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How well did Rodrick know Sam, really? Well enough to follow him into a drainage tunnel at midnight just for a hit of his blunt?
Currently, they were climbing their way down the rocky, leaf-covered hill behind the old paper mill down to the drainage tunnel below the highway. Sam had, yesterday, on the fourth day Rodrick knew him, told Rodrick about the spot. It was top secret, not to be shared with anyone, and if Rodrick did snitch, he would be scorned forever. Well, Sam didn’t say that last part exactly, but it was the vibe Rodrick got.
After giving him a shovel talk over a fucking smoke spot, Sam invited Rodrick out to smoke the next night. He hadn’t thought about the fact that it was the middle of November and fucking freezing when he agreed, but Rodrick was close to regretting that decision now. He’d put on a jacket before leaving, but the, according to the stupid weather app on his phone, 30 degree weather that felt like 14 fucking degrees was worming its way right through his ripped jeans. Sam didn’t dress any warmer; in fact, he looked like he should be colder, but the boy was… shit, what was that word? Mr. Anderson had been telling them about some book by Terry Prachet and some other guy today, and there was a… ineffable! There was an ineffable plan, and nobody in the class knew the word, so he spent like 10 minutes explaining that it meant ‘unspeakable’. Rodrick is always for wasting time in class, but he didn’t think he’d actually end up using the word. Sam was ineffably cool, though.
All of the other students Rodrick spent his time around, were idiots, not that Rodrick was much better; he was a D student for a reason. Everyone was stupid though; they thought dropping their voices and drawing facial hair on with stolen makeup would convince the cashier at the liquor store they were grown. They thought pranking the queen fucking bee wouldn’t lead to retaliation — and a stolen dog, but Drew kind of deserved that one. They didn’t even know you could huff glue before Sam showed them how. It made Rodrick wonder what the hell else the other boy had learned out in California before he moved here.
He must have learned how to actually look like an adult when buying weed too because after Rodrick picked him up from Corey Demoss’ house they actually bought the weed on the way to the paper mill. Rodrick thought he would have gotten someone older to buy it for him or would’ve stolen it from his parents or something but, no, Sam had Rodrick pull into the dispensary parking lot and was in and out in 5 minutes. Rodrick almost asked how he was able to buy the stuff but thought better of it when he realized it made him sound like a dweeb.
The short remaining ride out to the paper mill was quiet, but once they were actually trying to find the path through the woods down to the tunnel, Sam started talking to him, “Have you ever smoked a joint before?”
“Yeah, of course. What do you take me for?” Rodrick wouldn’t have agreed to this if he’d known he’d embarrass himself in front of Sam by not knowing how to smoke. Thank you, Bill, for being a total pothead and giving Rodrick the training he needed to not completely fuck his up.
Sam shrugged in reply, and that kind of amazed Rodrick because he was using evert ounce of his balance to not slip on the uneven and slippery rocks beneath his feet. The full moon and scattered stars above them were giving just enough light to see by, but Rodrick still felt like he was an inch from breaking his ankle at any given moment. Sam, on the other hand, was unfazed by the cold and dangerous trek.
When they finally made it to the tunnel entrance, Sam turned his phone camera on, and Rodrick so the funnel cake of layers and layers of graffiti. Only a little of it looked obscene, which would be a surprise considering the rest of the graffiti’d spots in Plainview. Sam led them to a pair of rocks on the edge of the leaf filled puddle from the recent rain. It made sense that a drainage tunnel would have water in it, but even Rodrick knew to not fuck with standing water.
It wasn’t all that important though; they weren’t actually sitting in it, and Sam was already pulling out the joints and lighter. While Sam twisted the end of the first one, Rodrick suddenly remembered he left his water bottle in the van. Going back to get it was a good idea, but if Sam wouldn’t need one, it would be embarrassing for Rodrick to need it. Sam clicked the lighter, a rusted and brassy Zippo, and Rodrick couldn’t look away from how the whipping flames lit up and cast odd shadows on Sam’s space. Even with his phone flashlight on and sitting on the ground, the small Zippo flame made Sam glow in the dark. When he finally put the joint to his lips and took a hit, Sam looked up and locked eyes with Rodrick.
