Chương 30: Smoke Two Joints

Paranoia dialed to eleven, Isabel and I made our way back to the cluster of cabins. Moving through the crowd, I couldn't help jumping at every shadow, worried that anyone we passed might be the second Weepy White. Before we even reached the stoner cabin, the sweet-smelling smoke hit my nose. I was a cartoon cat caught by the scent of a pie cooling on a windowsill, drifting toward the source. Figures silhouetted against the UV light moved inside, conversations mixing with bursts of laughter and the occasional cough.

It was a neon aquarium filled with stoned fish.

"There," Isabel pointed. I spotted him immediately. Tre was a basketball court length away on the porch of the cabin opposite the stoners' cabin, swaying slightly as he held a red Solo cup with both hands like it was a chalice. A girl with pigtails wearing what had to be fifty glowstick bracelets was crouched down next to him, giggling as he put down his drink so he could gesture wildly while telling his story.

"—and that's when I realized," Tre was saying loudly, "that being two feet tall has its advantages. Nobody expects the little guy to be the mastermind!"

"Jesus Christ," I said, striding over.

"Tre." He looked up at me with glassy eyes and a dopey smile on his face.

"Nora! My best friend in the whole wide world!" He gestured toward the girl.

"This is... uh..."

"Sage," the girl supplied helpfully.

"Sage! She's a theater nerd. Also, she gave me this beer. Isn't she the best?" I scooped him up before he could protest, ignoring his indignant squeak.

"Sorry, I need to borrow him."

"Did Sameer leave?" I asked, carrying Tre a few steps away from the girl.

"Nooope," Tre said, then hiccupped, which shouldn't have been possible given he didn't have lungs. Actually, he shouldn't even have been able to get drunk at all. I frowned, confused by the biology of it, and focused on him until a small tag popped up next to his head: STATUS APPLIED: INTOXICATED (DEBUFF) Effect: -15% Lucidity. -8% Movement. -8% Vision. STATUS APPLIED: BEER GOGGLES (DEBUFF) Effect: Every creature looks more attractive than they are. Susceptible to Charm skills and abilities. Of course.

The game had allowed his vinyl body to process alcohol like flesh and blood, just for the purpose of applying the debuff.

"He's in there. I swear." He pointed toward the cabin, his arm making three attempts before landing in the right direction.

"I'm like a... like a very small bouncer. Nobody gets past me!" His voice was so slurred I could barely understand him, and the way he kept swaying in my arms made me doubt everything he was telling me. Then he tried to flex, lost his balance in my hands, and ended up upside down.

"You're doing great," Isabel said dryly, taking him from me and flipping him right-side up. He started telling her about how "Sage understands my artistic vision."

"Can you keep an eye on him?" I asked Isabel.

"I need to check inside and make sure Sameer's actually still there."

"Sure," Isabel said, taking Tre from me. As I walked away, I heard him chatting her ear off about Sage's "big Broadway ambitions" and how beer tasted differently when you were a toy. The stoner cabin smelled like weed, Nag Champa incense, and the sour funk of too many teens crammed into a tight space. The blacklights made everything more surreal: white shirts glowed purple, teeth looked dark in people's mouths, and every piece of lint on my dark clothes lit up like tiny stars.

Hip hop blasted from a portable speaker in direct competition with the unending throb of bass from the music outside. I squinted through the haze, scanning faces for Sameer. I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking and bumped into a dude holding a bowl full of pre-rolled joints like party favors.

"Take one," he said joyfully. The smoke was everywhere, and there was no point pretending to be above it all. I should've kept my head clear. But the world was overrun by maggots, I was trapped in a demon video game, and I'd probably die before dawn. Fuck it. I took a free joint, found a lighter on a nearby table, and took a long drag. The smoke hit harshly, making me cough, but then... a familiar warmth spread through me.

My eyes caught on the Perception debuff, minus ten percent, right when I needed to be alert and looking for a potential murderer. I should care about that. I should be worried about making myself less observant. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. But then I took another hit and started to feel my shoulders drop. The constant anxiety that had been riding me since I woke up in my eighteen-year-old body began to ease.

That crushing weight I'd felt loosened its grip just a tiny bit. Fuck the debuff. This was worth it. The dude with the bowl of joints started to move on, but I caught his arm.

"Actually," I said, channeling every ounce of casual confidence I could muster, "I'm throwing a thing later. Can I grab some for my friends?"

"Hell yeah, sharing is caring!" The kid pushed the whole bowl at me. I grabbed two handfuls, probably fifteen joints, shoving them into my jacket pocket. ITEM ACQUIRED! PRE-ROLLED JOINTS (X15) Effect: Applies MILD EUPHORIA on use.

"They say it's a 'gateway.' But I've been through many intradimensional portals, and none of them felt like this." As I moved further into the cabin, the weed hit properly. The constant lump of tension in my shoulders loosened. For the first time since we got here, all my anxiety melted away. Even the pulsing LifeLine background screen seemed less threatening, the red glow almost warming. Weaving through the place, I finally grasped the full scope of the cabin's size.

It was much larger than I'd expected, probably meant to house twenty or thirty campers back in the day. There were several rows of bunk beds with barely enough room to walk between them. Most had been claimed by kids in various states of consciousness, some lying flat and staring at the ceiling, others sitting cross-legged and chatting animatedly with the glazed focus of the incredibly stoned. I thought I found Sameer twice, but both turned out to be false alarms.

