“Thanks for that,” Thomas says when I get in the car.

“I can’t believe you,” I say. “Any of you!” I finally understand all those man-hating feminists I see on Instagram. Men are dogs! Peg the patriarchy!

“So, it’s true?”

“I never thought my parents could ruin my life any more than they already have,” I say.

“Oh god,” he says. “Not the Nickelodeon show again.”

“I could have been a star!”

“Your parents were smart to keep you from being a child actor,” he says. “They all end up with heroin addictions.”

“I wish I had a heroin addiction,” I say.

“Hey,” Thomas says. “Speaking of drug problems.” He opens up his glove compartment to reveal a pudgy blunt. I haven’t smoked a blunt in years, and I remember why I keep Thomas around.

“Should we smoke it atop ole Mount Rubidoux?”

“Why the fuck not?” I say. “Hopefully we catch on fire after.”

“Attagirl,” Thomas says.

We sit on a rock underneath a big cross at the top of the mountain. We have a view of all of Riverside, which is just strip malls and pockets of trees and tract homes. The San Bernardino Mountains glow orange in the distance.

“I think this is the first place I smoked weed,” I say to Thomas as he flicks his lighter. A gust of wind hits, so I cup my hands around the blunt. Finally it lights, and just watching Thomas suck in smoke puts me more at ease. The smell calms me, the same way Lydia gets around catnip.

“How old were you?” Thomas asks as he exhales a fat plume smelling of tobacco and grapes. I am feeling unbearably nostalgic and extremely angry. I need the blunt in my mouth. I grab it from Thomas’s hand and suck hard.

“Middle school,” I say as I exhale a cloud so voluminous it looks like it could have been created by a bomb. “Probably twelve. These boys Zoe and I had crushes on took us up here to ‘get stoned,’ and Zoe didn’t even know what that meant. I only knew from watching The Big Lebowski.” I’d watched it with my dad, but for obvious reasons I am not interested in revealing that particular detail.

“Cool girl,” Thomas says.

I scrunch my face at him, then continue with my story. “I convinced Zoe to do it and she hardly inhaled. I got really high and fell in love. Not with the boys, but with THC. It was the first time I’d felt, like, normal. Like I could engage in normal conversations without feeling angry or alienated. I was just happy to chat about normal dumb things, like which teachers were our favorites and who we thought was hot on The OC.”

“Interesting.” Thomas takes the blunt from my hand. “So it helped you be social. Most people find the opposite. It makes them too introverted and self-critical to engage.”