Chapter Text
1992
Cassie is nine years old the first time she sees a dead body.
She doesn’t know that’s what she’s seeing.
She just knows the church smells wrong.
It smells like flowers that are too sweet and something sharp underneath — like furniture polish and dust and the faint ghost of old candles. The air feels thick, like it has weight. Like if she inhales too deeply, she might swallow something she can’t cough back up.
Her black shoes pinch her toes. She picked them because they were shiny. Now she wishes she’d worn sneakers.
Her mother’s hand rests on her shoulder, steady and warm. Too steady. “Sit still,” her mom whispers gently, not looking at her.
Cassie swings her legs anyway. They don’t reach the floor. They hover just above it, heels knocking softly against the wooden pew. The sound feels too loud, even though it’s barely there.
At the front of the church is a long, glossy box.
She knows the word for it. She heard someone say it earlier.
Casket.
She repeats it silently, testing the shape of it in her mouth. Casket. It sounds like basket. Like something you carry apples in. Or laundry. But this basket is closed on the bottom and open on the top, and inside it—
She squints.
Inside it’s her Uncle Ray.
He looks smaller. That’s the first thing she notices. He looks smaller than he did at Thanksgiving, when he lifted her up with one arm and told her she was getting too big for that. Smaller than he did when he fixed her bike chain and wiped grease on his jeans. Smaller than he did when he let her sip his soda and winked like they were co-conspirators.
Now he is flat. Still. Hands folded like he’s pretending to pray.
His skin is the wrong color. Not gray exactly. Not pale like winter. Just… wrong.
She studies him carefully.
He looks like he’s sleeping.
Except no one is trying to wake him up.
That’s what doesn’t make sense.
People keep walking up to the casket. They lean over him. Some touch his hand. Some touch his face. One woman collapses into someone else’s arms, making a sound Cassie has never heard before — low and torn and animal.
Cassie shifts closer to her mother. “Why is she crying like that?” she whispers.
Her mom squeezes her knee gently. “Because she’s sad, honey.”
“I’m sad,” Cassie says, confused. “But I’m not crying like that.”
Her mom doesn’t answer.
The church organ begins to play, soft and heavy. The notes hang in the air like thick clouds. Cassie doesn’t recognize the song, but it sounds old. It sounds like something that belongs in black and white movies.
The adults stand. Cassie stands too.
The pastor says words she mostly understands but not in this order. Words like “loss” and “peace” and “eternal rest.” Words that don’t match the man who used to tickle her until she screamed with laughter.
She watches the adults instead. Her grandmother is in the front row. Her face looks like paper — thin and crumpled and ready to tear. She keeps pressing a tissue to her mouth like she’s trying to hold something in. Cassie has never seen her grandmother look small before. Uncle Ray was her grandmother’s youngest.
Cassie doesn’t understand what that means yet. But she feels it in the air — like everyone else knows something she doesn’t.
The service goes on for what feels like hours. People speak about Uncle Ray. They say he was kind. They say he struggled.
They say he had demons.
Cassie looks around for demons. She imagines something red and horned hiding behind the organ. She imagines something invisible that only grown-ups can see.
She wonders if demons are contagious.
When the pastor says “You may approach the casket,” there is a shift in the room. A slow, collective inhale.
Her mother stands. Cassie’s stomach drops. They join the line.
She watches each person ahead of them step forward, lean down, whisper something. Some kiss Uncle Ray’s forehead. Some just stare.
Cassie doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do.
When it’s their turn, her mother kneels slightly so they are level. “You can say goodbye,” she says softly.
Cassie nods, even though she doesn’t know what goodbye means when someone isn’t going anywhere she can see. She steps closer. Up close, he looks even more wrong. His hair is combed too neatly. His suit fits too stiffly. His hands are colder than they should be — she knows that without touching them.
She leans in, studying his face. “Is he sleeping?” she whispers.
Her mother’s voice is steady, but her eyes are not. “No, baby.”
Cassie frowns. “Then why are his eyes closed?”
Her mother takes a breath. “Because he died.”
