Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(11)

“What are you, sixteen?”

“Fifteen.”

“In this town? Every other kid in your class probably has a hookup.”

“I don’t really—”

“Those are my terms, lady. Take it or leave it.”

We sized each other up for a minute. She tilted her head up high, like she was challenging me. For a second I felt like Al Pacino in that scene in The Godfather where he shoots all those guys in that restaurant and then flees to Sicily and marries that girl who doesn’t speak his language but has really nice breasts and then she gets blown up in a car.

Finally, I relented. “You’re on.”



Things I am extraordinarily good at locating: public restrooms, novels about hedonism and angst at exclusive private schools, quickly canceled cult TV shows, and free bagels. Controlled substances are not, and will never be, one of those things. Even picking up antibiotics for an ear infection at CVS makes me feel vaguely shifty and hyper-self-conscious, like a minor character on The Wire.

Fortunately, Ruth was right: Weed was as ubiquitous at school as folded brown-bag textbook covers with Drake lyrics scrawled on them. I located a hookup almost immediately when I sidled up to Mark Petruniak during Phys Ed and awkwardly said something like, “Hey, do you, like, I know you smoke, but do you happen to deal? I mean deal weed. Not, like, ‘with issues.’”

To my relief, Mark laughed.

“Yeah, dude,” he said super-nonchalantly, his eyelids drooping, and I caught a whiff that verified his honesty. “Hey, I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Well, sometimes,” I lied modestly, basking in taking a well-liked guy from school by surprise. “You know. Not a lot.”

(I smoked weed one time. It was at one of Ashley’s parties. I freaked out, locked myself in the bathroom, and sobbed uncontrollably until Dylan Dinerstein drunkenly climbed in through the window to pee.)

After Phys Ed, I handed Mark a fifty, and he gave me a small plastic bag with some green stuff in it that could totally have been Astroturf and I wouldn’t have known.

“Good shit,” I said, as if I had a Ph.D. in Discerning Shit Quality.

“You should come to over my house and smoke sometime,” Mark said casually.

“Yeah, definitely,” I lied.

In retrospect, I felt fortunate that a number of small miracles had transpired: I managed to purchase marijuana without asking Mark what exact unit of measurement was in a dime bag, without getting arrested, and without being so nervous about potentially being arrested that I Maria Full of Grace-ed it home in my vagina.

I stopped by Ruth’s house after school, just as the sun was setting, incredibly jittery from playing Pokémon with narcotics at school and hoping this stupid report would be worth all the anxiety.

She answered the door in the middle of my second knock.

“Yup.”

“Hi. I got the thing. The stuff. You know.” Beat. Nothing. “The stuff.”

“Oh, right.” A light clicked on behind her eyes. She looked mildly impressed but quashed it immediately. “Great, come on in.”

The foyer was warm and cluttered in an eclectic, lived-in way. Best of all, there were books everywhere, mostly very old ones, lined up on one single long shelf that looped around the room endlessly, like literature dominoes. I glanced a little closer and saw that a lot of them were feminist theory—some I recognized from my own late-night smart-girl Googles, but others I didn’t know.

“Dworkin is a loony tune.” Ruth pulled one book down from the shelf. “You ever read her?”

I looked down at the book. Intercourse, read its stark cover. Nothing you’d find between He’s Just Not That Into You and Eat Pray Love on Dawn’s bookshelf. I shook my head.

“She makes reality TV look like The Partridge Family,” Ruth said admiringly and handed the book to me. “Here. Keep it. I’ve read it.”

“You haven’t read, like, all of these, have you?”

“Yep.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, well. Thirty-four years teaching women’s studies, you crack a book or two. Not that there’s ever any right answer to this stuff.” She shook her head with sort of a bemused smile. “It’s amazing how the more you read, the less you know.”

“I totally get what you mean,” I said instantly. A second later, I realized I actually did. It was the first time I ever felt understood by a grown-up.

I tucked the book in my backpack, feeling a little bit like I’d just found the coolest informal library ever.

Ruth plucked the dime bag from my hand and brushed past me, heading into the kitchen, all Formica and peeling wallpaper. I followed behind. She lifted the lid of a porcelain sugar jar and placed the new plastic bag of weed inside it. She opened a junk drawer, pulled out some rolling papers, and started making a joint. Or a blunt. I’m still unclear on the difference, maybe the latter just isn’t as polite at parties.

“You wanna start this Old Crone Report, then?” Ruth asked through gritted teeth, clenching the joint between them.

I nodded and took out my notebook.

“Okay.” She breathed in, held it, frozen, then exhaled. A plume of smoke rose and twisted in front of us like a belly dancer. “You should know I’m not gonna give you any Tuesdays with Morrie bullshit.”