Once, I saw a dark-haired guy with glasses who turned out to be a tall girl in a boy's wig. The other time, I saw a guy with similar skin coloring, but he was making out with two girls on a bunk bed, and that didn't seem like Sameer's style. Ahead, two guys were sprawled horizontally on a bottom bunk, using the wall behind them as a backrest. Their legs swung lazily over the side of the bed as they passed a joint back and forth while caught in a seemingly intense debate.

"—no, but like, think about it," one of them was saying, gesturing wildly.

"How do we know colors are even real? Like, what if what I see as blue, you see as red, but we both learned to call it blue?"

"That's not how eyes work, Klice," his friend replied, taking a long drag.

"I know, but, like, how do we know for sure?" Klice shot back. A girl sitting cross-legged on the floor looked up at me with wide, bloodshot eyes.

"Hey, you look lost. You good?"

"Just looking for someone," I said, still scanning the room.

"Guy with clear glasses and side-swept bangs, kind of skinny. Sound familiar?" The girl shook her head, then one of the boys on the bunk bed spoke up, "You're talking about Bill Nye!"

"Excuse me?"

"That's what we called him! Dude was dropping science facts like he was getting paid for it." He pointed toward the back corner where a cluster of kids sat in a circle.

"We were with those kids, totally nerding out about black holes and stuff. Way over my head, but Klice was eating it up," he said, pointing a thumb at his buddy. Klice flashed me a "guilty-as-charged" look.

"I just love space, is all." My heart jumped. Clear glasses, bangs, and a predilection for geeky science chat… it had to be Sameer. Especially given his conversation with Tre about momentum and physics earlier. At the far end of the cabin was a row of sinks with a door on either side that led to what I assumed was a communal bathroom, probably multiple shower stalls and toilets, given the size of this place. The whole setup reminded me of a college dorm.

I'd never gone to sleepaway camp, so I had no idea if this was normal or opulent for a summer camp setting. In the back corner, near the bathroom, I spotted the circle of kids I was pointed toward. It was a group of eight: three girls and five guys passing two blunts in opposite rotations. They were loudly yelling over the music at each other in a heated debate.

"—dead fucking wrong, bro," a guy with a shaved head was saying.

"There's no way a Predator beats the Straw Hats." A blonde girl with fading pink tips nodded enthusiastically.

"Matt's right. They've all been through so many fights, and they all have powers and stuff." Another guy in a Deadpool t-shirt scoffed.

"You're both high. Predators have laser nets and Plasmacasters and those wrist gauntlet things. You're telling me a fuckin' goofy rubber kid and his Saturday-morning cartoon-ass friends are gonna survive against that?"

"Bro, Luffy's basically a god now! Even alone, Predator wouldn't stand a chance," Matt said.

"They have a reindeer on their team," Deadpool shirt yelled back.

"A fucking reindeer with a stupid hat."

"How dare you! Chopper is a precious baby," Pink Streaks said with mock outrage, swatting at Deadpool shirt's arm. I cleared my throat.

"Hey, I'm looking for my friend Sameer. Clear glasses, super skinny?" I had to shout over the music to be heard. They stared at me with mouths slightly agape, eyes searching for an answer to a way more complex question than the one I asked.

"Oh yeah," Deadpool Shirt said eventually.

"Dude told us some mind-blowing shit about black holes. Like, did you know if you saw someone falling into one, it would look like they were frozen in place because of how time moves all weird?"

"Neat. Where'd he go?" Deadpool Shirt blinked.

"Who go?"

"My friend. With the glasses." I tried to keep my voice level. The girl with the pink tips sat up straighter.

"He said he needed air and dipped."

"No, he went to take a piss," Matt chimed in.

"That was a half hour ago," Pink Tips corrected.

"When did he leave to get air?" I asked. As she considered it, her face scrunched up, lips pushed out so her upper lip got sucked against her nostrils when she inhaled.

"A while ago," she finally said.

"How long is that? You said he went to the bathroom half an hour ago. So how long after that did he leave?"

"I dunno. I don't even know how much time has passed since we started talking." She gave me an apologetic little shrug, adding, "Sorry. I'm trying to be helpful." I'd gotten more helpful information from the side of a cereal box. I thanked them and started toward the exit, then paused and doubled back toward the bathrooms. Maybe I'd get lucky and find him passed out in a stall. Unfortunately, the bathroom was its own fresh hell to endure.

A girl was throwing up in one of the toilet stalls, while her friend held her hair back, repeating, "It's okay, Dani, get it all out." None of the other toilets were occupied, but three of the showers had been converted into makeshift hotbox chambers, towels stuffed under the doors, smoke seeping out like steam. After another few seconds of looking, I gave up. The only things in that bathroom were vomit, smoke, sex, and sadness.

Pushing back into the main room, I threaded through the haze of bodies and blacklight, angling toward the exit to meet back up with Isabel and Tre. My hand was inches from the door when a terrified scream from outside cut clean through the music and chatter. A hush fell over the room, and we heard another scream. Then another. I bolted for the door, as an all-too-familiar spike of adrenaline replaced the pleasant fog in my brain.