“My body, my choice,” she said, and he didn’t know what to say to that. It was as if she considered herself the only parent, the queen bee, with him a mere drone.

Instead of apologizing for withholding this crucial news from him, she’d wrinkled her brow as if she didn’t quite recognize him and said, “Are you wearing makeup?”

“No,” he said.

“Yes you are.”

“No. Well. Maybe a little.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“The . . . play.”

She looked even more puzzled. “It’s been canceled . . . Is there something you need to tell me?”

“Nope. It’s for the play,” he affirmed, nodding, and went downstairs to watch TV.

Amazingly, blessedly, she hadn’t followed him. If they’d been in their own house, she would have interrogated him; there were some advantages to living in someone else’s house after all.

To be fair, he wasn’t being entirely honest with her, either, but it was for a good reason. He wasn’t even really wearing makeup—not like mascara and eye shadow! Just a little cover-up. There was a good story behind it, one he’d shared with his friends in Richmond, who’d found it hilarious.

It went like this: A few nights ago, bored with no rehearsal to go to, he’d Googled “Where to buy weed Maryland,” and came up with the expected information about dispensaries and medical marijuana cards—but he didn’t want to wait for a doctor’s note. He wanted it now. Then he looked up “Where to buy weed D.C.” and bingo!

In D.C. the laws were looser. You could possess it and smoke it, but you could not buy it. There was a loophole though: You could “gift” it, and certain businesses were doing just that. It was brilliant, and apparently legal. All you had to do was buy their wildly expensive product, and you’d get a little cannabis “gift” in return. Grant reviewed the offerings online—T-shirts, mugs, pizza, blown glass, cookies, rolling papers, and brownies, among others—and chose the brownies. He walked the cold quarter mile to the D.C. line lest someone notice the car was missing. He found a random address on Stephenson Place and placed his order: six brownies for seventy-five dollars. The wait time was anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. An hour? Hatless, scarfless, gloveless, he walked up the street and back again several times; then he jogged it, then skipped. He ran in place and did jumping jacks, boxed the cold air, anything to warm up, and an hour and a half later, a little car pulled up. Grant had grape-vined halfway up the block by then, but he sprinted back down, catching the guy with the apron over his coat before he rang the doorbell at that address.

He was handed a little brown bag that contained six very small brownies, and three little edibles shaped like gummy bears.