BANGERZ 2: WORST BEHAVIOR (2015)

36. Initiation

"It's your call, Tess," I hear Za drawl. The familiar sound of paper crinkling as he rolls a blunt follows. "Finish it off, or pick the rotation. I say we start with me first this time."

"Nigga, we always start witchu," Khalil notes, not unreasonably. "You didn't even bring the goods this time."

"Or a lighter." Miley's voice is even hoarser than usual, but even this she manages to pull off in her sultry, effortless way. "You come unprepared, you sit back and go with the flow."

"Which is why I asked Tess to be boss. Why y'all ganging up on me? It's cause I'm black, ain't it?"

"As black as night, Gunzo," Khalil says placidly, sounding like he's suppressing a laugh at Za's expense. "And just as unpredictable. You shouldn't even be doing the honors."

I hear the flick of a lighter as Za switches it on, and somehow I notice the brief bubble of light. My eyes cling to it, and I feel a sort of vacancy when it shuts off.

"You roll it, you light it," Za says. "Here, Tess - take this before they do me like this blunt. Pass me around and take hits, I mean."

I'm gazing up at the smattering of stars, oscillating between envy of their highness and awe at their distance, but I finally blow out a cloud of smoke and glance down at my friends. We're draped across the bleachers in North Shore's stadium on a sensually warm Saturday night, after having hopped the locked gates and stormed the steps. The stadium has been closed to everyone except the football team for dawn practice, and the field has clearly just been trimmed - and yet we broke in and trekked across it. As the school year winds down, I guess we're just crossing items off our senior bucket list.

"I shouldn't have any more," I say, sort of raspy myself - as I accept the fresh blunt from Za anyway. "We have business to take care of and... I need to be in my right mind." Yet I take such a long drag that I lurch forward with a bout of coughing.

Za and Khalil burst into a fit of cackles, though they're clutching their stomachs and hunching over just like me, so they might very well be coughing too. Miley stands and grinds her toe into our discarded pile of blunts, stamping out the last of the light. She looks like she's doing a dance - and again something deserts me at this absence, this absence of thrill and hope.

"You can be intelligent, successful, and still smoke weed," she says shrewdly. She raises her arms over her head, clasping her hands, and sways her hips to the music in her head.

"Well, yeah," Khalil agrees, stroking his jaw thoughtfully as he exhales a plume of smoke. His diamond-encrusted watch winks in our sparse lighting. "We're prime examples."

"Is that why we do it?" I wonder, stretching my arms and folding them behind my head. I recline on the cement bleachers that are only comfortable in my lax trance. "Because it's the only drug that makes us feel good without killing us?"

"You a talkative drunk and a philosophical junkie," Za jokes, accepting the blunt from Miley's long, delicate fingers. "But I agree. And it's the best gateway drug."

"To good snacks," Miley pipes up, twirling around in the middle of our huddle and showcasing her incredibly flat stomach - Lord knows she can afford the munchies. "You know that feeling you get when you're craving something but can't think of it right then? I just smoke... and I remember it."

"To a good night's sleep," Khalil adds. He mimics my reclined position in content. "If we didn't have somewhere to be, I could knock out right here on these bleachers. I couldn't even do that during our whack-ass games, bruh."

"And if we're being honest, to good sex," Za declares, raising a devilish eyebrow at all of us.

"Yeah, we know you need all the help you can get in that department," Khalil says, smirking like he's been planning that joke for awhile and was waiting on the right time to deliver. Miley laughs heartily at the flat expression that comes across Za's face.