We made a clumsy, yahoo progress through the swamp. Rex imitated animal sounds that sounded like no animal. Beer cans dinged in his backpack. Our deracinated feet stomped along in the mud.

After twenty minutes we found it: a one-room shack made of unpainted boards. The roof wasn’t much taller than I was. The circular flashlight beam showed tar paper covering the narrow door.

“It’s locked. Fuck,” said Rex.

“Let’s try the window,” Jerome suggested. They disappeared, leaving the Object and me alone. I looked at her. For the first time since I’d arrived she really looked at me. There was just enough moonlight to accomplish this silent exchange between our eyes.

“It’s dark out here,” I said.

“I know it,” said the Object.

There was a crash behind the shack, followed by laughter. The Object took a step closer to me. “What are they doing in there?”

“I don’t know.”

Suddenly the small window of the shack lit up. The boys had lit a Coleman lantern inside. Next the front door opened and Rex stepped out. He was smiling like a salesman. “Got a guy here wants to meet you.” At which point he held up a mousetrap dangling the jellied mouse.

The Object screamed. “Rex!” She jumped back and held on to me. “Take it away!”

Rex dangled it some more, laughing, and then tossed it into the woods. “Okay, okay. Don’t have a shit fit.” He went back inside.

The Object was still clinging to me.

“Maybe we should go back,” I ventured.

“Do you think you know the way? I’m totally lost.”

“I can find it.”

She turned and looked into the black woods. She was thinking about it. But then Rex reappeared in the doorway. “Come on in,” he said. “Check it out.”

And now it was too late. The Object let go of me. Throwing the red scarf of her hair over her shoulder, she ducked through the low threshold into the hunting shack.

Inside were two cots with Hudson’s Bay blankets. They stood at either end of the small space separated by a crude kitchen with a camp stove. Empty bourbon bottles lined the windowsill. The walls were covered with yellowed clippings from the local paper, angling competitions, soap box derbies. There was also a taxidermied pike, jaws agape. Low on kerosene, the lantern sputtered. The light was butter-colored, the ripple of smoke greasing the air. It was opium den light, which was appropriate, because already Rex had plucked a joint from his pocket and was lighting it with a safety match.

Rex was on one cot, Jerome on the other. Casually the Object sat down next to Rex. I stood in the middle of the floor, hunching. I could feel Jerome watching me. I pretended to examine the shack but then turned, expecting to meet his gaze. This didn’t happen, however. Jerome’s eyes were focused on my chest. On my falsies. He liked me already. Now here was an added attraction, like a bonus for good intentions.

Maybe I should have been pleased by the trance he was in. But my revenge fantasy had already gone bust. My heart wasn’t in it. Still, having no alternative, I went ahead and sat beside Jerome. Across the shack Rex Reese had the joint in his mouth.

Rex was wearing shorts and a monogrammed shirt, ripped at the shoulder, showing tanned skin. There was a red mark on his flamenco dancer’s neck: a bug bite, a fading hickey. He closed his eyes to inhale deeply, his long eyelashes coming together. The hair on his head was as thick and oiled as an otter’s pelt. Finally he opened his eyes and passed the joint to the Object.

To my surprise she took it. As though it were one of her beloved Tareytons, she put it between her lips and inhaled.

“Won’t that make you paranoid?” I said.

“No.”

“I thought you told me pot always makes you paranoid.”

“Not when I’m out in nature,” said the Object. She gave me a hard look. Then she took another toke.

“Don’t bogart it,” said Jerome. He got up to take the joint from her. He smoked half-standing, and then turned and held it out to me. I looked at the joint. One end burned; the other was mashed and wet. I had an idea that this was all part of the boys’ plan, the woods, the shack, the cots, the drugs, the sharing of saliva. Here’s a question I still can’t answer: Did I see through the male tricks because I was destined to scheme that way myself? Or do girls see through the tricks, too, and just pretend not to notice?

For one second I thought of Chapter Eleven. He was living in a shack in the woods like this. I asked myself if I missed my brother. I couldn’t tell if I did or not. I never know what I feel until it’s too late. Chapter Eleven had smoked his first joint at college. I was four years ahead of him.

“Hold it in,” Rex coached me.

“You have to let the THC build up in your bloodstream,” said Jerome.

There was a sound out in the woods, twigs snapping. The Object grabbed Rex’s arm. “What was that?”

“Maybe a bear,” Jerome said.

“Neither of you girls are on the rag, I hope,” said Rex.

“Rex!” the Object protested.

“Hey, I’m serious. Bears can smell it. I was out camping in Yellowstone one time and there was this woman out there who got killed. Grizzly could smell the blood.”

“That is not true!”

“I swear. This guy I know told me. He was an Outward Bound guide.”

“Well, I don’t know about Callie, but I’m not,” said the Object.

They all looked at me. “I’m not either,” I said.

“I guess we’re safe, then, Roman,” said Rex, and laughed.

The Object was still holding on to him for protection. “You want to do a shotgun?” he asked her.

“What’s that?”

“Here.” He turned to face her. “What you do is one person opens their mouth and the other person blows the smoke into it. You get totally fucked up. It’s excellent.”

Rex put the lit end of the joint in his mouth. He leaned toward the Object. She leaned forward too. She opened her mouth. And Rex began to blow. The Obscure Object’s lips were a perfect ripe oval and into that target, that bull’s-eye, Rex Reese directed the stream of musky smoke. I could see the column rush into the Object’s mouth. It disappeared down her throat like whitewater over falls. Finally she coughed and he stopped.

“Good hit. Now do me.”

The Object’s green eyes were watering. But she took the joint and inserted it between her lips. She leaned toward Rex Reese, who opened his own mouth wide.

When they were finished, Jerome took the joint from his sister. “Let me see if I can master the technical difficulties here,” he said. The next thing I knew, his face was close to mine. So finally I did it, too. Leaned forward, closed my eyes, parted my lips, and let Jerome shotgun into my mouth a long, dirty plume of smoke.

Smoke filled my lungs, which began to burn. I coughed and let it out. When I opened my eyes again, Rex had his arm around the Object’s shoulder. She was trying to act casual about it. Rex finished his beer. He opened two more, one for him and one for her. He turned toward the Object. He smiled. He said something I couldn’t hear. And then while I was still blinking he covered the Object’s lips with his sour, handsome, pot-smoking mouth.

Across the flickering shack Jerome and I were left pretending not to notice. The joint was ours now to bogart as we wished. We passed it back and forth in silence and sipped our beers.

“I’m having this weird thing where my feet look extremely far away,” Jerome said after a while. “Do your feet look extremely far away to you?”

“I can’t see my feet,” I said. “It’s dark in here.”

He passed me the joint again and I took it. I inhaled and held the smoke in. I let it keep burning my lungs because I wanted to distract myself from the pain in my heart. Rex and the Object were still kissing. I looked away, out the dark, grimy window.

“Everything looks really blue,” I said. “Did you notice that?”

“Oh yeah,” said Jerome. “All kinds of strange epiphenomena.”