Page 28 of So Far Gone

She got too high.

before he tore his ACL and had to give up sports for simply looking hot (and dealing weed), and who cruised the halls of their high school as if still on skates, and who had never even looked at Bethany before today, but who now stood dreamily in her kitchen, watching her try to make a sandwich with hands that suddenly

felt like walrus flippers.

“This lettuce feels weird.” Bethany held it out for Monica and Connor to see. “Look. It won’t do what I want it to do.”

“I warned you,” Monica said.

“I’m serious. It won’t go on the sandwich.”

“I don’t like lettuce on tuna fish anyway,” Connor said, and he grabbed the slices of bread, pressed them together, and took

a bite. “Thanks.”

Bethany was left holding the unruly lettuce.

“You got too high,” Monica said with some level of told-you-so irritation.

This appeared to be true. Also, as Monica had warned her, this appeared to be better pot than the ditch-grown compost they

usually smoked. It felt to Bethany like a life preserver of happiness had been gently placed over her shoulders and chest.

And a helmet of interestingness. No, that wasn’t right. That was stupid. It didn’t feel anything like that. It felt like her

skin was alive, pores open, nerves firing, like she was too perceptive and too sleepy all at once, too anxious and too peaceful,

too chill and too rushed and too buzzed, like... like she wasn’t sure if this was the greatest high she’d ever had...

or the worst.

“Paranoia,” Connor said.

“We should get back,” Monica said.

“My mouth keeps falling open,” Bethany said.

Connor took another bite of his sandwich, looking from one girl to the other as they talked.

“Look at my mouth,” Bethany said.

“You’re not saying words,” Monica said.

“I am saying words. I’m saying that my mouth keeps falling open.”

“Are you taking second-year French?”

“I’m not speaking French!”

“I didn’t say you were!”

Bethany felt a creeping panic. “Are you messing with me?”

“It’s cute,” Connor said through the tuna fish and mayo. “Your mouth.”

“We have to go,” Monica said. “Now.”

“I can’t go back like this.” Bethany pointed to her open mouth with the hand holding the unruly lettuce. Wait, did Connor

Brand just say her mouth was cute?

“We’ll miss English.”

“I am speaking English!”

“I said we’ll miss English!” Monica was totally exasperated now. “Jesus, Beth!”

“Shit.” Bethany did not want to miss English. It was her favorite class. But no way could she go back to school with wild lettuce, walrus flippers,

and an open mouth.

They had bailed on computer science, which was an easy skip, being both patently uninteresting and, like, incredibly boring.

The teacher, Mr. Dunn (Dunn-Heap, Bethany called him), made the class worse by treating them like mascots, two of only three

girls taking the course, like, ooh, isn’t it adorable , girls taking computer science when everyone knows programmers are boys—as if this were auto shop in 1958 and they’d only

taken the class to meet future husbands.

Computer science was also fifth hour, right after second lunch, which made it a prime skip target, since their high school

had an open campus and they could go eat at nearby restaurants and come back late, or just ditch food altogether, like today,

when they found themselves sitting in Connor’s car under the freeway, getting stoned with him and Ian, Monica’s boyfriend.

Ian had gone back to class, because he had soccer practice that day, but Connor said he was hungry and that’s when Bethany

offered to make him a tuna sandwich at her empty house four blocks away (her parents both worked during the day); and then

she looked at Monica with her please-come-with-us eyes, and Monica looked at her with the I-don’t-want-to-miss-class eyes and Bethany came back with the it’s-just-computer-science eyes and Monica gave her back the fine-but-I-don’t-like-this-one-bit-and-we’d-better-be-back-for-English eyes, and boom, here they were, smoke-show Connor Brand standing in her kitchen !

Eating her tuna fish sandwich ! While she held a defiant piece of lettuce in her walrus flipper.

But Monica was right. Sixth hour was English, with Ms. Candless, who they agreed probably had sex with both men and women (no reason, except she’d lived in Spain for two years, and she just seemed cool that way) and who let them read all kinds of racy feminist books from her official reading list. No, they had to get back for sixth hour.

“I’ll drive you back after I finish this sandwich,” Connor said.

“I’m going now,” Monica said suddenly, and she left the kitchen and was out the back door before Bethany could even throw

away the lettuce.

“That was sudden,” Connor said.

