The Swap(18)

Freya chuckled. “See how lucky we are? You have to come over tonight.”

“I’ll see if Brian’s into it.” He would be. His man-crush on Max aside, he was the fun-loving half of our partnership. While his asthma precluded him from smoking dope, he was always up for a beer and a laugh. A night on magic mushrooms would be up his alley.

“Awesome,” Freya said, then she peered past me to the baby and its family. She pointed with her fork. “Look at that.”

I turned to see a waitress making goo-goo eyes at the child while she wiped food from the table. Next to her, the middle-aged manager was cheerfully sweeping up the broken crockery.

“If we yelled and threw food and broke dishes, we’d get kicked out,” Freya said. “People will forgive anything if you have a baby.”





14


low


I had finished my shift at the store in tense silence. After Jamie had hijacked my lunch date with Freya, I was not in the mood for chitchat. Given my taciturn nature, she may not have noticed that I was giving her the cold shoulder, but I was. When I left at five thirty, she called after me, “Have a nice night, Low.”

“Yep,” I muttered, adding, “You too,” as the door closed behind me. I couldn’t lose this job, but I was pissed at my boss. She was so desperate for a friend that she’d pulled rank on me, jumped at the chance to share a meal with Freya. It was pathetic. I had just reached my truck when Freya’s text came in.

Are you coming to the studio?

As usual, Freya’s message lifted my spirits. When she had gone for lunch with Jamie instead of me, I’d felt angry and excluded. But her text validated that it had been me she’d wanted to eat with, me she had wanted to see.

On my way, I responded.

Her reply was instant.

Can you get me some shrooms? Enough for four people. I’ll pay you when you get here.

Of course I could get some ’shrooms. They grew wild in the island’s northern forests and several kids at school collected and sold them. But Freya’s request hurt. She was treating me like a drug dealer. And ’shrooms for four? If she’d said ’shrooms for three, or even five, I would have assumed she was inviting me to join in. Although I didn’t care for hallucinogens, I would have made an exception for Freya and Max. But she’d said four. Four. Who was she planning to trip with?

It had to be Jamie and Brian. While my straitlaced employer did not seem the type, four months of careful observation over the course of my friendship with Freya had convinced me that she had no other friends. She was friendly with a few people, like the seniors who took her pottery classes, but they weren’t friends. Definitely not friends who did ’shrooms together. Max didn’t seem to have any pals, probably because he spent most of his time alone in a kayak, or on a motorcycle, or exercising.

But disappointing Freya was not an option, so I drove to the taxi company where a former classmate worked in the office and sold drugs out the back door. I bought five grams of magic mushshrooms for fifty bucks. Freya was thrilled when I delivered the packet to her.

“You’re a doll,” she said, handing me a bill. And then: “Umm . . . Were you still planning to glaze your pieces tonight?”

“I was.”

“It’s just . . . Jamie doesn’t want you to know she’s doing ’shrooms.”

So, it was Jamie. I liked that Freya was betraying her confidence for me. “Why would I care? I’ve done ’shrooms plenty of times.” This was an outright lie—I had done ’shrooms only once, and I’d thought my lamp was laughing at me—but I hoped it might prompt an invitation.

“You know how Jamie is,” Freya said. “She’s kind of uptight.”

Her disparaging comments about Jamie made me feel deliciously warm. “Just a bit,” I joked.

“I don’t want her to be paranoid and have a bad trip. Come back tomorrow.”

The glow of satisfaction evaporated. Freya was dismissing me, like a delivery person. Like a mule.

“Sure.”

“Thanks for being so cool,” she said. She stood on her tiptoes then and kissed my cheek. It was an odd thing to do, but she must have sensed my feelings of betrayal and rejection, must have thought she could assuage her guilt with this pathetic show of affection.

“No big deal.”

But it was. A big fucking deal.





15


brian vincent


I was supposed to be working on my novel, but at some point that afternoon, I’d fallen down a social media rabbit hole. When Jamie walked through the front door at six fifteen, I was startled to realize I’d squandered hours of writing time. Feeling guilty, I jumped out of my seat.

“Hey, babe.” I hurried over and kissed her cheek. “You surprised me. I was in the zone.”

“Were you?” She gave me a wry smile. “Or were you on Facebook?”

“Twitter,” I admitted. “But there’s a plagiarism scandal going on with this huge YA author. Technically, it was research.”

“Or schadenfreude.”

I held up two fingers about an inch a part. A bit.

We moved into the kitchen, where lunch dishes and coffee cups still littered the counters. I began stuffing them into the dishwasher, as I asked, “Are you hungry? I bought a piece of fish at the docks. I could make some risotto to go with it.”