"You wanna try?" one of my good friends, Matt asked me, holding out a bowl and a lighter.
"Umm, no thanks," I had changed my mind various times that night. Of course I wanted to smoke and be high with some friends, but I had promised my brother that if I ever smoked, my first time would be with him.
"Whatever, tell me if you change your mind," he said as he passed the bowl to another guy that was there, though he was in my grade at school, I never found him interesting enough to learn his name. It was dark and cold and just a few nights after the new year, and we were in the middle of some small meadow across the street from Matt's condo. I couldn't stop looking at Matt's tall, yet shy friend. I never actually met him until tonight. I sat there freezing as they passed the bowl around to each other, occasionally asking if I wanted a hit.
"Wait, I hear something," Matt said and we all paused and glanced around. I, being new to this, was scared shitless; but Anthony, which happened to be the other guy's name, was not.
"It's just the wind, chill out," he said.
"No, I swear I thought I heard something," Matt had, as I learned later on, paranoid highs. After every car light he saw, he would freak, so the four of us eventually hid behind some shrubbery. I stopped paying attention for a few minutes, but Matt stepped away to do something as Anthony stood their taking hits, and John stepped off into another direction to go pee. Great. I stood there awkwardly not knowing what to do. It wasn't a great idea wearing one of the thinnest tank tops ever underneath my not-so-warm zip up. John was tall and quiet but he looked so warm so as soon as he came back, I gravitated towards him. I did this all night in hopes he was too high to notice. No one said anything about it at the time, but he definitely did notice.
After exiting the meadow, I was the only sober one. Feeling like a mother duck, with her (extremely high and giggly) ducklings, I led them back across the street, into the condo, and to Matt's house. I just wanted to hug John. He, being much bigger than I, radiated heat and I just wanted him to warm me up. Is that weird? Probably.
Eventually we found our way upstairs into Matt's bedroom, which he shared with his brother. I sat on his brother's bed with John, facing Anthony and Matt on his own bed. Okay, now what? At this point, they were all really too high to hold a conversation, though, Matt was the only one to actually speak to me. John said very little that night and if he did say something, it wasn't necessarily directed to me. He's probably just shy. Matt never told me much about John, I've only ever seen pictures. Once, I told Matt that John was hot. Does he know? Is that why he isn't talking to me? Good going Kim, you freaked him out before you could even actually talk to him. No, Matt wouldn't tell him. Would he? Uh-oh.
Soon enough, it was time to leave. I sprayed myself with a million spritz on perfume to make sure I didn't reek of pot. Shaking on the way home after each of my parents' questions, I sort of felt sneaky. You didn't even do anything, don't feel so proud. But I sort of did get away with the fact that my parents thought there were other girls there other than me. Oops?
