Ark, who had seen it and didn’t have to build the scene piecemeal in his imagination, spoke again. ‘Like, spiders are, I don’t know, man, just, like, so terrifying, to such an enormous population. Like, socially and mentally. I guess a lot of people hate spiders. I mean, I ate them but I still hate them, man. I’ve hated spiders since I was a child. Just, you know, how they are. I dislike them as members of life on earth. Spiders and bees. But with bees I have my personal reasons, like being stung and stuff. Spiders, I just dislike because they’re spiders.’

My voice said, ‘Well, that makes sense though. Just think about a spider’s basic mode of survival, you know. Like, it perfectly fits our social narrative of creepy-stalker-killer man.’

Other voices agreed with that for a while and then mine came out again. ‘I want to know where David and Thomas went, that’s what I want to know. Where did they go?’

‘Oh yeah, hey, when did they leave?’

‘I don’t know, let’s go look for them.’

Legs asleep, we groaned to our feet and brushed broken blades of grass off our jeans. There was nothing to be done about the olive stains and we just had to feel their clinging wetness.

Outside Narnia, the quad stretched in a giant circle around us. We started walking around slowly.

‘Oh shit—look!’

Following the motion of Ark’s head, we saw David pushed up against a tree, face thrown back into relief and eyes closed as Thomas, on his knees, pressed his face into his crotch and turned his blonde head this way and that.

I laughed, understanding.

We watched them for a minute or two and then, hungry,

went to find food. McDonalds was the only place open that late, so we got greasy burgers, greasy fries and sugary strawberry milkshakes.

They lie, you know. They try to scare us. It’s not the leaves and the powders and the pills that are addictive. Our bodies talk, they tell us what’s up. They shake a hand and swim a head when we’ve had enough. They squirt fear and project mothers’ faces into brains when voluntary play begins to slip away. We get the hints, we are forewarned. After that, it’s a choice. And like at any overstocked American supermarket, we are absolutely spoilt for choice.

If you want the powder too much, smoke the leaves. If the leaves are getting the better of you (though marijuana is not a physically addictive substance, so it really can’t do that) then crush a pill. As a general rule of thumb, anything that comes in a needle is best left alone. We don’t go down that road.