TWENTY

. . .

The depths of hell and the heights of heaven exist within a single mind.

Colin is picking me up early this morning. I can’t wait to get out of here; I even skipped breakfast. My hair’s still wet from the shower. My mom didn’t come home last night, of course, and I didn’t sleep. All last night I just told myself over and over: in six hours you can talk to Colin. You can finally tell him everything. He’ll help you understand.

At 8:05 a.m., the Spacemobile pulls up instead of Colin’s van. Rush is playing. Clint is driving. “Hop in,” he says, and the passenger door swings open. Bennett slides over on the bench seat; Colin’s in the back. They’re all stoned as hell.

Shit.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say, strapping myself in. At least I’m leaving, I tell myself.

“No way, man,” Clint says. “We gotta see this place.”

“Dude, totally,” Bennett says.

“We’re takin’ a tour.” Clint revs what’s left of the engine and drives straight toward the main building.

“You guys, come on, what are you doing?” I say.

“She’s worried, man!” Bennett says. “That’s ’cause it’s an adventure. Adventures are scary sometimes!”

“I’m not worried,” I say, even though I’m completely terrified. Clint and Bennett and wake-and-bake plus the ashram is a recipe for disaster. I try to sound blasé. “It’s just lame here. We should go.”

“Dude, no way, man,” Clint says. “We’ve been hearing about this place for like a year. It’s Crazy Central. All those chicks in robes? We gotta take a look.”

We are clattering down the bus route to Shanti Kutir and I am freaking out inside. “Let’s just go,” I say. “Get something to eat or something.”

“Nuh-uh.” Clint is resolute. “Colin finally agreed to give us the tour. We’re not passing that one up.”

I spin around toward the backseat, shoot Colin a look. He just shrugs. All I want in the entire world is to get out of here, and he’s going to get me killed.

“Come on, you guys. I’m gonna get in trouble.”

Clint turns to me, smirking, a glint in his eye. “Don’t you worry, little lady. We’ll protect you.”

Somehow that isn’t particularly comforting.

We drive the entire bus route, past the Amrit and Shanti Kutir, the parking lot and the dorms. Clint and Bennett laugh, talking about the devotees’ outfits and women that are hot.

“So what, is everyone here married to each other like a commune or some shit?” Clint asks me.

“Yeah, are they?” Bennett asks.

“No,” I say, puffing up. “It’s not like that.” I don’t like them talking about the people here. Not that I don’t hate them all. But I know them. They don’t.

“Well then, what? Does everybody do, like, mind-control experiments?”

“No.” I roll my eyes. “No. I don’t want to talk about it. Can we just go, please?”

“Whoa,” Clint says to Bennett, who raises his eyebrows. “I think the little lady’s mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

“C’mon, little lady. We’ll find something fun to do.”

I do not want to find something fun to do. I want to get out of here. People are starting to stream out of the buildings, headed toward the dining hall for breakfast. I sink down in my seat. The Spacemobile pulls up to the courtyard of gods.

“Wow,” Bennett says.

“Awesome,” Clint says. “Look at that fuckin’ elephant!”

Colin doesn’t say anything. He’s stoned out of his mind, spacing to the music, useless.

“Yeah, that’s Ganesh,” I say. Maybe a little information will satisfy them. “He’s the remover of obstacles. You’re supposed to pray to him for help with stuff in your life.”

“Weird, man,” Bennett says.

“Look at that!” Clint points at the statue of Kali Ma. Kali Ma is the destroyer goddess: she wears a necklace of skulls and a skirt made of arms and no shirt, standing on the body of Shiva with her tongue sticking out.

“Nice tits,” Bennett says.

I’m not superstitious and I know that gods are symbols, but everybody says you do not want to piss off Kali Ma.

“You shouldn’t say that,” I tell Bennett. He looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Dude, who’s that?” Clint asks, nodding toward Gandhi. “He looks fuckin’ hungry.”

“He’s got the munchies!” Bennett giggles.

“That’s Gandhi,” I say. “Haven’t you heard of Gandhi? He was like Martin Luther King but for India, in, like, the thirties?”

“He’s fuckin’ skinny, man,” Clint says.

“Yeah, he’s skinny because he went on hunger strikes.”

“Nah, dude, he’s skinny cause he’s got the munchies,” Bennett insists.

“He needs some Cheetos,” Clint says. “And a Big Gulp.”

“Dude!” Bennett says. “We gotta take Gandhi for some Cheetos!”

“Man!” Clint says, jaw dropping. “You are right!”

Wait. What are they talking about?

“That’s what the Spacemobile is for, man. Good deeds.”

“Good deeds.” Clint puts the van in park but leaves it running.

“Wait, hang on,” I say before he can leave the van.

