“Some people are smoking out back if you want to join in,” Hoffman said, grinning like an elf. “I bought the stuff, so tell them I sent you. Do you know Isaac? He’s a creative writing major. He can’t get enough.”

“Okay. I’ve never done that before.”

“You haven’t? Oh, wow, you really are a babe in the woods. What shitkicker county did you come from?”

Shitkicker?

“Hart County.”

“Get out there and smoke,” he said. “Start your education tonight.”

And he walked away from her like they’d never spoken.

Rebecca considered her options. She suddenly felt weird about being at the party. Maybe she didn’t belong there. Maybe she wasn’t in her tribe.

Maybe she didn’t have a tribe. And she belonged back in Hart County like so many of her high school classmates who didn’t go to college and never planned to leave.

Despite the nearly two beers, her rational mind still functioned. She told herself she was thinking silly thoughts. She knew Monique, and Monique was an English major, and the two of them were close.

Did she just need to loosen up a little? Get outside of herself like she had that night with the Wild Turkey? Like she used to do with Kent? Monique had pushed her to come to the party because she wanted Rebecca to meet a guy. Could she meet one sharing a bowl or two? Would this Isaac guy be the next Kent?

Her brain lost its ability to override her feet because Rebecca was moving before she knew it. She went out the sliding-glass door onto the small patio, lit by a floodlight that made it seem like they were standing on the moon. The patio was cracked, and little weeds poked through all over. A warm night, early September, still feeling like summer. Three guys stood at the edge of the patio, one of them holding a bong, another a lighter. The guy with the bong in his hands was coughing like a consumption patient in a Victorian novel. He saw Rebecca but couldn’t do anything to stop hacking.

He held the bong out toward her.

“Go ahead,” the guy with the lighter said. “Hoffman bought it. And Isaac can’t get his shit together now.”

She recognized the smell from high school parties. Sweet and inviting.

She put her beer on a window ledge and took the bong in her hands and looked at the guy with the lighter. His eyes were glassier than Hoffman’s, and he wobbled a little, like he might tip over.

“I just inhale when you light it,” she said. “And then I hold it in as long as I can. Right?”

“You seem to have the basics down,” he said, flicking the lighter with his thumb.

What the hell? Rebecca thought. It’s college.

She took what seemed like a reasonable hit, but the guy with the lighter said, “Easy now.”