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Marijuana: NEGATIVE

I breathe a very momentary exhale of relief before I read on to the result below it. A result that makes my stomach clench so hard I think I might throw up.

Psilocybin: POSITIVE.

Magic mushrooms?

My spinning brain may not be firing on all cylinders, but it pulls up the street name for psilocybin with little effort.

This result is even more ridiculous than the marijuana. I have never in my life taken psilocybin or anything related to it.

“Okay, this is definitely a mistake.” I also toss the paper onto the desk and push my chair back, needing physical distance from it. “The lab must have mixed my tests up with someone else’s.”

Phillip picks up both reports and puts them back into the file. “That’s what I thought, too…after the first report. That’s why I asked you for that second sample.”

I shake my head, still not fully believing what I’m hearing. “But I don’t do drugs,” I tell him, the volume of my voice increasing. “I’m serious, Phillip, I have never taken anything stronger than an Extra Strength Tylenol. This can’t be my report.”

Phillip reaches out his arm, then after a moment of hesitation, he pats me softly on the shoulder twice. “I am not going to show this to anyone,” he says. “I am hoping you’ll see this as a wake-up call. The next two years will be very challenging academically, and as your friend, I want to tell you that drugs are not the answer. Science is the only high you need.” He gives me yet another pat, then nods to himself, returns to his chair, and begins to type as if the last five minutes hadn’t happened. I, however, can’t do anything but stare at the manila file folder in front of me.

Phillip is right. One result could be chalked up to a lab error, but two? The odds are minuscule. Unless someone was tampering with my tests? But why would someone do that? The only person who even knew I was doing them in the first place was Phillip, and it’s obviously not him.

My stomach feels like it’s filling up with battery acid. I reach for my purse to see if I have any Pepto Bismol, but when I dig into my bag, my fingers hit something hard. It’s a tin container. I’m confused until I pull it out and remember the weird maple granola bars Harmony gave me this morning. I open the lid and look at them, and my blood runs cold.

Tiny green flakes cling to the maple syrup, holding the seeds in their bar shape. I didn’t really look at them this morning, and even if I did, I would have assumed the green was sage or lime or some unidentified plant Harmony grows outside her bedroom windowsill.

“Oh my god.” All the pieces click into place as I think back throughout the last few months. The cookies, the cheesecakes, the pies, and the flans.

She wouldn’t.

There’s no way.

But it’s a very logical answer.

“I think I’ve been drugged,” I say to Phillip, holding out the container. “My neighbor. She bakes. It always tastes a little off, but I eat it anyway.”

Phillip nods as if he at least believes me. “How long has she been baking for you?”

“She’s been dropping stuff off for years.” I think back to the cookies she used to make Larry when we first moved in. “I stopped eating her food a long time ago because it was hit or miss, and I got sick of discovering the misses, but I started again when…”

When Mackenzie moved in.

“Oh my god.”

I sink back down into my chair.

Harmony’s been drugging us.

She’s been drugging us for months.

30

Phillip sends me home early after I do nothing but stare at the folder for another twenty minutes and try to recount what I might have ingested since September.

I don’t recall feeling high.

As far as I know, I wasn’t ever high.

But do I even know what high feels like? Between working where we do and the “say no to drugs” campaigns of my early childhood, the closest I ever came to any mood-altering substance was a single puff of a cigarette behind the portables in the tenth grade.