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“I feel nothing.”
“It’s only been half an hour,” Addy says. “She said it could be awhile before it kicks in, depending on what we ate.”
“Neither of us have eaten else anything today,” Beth points out. “Which means it should’ve kicked in by now.”
Addy crinkles her nose and looks at the plate of cookies in the middle of Lana’s coffee table. Snickerdoodles. Freshly baked with one half plain, regular margarine, and the other half, green marijuana-infused butter. AKA: Cannabutter.
They’d gotten a small tub of it from RiRi, frozen. She’d claimed it was from a cousin’s crop and hadn’t charged Beth a dime. Probably just trying to stay in her good graces. Their good graces. She usually was.
“Maybe we just didn’t eat enough,” Addy suggests. They’d only had one cookie each, didn’t want to overdo it. Out of concern for the calories, sugar, and fat present in the cookies more so than whatever combo of indica and sativa there was.
Beth leans forward and snags another from the plate.
“Well, fuck it. Let’s have more.”
The soft dough breaks easily under Beth’s teeth as she bites it clean in half, little crumbs smattering her pretty lips. Addy takes another for herself and follows suit. The cinnamon sings on her tongue, still a trace of warmth lingering in the extra soft center. Addy chews slowly, savoring the taste.
Guilt prickles along her spine with every swallow, uneasy whispers of those threats to her thighs, the calories, the sugar, the lard. Addy doesn’t remember the last time she actually allowed herself to swallow any kind of dessert.
Her chest grows tight as she watches Beth reach for a third cookie.
“Hey…”
“Hm?”
“We can take the long route when we go for our run tomorrow, right?”
Beth tips her head as she chomps a huge bite out of the snickerdoodle, leaving only a cinnamon sprinkled crescent in her hand. She chews thoughtfully and spends a moment looking at Addy as Addy also reaches for a third cookie. A heartbeat passes, then Beth’s lashes flutter as she decodes her meaning.
“Oh, sure. Maybe we could go rock-climbing too. That’s active.”
“It’s not the same as conditioning,” Addy argues, nibbling dubiously at the snickerdoodle.
“Not everything we do has to be about cheer, Addy.” Beth licks the crumbs from the corner of her lips.
“I didn’t say that—“
“Addy,” Beth hums, plucking a fourth cookie and waving it for emphasis. “You’re not going to make getting high all about cheer, are you?”
Addy sighs through her nose and peers at the half eaten snickerdoodle in her hand, soggy around her bite marks. “No…that’d be stupid.”
“Can we relax for once?” Beth sighs wearily. “For five minutes?”
“Yeah, I know. That’s the point, isn’t it?” Addy crams the rest of the cookie in her mouth and rolls her eyes at herself.
One day of daring to digest dessert isn’t going to kill her. This is supposed to be fun. Their first time doing edibles. Which Addy supposes isn’t going to feel terribly different than just smoking weed, whenever the high hits, but it’s supposed to last longer, at least.
And the cookies taste pretty good. Maybe even better because she rarely allows herself to actually eat them. Before she knows it, between the two of them, they’ve devoured almost the entire plate.
“Do you think it was really cannabutter?” Addy asks, eyeing the clock on the wall. Over forty minutes in and still no high. “Maybe RiRi was just messing with us.”
“It stank like weed,” Beth scoffs, lazily swinging a leg over the arm of the couch. “Maybe we should’ve put more in, instead of cutting half with the normal stuff.”
“Maybe…” Addy trails off, blinking as she feels the beginning of a buzz at the back of her skull.
The buzz spreads through her body until her flesh hums with it. She snaps her head up and looks to Beth, who stares back with a strange expression on her face.
“Oh,” Beth’s saying. “It’s hitting. Finally it’s hitting.”
“Yeah,” Addy agrees, rubbing her lips together, nodding slowly as the internal buzz grows more insistent, head going helium light. “Yeah, I can feel it.”
“Should I put on music or something?” Beth asks, swaying a bit, as if she can already feel a beat.
“Sure.” Addy passes Beth her phone. “You pick out a playlist, I’m gonna use the bathroom.”
Addy edges her way off the couch, and steps around the coffee table.
“Maybe that one Cori sent in the group text?” Beth chimes with a teasing lilt.