Bethany opened the cabinet beneath the sink and finally threw the lettuce away. Okay, at least that was done. She was getting

her shit together. That weird lettuce was gone. But clearly, her best friend was mad at her now. Maybe they could pick her

up on the way back to school and Bethany could apologize. But for what? Getting too high?

“I guess there’s no reason to rush back now,” Connor said. “Maybe you want to show me your bedroom?”

Wait. Did Bethany want to show Connor Brand her bedroom? This was not a question she had been prepared to answer. Did she

want to go to a dance with delicious Connor Brand? Yes. Did she want people at school to see her holding hands with brooding

Connor Brand? Definitely. Did she want, perhaps, to make out with juicy Connor Brand in his black Volkswagen Jetta? Sure.

But he had just spoken his first words to her less than one hour ago—“You ready for a hit, Monica’s friend?”—and so a tour

of her bedroom seemed a bit premature, perhaps even creepy, and maybe smooth Connor Brand realized the same thing, because

he proceeded to try making up some of the intermediate steps between sandwich and sex, crossing the kitchen, taking her in

his arms and kissing her, and at first she thought it was weird that one of the best-looking seniors in school had tuna breath,

but then she recalled making him a tuna sandwich, and it made sense and was even kind of endearing, so she opened her mouth

and kissed him back, but she wasn’t sure what to do with her hands while handsy Connor Brand ran his all over her back and butt and sides, so she put one walrus flipper on the back of his neck and the other on his chest, and that felt amazing, maybe she should show him her bedroom, but, wait, she had a City Guys poster above her bed, what a weird thing that would be—like, what, she was ten?

—and wait, was she going to lose her virginity?

Now? Like this? Stoned and skipping school

with a senior she barely knew? And wait again, was his hand going up her shirt—and that’s when she heard the familiar sound

of footsteps on her front porch and—

“Shit! My parents,” she whispered, and pulled away from tuna-breath Connor Brand and pushed him toward the back door, opened

it, and shoved him out, following him just as she heard her father’s voice in the living room:

“—a bargain when we bought it—”

She gently closed the back door behind her, pushed Connor down the back steps, along the lattice that her distracted dad had

put up for the herbs and clematis her earth mother mom planted, toward the side of the house, right through her mother’s favorite

rosebush. “Stay down!” she whispered, and they snuck low past the big dining room window, and into the driveway. Thankfully,

she’d had Connor park up the street, so that no neighbors would tell her parents that a car had been in the driveway or out

front, and they crept past her dad’s Audi and broke into a run until they arrived at Connor’s car, and she opened the door

and fell into the passenger seat, heart pounding in her ears. “That was so close!”

“Yeah,” Connor said, with slightly less enthusiasm.

She wondered for a moment if they would continue making out in his car, and she thought more about the ramifications of getting

involved with someone like Connor Brand, who would no doubt go off to college next fall, so she’d be looking at a potential

boyfriend window of, what, four months?

But, by then, she could tell something had shifted with wearisome Connor Brand.

“Better get you back to school,” he said, like her parents had asked him to drop her off at kindergarten.

“Yeah, cool,” Bethany said. And even though she hadn’t really wanted to show her bedroom to step-skipping Connor Brand, she

still felt like she’d messed things up somehow, and she was feeling sad about that, when Connor drove them right past the

front of her house—before she could tell him not to—and she looked up and happened to see her father on the front porch as

he started down the steps—apparently, he’d just popped in to grab something—his eyes making contact with hers and following

her as she passed, giving Bethany the is-that-who-I-think-it-is eyes.

“Shit!” Connor Brand said. “Did your parents see you?”

“I don’t know,” she said—but no, her parents had not seen her, maybe just her dad, because A. she wasn’t sure he’d registered that it was her, and B. whoever that petite

Asian woman was on the porch with him, it was not Bethany’s mother.

“I... I don’t know,” she said again, feeling kind of sick.

And, no, she decided, as Connor Brand pulled up to her high school and dropped her off for sixth hour English, this was not the best high she’d ever had.

***

Bethany finished the story of Connor Brand’s sandwich and her father’s mysterious female friend, leaned back in her kitchen

chair, and bit her lip to keep from crying. This was April 2020. Month two of the coronavirus pandemic. Shane was at work,

the kids were playing in the backyard, and Bethany was having an online meeting with her therapist, Peggy, who had asked her