Chapter Text
When Langa first tried pot, he was twelve, and training with snowboarders three years older than him. After practice one day, the crew tramped behind the lodge where tourists picked up their rentals, and sat atop a snowbank to lean their backs against the logs of the lodge's exterior. Cassie, a girl with a rough voice who liked to whoop whenever she caught big air or landed a new trick, pulled a joint and a neon green lighter out of one of her snow pants' waterproof pockets. She struck the lighter, held the flame to the twisted tip of the joint, and took a slow, even drag to start them off.
Langa's eyes followed the joint neutrally as it was passed quietly from one snowboarder to the next, trying to decide if this was a part of the sport he admired, or a distraction. He knew they were trying to share something with him by including him in this ritual, but only some of this crew were genuine competition for Langa; most seemed content to race the same routes day in and day out.
When Langa saw Marco was participating, he decided he would too. Marco was a short boy with bronze skin and wavy ebony hair that curled away from his head as it spilled over his ears, who almost always flew down mountains in a tank top atop a secondhand board. He didn't talk about his family much, but everyone knew he was pulled aside by the coach before regionals to strategize about scholarships that would help cover the cost of flights to the competition. Langa counted Marco's inhale (2 seconds on the joint followed by 3 of fresh air) and how long he held it for (4 seconds) before his billowing exhale and resolved to keep up with him.
Langa was at the end of the line, and the penultimate snowboarder looked at him dubiously before offering the joint. Langa took it and was careful to pinch it the way it seemed like the rest had. He inhaled, planning to count to himself to match Marco, and for the first two seconds his lungs were obedient. Unfortunately, his competitive nature couldn't override his body's reflex to the new experience, and as soon as he he tried to inhale fresh air to follow the smoke, he began hacking uncontrollably.
The line set about chuckling, and the boy next to him offered him a water bottle in exchange for the joint going back up the line where it was finished and snuffed out by Cassie. Langa was mortified at first, for failing to keep up, but as the chuckles seemed to telephone down the line of people and reverberate back to him, he found the warmth that had risen in his cheeks from embarrassment was spreading into a gentle smile. It felt really nice to just laugh at a shared joke with these athletes he spent every afternoon with, some of whom he even respected.
Once the group began moving again, gathering their things and splitting into their carpools home, Langa realized how much brighter the snow was, how much crisper the air was, and how unified and joyful it was to be conscious in the world. Langa had felt this sense of this kind of euphoric clarity before, but only when he reached "the Flow" while snowboarding. Those rare moments when he was careening down the mountain effortlessly, somehow, though he knew rationally that it was a precise concert of his training, physics, the material world, and a heapful of luck. Langa loved it.
He also realized he was going to have to walk toward his mom's car a lot more slowly than he'd originally planned, because there was something new to observe and appreciate with every step. He felt strongly that moving quickly through the world in this moment would be wasteful. That was a new sensation for Langa. Normally he merely endured the non-snowboarding parts of he day.
At home his parents joked that his eyes were bigger than his stomach, and certainly bigger than their plates when he piled his high with a mountain of dinner. He couldn't help himself from getting seconds of everything too. As soon as he finished a bite of one dish he found himself needing another so that he could truly taste and feel every component of the dish. It was as engaged as he had ever been at the dinner table and his mom joked, "Are you sure you don't want to be a chef?"
And Langa actually paused for half a second before coming to his senses and shouting, "No way! I'm going to be the world's best snowboarder!" His parents exchanged glances, and then laughed. He was still Langa.