The Mistake(4)

“Wanna go outside and smoke this?” Matt pulls a joint from the pocket of his button-down and holds it in front of me. “I’d light it up here but Mr. President will kick me out of the frat if I do.”

I shift awkwardly. “Ah…no, thanks.”

“You don’t smoke weed?”

“No. I mean, I have, but I don’t do it often. It makes me feel all…loopy.”

He smiles, and two gorgeous dimples appear. “That’s kinda the point of weed.”

“Yeah, I guess. But it makes me really tired, too. Oh, and every time I smoke it I end up thinking about this Power Point presentation my dad forced me to watch when I was thirteen. It had all these statistics about the effects of weed on your brain cells, and how, contrary to popular belief, marijuana actually is highly addictive. And after every slide he’d glare at me and say, do you want to lose your brains cells, Grace? Do you?”

Matt stares at me, and in my head there’s a voice shouting Abort! But it’s too late. My internal filter has failed me once again and words keep popping out of my mouth.

“But I guess that’s not as bad as what my mom did. She tries to be the cool parent, so when I was fifteen, she drove me to this dark parking lot and pulled out a joint and announced that we were going to smoke it together. It was like a scene out of The Wire—wait, I’ve never actually seen The Wire. It’s about drugs, right? Anyway, I sat there panicking the whole time because I was convinced we were going to get arrested, and meanwhile my mom kept asking me how I was feeling and whether or not I was ‘enjoying the pot’.”

Miraculously, my lips finally stop moving.

But Matt’s eyes have already glazed over.

“Uh, yeah, well.” He clumsily waves the joint around. “I’m gonna go smoke this. I’ll see you later.”

I manage to hold in my sigh until he’s gone, then release the heavy breath and give myself a mental slap on the wrist. Damn it. I don’t know why I bother trying to talk to guys. I go into every conversation nervous I’m going to embarrass myself, and then I end up embarrassing myself because I’m nervous. Doomed from the start.

With another sigh, I head downstairs and search the main floor for Ramona. The kitchen is full of kegs and frat boys. Ditto for the dining room. The living room is packed with very loud, very drunk guys, and a sea of scantily clad girls. I applaud them for their bravery, because the weather outside is frigid and the front door has been opening and closing all night, causing cold air to circulate through the house. Me, I’m nice and toasty in my skinny jeans and tight sweater.

I don’t see my friend anywhere. As hip-hop music blasts out of the speakers at a deafening volume, I fish my phone out of my purse to check the time and discover that it’s close to midnight. Even after eight months at Briar, I still experience a teeny sense of glee every time I stay out past eleven, which was my curfew when I lived at home. My dad was a real stickler for curfews. Actually, he’s a real stickler for everything. I doubt he’s ever broken a rule in his life, which makes me wonder how he and Mom managed to stay married as long as they did. My free-spirit mother is the polar opposite of my stuffy, strict father, but I guess that just proves that the whole opposites-attract theory has some merit.

“Gracie!” a female voice shrieks over the music, and the next thing I know, Ramona appears and throws her arms around me in a tight hug.

When she pulls back, I take one look at her shining eyes and flushed cheeks and know she’s drunk. She’s also as scantily clad as most of the other girls in the room, her short skirt barely covering her upper thighs, her red halter-top revealing a serious amount of cleavage. And the heels of her leather boots are so high I have no clue how she can walk in them. She looks gorgeous, though, and she’s drawing a ton of appreciative stares as she links her arm through mine.

I’m pretty sure that when people see us standing side by side, they’re scratching their heads and wondering how on earth we could possibly be friends. Sometimes I wonder the same thing.

In high school, Ramona was the fun-loving badass who smoked cigarettes behind the building, and I was the good girl who edited the school newspaper and organized all the charity events. If we hadn’t been next-door neighbors, Ramona and I probably wouldn’t have known the other existed, but walking to school together every day had led to a friendship of convenience, which had then turned into a real bond. So real that when we were looking at colleges, we made sure to apply to all the same schools, and when we both got into Briar, we asked my father to speak to the residence office and arrange for us to be roommates.