The word falls into Cassie’s ears like a pebble into deep water. Died. She knows the word. Fish die. Bugs die. The goldfish she flushed last year died. But Uncle Ray isn’t a goldfish. “Why did he die?” she asks, still looking at him.
Her mother’s silence stretches too long.
People are waiting behind them. Cassie can feel their breath on her neck.
“He was sick,” her mother says finally.
Cassie nods slowly. Sick makes sense. She’s been sick before. She had the flu last winter. She threw up and watched cartoons and drank ginger ale. “What kind of sick?” she asks.
Her mother’s jaw tightens. She looks down at Uncle Ray. Then at Cassie. “He was addicted to drugs.”
The word is unfamiliar.
Addicted.
It sounds heavy. Sticky.
“What does that mean?” Cassie asks.
Her mother hesitates again. “It means… he used something that hurt him. And he couldn’t stop.”
Cassie blinks. “Why couldn’t he stop?”
Her mother’s eyes shine. “Because addiction changes your brain. It makes you feel like you need something, even when it’s hurting you.”
Cassie looks back at Uncle Ray. He doesn’t look like someone who needed something. He looks peaceful. Almost waxy. “Like candy?” She asks carefully. “Sometimes I eat too much candy and you say I have to stop.”
Her mother gives a sad smile. “Sort of. But stronger. Much stronger.”
Cassie thinks about that. She imagines candy that makes you stop breathing. She imagines soda that makes you disappear. “Did he know it would make him die?” she asks.
Her mother swallows. “I think he didn’t think it would.”
That feels important somehow.
Cassie leans closer to the casket. “Uncle Ray?” she whispers. “You should’ve stopped.”
He doesn’t answer.
Her mother places a gentle hand on her back. “Say goodbye, sweetheart.”
Cassie stares at his face.
Goodbye feels permanent. She doesn’t like permanent.
“Bye,” she says finally.
They step aside.
As they walk back to their seats, Cassie’s head feels full. Like someone stuffed it with questions and forgot to leave space for answers.
Addicted.
She says it again in her mind.
Addicted.
It sounds like a trap.
After the service, everyone moves outside to the cemetery. The sky is too blue for this kind of day. It feels rude. The casket is lowered slowly into the ground.
Cassie watches the ropes.
She watches the box sink.
She feels something shift inside her chest — not a sharp pain, but a hollow.
Her grandmother cries openly now. Cassie tugs at her mom’s sleeve. “Where does he go?” she asks.
Her mom looks at the sky. “Some people believe he goes to heaven.”
Cassie looks up too. The sky is endless. “Where is heaven?” she presses.
Her mother smiles faintly. “Up there.”
Cassie squints. It looks like nothing but clouds. “Can he still see us?”
“I hope so.”
Cassie watches as a handful of dirt hits the top of the casket. The sound is final. She flinches.
On the ride home, the car is quiet. Her father drives. Her mother stares out the window. Cassie looks at her hands in her lap.
Addicted.
She imagines it like a monster. Not red and horned, but quiet. Something that slips inside you and makes you choose wrong things.
“Mom?” she says softly.
“Yes?”
“Can kids get addicted?”
Her mother turns sharply. “Why would you ask that?”
“I don’t know. Just… can they?”
Her mother takes a breath. “Sometimes. But it’s mostly adults.”
Cassie nods, but the answer doesn’t settle her.
“Will I get addicted?”
Her mother reaches back and squeezes her hand. “No. We’ll make sure you don’t.”
Cassie relaxes slightly. But the word stays.
Addicted.
That night, she dreams about her uncle. He is standing at the edge of the playground at school. He waves to her, but every time she tries to run to him, the ground turns sticky. Like glue. Like tar. Her feet won’t move.
She wakes up with her heart racing.
For weeks after, she listens differently. When adults talk in low voices at family gatherings, she listens. When someone says a cousin is “having problems,” she listens. When someone mentions rehab, she memorizes the word.
Addiction becomes a quiet thread woven into the background of her life.
She doesn’t fully understand it.
But she understands this: It took her uncle.
And when something can take a grown-up — someone big and loud and strong — it must be powerful.
