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now was to graduate and put high school behind me. As for the future—what future?
    “Another thing about California is the film biz,” Nate said. “You, me, Karl—we could totally write screenplays, you know, make films, start our own studio, man.”
    “Look, I just want to get through this high school thing, okay?”
    “You’ve got to start dreaming big, man,” he said, slapping his hands together. “Or your ass is never going to get out of here. Don’t limit yourself to, like, today and tomorrow and whatever.”
    “Nate,” I said, “get real.”
    “Real is what I make it.”
    Okay, Nate was getting
really
irritating now. I wanted to deck him.
    Nate stopped in his tracks, and we stood there next to the grassy slope of the Dudgeon School campus, dark and silent. “Gotta take a leak,” he said. Then, just like that, he disappeared, trudging up the slope into the dark. He must’ve been making for the trees halfway up the slope, toward the school building.
    I lay back on the slope. Looking upward, I was blinded by the glare of the streetlight for a second. I was feeling drunk again, very drunk, as I made out the silhouette of the branches above. “Real is what I make it,” I muttered and chuckled, still tasting the anger and realizing that the anger was, in part, directed at myself for not being able to share in Nate’s grand plans no matter how pie-in-the-sky. What a rotten feeling. Still, it wasn’t his fault I envied him.
    I lay there and let my anger subside, keeping my eyes on the streetlight, and listened to myself breathe. Then, slowly, crazily, the whole world began to tilt, and I was a ship leaning and pitching on storm waves. Up and down, side to side. My vision darkened as if an aperture were closing, and my throat suddenly clenched and my mouth wanted to vomit. On my feet now, I heard myself retch and unwholesome liquid came out, disappearing into the grass. More came out. I braced my hands against my knees. Worse than the vomit was the noise—ghastly, laceratingheaves from deep within the diaphragm that must’ve sent shudders through the entire neighborhood and out of proportion to the liquid trickling from my mouth. The sensation finally eased up, and, in relief, I dropped to the ground, coughing and trying to settle myself down.
    And that’s when, from the corner of my eye, I made out the sapphire-bright whirling of police lights. I turned to face the police cruiser, holding a hand up to shield my eyes from the lights. The cruiser, its headlamps spearing my eyes, prowled up to the curb on its tires like some predator. I saw the outline of an officer emerge and train a flashlight on me.
    Nate’s feet came scuffing against the grass behind me. “Oh, shit,” I heard him groan.
    “You boys want to step over here, please?” came the officer’s voice, hard and authoritative.
    As I stepped forward, I felt something, there in the front pocket of my jeans. I pressed my hand there, a bulge, and I made a realization that felt like one breathless leap into a deep hole: It was the weed. Nate’s weed. Wrapped in the cellophane. I realized it at about the same time the officer, his flashlights hitting us both in the face, asked if we’d been drinking. And what it was, son, I had in my front pocket.
    * *
    A 5 a.m. phone call from the police had woken up my parents. My father told me they’d found me laid out on a cot in a holding cell, retching into a wastebasket placed next to me. He paid the fine—it wasn’t cheap—and had to drag me from the station, into the car, and back into the house.
    When I woke up a few hours later in my bed, in my room with no idea how I got there, I knew I was in deep shit. I had a throbbing headache, my mouth smelled toxic, and I found vomit stains all over my shirt. Yes. Very deep shit.
    “I’m so ashamed. I’m so ashamed,” my father said over and over again that evening as we faced each other. “You’re a disgrace.”
    I stood there stoop-shouldered