“What are you guys doing?”

“Feeding the hungry!”

I turn toward the backseat. “Colin!” I say. He doesn’t open his eyes.

“Colin! They’re taking Gandhi!”

He lifts his head six inches, peers at me through heavy lids. “That’s cool, man.”

“No, it’s not cool! There are people everywhere!

We’re gonna get arrested!”

“Dude, chill out. It’s cool. It’ll totally be fine.” And he lays his head back on the seat.

Clint and Bennett are outside the van already. If I yell I’ll only draw attention. Clint’s digging at the feet of Gandhi with a stick; Bennett grabs Gandhi’s head and wrestles him up. Apparently I have to keep lookout, since no one else is going to. We’re half hidden by a hedge, but Clint and Bennett are making grunty noises and at least two people crane their necks to try and see around the hedge.

“Psst,” I whisper loud through the open window. “Hey.” Bennett turns around. “People can see you.”

“Okay, hurry up,” he says, and starts yanking harder; Clint kicks the bottom of the statue till it finally breaks free.

“All right, one, two, three,” he says, and they hoist Gandhi onto their shoulders, head back toward the van.

“Open open open!” Clint yells; I sit there frozen.

“The back!”

Colin’s clearly not gonna get up to open the door. I just want to get us out of here. I run to the back and open the latch; Clint and Bennett heave Gandhi up and throw him in. He hits the metal of the van, making a horrible clanging noise.

“Run!” Bennett says; they slam the doors, we pile in, and Clint steps on the gas.

They’re all cracking up, of course, practically falling over themselves as we speed down the bus route. Clint’s eyes squeeze shut from silent-painful laugh, and once I even have to grab the wheel to keep him from swerving.

“Did you see that, Tessa? Did you—” Clint hollers.

“Just drive,” I say through clenched teeth.

He heads straight for the main entrance, where there are about a million people. I hold my breath and shrink down in my seat. A familiar voice yells, “Hey!” and in the rearview mirror someone chases us, but the transmission drowns it out and we speed past, hurtling toward the highway, Gandhi crashing in the back.

On the road the guys roll down the windows and yell.

“Wooh!” they howl, faces aimed into the wind. I roll my eyes and shake my head. Clint reaches across Bennett to poke my ribs. “Hey,” he says. “We got away!”

“Hooray.”

“Aw, c’mon. Wasn’t it a little awesome?”

“No.”

“Not even when we hurled him in the back?”

“No.”

“Not even when we drove past all those ashram people chasing after us? ‘Hey! Wait! Stop!’” He imitates them running after us, making a spaz-out face. I laugh a little, in spite of myself.

“See?” he says, poking me again. “See, it’s fun.” He smiles at me.

Finally I decide to let him win me over. It’s easier than trying to fight. “Okay.” We round a bend; Gandhi clunks against the wall.

At Colin’s, they unload the statue while I smoke up. If I can’t talk to Colin about last night, then what I need is to forget. I need to make myself go away. I need to blot it out, blur everything till you can’t make out the outlines and it all just runs together. I polish off three bowls by myself, until my head is thick enough that I can tell myself I just dreamed the temple and the guru and my mother and my dad. Until everything that’s happened to me dissolves, and I’m not carrying it inside me anymore, and all that’s left is what’s happening just exactly now. I make a promise to myself: Today, just for today, there will be no such thing as memory. No such thing as stuff that happened in the past. No people except the ones I’m in the room with. All that will exist will be what’s happening in this moment, here and now. Everything else is dust.

I let go of myself and give the morning over to the guys. We stopped at 7-Eleven on the way, and now the guys spend at least an hour building an elaborate shrine in the yard: a ring of Ding Dongs encircles Gandhi’s feet, a Big Gulp perches precariously on his head, and he’s festooned with Cheetos. Everyone thinks this is hilarious. I sort of like Gandhi—the person, not the statue—so I wonder if it’s disrespectful. I’m stoned enough to recognize that it is kind of incredible, though.

“Good deeds!” Bennett yells, and high-fives Colin when they’re done.

“Attention, all,” Clint calls out in a fake town-crier voice. “Please gather round for an important announcement.” Everyone just stares at him. He waves us over. “I said, Please gather round.” Bennett finishes the Cheetos; I put down the bong and head toward the guys.

With a flourish, Clint produces a tiny Baggie from his pocket. It’s folded in half and then in half again, so small you can’t imagine it’s even holding anything. “I have here”—another flourish—“your tickets to a new reality.”

“Aw, man, you scored,” Bennett says. “No shit. Really?”

“Really,” Clint says with a nod.

“That is awesome,” Colin says, slightly sobered up and more awake.

“What?” I ask. Everyone seems to know what Clint’s talking about but me.