Years later, she will hear the word again. She will hear it in health class. She will hear it whispered about a classmate’s older brother. She will hear it in arguments. She will hear it in apologies.
But this is the first time.
1992. A nine-year-old girl in stiff black shoes. A polished wooden casket. A word that changes the shape of the world.
Addicted.
She doesn’t know it yet, but the question she asked that day — “Why couldn’t he stop?” — will echo through her life in ways she can’t see.
Because sometimes the first time you hear a word is the moment your childhood shifts slightly off center. And sometimes, you don’t realize you’ve stepped into a larger story until years later.
But on that day, all she knows is this: Her uncle is gone.
And something invisible took him.
And whatever that something is, it has a name.
—
1994
Cassie is eleven the year she decides gravity is a suggestion. The driveway is sloped just enough to feel dangerous. She sets her skateboard down at the top and nudges it forward with her foot. The asphalt is warm under the August sun, soft enough to smell faintly like tar. Cicadas hum from the trees lining the street. Somewhere down the block, a lawnmower drones like a mechanical bee.
She pushes off.
The board wobbles at first, then steadies. The wheels hum. The wind lifts her hair back from her face and presses her T-shirt against her ribs. For a moment, she feels untouchable. At the bottom of the driveway, she doesn’t slow down. She hits the street still rolling fast, knees bent, eyes locked ahead. A car could come. It doesn’t. The risk feels sharp and electric in her veins.
She doesn’t scream like the other girls did the one time they tried her board and panicked halfway down. She doesn’t flail.
She leans forward. The board obeys.
When she finally jumps off near the mailbox, her sneakers skid and she stumbles — just barely — before catching herself. A laugh bursts out of her chest, loud and wild.
Inside the house, the curtains twitch. Her mother is watching. Cassie can feel it.
She doesn’t look back.
⸻
At school, the girls in her class talk about scrunchies and lip gloss and the color of the week. It’s pink. Everything is pink. Pink gel pens. Pink barrettes. Pink backpacks with cartoon dolphins stitched on the front.
Cassie looks down at her own backpack — black canvas, scuffed at the corners, decorated with a crooked lightning bolt she drew in silver marker. She likes that it doesn’t match anything.
During recess, the girls gather near the swings and whisper about who likes which boy. Cassie is at the far end of the blacktop trying to land a trick she saw older boys doing at the park. An ollie.
She crouches low, pops the tail of the board against the ground, and jumps. The board lifts — barely — and then clatters sideways. She falls hard onto her knees. Skin splits. Tiny red beads bloom. She hisses but doesn’t cry.
“Are you okay?” a teacher calls from across the yard.
“I’m fine!” she shouts back, already standing.
She tries again.
And again.
And again.
The girls on the swings glance at her like she’s something mildly fascinating and faintly embarrassing. “Why does she always hang out with the boys?” one of them whispers, not quietly enough.
Cassie hears.
She pretends she doesn’t.
⸻
That evening, she comes home with blood on her jeans and dirt on her elbows.
Her mother meets her at the door.“What happened now?”
“Nothing,” Cassie says automatically.
Her mother sighs, kneeling to examine the damage. “Nothing doesn’t usually bleed.”
Cassie shrugs. “It was just a fall.”
“You could break something one of these days.”
She grins. “I didn’t.”
Her mother doesn’t smile back.
At dinner, her father studies her over his fork. “You know,” he says carefully, “most girls your age aren’t throwing themselves at concrete for fun.”
Cassie rolls her eyes. “Most girls my age are boring.”
Her mother and father exchange a look. It’s quick. But she sees it. That look again. The one she first noticed two years ago, after the funeral. The look that says we’re worried but we don’t want to say it wrong.
“I’m not boring,” she mutters.
“No one said you were,” her mom replies gently. “We just want you to be careful.”
“I am careful.”
Her scraped knees suggest otherwise.
⸻
She doesn’t hate pink. She just doesn’t understand why it feels like a rule.
In fourth grade, someone told her she’d grow out of climbing trees. In fifth grade, someone told her she’d start caring about clothes. In sixth grade, someone said, “You’d be so pretty if you tried.”
