And the first time Miranda took it? It had been like falling in love. Like figuring out the biggest secret ever. She still remembers sitting in the backyard of some guy she went to school with, his parents gone and a party all around her, a party where normally she would have felt anxious the whole time. It was Matthew—Matthew Scout, although she didn’t know his full name then—who had given her that first pill. It wasn’t long before euphoria filled her. Miranda felt energized and mellow at the same time. It wasn’t like pot, which made her paranoid. Or alcohol, which made her talk too much and then made her cry. Oxy just made her feel good. A half hour after swallowing that first pill, she had been relaxing against Matthew’s shoulder.

It turned out that lots of people in her high school play around with Oxy. People from every sort of group—the burnouts, the geniuses, and even the girls who were wicked-good softball players who were going to get college scholarships—they’ve all tried it. But only the rich kids have the money to keep doing it, which makes it more cool. Because it’s so expensive, this big rich drug.

The one problem is that even though Miranda lives in tony Lake Oswego, she isn’t all that rich. Hasn’t been since her dad left her mom. Her dad still buys her things, but he doesn’t give her that much cash. And Matthew might have handed her that first pill free, as a favor, but he couldn’t afford to keep doing that.

And that was before he showed her that if you crushed up the pills and snorted them, you felt even better. And the next thing Miranda knew, if she didn’t have any in her system, she felt terrible. She cashed seven thousand dollars in savings bonds her aunts had given her for birthdays, money meant for college. She sold her phone and told her dad she lost it. She sold her leather jacket. She sold her mom’s camera, which hadn’t been used since the divorce. Matthew knows someone who has an eBay store, so Miranda has started shoplifting the things he says sell well. Anything just to stay in that happy place. Plus, it turns out that if you stop using, you feel worse than you ever have in your life. Like you have a fever. Like you’re going to start vomiting and never stop. Like your bones are being broken. Like she feels now.

“There’s a fix for that,” Matthew has told her. “You could just start using heroin. It’s way cheaper.” He does it himself and says it’s no big deal.

But so far Miranda has been saying no. If you use needle drugs, then you really are an addict.