The chilling gust of wind that smacked into Rodrick the next moment, and blew the smoke right back into Sam’s hair, did its best to pull the boy out of whatever trance Sam had put him under, but it was ultimately fruitless. Rodrick could only sit and watch Sam smoothly blow the smoke out into the wind and away from Rodrick. The sudden urge to ask him to blow the smoke in Rodrick’s face was just an intrusive thought. Rodrick totally didn’t actually want that. Because it would be weird. Yeah.
Anyway, Sam handed Rodrick the blunt and asked, “So, which one of your band members was hooking you up?”
Rodrick let the smoke out of his mouth slowly and did his very best to fight the cough climbing its way up his thought but lost before long. As he hacked lightly, Sam gently stole the blunt back and took another hit. Once Rodrick was fine enough, he answered, “Bill.” There wasn’t any recognition on Sam’s face, so he went on, “He’s like 35, so he just buys it straight up. No clue where the money comes from, but I’m not arguing with free weed.”
Sam offered the blunt back to Rodrick, but the slightly shorter boy just held it while Sam asked his next question, not wanting to be coughing while he should be replying. “You sure he’s not a pedophile, or something?”
Alright, that was a wasted effort. The sudden topic switch was like a punch to the gut and sent Rodrick coughing again, though this time it was mixed with disbelieving laughter. Sam apparently chose to focus on the laughter when he followed up, “I’m serious, why the hell is some 35-year-old guy hanging out with a bunch of high-schoolers?”
Rodrick couldn’t think of a good reply, so he just fell back on taking another hit to avoid saying anything. This one ended without any coughing, but Sam didn’t immediately take the blunt back. Rodrick was sitting kind of criss-cross applesauce on his rock, but Sam had his feet planted on the ground and his knees up to his chest. It was kind of the posture of someone who was cold, and in the diluted flashlight illumination Rodrick could see the flush on his face and ears, but Sam wasn’t shivering or anything so he must have been fine.
The conversation was lulling, and Rodrick knew the second it died this would become awkward, so he began scraping his brain for something to say. How long have you been doing this? No, no, that’s weird. Do you always come to this tunnel? That sounds like Rodrick’s fishing for other good places to smoke even though he can’t even buy weed himself. Do you want to make out? No. Get out of here, intrusive thought; not gonna happen. Every passing was another one closer to a burned bridge, and Rodrick was being the panic.
Sam, holding his hand out for the joint, gave Rodrick another second to think of something to say, but the sentence that made it out wasn’t his finest. “What’s your favorite color?” What was this, first grade?
To his credit, Sam didn’t immediately choke out a cough-laugh max. There were a few seconds of heavy silence before he cracked. The laughter that did make its way out, cracked and rough as it was, just barely made it to the edge of making some kind of warm and funny feeling from bubbling up in Rodrick. Luckily he wasn’t that… ok there was another word Rodrick couldn’t think of but the point was that he didn’t have that warm and fuzzy feeling in his lungs right now and Sam was actually answering his question.
“Blue.” That made sense. Not just because he dyed part of his hair blue but because his eyes were blue, and god could only want such a pretty person to be happy every time he looked in the mirror. Wait, where the fuck did that come from- “What about you?”
Oh shit, Rodrick actually had to answer back. What was his favorite color? The memory of deciding that having a favorite color was stupid baby shit when he was like 13 flicked Rodrick in the forehead, and he realized he had self-sabotaged himself. Rodrick tried to decide on a new one in the moment but genuinely couldn’t come up with anything. “I have no idea?” Ok, he didn’t need to phrase that like a question.
“Really?” Sam’s eyebrow raised. All Rodrick could offer was his own shrug in reply. Sam brought his hand not holding the joint up and rested his chin on the heel of it. He tilted his head slightly and replied, “I thought you would have said green. Like an olive green.”
Rodrick couldn’t think for a few seconds. They’d only known each other for a few days, but Sam just completely clocked him. Rodrick never would have picked olive green as his favorite color, but the second the words left Sam’s mouth, he knew the other boy was right. He was so completely right it was almost embarrassing. Maybe embarrassment was the thing freezing Rodrick in place instead of the actual cold, just watching Sam bring the blunt almost to his lips before dropping it.
