"Okay." Blair shrugged, removing his sunglasses and putting them on his desk. I started looking at the posters on the walls. They were all movie posters: Action Hero and Vietnam Rescue starring Steve Blanchard on one wall-the ones on the facing wall were Mary Queen of Scots and To the Lighthouse starring Nicole Blair.

And then it clicked in my head.

I looked at one wall. "Blair," I said aloud, and then looked at the other. "Blanchard."

Blair grinned at me as he opened the bottom drawer of his dresser. "Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. You'd be amazed how many people never get it and I have to tell them." He rolled his eyes. "Shut and lock the door." I did. "Yup, Mom and Dad." He laughed. "I'm what they call a `star baby', although they got divorced when I was little. I don't remember them ever being married to each other." He placed a large glass dragon and a baggie full of something on the desktop, and started filling a little silver bowl on the side of the dragon with pieces of something from the baggie. "Sit." He gestured at the bed, so I sat down there, shrugging off my backpack. He got up and placed a towel along the bottom of the door, then walked back and lit the bowl, inhaling deeply as it filled with smoke. He set it back down, sat there for a few seconds before blowing a huge aromatic stream of smoke at the ceiling.

"Your parents are Nicole Blair and Steve Blanchard." I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. "But they're movie stars!"

"Yeah, well, you're not in Kansas anymore, bud." He took another hit. "Movie stars are a dime a dozen out here. And Mom's not really a movie star, although she's won an Oscar, which is more than Dad can say," he said after exhaling another cloud.

"Wow." No one back at home would believe that I had a class with Steve Blanchard's son. My parents would freak, too. NIy parents were huge fans of Steve Blanchard. He was the only movie star whose movies they'd pay to see at the theater. And when they came out on video, they rented them. They were crazy about him. Frankly, I didn't think he could act and his movies all pretty much seemed the same to me, but he was a lot of fun to watch. He had an amazingly sculpted body, a beautiful face, and the deepest blue eyes-and in almost every movie he made at some point he was naked, covered in oil and tortured. Not that they ever showed his dick or anything, but his ass-his ass was almost as big a star as he was.

He offered me the dragon. "Oh, no thanks, I don't." I waved it off.

"Have you ever tried?" He looked at me. "Like I said, bro, you're not in Kansas anymore."

I hesitated. In one side of my head, I could hear my parents' endless lectures. Smokingpot is just the start, once you try it you get hooked and if that drug is okay for you, and doesn't mess you up so had, well, why not try cocaine and crystal meth and heroin or LSD and before you know it you're so badly hooked on something you can't stop, and you're destroying your body and your mind, and you're such a smart boy, Jeff, with such a brilliant future ahead of you. Don't be stupid.

But on the other side, there was another voice, the one I'd heard before but always managed to suppress.

But your parents wouldn't love you, Jeff, if they knew what you were really like-that you liked boys instead of girls, that you dream of other boys, that the thought of kissing another boy is what gets you excited; kissing a girl doesn't do anything for you at all. What would your parents say about that? What would they say if you told them the truth? They'd throw you out, that's what they'd do. You've heard them talk about the "queers, " and have they ever said anything that would make you think otherwise? They think queers are freaks, and you're a queer. You've tried to change that, you've gone out with girls, and it hasn't done you any good. You've gone to church and you've prayed, and it hasn't done you a damned bit of good. So why be good? You're bad, through and through, and they've always told you so. So what? Try it. Once won't kill you.

I looked at Blair.

I looked at the dragon.

I reached for it. "Um, what do I do?"

"Ah, I love corrupting the innocent." He grinned, and sat down next to me on the bed. "Well, you see this little hole? You put your thumb over that, okay?" I did as he told me. "Now put your mouth over the big hole here at the top." I did, smelling the water inside the glass, which was kind of nauseating. "Okay, when I light the lighter and put it against the pot, you start sucking in air, okay?"

I nodded.

He lit the lighter.

I started sucking.

"Now take your thumb off."

I did, and inhaled a huge rush of smoke.

And choked.

I started coughing, hard.

I couldn't stop. It felt like I was NEVER going to stop. I coughed and gagged, then coughed some more. My throat burned, my eyes watered, and Blair handed me my Coke. "Take a drink," he ordered.

I swallowed, and that soothed the burning in my throat enough so the coughing stopped.

"My God." I finally managed to choke the words out before finishing the rest of my Coke. "That's horrible." But even as I said the words, I could feel a weird kind of numbness moving through my mind. I'd never felt anything like it before, and as I looked at Blair, I started to giggle. "Oh, wow." I said, and the words seemed to echo and bounce around inside my head. I looked over at the poster for Mary Queen of Scots, and the red velvet dress and pearls Nicole Blair was wearing seemed-somehow almost alive with vibrancy, it was almost as though she weren't a poster image but actually there, breathing.

"Have another hit, " Blair said from somewhere nearby, and I took the dragon in my hands again and obediently put my thumb and mouth in place.

This time I didn't cough at all, and I could feel my mind completely relaxing, and my entire body seemed to be floating somehow. I looked over at Blair, who was taking another hit.

He's beautiful, I told myself, look at those eyes.

Now that I knew who he was, I could see he had his father's eyes, his mother's bone structure and skin. I wanted to touch him, to kiss him.

He's even more beautiful than Kevin.

He put the dragon down, and he reached over and put his fingers on my face. "How you doing there, Jeffy?"

I smiled. "I'm good, it's all good." I giggled again. "Wow This feels amazing."

Blair leaned in and kissed me.

My entire body responded. It was like an electric current was going through me, my entire body felt sensitized and my cock immediately got hard. His lips weren't like I'd imagined Kevin's to be. They were soft but firm, and he tasted slightly of smoke and Coke. As he kissed me, he slid across the surface of the bed until his leg was touching mine, and his arms went around me. I put mine around him and pulled him closer to me. It was everything I'd ever dreamed of, only better. He pushed against me a little bit, and I leaned back until I was on my back, and he rolled over on top of me. I put my arms around him, feeling the muscles in his back and he started grinding his crotch on top of mine.

He stopped kissing me and raised himself up on his elbows and looked into my eyes. "You doing okay there, Jeffy?"

I smiled at him. My head was still full of fog, but I knew I wanted him to keep going, I didn't want him to stop. "Uhhuh."

"Maybe we'd better stop." He got to his feet and smiled down at me. I could see the bulge in the front of his shorts.

"Why?" I sat up. "I don't want to stop."