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Nate read the answer in my face. "You don't, do you?"

Did he look disappointed?

"No," I said. "I mean, I never have or anything..."

"It's cool. You don't have to. It's just that, uh"—he glanced at his brother, who was back into another round of the video game—"certain...
things
are really, really good when you're high."

Certain "
things"?
Did Nate want me to take drugs and have sex? I didn't care if leaving would make me look like a dork; this was getting insane. I had to get out.

"I don't ... think I'm ready for ... certain things. I don't know, maybe I should just go."

"No, no, I'm not talking about ... I just mean..." Nate seemed embarrassed to have to spell it out, especially within earshot of Thackery, but he did. "Making out is really good when you're stoned. It's more intense."

More intense? If kissing Nate got any more intense,
I'd
be the one slipping into a coma. Ouch—I winced at my own thought. Way inappropriate.

"Not that you have to do it," Nate said. "At all."

He meant it. I could tell. I liked that. And I really didn't have any desire to try ... mostly. Except for the part of me that was a little curious. Especially since for Nate it seemed to be a prelude to really good making out.

"What's it like?" I asked.

"Really cool," he said. "It's not scary or weird or anything. It's just mellow and ... nice."

I reached out, and Nate handed me the baggie. I took out one of the joints. It had an odor to it. I recognized it as the pungent smell in the room I couldn't place before.

"Nice, right?" Nate asked. "Do you want to try?"

There was no pressure in the question; I could see that. I could also see that Nate was kind of hoping I'd try.

And I
was
curious.

And it's not like I was alone. Nate was with me, and he knew all about this stuff.

And it's not like a couple puffs would hurt me, right?

"I'll try it."

Nate rewarded me with a smile. "You'll love it. We can go upstairs to my room; it's more comfortable there."

"Your room? Nate, I—"

"Nothing will happen you don't want to happen. It's just ... quieter there." He glared toward Thackery, and I understood.

We went up to his room. Nate hadn't lied: the rest of the house was much nicer than the media room. I wondered if he even spent any time up here. It was immaculate. Like a hotel room.

As Nate got everything ready, he explained how big a deal pot was to him and how seriously he took the honor of introducing it to someone for the first time. Clearly we had hit on another of his passions. The only other time he spoke this much was when he was talking about music.

Nate seemed dedicated to giving me the perfect pot experience. He set up lots of pillows on his bed so it would be extra comfortable, then went to his Mac and played an iTunes party shuffle he had created specifically for times like this. Music, he said, totally made the experience. His computer had surround-sound speakers, so the whole room would reverberate. Visually, he said, it was important to have something interesting but not too complicated to look at, so he turned the flat-screen TV/monitor on his wall to a multicolored lightning-bolt screen saver.

Nate darted downstairs to get some water and snacks in case I got thirsty or hungry afterward. He wasn't gone long—just enough for me to look around and confirm my first impression. It was like a hotel room: no pictures, no books, no random personal things like my Tastykakes and mini Liberty Bell.

When Nate came back, he turned down the lights and sat next to me on the bed. "I'll get it started," he said, "then I'll pass it to you."

I nodded.

He lit one of the joints, then sucked in several times as the now-familiar acrid smell filled the air. Then he took in a big breath. He explained what he was doing, and I tried not to laugh. He was working so hard to keep in his breath while he spoke, he sounded like he was on helium.

"You breathe it in, then you hold the smoke in your lungs for a bit before..."

With a whoosh he blew it out.

"Now your turn." He handed it over. "You might cough but try not to. Try to keep it in."

I did what he said. I sucked in deeply and almost fell into a coughing fit, but I didn't. The smoke burned in my lungs. It hurt. I held in the smoke as long as I could, then let it go in a rush. There, I was done. I handed the joint back to Nate.

"Okay, I tried it," I said. "Now do we get to the really-good-making-out part?"

"A couple more hits," he said. "Just to make sure you get the full experience."