“Oh, Tessa.” Colin turns to me. “You’re gonna love this.”

“Really?” What am I gonna love?

“Oh my god. Yes. Totally.”

“What is it?”

“Have you ever heard of acid?”

“What, like battery acid?”

He laughs. “No. Like LSD.”

I have heard of LSD, in junior high health class when we had two weeks about dangerous chemical drugs. Mr. Fishman said that people take it and jump off buildings, thinking they can fly; he said some people scratch their skin away, sure they’re covered with bugs. He also said there are people who never come down. I pretended I was taking notes while I imagined unseen bugs crawling on my skin forever, how terrifying it would be to take a pill and never get my brain back.

“Oh. Wow. Isn’t it—scary?”

Colin’s eyes are wide and focused. “No. Totally not. It’s amazing.”

“Aren’t there—don’t you think there are bugs on you and stuff?”

Colin shakes his head. “Urban legend, man. Just like the perpetual-tripping myth. Everyone knows someone who knows some guy who dropped too much and tripped forever, but the secret is it’s all the same guy. And he doesn’t exist.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Because in health class—”

“Propaganda, dude,” Clint interrupts. “What’d they tell you about weed in health class?”

He’s right: they told us marijuana leads to heroin use, erases your memory, and turns you psychotic.

“Hm. Then what’s it like?”

“Oh, man,” Bennett says.

“Wooh,” Clint says.

“Basically it’s like waking up a whole new brain you didn’t even know you had,” Colin says, and grins.

“Wow. Like what kind of brain?”

“Like the awesome kind,” Bennett snorts.

“Have you ever heard of that saying, We only use ten percent of our minds? It’s like all of a sudden you’ve got access to the other ninety. And it’s totally beautiful. Like you can finally see.”

My mom said that when we first got to the ashram: I can finally see. I wonder if acid is like the stuff she talked about: electricity flowing through you, a liquid silence ocean. I wonder if I’ll finally find out what she meant. “Is it like the universe and stuff?”

All three guys laugh. “Exactly. That’s exactly it.”

“It’s like the universe,” Clint says, as he reaches into the tiny bag with tweezers and pulls out a square of paper. “Open wide,” he says, and sets it on my tongue.

For almost an hour and a half I don’t feel anything. I keep telling the guys there’s something wrong, but they keep telling me to chill out. “It takes at least an hour. Minimum,” Colin says. “Sometimes longer.”

At approximately eighty-six minutes I feel a weird feeling. It’s kind of like too much coffee but there’s a chemical part too, a clangy feeling in my nose and mouth. “Drink some orange juice,” Clint says. “It’ll make it come on harder.”

He hands me the carton and I chug. The juice is viscous and tangy. Somehow I can feel it in the inside of my skull. My mouth gets thick and sticky and I smack my lips.

“Ah, that acid feeling,” Colin says.

Clint puts on And You and I, my favorite Yes song. It’s long, with all these movements, delicate acoustic parts morphing into space noises and epic orchestral swells, then back to quiet. When the sci-fi crescendos start in, suddenly I can hear the sounds in space. Except it’s not just hearing, because I actually experience them spatially—geometry of the notes, the gaps between them. Hearing and seeing combine into a whole other way of perceiving, and all of a sudden I realize there aren’t just five senses, there are totally way more. When I close my eyes I see separate planes stretching out and out and out, notes weaving between them like electric threads. Being stoned makes music special but in a feeling way, fuzzy and lush in your body and imagination. This is actually real, crystal-clear and sharp, like it’s always there and I just saw behind the curtain.

The song spirals into resolution, And you and I climb crossing the shapes of the morning, and I tear up at the beauty of it, note-threads looping into perfect filigreed patterns that make the shape of love, and when silence comes again I open up my eyes. They’ve never been so open: it’s how I imagine babies feel, looking at the world for the first time, pure. My face is a clean slate.

“Welcome to acid,” Colin says, and takes my hands, staring right into my mind.

Pretty soon after that, time stops meaning anything. “How long have we been tripping?” Bennett asks, and I look at the alarm clock and immediately crack up. Those little ticking hands, so meaningless, such a tiny insignificant human way of trying to measure something infinite and vast. Ridiculous. I throw the clock across the room, laughing.

“Time doesn’t exist,” I say, realizing it as the words spill out my mouth. “It’s actually the same as space, but that’s too big for our minds to comprehend, so we invent calendars and clocks and minutes and hours and run our lives by them, but all that stuff’s made up! It’s just made up. Oh my god, it’s made up.”

“It’s made up!” Colin yells to the rafters, laughing. “Made up!” That’s Clint. “Okay, so in the arbitrary system of random symbols we call time that doesn’t actually exist, how long have we been tripping? I want to know how soon we’re gonna peak.” That’s Bennett.

