The sharp aroma and smoke-smell of weed Sharkey now associated with optimism and gratitude, a deep gulp of it the prelude to laughter and forgetfulness. It took away his appetite, it gave him time to think, and his thoughts were always incoherently pleasant. If any shadow loomed, if that pain stabbed his soul, he lit up again, and the pain was gone, the world was bearable, his mother was not a bore, and even school made sense: you went there to meet your friends, you picked up weed and smoked it afterward, and then the day was gone, up in smoke.

He was so dreamy when he was buzzed that his mother did not question his mood; whiskey made her abrupt and irrational, but if he was patient, he tolerated her, saying nothing, and kept her company, she merely sat and sipped and smacked her lips, and was soon asleep in her chair, her head twisted sideways on one shoulder. Then he’d help her to bed, and she was usually still asleep when he set out for school, ducking behind a hedge on the way to smoke the remainder of his joint.

Not surfing, not even swimming, he saw how close he’d come to resembling the other boys. After school the only urgency was to get high—no sports, nothing but idle talk under the trees, and then they went back to their houses, or the backseats of the junked cars, and he walked home and sat in the hot shadow of the parlor, waiting with his mother for the day to end. And before bed and in the morning he saw a new face in the mirror.

How much time had passed since his father died he could not say, but he could estimate it by examining his face, how pale it was from being out of the sun, the sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, his lank shoulder-length hair that had lost the sunburned highlights, the purple teeth marks on his neck—Nalani’s love bite. They still met in the van in Papakolea, she still said, “You want to play with me?” He was a pale skinny stoner like the others except that they were dark. He was as dirty as they were now; his mother had stopped doing the laundry, she rarely cooked, she was usually too drunk to notice what he’d become, and most days he got takeout at Zippy’s.