I thought I'd already had the full experience, and I didn't like it at all, but maybe I needed to give it more of a chance. If Nate loved it so much, there had to be something else there. And if not, if this really was the only time I'd ever smoke pot, I figured I should at least do it the right way.

I took the joint back from Nate and sucked in again, long and deep, then suffered through one more round passing it back and forth.

"Are we good now?" I asked.

Nate took another long pull, held it in, then let it out. "Yeah."

He leaned down to kiss me, and for a minute it felt amazing all over again...

But then I couldn't kiss him back.

It was weird. I wanted to. I was kind of dying to. Or at least I had been. But now I pulled out of his arms entirely. Now I just really wanted to lean back, shut my eyes, and listen to the music.

And grin.

It felt like I had a huge goofy grin on my face. I had no control over it. None whatsoever. And I couldn't control my body. I couldn't move. Not my arms, not my legs, not my head, not at all. I couldn't talk either.

It wasn't pleasant. It was terrifying. I was lying in a strange guy's bed! He could do anything, and I couldn't stop him. My heart started racing as I envisioned all the horrible things that could happen to me in this strange house with no parents and no rules and no one to care if I screamed, which I couldn't, even if I wanted to.

Nate's voice came to me as if through ten feet of water.

"Cara? Cara?"

Inside my head I screamed for help, but my body wouldn't respond.

I heard a chuckle through the ten feet of water. "Wow ... you are
so
high." He tucked the comforter of the bed around me and leaned down to whisper in my ear. "Enjoy it," he said.

I felt him lean back on the pillows, and heard him open a bag. The smell was intense: potato chips. I felt very alone, stuck inside my head next to him. But then he reached over to gently pet my forehead and hair, over and over.

It was nice.

It made me feel a lot better.

I completely zoned out.

When I regained consciousness, the room was pitch black. My mouth felt like a big fluffy guinea pig had died inside it. Nate was next to me, fast asleep.

We were both fully dressed. This was good.

Something was beeping. I followed the sound to my purse and opened it to find my phone.

Its clock said 4:30 a.m.

Oh no.

The beep meant I had messages.

I had a
lot
of messages.

First, texts from Claudia wondering where I was. Then voice mails that grew more and more frantic until the most recent one of the bunch.

"Cara, it's Claude. It's after four in the morning. Where the hell are you? I'm freaking out! Why didn't you give me Nate's number? Was there an accident? Did something happen at the club? I can't find anything on the Net. I don't know where you are, I don't know what you're doing, but it's crazy late and I'm..."

I had never heard Claudia like this. She sounded awful, like she was on the verge of a complete breakdown. I couldn't believe I'd done this to her.

"...I'm ready to call your parents, I swear it," her message continued. "I'm really scared, Cara. Just ... if you get this, just call me, okay?"

My parents? She was going to call my
parents?

Panic ran through me. I checked when she'd called. Ten minutes ago. Oh my God. Had she actually called my parents?

I was glad I had Claudia on speed dial. My hands were shaking so hard, there was no way I could have handled ten digits.

Please don't let her have called my parents. I know I deserve it if she did, but please-please-please don't let her have called my parents, pleeeeease...

She hadn't called my parents—but that's only because I had miraculously beeped in before she'd dialed the last two numbers.

"Cara, where are you? Are you in the hospital? Tell me which hospital you're in. Were you in a car accident? Are you still on the side of the road? Do I need to call nine-one-one? Were you abducted? Did you just now escape? Are you bleeding? Are you dressed? Did Nate ... did he survive? Let me come and get you. I'll come get you and I'll call the police."

Claudia was sobbing. I couldn't blame her, given the horrific scenarios she'd built.

"Claudia, it's okay," I assured her. I whispered so I wouldn't wake up Nate. "I'm fine. Nate's fine. There was no accident and no abduction. I'm at Nate's house and I'm fine."

"You're at his ... Tell me you didn't have sex with him. If you scared me like this to have sex with him, I'm going to slaughter you. No, first I'm going to make you tell me every single detail, then I'm going to slaughter you."

