PERFECT PLACES

Cole (2)

Cole felt very nervous as he walked into the common room to meet the other students on his residence floor for the first time. He wasn't used to this nervous feeling around people his age. He usually did just fine being sociable and making new friends. He felt nervous, though, because he didn't know what the social rules of college were just yet. He wanted to seem cool to everyone else on his floor so that he could join a group and go out with them that night. He was hoping that there was going to be a few nice guys at the meeting that he would be able to vibe with quickly. He didn't want to have to stretch his own personality too much in order to fit in and go along with the social scene.

As he walked into the room, he saw a group of pretty girls talking to each other. He realized he was the first guy to arrive at the meeting. He saw his floor leader in a chair with a stack of papers on her lap. She smiled as he walked in and he smiled back.

"Are you on Union 5?" she asked cheerfully.

"Yeah I am, nice to meet you, I'm Cole."

"I'm Charlotte! It's nice to meet you, too!"

She handed Cole a paper with a smile as a group of four boys walked into the room, laughing. Cole braced himself. They each took a paper, still laughing amongst each other. They were very loud and very cocky. They went and sat down in a few of the chairs that were spread out in a circle in the large common area. Cole went and sat down too, a few seats away.

Cole sat there for thirty seconds, tapping his foot. Then two more boys walked in, each taking a paper. They sat down in the seats between Cole and the other group of boys. One sat down right beside Cole. He had long hair that had been tied up in a man bun, and he was wearing a simple t-shirt and shorts with flip flops on his feet. He was also wearing a beaded necklace around his neck with a spear shaped pendant hanging below his collarbone.

"I'm Caleb," he said bluntly. He was looking at Cole.

"Hey, I'm Cole."

"Where you from?"

"Ottawa, you?"

"Toronto."

...

Cole found himself in Caleb's room that night, along with the guy he had walked into the common room with, Kyle. Caleb and Kyle were sharing a double room and knew each other from high school. Cole had stuck with them most of the day. They weren't the type of people he'd hung out with in high school, but from scoping out the other guys on the floor they seemed like a good place to start. Caleb, at least, was pretty good at keeping up a conversation. Kyle seemed at least tolerable as well, although he seemed to be a bit of a bum who definitely was not enrolled in college to go to class. But Cole wasn't in high school anymore. He could hang out with whoever he wanted to hang out with.

A group of girls, the pretty ones that had arrived first at the floor meeting, joined them in Caleb's room. Cole would learn later that their names were Jess, Abbey, and Lisa. As they walked in, they asked the guys where they were planning to go out for the night. Kyle answered, explaining that he and Caleb weren't much the type to go out often. Caleb replied and said that he'd consider it if they had time to get "a little fucked up first". Cole agreed with them and said he would go out, too.

Shortly after, Cole walked over to his room a few doors down to grab the alcohol that he had bought with his parents the day before. He went to the common room to find a cup to use and found a stack of red solo cups on the kitchen table, unwrapped. He grabbed one and headed back to Caleb's room, ready to get drunk with these two strange guys and three cute girls (which, he assured me, he had no interest in flirting with, and that he was missing Sarah dearly).

As he walked past his room, on the way back from the common room, he quickly knew things were different than before. The first thing he noticed was the loud music that Caleb had turned on. He had large speakers in his room that he had talked about earlier being "of really high quality" and which were "ready to get loud for tonight". He was right, they were very loud. Cole instantly thought about how the floor leader on duty would almost definitely hear it from whatever floor of the building she was on and come to tell them to turn it down. It was pretty obnoxious. Cole suspected that Caleb was trying to be the center of attention for the night. At least he was playing a good song.

The second thing that Cole noticed once he was a few steps away from Caleb's and Kyle's door was the smell. Weed, and a whole lot of it. Its strong smell was already seeping under the crack of the closed door and into the hallway. Cole had only been gone a few minutes.

As he opened the door, he saw the girls passing a joint around between each other. Kyle was trying to open the window and Caleb was grabbing their fan to direct the smoke outside. He was also holding a second unlit joint in his mouth. Cole imagined how loud the music must be for the people on the sidewalk below.

"Awe, we could have hotboxed the whole room!" said Amber, watching Kyle open the window. Everyone laughed, including Cole, out of instinct.

"That reminds me," said Caleb, "we should shove a towel under the door so the smell doesn't get out."

"Uh, kinda too late for that, I smelled it from out there already," Cole answered.

Cole was fine with weed. He'd smoked it two or three times before, but not too often. He would usually only do it on special occasions. Most of the time when he partied he would just drink. But this night was special, he decided then, and in the moment that the first joint came around the circle to him, he took a big hit.

As he continued to inhale, he felt the smoke reach his lungs and he started to feel the burning sensation in his chest that he had felt a few times before. He started to exhale quickly, before it got too bad. But he guessed very wrong. He coughed once at first, and then ten times in a row. Kyle had to find him some water from the sink. Caleb called him an amateur, but was only joking.

Cole kept taking hits from the joint as it went around and around the circle, taking smaller hits after the first time.

Soon he was forgetting about everything in the world. Soon he was sinking into the comfy beanbag chair that Caleb had offered for him to sit on, "to get the full experience". Soon Cole was very, very high.