“Soon, I think,” Clint says, giggling.

“Yeah, very soon,” Colin says.

And then we’re peaking.

I can’t move, because everything else is. The walls are breathing, the floor is breathing, so’s the ceiling: everything around me is alive, the world continually and infinitely collapsing like double waterfalls into a single point between my eyes. And that’s when I have my eyes closed. When I open them, that point is wherever I’m looking, multiplying till there’s a million vortexes everywhere, white light fractured into rainbows, air fractalized and prismed, flowing eternally into itself in the infinite breath of the universe.

A little voice in my head hears me think, Infinite breath of the universe, and says, That sounds like cheesy ashram talk, but then I recognize how small that voice is, how much tinier than the reality I’m experiencing, and words like universe and infinity are coming to me like dictation, not like something I’m trying to make up, and that’s the difference: Whether you really see it or you make it up. Cheesy happens when you fake stuff. If you really see it, it’s just real.

Colin and Clint and Bennett and I lie down on the floor, tops of our heads touching, feet pointing outward in a circle or a cross. Colin takes my hand and I’m thankful for the tether, keeping me from sliding off into infinite space. I feel his pulse in his palm and our veins interweave, life joined to life. Everything’s alive. Everything’s alive. I move my free hand in front of my face and it turns into fifty hands, my arm to fifty arms, and suddenly I understand the courtyard of gods. That’s why Ganesh and Kali Ma and Saraswati have a million arms.

It’s a picture of this.

And then suddenly everything’s a picture. The kitchen, the poster, the bed, all of them are paintings of themselves, like Van Gogh or something in a museum. I realize: the painting is the outer manifestation of the thing, how the world sees it, what it wants you to think it is. But underneath that, each thing has an essence. I look at Colin, and Bennett, and Clint: it’s the same thing with them. Their faces and bodies and clothes, presentation, personalities—all of that’s a painting, and beneath that is their life force, which is what they really are. And I get it: that’s what the swamis mean by ego. The painting part’s the ego, and the essence part’s the soul.

That’s such a cool thing that I want to say it out loud, but my mouth won’t make words. Thoughts are coming so much faster than my teeth and tongue can turn them into language. Nobody else is talking either. I think I have to just stay quiet.

Those words echo in my head, Stay quiet; thoughts fall away and I’m just breathing. My ribs turn vast and transparent; when I close my eyes there are those planes again, stretching out in infinite directions till they disappear or turn to everything, and I realize everything and nothing are the same, it’s all a liquid silence ocean, stretching on forever, and then I remember that I’ve heard that phrase before.

This is what my mom meant. This is why her eyes blazed and she tried and tried to tell me. I know it. A wave of love and relief floods over me. I wish I could go back to that walk in the woods when I made the dumb televangelist joke; I wish I could take it back, tell her I understand. The thing is, now, I’m not sure she’d even care. She’s so far away. Even though I know that near and far are just illusions, that they’re really the same thing, I still can’t find her.

I’m starting to get overwhelmed thinking about my mom, far away with the beard guy. I flash on last night in the bathroom, the steam, her fingernails digging into my arm. I get a whiff of claustrophobic anxious black oil creeping in the edges of my rainbow mind, and I know I have to stop it, now. I have to pick my mind up off that subject and put it down in a wholly different place. Now. Before it’s too late.

I open my eyes, point them toward the white ceiling, try to slow things down enough to stand up. There are fractals moving on the stucco, but things are breathing less; the infinite collapsing has stopped being quite so infinite. I get up.

“I’m going for a walk.” I’d forgotten I could speak.

Outside is amazing. Nature is perfect. It’s freezing and the wind bites past my clothes, through my skin, between my cells; I’m cold down to my bones, but it’s not uncomfortable. I’m part of the air. If you don’t resist it, cold is just another way of being, as natural as a warm bath. Branches tangle, interlace in the woods around me like nerves or lace, black against the bright white sky. Snowflakes sprinkle out from whiteness—crystalline, miraculous. Everything is so clear it’s like I’ve got extra-strong glasses. My world was blurry and I didn’t even know it.

Behind me is Gandhi; I go to see him. He has Cheeto powder on his face, Dr Pepper running down his head. It was funny before, but now I see it isn’t right.

He needs to be cleaned. I try wiping him off with my sleeve, but there’s too much junk on him. I understand why they call it junk food—it really is. It doesn’t have life force like nature does, or sprouts. Suddenly sprouts sound really good. My sleeve is soaked with Dr Pepper and I’m smearing it on his face. That won’t do. I pull my shirt over my head; a rush of goose bumps shoots up my spine. Don’t resist, I tell myself, and breathe deep, nothing but my bra between me and the winter wind. Snowflakes melt onto my skin. You’re part of it; it’s all the same thing. There’s nothing outside of you to fight against.