"I didn't have sex with him. Let me just come to your house. Does your mom think I'm there?"

"Depends how many Sominex she took. She'd have to believe you were in severe gastric distress and unable to come out of the bathroom for about five hours."

"How many Sominex do you think she took?"

"Double dose, with her Xanax. She believes it. Just know if you were a guy, I'd be castrating you."

"My balls are yours. I'm so sorry, Claude. I'll be right there."

I hung up. I was seriously thirsty. I found the water bottles Nate had brought up last night, but they were empty. I'd have to wait until I got to Claudia's. No way was I going to try to navigate this place.

I grabbed my bag, then looked over at Nate, still fast asleep on the bed. Even rumpled and unconscious, he was beautiful. I wondered what would have happened if I hadn't lost the ability to move last night. I wondered what would happen if I crawled in next to him right now ... woke him up by kissing him on his neck, nibbling his ear like he'd done to me...

But I knew what would happen. Claudia would hunt me down and skin me alive. I had to leave. Should I wake him up and say goodbye? Give him a kiss on the cheek? What's the protocol for ducking out on your kinda-sorta-boyfriend in the wee hours of the morning after you went catatonic on your first date? Would he be worried if he woke up and I was gone?

I looked for a pen and paper, but I'd already seen that nothing was around. How was that possible? Did he not do homework? My room was covered in notebooks, pens, and pencils.

I opened his desk—and found a pile of pictures. Nate couldn't have been more than eleven in the one on top. He wore a baseball uniform, and his short but scruffy dark hair peeked out from under the hat's brim. With his freckles and huge gap-toothed grin, he was the poster child for All-American Boy. He faced the camera, but he was looking up at a woman behind him who had to be his mom. She was blond and beautiful, with freckles that matched her son's, eyes that gleamed with life, and a huge smile. She had her arms wrapped around Nate, and her head rested on his.

If Nate was eleven here, it had to be, what, months before the accident? Weeks?

I looked again at the grinning boy in the picture, then at the tortured DangerZone sprawled out on the bed. I wondered how different he would have been if the accident hadn't happened.

My heart broke for Nate. Of course he was tortured. Of course he smoked pot all the time and lost himself in music. How else could he deal with everything? I imagined my own mom in the hospital for five years, Karl off with some girlfriend and never around. That would be different, though, wouldn't it? Would Karl even get custody of me if that happened, or would I have to live with my dad? Either way, it was too awful to even think about. I felt so bad, I almost did jump into bed next to Nate and wrap my arms around him, not to start making out again, but just so he knew I cared.

I realized I could make a huge difference in Nate's life. We were together now. I could be his rock, the one person he could open up to about everything. I couldn't change what had happened, but if I tried hard enough, maybe I could change
him.
Get him a little closer to the guy that kid in the picture would have been by his junior year in high school.

It felt incredibly special that, of all the girls at Chrysella, I was the one Nate had chosen to let in. I would be there for him. I would help.

My phone chirped. It was Claudia. "Even as I speak, I'm training a cobra to find you at Nate's house and kill you."

"I'm leaving now. I swear."

I took a second to send Nate a text saying I had an amazing time, I had to take off, and he should call me later. I gave his cheek the softest kiss, then tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. I didn't need to be so quiet. As I opened the door to slip out, I heard wild beeping from the media room and Thackery's sleep-deprived croak. "Starscream will bring you down, Autobots!"

So sad. I shook my head as I left, and drove to Claudia's as fast as I could.

She was waiting for me, of course. She stood on the porch and leaned on the rail, wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked, white flowy nightgown that billowed to her feet. It was a piece I knew for a fact she had never once slept in but that made her look incredibly dramatic, especially with her long black hair hanging loosely down her back. If she could have conjured up wind and a rainstorm to amplify the suffering she'd lived through by my hand, I knew she would have.

"Claudia, I am so, so sorry. I will never freak you out like that again."

"That's all you've got?"

"Pretty much. Except for the beer, the pot, the crazy making out, the
Lord of the Flies
mansion, the coma-mom—"