"Where I Am": Driving to a Memorial

She fluffs her hair, the soft honey-ash waves falling through her fingers, the separate curls, before setting her knee against the splitting leather wheel, holding the piece up to her mouth, the pink Bic lighter upside-down in front of her face, that long, deep inhale. She laughs, doesn’t cough. The fields we are passing are lush with unkempt, champagne-colored straw, pearls of sticky teardrop seeds clustered together at their ends. She pauses and hands it to Aaron, who talks through the whole ritual except the actual hit, for which he announces mid-sentence “pause.” He holds the glass pipe by the belly, the orange and blue-speckled elephant, coddling its S-shaped trunk between his lips gummy with balm for a second pull. This small elephant bong, it even has four stubby glass legs, freckled in orange. I am next, then Heather again as we are barreling parallel to a grocery store semi-truck five sizes our senior, the car hot-boxed and stoned itself swaying gently back and forth, a lulling rock, roaring when its wheels graze the chopped yellow line between us and the truck. I look out the other window and try to forget how terrified I am until she passes and we are, once again, alone on our little grid of the road.

            Through Turlok, Aaron says to the both of us,

            “Did you hear about the guy who got shot during a Beanie Babies deal?”

            I hadn’t. Neither had Heather, whose mouth drops open in a half-grin.

            “It was like a drug deal, but with Beanie Babies, and the guy was trying to sell a counterfeit and got shot.”

            We both look at him.

            Heather gasps between chortling, “you’re kidding.”

            “People are serious about that shit.” Aaron smacks his lips over a round tin of peppermint balm and passes the bag of chips we’ve been sharing back to me. Cheddar and sour cream flavor; his fingertips thick in layers of cheesy grit.