“Cori’s taste is ass.” Addy blows scornfully past her lips.
“Say, what? I thought you loved Downtown Sasquatch.” Beth rolls her eyes.
Addy mimes gagging and shuffles off to the bathroom. For a few minutes the high just glides through her, but things get a little weird when she’s washing her hands. In the mirror above the sink, her reflection just doesn’t look right. It looks fake.
Like someone took a couple different pictures of Addy and photoshopped the pieces into the mirror. For a moment Addy almost wonders if she’s looking in a mirror at all, or if this is some odd art piece Beth did of her face and hung up in here for some reason.
But the person who doesn’t quite look like Addy in the mirror moves when she moves…and the shower curtains move behind her. Like they’re breathing. Someone’s there, she realizes, chilled to the bone. Someone must be behind them, breathing, watching her every move.
Addy gasps, quickly ripping around and seizing a fistful of the curtains. With a sharp cry, she yanks it open. Only to find herself staring at an empty bathtub. Shampoo bottles on the ledges. A loofa hanging from the shower head.
Addy swallows. She gives herself a rousing shake, or tries to, to no avail. Her head spins dizzily and the floor seems to shift under her feet. The faucet is still running. Addy never turned it off. She reaches to do so and pauses, chest knotting as she hears the voices.
They’re in the water, hissing under its rush, mocking her with every shameless splash against the porcelain. Her hand hovers over the lever as fear floods her senses. Her heart races like a hare in pursuit and the water just keeps mocking her, spitting its vicious garbled sarcasm.
No, no, that’s impossible. That’s fucking crazy, water doesn’t talk. The voices can’t be coming from the water…
There aren’t any voices, that’s ridiculous. Addy slams the lever down, shutting off the water. Watching the last of it swirl down the drain and telling herself all she hears is the motion of the liquid as it travels. Nothing any more sinister than that.
Addy flees into the hall, pulling the door shut behind her so fast, it slams. Even when she lets go of the knob she can still feel it, the slamming, she feels it inside. Because it is inside, she realizes, it’s not the door that’s slamming anymore. It’s her heart.
Her heart violently slams into her sternum with each beat, painful, so painful, as the buzzing in her blood intensifies.
“Beth,” Addy chokes out, hand against the wall as she stumbles across the carpet.
The carpet sucks at her socks. The hallway before her seems to stretch out, shadows flickering over the walls. The eyes in all the picture frames glower down at her, judging her. She can almost hear the nonexistent whispering again.
Addy’s knees buckle and she goes down in the middle of the hall. She attempts to pull herself up and finds that she can’t. Her limbs tremble as she tries to force actions she simply can’t put the power behind.
Addy feels as weak as a naked baby bird, fallen from its nest and exposed on the concrete.
“Beth!” she screams in a voice she doesn’t recognize. “Beth! Beth!”
“Addy!” Beth calls back from somewhere, sounding as terrified as Addy feels, shrill enough to shatter glass.
“What’s happening!?”
Laughter starts up from somewhere, dark, hot laughter like bubbles boiling over a witch’s cauldron. When Beth appears around the corner, hands floundering against the walls, it bounces between their mouths and gets higher, shakier. Delirious.
Addy feels the tears pouring down her face and nothing is funny, none of this is fucking funny at all, but she just can’t stop laughing.
Neither can Beth. She loses her grip on the wall and slides down, an inexorable descent. She tumbles over onto her side, hair fanning around her head like a seashell as the uproarious laughter wracks her body. Beth’s heels drum against the floor and she laughs so hard Addy can feel the pain of it in her own chest, tears bursting from her ocean eyes.
Addy bows over her, fingers curling into the carpet as she fights for breath between her own frenzied paroxysms of laughter. It’s terrifying. Nothing is humorous at all, it’s like the laughter is an invasion of some kind. A demon possessing her body, possessing the both of them.
The blue in Beth’s eyes turns to rolling seas, dolphins swimming in them. Addy watches.
“Oh my god,” she gasps out, “oh my god.”
“What the fuck,” Beth replies, her hands spasming in the air. “Addy, what the fuck.”
