Come and help me with the remotes, would you?”

Mandy and Ted had passed out on the bed reading Harry Potter while Stuart made his first batch of pot-butter chocolate-chip cookies. The plan was to keep them in the fridge so Mandy could snack on them during the day if her MS was getting bad and she felt weird about smoking on her own. Stuart watched the cookies bake through the oven’s murky glass, the glistening dough oozing flat and solidifying in circles on the tray. He scraped the rubber spatula against the sides of the mixing bowl, collecting blobs of cookie dough and licking them off.

The oven beeped. Stuart removed the tray and carefully transferred each cookie to the very professional wooden cooling rack Mandy had bought at Williams Sonoma when Ted was a toddler and she thought she might become the type of mom who baked cookies and cakes every day. The crisp cookies clung to the rack in precise rows. There was one lone extra cookie that wouldn’t fit. Stuart tossed it in his mouth and flung the spatula and baking tray into the sink. The roof of his mouth hummed as he chewed. His eye sockets were expanding. So were his ears and his feet. Even his ass cheeks felt weird. Uh-oh. Eating pot butter was way more hardcore than smoking it. All that raw cookie dough and now that whole cookie—he was already super high.

Baked weed cookies for my sweethearty

Ate too many—now it’s time to party!

He grabbed his keys and his phone and glanced at Mandy and Ted, asleep on their backs on the queen-size bed. It seemed sort of irresponsible to leave them in such a vulnerable state when he was their protector and provider. But he had to. He had to get outside and walk.

Liam’s hands were shaking. He could barely hold his phone in place. His thumb wavered over the record button.

“Guys,” he spoke up, his voice breaking annoyingly. “I don’t think we should be doing this.”

They’d already filmed Bruce lighting drops of vodka on fire and practically burning his arm off. Was it really necessary to incorporate the slide?

Bruce screwed the cap back on the vodka, shook the bottle violently, and then unscrewed the cap again. “Speak for yourself. I was fucking born to do this. I just wish I hadn’t smoked so much weed earlier. I need to fucking focus.”

“What exactly are you doing, anyway?” Black Ryan asked.

Liam glanced at him warily. Black Ryan didn’t sound too happy about Bruce’s antics either.

“Isn’t it obvious, fuckwad?” Bruce demanded.