I could feel them all looking at me and I knew my decision would determine how they viewed me forever. It wasn’t so much peer pressure as it was opportunity. I’d never been given the opportunity to smoke, but God did I want to try. They’d clearly been doing this here for months and, look at them, still alive, no Devil in sight.

I stepped forward and took it in my fingers, suddenly remembering why the skunky smell was so familiar—it wasn’t a cigarette, it was weed. Surprisingly, that made me want to try it more.

He put the joint between my lips and held it there as I took a deep breath, quickly flipping through the Rolodex of magazine articles in my brain until I found the one I was looking for: a letter to the editor in Cosmo. Take a deep breath, let the smoke seep into your lungs and your esophagus. Do not swallow. Then let it out slowly to avoid coughing.

When I finished, he nodded, one side of his mouth lifted into an impressed smile, as he took the joint back and put it in his mouth. I liked the idea that we both tasted the same thing, our lips against the same paper. It was the second closest thing to sex I’d ever done.

The whole group of them seemed to relax, but that was easy to do as the bank of knowledge just became equal; I had something on them, but they had something on me now. We were partners in crime.

“I should get back to it,” I said, motioning up the hill.

“We come here every once in a while,” one of the girls in the back said. There was something about her hair—the dark straight bob—that I couldn’t quite get out of my head. “If you’re ever around and want to join us again...”

“Don’t tell anyone,” the other girl said, backing away. “If you tell, we tell.”

I watched them disappear into the forest, then stared at the trees for a while after they were gone. I was waiting to be punished. To be struck by lightning or visited by the Devil or shamed by Jesus. Maybe I was just adding to the list of reasons Saint Peter will reject me at the pearly gates, but for now, on Earth, I was starting to think nothing was quite as bad as I’d been taught.

Then I threw up right there on my own shoes.

When I got back to Willits, I was rejuvenated. Maybe it was the excitement of getting away with something, maybe it was the weed, maybe I was getting better at running. Either way, when I sprung our door open, ready to tell Ruthie all about it, I was shocked to see our room was empty.