I use my shirt to clean Gandhi, every inch of him, and think, This is what devotion is. I’m in an ancient temple or a ceremony, communing with the spirit of the statue, making sure he’s clean and pure. I run the corner of my sleeve around the rim of his glasses, creases of his nose. Snow makes a thin film on his head and shoulders. When he’s finally clean, he smiles at me. I smile back.

We’re standing there, staring at each other, when the guys spill out. I feel their energy, loud and tumbly and male, even before the screen door slams.

“Hel-loo,” Colin calls out.

“I’m here with Gandhi,” I say, still reverent from the cleaning. They come over.

“What do you think?” I show them my handiwork. They nod, solemn. It’s an improvement.

“That really is a beautiful statue,” Bennett says, looking at Gandhi.

“Yes, indeed it is,” Clint says, looking at me.

Colin comes up behind me, wraps his arms around my naked torso. I wasn’t fighting the cold, but the warm feels amazing. I lean back into him, soak up the heat of his chest with my back. He grabs my hips, turns me around and kisses me.

It’s insane kissing on acid: weirdly more and less than sober or stoned. We fall into each other’s mouths, energy circling between us in an endless figure eight, like an infinity sign, and again I understand: that symbol’s not just a drawing, it’s a picture of something real, a picture of this. At the same time, the actual kissing part feels weirdly hollow, almost silly—just muscles, tongues swimming around each other. Bodies are just bodies. We give them all this importance, but they’re really so rudimentary, empty vessels. He opens my mouth deeper and I don’t feel the sex of it, just the energy.

Meanwhile Bennett has found a tree trunk to stare at. “Man, look at this bark,” he says. “It’s like moving. I should totally take this home and put it on my wall like art.”

Colin stops kissing me for a second, laughing. “In eight hours it isn’t gonna look like that anymore, man. You can’t take it with you.” Then he comes back to my mouth.

“Aw, dude, you’re right,” Bennett says. “Wow. Perception is wild, huh?”

“Wild, man,” Clint says. My eyes are closed but I can hear he’s near me.

Electricity runs through me, strong, and I realize that I’m shuddering. My whole body’s shivering hard; it’s funny, I don’t really feel cold. I stop kissing and look down at myself. Colin does too. “Wow,” he says. “Why didn’t you tell me you were cold?”

“I didn’t feel it,” I say, and look into his spinning eyes.

“C’mon,” he says. “Let’s go inside and get you a shirt.”

His flannel feels like the essence of hot cocoa. The bed is the essence of bed. He puts on water to boil, and part of my brain says, Hot stove = fire, but then I start watching the walls and forget. When the teakettle whistles, he remembers to turn it off, which is good because I wouldn’t have. He brings me a Garfield mug full of mint tea. It says, “Give Me Coffee and No One Gets Hurt.” Garfield is out of control. I stare at his face for a minute and then it’s too much; I have to stop. I cover him up with my hands.

“You good?” Colin asks me.

“Mmm,” I say. I am.

“Cool, then I’m gonna go outside and run around a little.” He smiles into my eyes. I smile back. That was nice, how he took care of me, brought me in and put a flannel on me. That’s what people are supposed to do with each other. That’s what love is, I realize: just looking out for the people around you, thinking about what they might need, and giving it to them. So simple. He’s my ally.

“Thanks,” I say.

I lie back on the bed and close my eyes for what seems like hours. Grids of vibrating electric light stretch out in all directions, farther than my mind can even see; I track them back and back and back till suddenly they disappear and everything turns to space, like in Star Wars or cartoons, but vast, and real. Twinkling in the emptiness are a million tiny jewels, and when I stay with them, I see they’re all connected by delicate threads, gossamer thin, and the net that they make is the universe.

In the distance I hear the door open and swing shut, far off, all the way across space. Then a voice snaps me back into the room.

“Hey, Tessa,” Clint says.

I rub my eyes, disoriented, not sure which reality I’m in or if it’s both at once. Transcending dualities is confusing. It’s dark outside.

He sits backward in a kitchen chair. “Trippin’ out, huh?” His weasel eyes are blazing.

I smile. “Yeah.”

“Didn’t know all that stuff existed, did you.”

“No. Well, sort of. But not like this.” It’s hard to talk. “You know.”

“Yeah, I do. You want something to eat?”

Eat. Whoa. My body is not sure how it feels about that. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. But try this.” He brings an orange from the kitchen, digs his thumbs into the peel. It sprays, pungent. “Smells good, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Wait’ll you taste it.” He finishes peeling, splits it in half. It’s incredible just to see. It’s like the mandalas at the ashram, perfect patterned circles, except this one’s made by nature. I swear, nature is amazing. He pulls a segment off.

