Page 149 of Under Story

She could not identify the lyrics. For now, she imagined the song that everything sang, for as long as it could:

I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive.

May 1999

At six, the Center’s residents flood into the Longhall for dinner. The meals here are astonishing. Buttery shiitake eggs, scrambled with Wisconsin cheddar. Lion’s mane sliced thin and soaked in tamari, then fried. Salad with beets and squash and pickled onions, or salty, oil-cured olives and soft knobs of goat cheese.

Tonight, Rox has had the kitchen make Laurel’s favorite dish: an apricot and king oyster tagine. Laurel is stacking plates on the serving table when she approaches with a parsley garnish.

“This looks incredible,” Laurel says.

Rox swats her. “You shouldn’t be working. It’s your last meal.”

“I want to. Otherwise, I’ll just be in my head.”

Eli is coming. A line forms at the serving table. Rox says, “Who’s going to pick you up again?”

“Her ex,” says Esther, who has snuck up behind them and thrown her arms around Laurel’s waist.

Rox raises an eyebrow. “Okay then.”

Esther smells like lavender spray. Her short white hair is in two braided pigtails, and her body is soft against Laurel’s.

“Don’t go,” she says.

And now a crowd is queuing around Laurel, almost as long as the one for food. Ha-yoon writes down the address of Clare’s farmhouse. CK gives Laurel the lanyard key chain they made for her. Bev tells Laurel how much she’s learned from their conversations about fungi. Maeve cries, but then, Maeve cries at everything. Still, as Laurel sits between Esther and Joanie, sadness overtakes her. It is not exactly grief—more a premature nostalgia for this place, which took her in when she needed it.

The Center is not a utopia. There are clashes of personality, and a god-awful line for the bathroom, and tiffs from which Laurel is not exempt. One night, Jaz borrowed her coat on the way to a bar. When she returned it with a wine stain, Laurel became hysterical.

“You’re being a drama queen,” said Jaz. “It will literally come out with soap.”

Nell brought over a bottle of stain spray.

“It’s the hormones,” Nell said when Jaz left.

Laurel knew that Nell was right. Her emotional stability, scaffolded throughout adulthood, was coming apart. Shingles blew off without warning. Shortly after the stain incident, Nell turned eighteen and left the Center. She waved from the back of her father’s truck, her face a smear of tears.

—

After dinner, Laurel helps to clear the tables, despite Rox’s protests. When the dishes are finished, a small group remains in the kitchen.

Rox distributes materials. With their woody-looking stems and shriveled golden-brown caps, they look less like mushrooms than acorns on stalks. Though all of the participants will consume the same fungi—dried Psilocybe cubensis, by the look of it—their preferred methods vary. Rox, Aisha, and Noor add hot water and drink the tea. Joanie and Maeve eat theirs in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Fran, Olive’s new apprentice, chews the mushrooms raw.

“Want to join us?” asks Rox.

“That’s okay,” says Laurel. “Not my thing.”

“How can you know that if you’ve never tried it?” Fran asks.

Five years ago, while packing the house, Laurel found the psychedelic chocolate from Louis. She put it in the pocket of her duffel bag: it linked her to the past, and to her life in Antarctica. But she hasn’t eaten it.

“No peer pressure,” says Aisha.

“Perfect night for it, though,” says Noor. “We’d send you off with a bang.”

“Rumor has it that her ex is coming,” Rox says. “She probably shouldn’t be tripping when she sees him.”

“Or maybe she should,” says Aisha.