Sam huffed and picked the joint back up but dropped it again before he even got it about his knee. “Goddamnit. I hate when this happens.” Rodrick shifted on his rock as Sam tried for a third time with red and splotchy fingers to pick it up only to fail.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’ve got poor circulation. I got it from my mom, and now I can’t even fucking feel anything in my fingers! God, I fucking hate that bitch. She does this to me and marries that asshole Peter and lets him move us across the fucking country!” Sam directed his yelling at the blunt, better than at Rodrick, and threw both his hands down in frustrated defeat. Rodrick had no idea what to do about Sam’s anger. Sure, he hated his parents sometimes, but Sam sounded like there was a lot more in him than annoyance at screen-free weekends. After a few moments, Sam looked up at Rodrick, “You hold it.”
“What?” What the hell did Sam want Rodrick to hold it for?
“You hold it while I take a hit, then I won’t drop it.” It sounded really weird, and Rodrick wasn’t super excited about holding something up to Sam’s lips. Well, actually- no, no, Rodrick was deciding that he was not excited to get close to Sam’s lips. He did belatedly realize, once he had already picked the blunt up, that he could have said no. Regardless of what the stupid and impulsive thoughts in his brain where Rodrick could have stopped himself from holding the filter side of the blunt out to Sam.
They were sitting a little too far away from each other for Rodrick to actually reach Sam’s lips without moving, but Sam moved first. The other boy tucked his legs and slipped off of the rock so he was kneeling on the dirty concrete in front of Rodrick. Sam leaned in to finally put the blunt to his lips, and his hands just so happened to settle gently on Rodrick’s open thigh. Rodrick categorically denied any sort of feelings, twitches, or urges that maybe theoretically have sparked at the sight of Sam closing his eyes while breathing the smoke in. He was totally only doing this as a favor to his new friend and for no other possible reason.
Taking a quick drag of the blunt while Sam held his own smoke in his lungs only to breathe out in sync was also just practical; the blunt was burning getting close to the filter and Rodrick didn’t have much time to get another hit in before it would be all gone.
The silence that hung above them afterwards was charged. Rodrick didn’t really know what would happen if he acknowledged it, but he did know he was scared. That charge was something he hadn’t felt before, and Rodrick knew if he looked back into Sam’s eyes he wouldn’t make it out. Sam was a gaping hole, and Rodrick was toeing at the edge. Something destructive in him was saying to take the plunge but the rest of him had enough sense to look at the tip of Sam’s nose instead of his eyes and say, “You think we should get going?” before any gusts of wind could knock him over.
There was a shift on Sam’s face, going from one thing Rodrick couldn’t identify to something else he couldn’t identify, and he sat back on his heels. “Yeah, probably.” Sam picked up the forgotten Zippo and phone from the ground and stood to begin walking out. Rodrick dropped the end of the blunt and ground it with his heel quickly before Sam could get too far away. The climb back up the rocks was quiet again, though Rodrick was still focusing on not slipping, so that didn’t help.
Stiches filtered quietly through the van speakers when Rodrick started the car, and he knew they weren’t going to talk for the rest of the ride. He was right, too. The only words exchanged were barely audible directions to Sam’s house that floated out from the deep and shifting shadows in the passenger seat. When Rodrick finally arrived, two houses down the block so no one awake at home could see them, he turned to Sam. The other boy was watching his hands tangle in the hem of his shirt, and Rodrick had no idea what he was thinking about.
Before long, Sam unbuckled and opened the door. Rodrick really thought he was going to get out without saying anything, but at the moment before Sam’s feet touched the pavement, he paused. A final piece of silence hung between them, drowning out the song on the radio and the rumbling engine, and Rodrick didn’t even know what he wanted to happen. Sam saying, “I’ll see you at school,” was pretty good. It still left a funny feeling worming around Rodrick’s guts while he watched Sam walk down the sidewalk, but it could have been worse. Rodrick’s own ride home was equally quiet, and he was luckily about to sneak in silently enough to crash into his bed without waking either of his parents.
The double had always been a little big for one person, a problem that Rodrick had been half fixing with pillows and blankets for years, but it never quite felt empty like this before. But that was just another stupid feeling, probably from the fact that Rodrick hadn’t slept in like 6 hours. It would be gone by morning. Maybe the whole night would be gone by morning. The last thing Rodrick felt before sleep swallowed him whole was a small, squirming desire for that not to happen.