As if she’s a project. As if she’s missing something essential.
One Saturday afternoon, she stands in her room staring at the dress her grandmother bought her — pastel, frilly, unmistakably pink. She touches the fabric between her fingers.
It feels like someone else’s life.
She pulls it on anyway. The mirror shows a girl she recognizes but doesn’t quite believe. Her hair is brushed. The dress fits. She looks… nice.
She feels trapped.
She changes back into jeans before anyone can see.
⸻
The recklessness isn’t just the skateboard. It’s climbing higher than she should.nIt’s running across the top of the jungle gym instead of using the ladder. It’s jumping from the roof of the shed with an umbrella because she saw it in a cartoon and wanted to test physics for herself.
(It doesn’t work. She sprains her wrist.)
It’s volunteering to go first. Always first.
When a boy in her class dares someone to bike down Miller’s Hill — the steep one with the sharp curve at the bottom — she doesn’t hesitate. “I will.”
The boys stare at her like she’s both ridiculous and impressive.
She pedals hard, heart hammering, wind roaring in her ears. Halfway down, doubt flickers. At the bottom, she barely makes the turn. Gravel spits from under her tires. She nearly wipes out but holds it. When she reaches flat ground, she laughs again. That same wild sound.
Later, lying in bed, she replays it. The moment of almost. The thin line between upright and disaster. It feels like balancing on the edge of something she can’t name.
⸻
One night, she comes downstairs for water and hears her parents in the kitchen. They don’t know she’s there. The light is low. The refrigerator hums.
Her mother’s voice is soft, threaded with concern. “She scares me sometimes.”
Cassie freezes halfway down the stairs.
“She’s eleven,” her father replies. “Eleven-year-olds scare everyone.”
“It’s more than that, Neil.” A pause. “She takes risks,” her mother continues. “She doesn’t think before she jumps.”
Cassie grips the banister.
“I don’t want to squash who she is,” her mom says. “I love that she’s brave. I just—” Her voice cracks slightly. “I don’t want her to get hurt.”
Her father exhales slowly. “Kate… she’s not Ray.”
The name lands like a dropped glass. Silence follows. Cassie’s stomach tightens. Her uncle’s name hasn’t been spoken casually in a long time.
“I know,” her mother says quickly. “I know she’s not. I just… sometimes I see that same edge. That same all-or-nothing streak.”
“That wasn’t about skateboards,” her father says gently.
“No,” her mother agrees. “But it started with risk. It started with pushing.”
Cassie’s chest feels hot. They’re not angry. They’re afraid. Of her. Or for her.
She can’t tell which is worse.
“She needs guidance,” her father says. “Not fear.”
“And what if guidance isn’t enough?” her mother whispers.
Cassie steps back slowly, heart pounding louder than it did biking down Miller’s Hill. She didn’t know they connected her to him. She didn’t know her scraped knees could echo something darker.
Back in her room, she lies awake staring at the ceiling.
Not Ray. She isn’t him. She doesn’t want to disappear into something invisible. She just likes the feeling of flying.
There’s a difference.
Isn’t there?
⸻
The next day, she climbs the oak tree in the backyard higher than she ever has before. The branches thin near the top. They sway slightly under her weight. From up there, the neighborhood looks smaller.
Contained.
She can see into yards she’s never noticed before. Blue pools. Rusted swing sets. A dog barking at nothing.
Her house looks ordinary.
Her life looks ordinary.
She wonders if that’s what her parents want. Ordinary. She shifts her weight, testing the branch. It creaks.
For a second, fear spikes sharp and clean. She smiles.
Not because she wants to fall.
Because she didn’t.
She climbs down carefully.
When her feet hit the grass, she feels grounded in a way she can’t explain.
Maybe this is how she understands the world.
By leaning into its edges.
⸻
At school, a substitute teacher once tells her to “act like a young lady.”
Cassie asks what that means.
The teacher blinks. “Sit properly. Don’t shout. Be gentle.”
Cassie considers this. “Why?”
The teacher frowns. “Because that’s how girls behave.”