“Open wide,” he says, just like when he put the acid on my tongue. The thought, Why does he keep feeding me? flashes through my mind, but then it flits away. I open my mouth; he slides the orange in. It’s amazing. So intense I can feel it in my whole head, and also in my blood. Suddenly I understand food. This was made by nature to sustain me, who is also part of nature. I feel the interconnectedness of everything as I chew.

“Wow,” I say into his eyes.

“Toldja,” he says.

He feeds me another piece. Then he hands the orange over to me. “You don’t want any?” I ask.

“Course I do.” He grins. “Now it’s your turn.”

He means feed him. I guess it’s only fair. I peel off a piece and hold it out, stopping a few inches from his mouth. He darts forward and bites it from my fingers like an animal.

“Mmm,” he says, chewing, staring at me. I squirm a little. He swallows.

“Another,” he says.

This time his lips brush my fingers as he takes it from me. A shiver goes through my skin. I’ve never touched another guy besides Colin, unless you count Randy Wishnick. It surprises me how much touching Clint is the same as touching Colin. Except then he looks at me with those beady weasel eyes and it’s not.

“Why’d you put that flannel on?” he says.

What does he mean? “I was shivering.”

“Too bad,” he says.

Too bad I was shivering, or too bad I put the flannel on? “I guess.” Suddenly I wish I could close my eyes and go back to glimmering jewels in space. My heart starts to thud. I’m not hungry anymore.

The door creaks open, interrupting Clint’s stare, and Bennett walks in, pulling off his sweater. He’s got a tie-dye T-shirt underneath, and the swirls of color undulate across his pudgy belly. I stare.

“What, the tie-dye?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Totally,” because suddenly I understand tie-dye. Acid makes you suddenly understand a lot of things you’ve seen a million times before.

“Where’s Colin?” I ask Bennett. “He went down by the creek,” he says. “Grabbed a flashlight, went exploring.”

I wish he would’ve taken me. “Oh.”

“He always does that when he trips. Vision quest. He’ll be back eventually,” Bennett says. “He knows the woods around here super well.”

“Okay.”

“Tessa and I were just having an orange,” Clint tells Bennett, raising his eyebrows.

“Yeah?” Bennett says.

“Yeah,” Clint says. “She was feeding me.” I blush. “Maybe if you ask nice she’ll feed you too.”

I want to say, No way, but I don’t want to seem paranoid. What’s wrong with sharing an orange? Clint would say, and I wouldn’t have an answer.

Bennett turns to me. “Tessa, would you please feed me some orange?”

My stomach burns. “Okay.”

I peel a piece off, put it in his mouth. They both just watch me.

They’re not doing anything wrong. They’re being nice, and smiling, sharing food. But the acid gives me X-ray vision, tunneling through the layers, and there is something underneath that’s unfamiliar, thick and sticky and a little frightening. I’m starting to get that feeling that I had before, black oil creeping in the corners of my mind. I start to remember last night again. I feel like I don’t have any parents. I feel like I’m still too young to not have parents. I want Colin to come back.

“It’s hot,” Clint says, and turns to Bennett. “Don’t you think it’s hot?”

“Totally,” Bennett says. I don’t think it’s hot.

Clint stands up and takes his shirt off. He’s skinny: you can see the outline of each muscle, his chest concave, stomach a perfect six-pack. His body is bright white, moles and freckles standing out in stark relief. He strides over to the sink to get a glass of water, easy in his skin. He gulps it down and puts “Led Zeppelin III” on the stereo. Immigrant Song. He turns it way, way loud. Robert Plant’s voice screams out echoey: Aaaah-ah! It sounds like Halloween.

Valhalla, I am coming. Bennett smokes from the bong. I can’t imagine being stoned right now.

Clint says, “Aren’t you hot, Tessa?”

“Not really,” I tell him.

“Yeah, but sometimes acid messes up your sense of temperature,” he says. “Remember before when you didn’t realize you were cold?”

It’s true; I didn’t. “Yeah.”

“I think it’s the same thing now. It’s super hot in here. You should be careful not to overheat.”

“Really?” I can’t tell if he’s messing with me or not. Everything’s a collage of contradictions; I can’t tell what’s real, if everything or nothing is, or somewhere in between. My gut says he’s messing with me. But what’s “my gut”? Maybe it’s just fear. Maybe I need to overcome it. Maybe that’s my challenge from the universe.

“Totally,” he says. “You shouldn’t be wearing all that heavy flannel.”

I have to be brave in order to know the truth. I start unbuttoning.

“You’re gonna be way safer,” Clint tells me. I let the shirt fall to the floor. Cool air feels good against my skin. I’m just in my bra and jeans. Bennett is staring at me over the edge of the bong.