“I can’t move. I can’t.” Addy uses her last bit of strength to push herself to the side so that when she collapses, it is beside Beth rather than on top of her.
“I know,” Beth pants, finally spent of the laughter. “I can’t, either. Not much, but I can do this, at least.”
She rolls and fits herself around Addy, slinging an arm around Addy’s waist. Addy slides her hand over Beth’s and feebly intertwines their fingers. It’s like an anchor, she thinks. An anchor in the ocean of Beth’s eyes that spilled out when she cried, all those dolphins jumping. Something to keep her grounded as her bones turn to jelly and the hall rotates around them, lengthening endlessly.
“Is this really just weed? This can’t be just weed.”
“Should I call her?” Beth asks, mystified.
“No, no. Fuck Beth, she did this on purpose,” Addy declares, entire body jittering with that buzz inside, fierce as a nest of angry hornets. “We’re dying. RiRi laced the butter with poison so she could usurp us, fuck, Beth, we’re dying.”
“No way,” Beth clucks her tongue in her ear and the warmth of her laughter tickles against Addy’s skin. “RiRi doesn’t have the stones.”
“I’m telling you, Beth, we’re dying. Or at least I’m dying.” Addy squeezes her eyes shut. “My heart’s gonna pop out.”
“What?”
“It’s beating so hard, it’s gonna come out. I’m gonna die, I can feel it.”
“No,” Beth says, determined. “That’s not happening. I won’t let it.”
She squeezes Addy’s hand and brings it to Addy’s chest, right over her heart. Holds their hands flush to the place where her heart’s colliding with the bone. Presses their hands down so tight, it’s viselike.
“We’ll keep it inside,” Beth promises.
For awhile, it’s quiet. Addy stops talking because she can’t collect her thoughts enough to speak. Anxiety gnaws at her core like some relentless rodent. But there is reassurance in Beth’s touch, in Beth’s steadying hand over her hammering heart. In the warm wash of Beth’s breath on the back of her ear.
“Beth?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“…I don’t know. I can’t get up.”
“I can’t get up, either.”
“I know.”
“What should we do? Do you think we’re overdosing?”
“You can’t overdose on weed, Addy.” Beth snorts. “We’ll just sleep it off.”
“In the middle of your hallway?”
Beth hums resignation against her skin and gives her hand another squeeze.
“Wait,” Addy says, an idea blooming. “Maybe we could get up together.”
“Together?” Beth questions, like she doesn’t quite understand the word, voice crinkling like shimmery cellophane.
“If we help each other, maybe we could make it to your bed,” Addy explains, or hopes she does, anyway, it’s hard to attach meaning to her own voice when the words drip from her lips slow as molasses.
“Teamwork,” Beth murmurs, agreeable now, a sorbet soft smile skimming Addy’s earlobe. “Let’s give it a shot.”
Addy brings Beth’s hand to her lips and gently kisses her knuckles. Then she dares to let go, at the risk of her heart bursting out of her like a juvenile Xenomorph, carefully rolling onto her hands and knees. The hall shifts around her, the ceiling stretching farther away.
Beth lets out a soft groan, pushing herself up beside Addy. She reaches for Addy’s hand again and Addy folds it into hers. Together, they hang on tight and get into standing positions. They creep down the hall like decrepit geriatrics guiding canes over patches of winter ice, slow and stumbling. But when Beth begins to capsize, Addy hikes her back up again. When Addy begins to list sideways, Beth jerks her the opposite way.
Eventually they reach the destination of Beth’s bedroom, and flop onto the mattress in unison, two boneless blobs out of breath. One of them starts laughing again. Addy isn’t sure who.
“I hate this,” she mutters, inching her way under the comforter.
“This is the exact opposite of relaxing,” Beth groans, dropping her head into her hands.
Addy reaches up to rub her back and this at least— the warm solidity of Beth under her palm —is something of a comfort. It seems to comfort Beth too, because she peeks through her fingers and peers fuzzily at Addy.
“Lay down,” Addy murmurs, trying to focus on Beth and not the way the room seems to mutate behind her. “Let’s sleep it off. Like you said.”
Beth nods and squiggles under the comforter beside her. They curl up together and the final thing Addy feels before she passes out is Beth’s hand easing into place above her heart.