Cassie doesn’t argue. She just doesn’t comply.
⸻
Later that year, during a health class lesson about drugs, the word resurfaces.
Addiction.
It floats across the classroom like a ghost only she recognises. The teacher talks about peer pressure and bad decisions and consequences.
Cassie listens differently than the others.nFor them, it’s abstract. For her, it has a face. She thinks about risk again. About edges. About the way she chases the feeling of almost.
Is that how it starts?
Not with substances. But with sensation?
She doesn’t know. She only knows that when she’s still too long, she feels restless. Like there’s static under her skin.
Motion quiets it.
Speed quiets it.
Danger quiets it.
That thought unsettles her.
⸻
One evening, her father finds her in the garage, attempting to build a ramp out of scrap wood.
He leans against the doorframe. “Planning world domination?”
“Planning airtime,” she replies.
He studies the crooked nails, the uneven boards. “You measured?”
“Mostly.”
He walks over, crouches beside her. “If you’re going to launch yourself into the air,” he says calmly, “let’s at least make sure it doesn’t collapse under you.”
She glances at him. “You’re not going to tell me to stop?”
He meets her eyes. “No. I’m going to tell you to build it right.”
Something in her chest loosens.
Together, they adjust the angles. Reinforce the base. Hammer carefully. When it’s done, it’s sturdier than anything she could’ve made alone. She sets the board down.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” her father says quietly before she goes.
She doesn’t answer. She pushes off. The ramp lifts her clean into the air for half a second. She lands shaky but upright.
Her father claps once.
“See? Reckless is jumping without thinking. Brave is preparing and jumping anyway.”
She stores that sentence somewhere deep.
Brave.
Not reckless.
Maybe there’s a difference.
⸻
That night, her parents don’t know she hears them again. But this time the tone is different.
“She’s going to be okay,” her father says.
“I know,” her mother replies softly. “She just feels everything so intensely.”
Cassie lies in bed, staring at the ceiling once more.
Intense. Reckless. Brave. Addiction. Risk.
They’re all words circling her like birds looking for somewhere to land.
She doesn’t fully understand any of them yet.
She just knows she doesn’t want to be small. She doesn’t want to shrink herself into pink boxes or careful shapes. She wants to feel the wind. She wants to climb higher.
But maybe — just maybe — she can learn where the edge actually is.
In 1994, she is eleven years old. She doesn’t know who she will become.
She only knows this: She is not fragile. She is not predictable.
She is not her uncle.
And when gravity pulls, she will answer — but maybe, if she’s careful, she won’t let it pull her under.
—
1997
Cassie is fourteen the first time someone passes her a joint.
It happens in the woods behind the soccer fields — the place everyone pretends not to know about but somehow always finds. The trees are tall and thin, their trunks scarred with initials carved by pocketknives. The ground is layered with pine needles that soften footsteps and swallow sound. It’s late afternoon. The air is thick with summer, warm but beginning to cool. Cicadas buzz lazily overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a car stereo thumps faint bass.
There are five of them sitting in a loose circle: Jenna cross-legged on a flattened sweatshirt, Marcus leaning back on his elbows, Tyler flicking a lighter open and shut just to hear the click, Lila braiding and unbraiding the ends of her hair.
And Cassie. She’s trying to look like this is normal. Like this is just another Tuesday.
The joint is already lit when it reaches her. The paper glows faint orange at the tip. Smoke curls upward, pale and lazy. She stares at it for half a second too long.
“You good?” Jenna asks, watching her.
“Yeah,” Cassie says quickly. Too quickly. She takes it between her fingers. It feels lighter than she expected. Fragile. Almost harmless. Her heart beats faster — not from fear exactly, but from the sharp awareness that this is a line. A thin, invisible line she’s stepping across.
Weed.
Not pills. Not powder. Not needles. Just weed. That’s what everyone says.
“It’s not a big deal,” Tyler adds, like he can read her hesitation. “It’s just weed.”
Just.
She brings it to her lips. For a flash — less than a second — her uncle’s face surfaces in her mind. Not in a casket. Not waxy and still. Alive. Laughing too loud at Thanksgiving. Tossing her into the air. Calling her kiddo. Then the memory shifts.
