“I know it,” said Gerald. “But damn, she was fine.”

They sealed their agreement with another hearty toke. “Do you ever feel like you can’t stand it?” said Rashid as he passed off, his voice constricted by smoke. He didn’t know what he was going to say until he had said it.

“Can’t stand what? Not getting any? Hell, yeah.”

Gerald and Sean both giggled madly and high-fived each other. Rashid felt his high taking on a crazy, uncomfortable edge. “No, I mean everything. This whole damn school. Sometimes I feel like …” He jumped up and kicked the rock he had been sitting on as hard as he could. Gerald and Sean watched him, their breath chill puffs of air before them. “Damn, now I’m bringing us all down. Let me just shut the fuck up.”

The giggling stopped, and the boys sat in silence. The air was a lot colder. But that wasn’t something that anyone could do anything about. “It’s cold out here,” remarked Sean. Without any more words, the silly good feeling dissipating, they buried the roach and stood, intending to head back to campus.

As they walked, Rashid squinted against the brilliant sunshine. It hurt his eyes. The brown and fading green of the grass under the dusting of snow was weirdly blinding. He looked toward the barn. It throbbed red against a brown-and-white backdrop, outlined by a comically blue sky. The cows were nowhere to be seen—it was too cold for their tastes. He imagined that they were huddled in the barn, their warm, bovine breath adding to the thick hay-and-cow-manure smell. The uncomfortable hyper-awareness that he’d briefly lost when they were first getting high was coming back. He could feel the cold earth through his boots as he ground small things to death beneath them. “I’m too high to go to my next fucking class,” he said finally. His voice seemed to come from a very long way off.

“Me too,” said Gerald. Sean just nodded.

“Well, what are we gonna do, then?” said Rashid. “I’m fucking freezing.”

The boys stood for a moment, their breath puffing out before them. “We could go to the barn—do the ropes course,” Gerald suggested after a few moments of silence. Sean and Rashid caught each other’s eyes with a “dare ya” look, then all three boys took off running, back toward the great red barn on the hill.