Clint cracks a grin. “See, isn’t that so much better?”

I wish there was a word for yes and no at once.

Clint sits down by me on the bed. Led Zeppelin wails. It’s pitch-black out the windows. He reaches out his hand, puts it on my leg, and suddenly it’s like a vortex opens up, one I could just spin into, no bottom, no floor, no one to catch me or pull me back; just endless empty space. I peek over the edge, teetering.

Then the door cracks open again.

It’s Colin. My heart leaps in my chest: thank god. My body fills with love and I understand the phrase sweet relief. “Colin!” I stand up, pulling away from the black hole of Clint. “You’re back!” I go to throw my arms around his neck, kiss him like before, minds melding in infinity signs, but he hangs back.

“What’s up?” I ask him, eyes wide open.

He looks down at my bra and stomach, then across the room to Clint.

“Nothing,” he says, but he doesn’t mean it.

He eyes the orange peels on the floor, then walks to the refrigerator and opens it, staring at the empty inside. I follow him.

“Are you mad at me?” I can read him better than I can read Clint and Bennett.

“Nope,” he says, staring at the mustard.

Reality is shaped like nerves or branches, and he’s gone down a fork where I can’t follow him. I remember this morning, how all I wanted was to talk to him. How I stayed up all night waiting for it, imagining how I would finally tell him everything and he would hold it, hold me, keep me from spilling. He was so nearby. Now he’s down a whole road I don’t recognize. I want to reach through the crowded air between us, past the skin of thoughts that wraps his mind. I want to pull him back. “Hey,” I say, and run my fingers down his cheek.

“Hey.” He turns to me and wraps me in his arms, slides a hand onto my hip and grabs, but it’s rough, not pure like energy and babies’ eyes. Then he kisses me, too hard to feel the figure eight between us. I squirm. It doesn’t make me stop spilling. Clint and Bennett are watching from the couch. Out the corner of my eyes I spot the alarm clock on the floor from where I threw it a long time ago. It’s four in the morning. I can’t imagine ever sleeping.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I say.

“Tess, I just got back from a walk. A really long one,” he says. “Besides, don’t you want to be in here with everyone?” He eyes my chest again, then looks to Clint, his shirt off too. “It kind of seems like it.”

I shake my head.

“Kind of seems like you want to hang out with Clint.”

“Not really,” I say.

“Really? Hmm,” he says. He sounds hard, and far away. It scares me: I can’t find him, even though he’s standing right here. “Well, I still don’t feel like going out again. You can if you want.”

It’s pitch-black; I’d get lost out there in the woods by myself. I need to find something to hang on to.

“No, it’s okay. Let’s listen to some music.”

Colin puts on the Doors. “Break on Through.” I’ve heard them before and I know all about Jim Morrison, but they are different on acid. Especially closed up in a little cabin, especially in the middle of the night. Tried to run, tried to hide, break on through to the other side. The Doors were made for taking acid. I start dancing. I’m the only one but I don’t care, I shut my eyes and shake every-thing as hard as I can, trying to get it all out, cross over, push through. I tell myself: Just spill. Disintegrate. Give up your attachment to holding things together. I remind myself: Your challenge from the universe is to overcome your fear.

I dance till my muscles are wobbly and I’m covered with sweat. Now I’m glad I’m only in my bra. I flop down on the bed; the room spins around me, tilty, orbiting, like Saturn’s rings. The world of my mom and my dad and the ashram and even Colin dissolves and my universe becomes the circus world of the Doors, carnivals and lizards, snakes and deep dark corners. Clint sits next to me, leaning in and singing along: You know that it would be untrue; you know that I would be a liar. . . . He holds out the bong and I take it, inhale deep.

The next song comes on and Clint keeps singing right to me: The men don’t know, but the little girls understand. I just watch his lips move, till I can’t see them anymore because they’re pressing into mine.

I go with it for a second, just a second, before my brain says, Stop. Then I realize what’s happening. The last thing I want to do is kiss Clint. His breath is hot and he looks like a rodent or a fox and he is scary like Jim Morrison. And he is my boyfriend’s best friend, and what the hell is he doing kissing me? My mind swirls. Shit. I have to get away. I pull back, press my hand against his chest. “Stop.”

“What’s the matter, little lady? You scared?” He leans in again. “No. Yes. I don’t know. Just stop it.” He doesn’t stop. He’s crowding me with his breath, and I look over his shoulder, search for Colin with my eyes. I know he’ll get me out of this, say something that’s just the right mixture of funny and firm, pick me up and hold me, make it so I can breathe again. I plead with my eyes: Come get me.

But he doesn’t. He takes a swig of water from his glass and looks me straight in the eye like he’s accusing me of something. And he leaves me there.