The word surfaces.
Addicted.
Her mom’s voice in a church that smelled like flowers and polish. He couldn’t stop.
Cassie inhales. Smoke fills her mouth, harsh and unfamiliar. She coughs immediately, eyes watering.
The others laugh, not cruelly — just knowingly. “First time,” Marcus grins.
She waves a hand like it’s nothing. “I’m fine." Her throat burns. Her chest tightens. She tries again, this time slower. Inhale. Hold.
The smoke settles deeper. She exhales, watching it leave her in a thin gray stream. It doesn’t feel like anything yet.
They pass it around again.
Someone puts on music from a small portable speaker — something bass-heavy and distorted. The rhythm pulses through the ground.
Cassie waits.
She expects something dramatic. A lightning strike. A shift in gravity. Instead, it’s subtle.
Her shoulders loosen first. Then her jaw unclenches. The constant low buzz under her skin — the one she’s had since she was eleven, maybe longer — softens. Not gone. Just quieter.
She leans back on her hands and stares up at the sky through the lattice of branches. The leaves look sharper somehow. More detailed. The sunlight filters through in gold shards.
“You feel it?” Lila asks.
Cassie considers. “Yeah,” she says slowly.
It’s not like flying off a ramp. It’s not like biking down Miller’s Hill. It’s the opposite. It’s like someone turned the volume down on the world. The restless static that usually hums in her chest — the urge to move, to climb, to jump — fades into something warm and manageable.
She laughs at something Marcus says, and the laughter feels easier than usual. Less forced. It spills out of her without scraping her throat. This is nice, she thinks.
That thought lands heavy.
Nice.
Not wild. Not dangerous. Just… easy.
She closes her eyes for a second and lets the warmth spread. It settles behind her eyes. In her limbs. In the space between thoughts. For the first time in a long while, she doesn’t feel like she’s bracing for something. She doesn’t feel like she needs to prove anything. She just exists.
And it feels good.
Too good?
The question flickers faintly but doesn’t stick.
“See?” Tyler says. “It’s chill.”
Chill.
That’s the word. Not reckless. Not intense. Chill.
Cassie likes the sound of that.
—
Later, when the joint is gone and the sky has shifted toward evening, they lie in a messy line staring upward. Conversation drifts lazily.
“What if trees can talk,” Jenna says, giggling.
“They probably do,” Marcus replies. “We’re just too loud to hear it.”
Cassie smiles. Her thoughts move slower now. Softer edges. She thinks about her parents in the kitchen three years ago.
“She’s not Ray.”
The memory surfaces uninvited. Her chest tightens slightly. She rolls onto her side and presses her cheek into the cool earth.
This isn’t that, she tells herself. This isn’t spiralling. This isn’t losing control.
She’s not chasing oblivion.
She’s just… trying something.
Everyone tries something.
It’s not like she’s doing this alone in a dark room. It’s not like she needs it.
She just wanted to know.
And now she knows.
The word addicted hovers again, quieter this time.
Addiction changes your brain. Her mom’s voice.
Cassie frowns faintly. Does it? Her brain feels… softer. Cushioned. Not changed. Not broken. Just relaxed. She thinks about how tightly wound she usually feels. Like a spring pulled back too far.
What if this just takes the edge off? What if the edge doesn’t have to be so sharp all the time?
The thought is seductive.
She pushes it away.
It’s just today.
Just once.
—
When she gets home, the house smells like pasta sauce and garlic.
Her mother looks up from the stove. “Hey,” she says. “You’re late.”
“Sorry. Lost track of time.” Her voice sounds normal. She checks carefully. Normal. Her heart beats a little faster as she steps into the kitchen light.
Can her mom see it? A part of her thinks.
See what? Another part thinks. There’s nothing to see.
She washes her hands in the sink, watching the water swirl down the drain. Her reflection in the window looks the same. Maybe her eyes are slightly red. She rubs them casually.
“You okay?” her mom asks, glancing over.
“Yeah. Just tired.”
Not a lie.
