“Energy,”he said, handing me my burrito. Sitting in front of my parents' house as he kissed me good night: ”Which two planets are almost identical in size?“ ”Duh,“ he said, smoothing my hair back, ”Venus and Earth.“ ”Rogerson,“ I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, ”where would I find the pelagic zone?“ ”In the open sea,“ he said. ”Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints."

Rogerson, for the most part, didn't like any of my cheerleading friends. Rina was the only one he could tolerate, and her just barely. He said she was too loud, but he liked her spunk nonetheless. Since she was still hot and heavy with her quarterback, not to mention a developing situation with a college-​boy shoe salesman she'd met at the mall, I didn't see much of her other than at practice. When I wasn't there, I was with Rogerson and his friends. We'd been together about a month when he took me one Sunday afternoon to an old farmhouse out in the country. It was yellow, and kind of ramshackle charming, with a big yard and a dopey looking yellow Lab, curled up in the late winter sunshine, that yawned, uninterested, as we walked up the steps. There were two carsa yellow VW bug and a pickup truckparked in the driveway, and when Roger-​son knocked on the heavy wooden door I could hear the TV on inside.

“Come in,” a voice called out, and as I stepped in behind Rogerson I saw it belonged to a girl with long, straight blond hair who was sitting on a big couch in front of the TV, her feet tucked up under her. The room was small, with bright white walls, sunshine slanting in through a window with a bunch of plants crowded on the sill. The coffee table was an old trunk, covered with magazines and packs of cigarettes, some bracelets and a flurry of envelopes. There was a fish-​bowl on top of the TV with one bright orange goldfish in it, circling. The girl on the couch was smoking a cigarette and watching the Home Shopping Network, which I recognized instantly from my mother's newfound doll addiction. The jewelry segment was on, with some woman talking up a cubic zirconia bracelet she had draped over her fingers, modeling it this way and that.

“Hey,” Rogerson said to the girl, who looked up and smiled at him. She had a pretty face and cat-​shaped eyes. “Hey yourself,” she said, reaching over to lift a stack of magazines off the couch beside her. “Have a seat. Dave's in the kitchen making lunch.“ ”Is that Rogerson?“ a guy's voice yelled from the next room. ”Yeah,“ Rogerson said. ”Get in here, man. I need to talk to you.“ Rogerson stood up, squeezing my shoulder, and walked to a swinging door, leaning into it to push it open. I caught a glimpse of a guy in his early twenties, in cutoffs and a long flannel shirt, barefoot, standing over a frying pan. On the wall behind him there was a huge velvet Elvis, hanging by a row of cabinets. When the guy saw me he lifted his spatula, smiling, and waved at me before the door swung shut again. ”That's Dave,“ the girl beside me said. ”He's making Hamburger Helper. I'm Corinna.“ ”Caitlin,“ I said, and she nodded, smiling at me. ”Rogerson has problems with introductions.”

“No big deal. We're definitely not formal here,” she said, flicking her wrist absently, clattering the thin silver bangles she wore there. Then she reached forward to stub out her cigarette in an ashtray shaped like Texas, picking up the remote with her other hand to flip channels. She cruised by MTV, a political news show, and two old movies before finally landing on an infomercial about acne medicine, where they were interviewing a kid with horrible skin, all red and splotchy and riddled with bumps like the surface of the moon. “Oh, man,” she said, reaching over the arm of the couch, feeling around for something, and coming up with a blue ceramic bowl and a bag of pot. “That poor kid. Look at that. Like high school isn't bad enough, you know?” She opened the bag and quickly packed the bowl, pressing down on it with her index finger. “I had acne in high school, but it wasn't that bad, thank God. And I still couldn't get a date. But you probably don't have that problem, right?” She fumbled around on the coffee table, moving a TV Guide and two emery boards to unearth a lighter. “I mean, you have great skin.”

“Oh, well,” I said, watching as she lit the bowl, drew in a deep breath, and held it a second before slowly letting out a long stream of smoke. “Not really.”

“Oh, you do, though. It's all genes. Does your mom have good skin?” It was strange to think of my mother, here, but her face popped into my head instantly, smiling, lipstick perfect. “Yeah, she does.”

“See?” She tapped the bowl with the lighter. “Genes.” And then she handed it to me. Up until that point, I'd only smoked a few times: with Rina, experimenting; at one or two parties with the more rebellious of the jocks; and the night I'd seen Rogerson's dad hit him. I'd never cared one way or the other for it, but being in that little farmhouse, on a sunny afternoon, sitting in the corner of that big comfortable couch talking to Corinna, it just seemed right, or as right as anything technically wrong could be.

“Thanks,” I said, taking it, lighting the lighter and drawing in a big hit of smoke, which immediately set me to coughing like crazy. The next one went down easier. And by the third, I felt like an old pro.

Afterward, Corinna lit a cigarette and offered me one, too, which I took, lighting it and smoking like I'd been doing it all my life. We sat there together, smoking and watching the acne doctors work their magic.