Clint leans back in and I say, “Stop,” again, and he says, “C’mon, Tess, break on through.” I put my elbows in front of my chest, try to make a space between us, but he pushes them away, pins my arms on the bed. My mind is a zoom lens; the room is spinning out and everything is way too intense, his hands and face and the confusion; this is the end, my only friend and Colin by the refrigerator, not moving, just leaving me there, Bennett saying, “All right,” and Clint’s hard body on top of me all bones and angles. I’m trying to push through my fear, push past it, go where the universe takes me, but the harder I push the harder it pushes back, and the push grows and the fear grows and the push grows and the fear grows until there’s an epic battle inside and on top of me, every fight that’s ever existed replicating its essence in my body and my mind, threatening to explode my skin from the inside.

“Jesus Christ,” Colin says and slams his water down. “I’m going for a walk.”

I decide I will kiss Clint. I can’t fight it, so I’ll do it as an experiment. To see what an unfamiliar human being feels like. Or something. The universe wants me to be brave, so I’ll let myself kiss him. But that’s it.

It goes on for what seems like forever, and the whole time I feel like I’m on the edge of a razor. It could cut me anytime and I would bleed and bleed and nothing here would stop it. I could bleed till I’m empty, till there’s nothing left but the painting of me. “C’mon, gimme a little love,” Clint says, and I know he wants me to act how I do with Colin, the squirming and the sounds, and I can’t. I can’t do it. It’s fake. All that power I think I have with Colin, it’s all fake. He still leaves the room and Clint’s on top of me, and no matter what noises I make it won’t change that, and I’m starting to wonder what is on the other side of my fear, and if I’ll ever get there.

Bennett comes over and sits on the bed. He just watches us. Clint looks up at him and grins. “Awesome, huh?”

“Awesome,” Bennett says.

I ram Clint in the ribs with my elbow and run outside.

I can’t find Colin. I run and run, breathless, freezing in my bra, wind washing my lungs like water. My heart pounds hard, harder than it ever has, till I start wondering what a heart attack feels like. I could die. I could die out here and nobody would stop it; I could die at any second, anytime. Fear bears down on me like a tidal wave and I’m running to outrace it, find some hiding place where it can’t reach. Everything turns primal; this is the most basic thing, I think; terror runs through my veins and I’m alone. Totally, completely, essentially alone.

Branches scrape my shoulders, leaving welts; my skin looks too alive, grotesque in the predawn light. I run through the woods. “Colin!” I yell on the edge of my breath. “Colin!”

Finally I find him, down at the creek, on the other side from me. His jeans are rolled up, his shoes off. He’s staring at the water; it floods between us like a boundary on a map. We’re two separate countries, him and me, and I don’t know what war we had to get that way.

“Colin!” I call across the creek. He looks up. His face is angry.

“What do you want?” he yells back over the rush of the water.

I want you, I think. But I’m too scared to say it. And in some way, for some reason, it partly isn’t true.

I roll up my jeans, lose my shoes, and wade in.

I was cold before, but this is a whole new level. The water’s glass through my skin; the current’s hard enough to knock me over and I feel like I’m a pioneer crossing some huge and ancient river, my entire survival hinging on getting to the other side.

“What’re you doing?” Colin shouts, and I can’t answer, too focused on the mossy rocks beneath me, struggling not to slip. Halfway through my ankle catches in two sharp-edged stones, wrenches hard and I fall, twisted backward with the current, soaked. A hot arrow of pain shoots up my leg.

“Tessa!” Colin yells.

I brace myself, slip my foot out, hoist back up; but when I try to walk, the arrow fires harder and I fall again. I start hyperventilating. “Just wait there.” Colin wades into the creek. I sit, water flooding around me, and try to slow my breathing, hold still in the rush of it. Finally he gets to me, puts his arm around my waist, slings my arm over his shoulder, and lifts. I lean on him; I have to.

Finally we get over to the other side, collapse on brown leaves and soft dirt. The sun is rising. I’m still breathing hard. My ankle throbs.

“What the hell were you doing, Tess?”

I can’t tell what he means: when I was crossing the river, or with Clint in his cabin? My head is crashing with so many things. I’m relieved I made it here, and terrified; furious at Colin for leaving me with Clint, but thanking god he waded in and got me. My entire body’s shaking. “I was trying to get to you.”

He looks at me for a long time from far away. His face is like the day after we first kissed, when he told me that it couldn’t happen anymore—except harder, and older, and full of too many things for me to count or know. Suddenly I can feel my own face and I know it looks the same. That border’s still between us, even though I made it across the creek. I feel old, and scared, and young, and angry.

“Take me home,” I say, and then I’m sobbing. “Take me home.”