But a couple weeks before the retake, Katie had shown me her stash, spreading the little papers to roll and the baggie of weed out on her kitchen table. She got it from her brother, she said, who got it from someone at college.

“I think you’re just too uptight about your score,” she said. “Take a practice set lit up and see if you do any better.” She handed me the fat roll and a lighter.

“I don’t smoke cigarettes,” I told her. “I’ll have a coughing fit.”

“It’s different. Smoother. Try it.”

I looked at my last practice score. I wasn’t getting any better. I just couldn’t answer things fast enough. I felt the weight of the clock, the pressure to get every question right.

I stared at the joint. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Here, I’ll start it.” She lit the end of the roll at the twist and it blazed with light for a moment, then the burnt end went black. She sucked in, held it, then blew out a long clean line of smoke that dissipated elegantly into nothingness.

The smell hit, the sickly sweet smoke. She passed the joint to me. “Just take a couple puffs, then stop until you see what it does.”

“Do I breathe it in?”

She laughed. “Of course.”

Katie made it seem easy. I tentatively put it to my lips.

“Just suck it in,” she said.

I inhaled, and immediately felt the urge to cough, but it wasn’t too bad, and I could suppress it.

“You’re doing all right,” she said. She took the joint from me and puffed. “Don’t forget to exhale!”

I let it go and the smoke went everywhere in an ugly cloud. Katie laughed. “You’ll get it.” She passed it back. “One more and then we’ll wait. It takes a few minutes. You may not feel much the first time.”

I briefly flashed to middle school and the anti-drug lectures. No one had paid the least bit of attention then. I hadn’t been around drugs, ever. Katie acted like it was no big deal.

“How you doing?” she asked.

My mouth tasted strange. I had a sense of being a little hot and my heart might have been beating faster, but then, I was nervous. “Nothing,” I said.

“One more.” She passed it over again.

I took another puff and gave it back. “I’m going to do one more timed section and call it a day,” I said.

She examined the joint. “I have no idea if this is any good or not. Nothing to compare it to.”

I shrugged. Figures it wouldn’t do anything to me. I probably did something wrong.

But somewhere about question six, I felt a lightness come over me. My stomach turned, just a tiny tweak, and I felt buoyant, chilled out, like everything was good.

I glanced up at Katie. She’d kicked her feet up on the table. I wondered if her parents knew about her habit. She was doing it right here in the kitchen. Either they approved or they weren’t coming back anytime soon.

I moved through the questions. The extra work was paying off. I could almost predict the answers they would use for options and easily eliminated the wrong ones. I forgot about the clock entirely, feeling a rhythm with the equations, not completely caring if I got them right or not, moving from one to the next with ease. I ticked off the last one and noticed I still had time left. Crazy.

I flipped through to the answer key, realizing the room was getting hazy. Katie was really going at it. The first few questions checked off fine. I ran my fingers down the line. Correct. Correct. Correct.

Holy crap, I hadn’t missed a single question. It was just a set, twenty problems, but still.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Katie said. “You killed it, didn’t you?”

“Might be a coincidence.” I packed up my books, feeling happy and loose. I’d walked over, thankfully. I wasn’t sure I was up for driving. Now that I was done concentrating, I could feel something off, like I noticed each step a second after my foot hit the ground.

Katie followed me to the door. “Let’s try it again tomorrow. Do a longer bit. It’s an experiment.”

I walked out into the night. “Maybe.”

Katie laughed. “You’ll be back!”

In the bath, I rose from the water with a gasp. I’d been holding my breath again, waiting for the black.

Not in the tub. Shower sometimes, but a bath was dangerous. I never knew exactly how long it took me to come back around. Possibly long enough to drown. Another car drove by, illuminating the room for just a moment.

The boys in Austin’s bedroom were a flash of memory, sitting around a table, a big glass bong in the center. Austin probably smoked. If I were around it again, if things progressed, the whole thing could start all over. Relationship. Sex. Pregnancy. Death. Secrets. Guilt.

I wiped my eyes. No more Austin. No more Gavin. I had to get back to where I’d been on Monday, before I saw him again, before everything caved in.

My phone buzzed in my jeans, lying somewhere in the bathroom. I could make out a lump on the white rug and I reached for it, wiping my hands on the denim before I tugged the phone out.

Sixteen texts from Jenny. Good grief. I scrolled through. Most were about Gavin, how he was persistent, desperate to see me. She listed his phone number and said she refused to give him mine.

The next message almost made me drop the phone.

He told me about your baby.

I read it twice then flung the phone away, not caring if it cracked. What was he doing? Why had he done that?

Water flew across the tub as my hand smacked the water over and over again. I came here to get away. I needed to escape.

My face was wet, and I wasn’t sure if I was crying finally or just splashed. I rushed with hate for my high school friend Katie, for her idea, because it had worked too well. I smoked and smoked and smoked and learned exactly how much weed I needed to maximize my test taking. We went through her stash so quickly that we had to drive up to her brother’s college to get more.

I sank below the water, looking up into the blackness. It was almost as good as holding my breath, but not quite. The water was cooling off, and my mind still whirred. I wanted to shut it off, stop thinking.

If only I hadn’t smoked so much. If only I had trusted myself to take the test without it.

I held my breath, bubbles flowing from my lips and rising to the surface.

Spots filled my vision. My body wanted to come up for air, but I didn’t let it.

I stayed away from everyone for a reason. Too many triggers. Too much history. Small things, like college boys with a bong, became huge, looming over me like the ocean swallowing the stars.

Gavin couldn’t know. He could never know. If Austin talked. If Gavin heard. If he connected the dots.

My lungs were bursting but then suddenly they weren’t. I exhaled everything in my body and sank farther against the hard curve of the tub. Would my body save itself in this black water?

I opened my eyes and saw Finn, curled up like he’d been in the sonograms, and how I’d imagined him to look while he was still tucked safely in my belly. He floated, the curling line of his umbilical cord snaking between us. I reached for him, hoping maybe he’d open his eyes this time, and breathe without a machine. But we were underwater, and he couldn’t breathe. His lungs wouldn’t work here any more than they had when he was in his little plastic bed, the ventilator taped to his mouth, forcing air in and out in a loud mechanical whine.

He shifted, rotating, almost as though he were coming closer, then opened his mouth and blew out a long exhale of gray smoke.

I gulped water and everything went quiet, so black, and I couldn’t see anything at all. 

I flung my helmet on the sofa, glad to be home from Tijuana. The phone buzzed and my heart raced, thinking maybe Corabelle’s friend had given her my number, but it was just Mario, asking if I wanted to shoot pool.