She feels heavy now. Calm. Almost sleepy.
At dinner, her dad tells a story about work. Her mom complains about the neighbor’s dog digging up the flowerbed.
Cassie listens, nods, responds in the right places.
Inside, everything feels padded. Protected. The usual sparks of irritation — the urge to argue, to push back — don’t ignite. She lets things go. It’s easier.
After dinner, she goes to her room and lies on her bed staring at the ceiling.
The high is fading slowly. The static begins to creep back in around the edges. Not all at once. Just a faint buzz.
She notices the difference immediately.
Before today, she didn’t realize how loud it had been.
Now she does.
That realization scares her more than the joint did.
She sits up abruptly. This is how it happens, a quiet voice whispers. Not with fireworks — with relief.
She presses her palms into her eyes until she sees stars. I’m not him, she thinks fiercely. I’m not.
Her uncle didn’t start with wanting to relax.
Did he?
She doesn’t actually know. No one ever told that part of the story. They only ever said he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t. The word feels slippery.
She could stop. She hasn’t even started, really. It was one time. One afternoon in the woods.
She stands and paces her room. Her skateboard rests against the wall, scarred and worn. That’s her thing. Speed. Motion. Air. This — this was different.
Stillness. Softness.
Maybe she just wanted to know what the opposite felt like.
Maybe that’s all.
That was fun, Cassie thinks.
It was.
That’s the truth.
And that’s what unsettles her.
—
Over the next week, she thinks about it more than she expects to.
Not obsessively. Just occasionally.
In math class when the teacher’s voice drones and her knee bounces under the desk. At night when she can’t fall asleep because her thoughts won’t line up. When she snaps at her mom for no reason and immediately regrets it.
She remembers the woods. The quiet in her chest. The way laughter came easy.
She tells herself she doesn’t need it. Need is a dangerous word. She needed air biking down Miller’s Hill. She didn’t need this.
Still.
When Marcus casually says, “We’re going out again Friday,” her pulse ticks up.
She hesitates only a second. “Maybe,” she replies, trying to sound indifferent.
Inside, something has already decided.
—
Friday comes. The woods again. The circle again. This time, when the joint reaches her, she doesn’t pause.
She inhales more smoothly.
No coughing.
The effect comes faster. Her body remembers.
That’s new.
That awareness sends a flicker of unease through her — quickly smothered by warmth.
“You’re a natural,” Tyler jokes.
She smirks.
Natural.
She doesn’t tell them about the funeral. About the church. About the word that still echoes. They don’t carry that weight. For them, this is just a rite of passage.
For her, it’s layered.
She leans back and lets the calm wash over her again. Maybe this is what balance feels like, she thinks. Maybe she’s been tilted too far toward intensity for too long.
Maybe this just evens her out.
That’s a reasonable story.
She likes that story.
She holds onto it.
When a sliver of guilt tries to surface, she pushes it down firmly. Not now. Not here.
She wants to enjoy this. She deserves to enjoy something.
Doesn’t she?
—
That night, lying in bed, she whispers the word addicted into the dark. It doesn’t sound as loud as it did when she was nine. It doesn’t sound as terrifying. It sounds distant.
Like something that happens to other people. To people who lose control.
She still feels in control. Completely.
She could say no next time. She’s sure of it.
Probably.
The uncertainty pricks at her.
She turns onto her side and pulls the blanket up to her chin.
Her uncle’s face flickers once more in her mind.
Not accusing. Just there.
She presses the image down gently, like smoothing dirt over something buried. This isn’t the same, she insists. This is different.
Weed isn’t drugs the way he did drugs.
That’s what everyone says. Just weed. Just relaxing. Just being fourteen and curious and alive.
Her breathing slows. Sleep comes easier than usual. And as she drifts off, the last thought that settles in her mind isn’t fear.
It’s memory.
Of how quiet her chest felt in the woods. Of how manageable the world seemed. Of how, for a few hours, the edge wasn’t sharp at all. She doesn’t know yet whether that memory will fade or grow teeth.
She only knows this: She liked it.
And that feels like the beginning of something she doesn’t fully understand.