Page 42 of Dead Boys Club

“No, that’s cool,” George says earnestly. “How does someone become a park ranger?”

Zach ends up explaining his entire theoretical college plan, in detail, for the next twenty minutes. George sits and listens to him, nodding and asking follow-up questions. George is nice, and Zach feels like he’s glowing as he talks. George is also a senior, and he’s already applied to both Stanford and NYU. Talking with George distracts Zach from how bad he is at social situations; somehow George makes it seem so easy.

Zach’s attention is drawn away again when Parker excuses himself from the firepit. He glances over his shoulder, watching Parker’s lanky body climb back up the hill to the deck. Zach is worried for a moment that he feels so weird about seeing Parker in a dress because he has a problem with it, like maybe he’s secretly homophobic or something, but he tries his best to scrub the thought away.

Parker returns five minutes later, his cheeks darkened from running back down the hill. He shakes a little tin box in his hand.

“Party favors?” Parker says, opening the box. Even in the slowly dimming light, illuminated only by the orange flames, Zach recognizes the joint from his elementary school D.A.R.E classes.

Zach’s face burns. He’s terrified that he’s about to get in trouble, somehow. He’d told Paige that Parker wasn’t doing drugs. He knows now that isn’t true, but at the time he’d been more concerned about hard drugs.

There’s a rousing cheer from many of the partygoers, including Isaac. Zach is pretty sure that Isaac has never smoked weed in his entire life.

“Parker,” Paige groans, scrubbing one hand over her face. Parker leans over the back of the folding chair she’s sitting in, holding the joint under her nose.

“Come on,” Parker says, grinning. “Who’s going to tell Henry and Rebecca? Not me.”

Paige turns in her seat to look at her brother. After a moment, she sighs, looks down at the joint, and takes it out of Parker’s hand. “Fine,” she says, lips pulling up at the corners in a coy grin.

Everyone takes a seat around the fire, scooting closer so that the circle is smaller.

“Did you know that studies have linked marijuana to negative psychological effects?” Bea says, crossing her arms while Parker lights the joint. “Inhaling smoke of any kind is dangerous for your lungs too.”

Zach is wedged between Bea and George. He exchanges a look with her—Zach’s grateful, because he feels like he needs a friend in the not-doing-drugs department.

“You don’t have to smoke it, Bea,” Parker says, handing the smoking joint to Paige. “No one’s going to think you’re any less cool.”

Bea blinks, slowly uncrossing her arms. “You think I’m cool?”

“Duh,” Paige says, bringing the joint to her lips.

Zach watches as Parker shows Paige how to smoke the joint. She coughs and laughs, her face going red, eyes watery. They pass it around the circle. When Isaac takes a hit, he hacks and wheezes. Isaac passes it to Bea, who politely passes it to Zach without taking a hit. Zach holds the joint carefully between his fingers, looking up at Parker. He finds Parker watching him, face unreadable in the flickering firelight.

“Um,” Zach says slowly. “I have asthma, so…”

He doesn’t, but he passes the joint, and George, Alicia, and Ben take a hit. When it reaches Parker, Zach watches as he holds it effortlessly between two fingers. The joint gets passed around the circle once more, Paige and Isaac having an easier time on the second round. Bea and Zach both pass again. While everyone else is smoking, Zach decides to ask Bea what her costume is. She tells him that she’s dressed up as the Baker’s Wife from Into the Woods. She made the costume herself, apparently, from skills she learned at a professional costume design class she took a few summers ago. Zach makes another mental note to look up Into the Woods.

When the joint makes its way back to Parker, he smokes the last of it before flicking it into the fire.

The mood is lighter after that, everyone giggly and relaxed. Zach gets up off his chair and gets a cola from the cooler—it’s wet from the melting ice. Isaac wanders over to the snack table, grabs a handful of the flat pretzels, and shoves them in his mouth.

“Paige, your snacks suck,” Isaac says around the crunching mouthful, already reaching for more.

“Mom only shops at Trader Joe’s and the co-op,” Parker complains.

“I’ve got ten bucks,” George says, digging into his front pocket. “Anyone else have cash? We can get a pizza.”

“I’ve got ten,” Isaac says, and soon everyone is fishing out whatever cash they have in their pockets and wallets and dumping it on the snack table. Zach doesn’t have any cash, but neither does Bea, so he tries not to feel too embarrassed about it. After a lot of shouting, mostly from Parker, Bea hikes back up to the house with Paige and calls the only pizza place that actually delivers to this side of town. They order two large pizzas and a side of cheesy bread.

The evening drags into night, with pizza and music and revelry. Most of the party guests are some degree of high. Zach watches Ben bug Parker for the majority of the evening. Alicia and Bea get into a debate about the major themes in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. George makes his way back to Zach and asks him more questions about national parks, and even though Zach is entirely sober, he feels his own kind of high and spouts off, uninhibited, about hiking and foraging and Acadia.

It’s fun. He’s a seventeen-year-old boy at a party with friends, and he’s having fun. For once, he’s entirely normal.

Eventually, the temperature drops to the point where nobody is having fun shivering around the firepit anymore. Parker puts it out, and they all hike back up to the house, shaking and giggling. They pile into the Reids’ pristine, modern living room. They leave the unappealing snacks down at the bottom of the hill, to be cleaned up later, maybe in the morning, by more sober Reid twins.

When they’re all inside, Parker disappears again, only to return with a bottle of wine. Paige yells disapprovingly while, once more, the rest of the group, minus Bea and Zach, cheer loudly.

“Dad is going to kill you!” Paige laugh-yells.