Dark Rooms by Lili Anolik

Author:Lili Anolik
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

The Outdoor Club, of which Shep is founder and faculty sponsor, is exactly what it sounds like: a club for people who are into the outdoors. One Sunday a month club members travel by van to some picturesque New England spot and engage in an at-one-with-nature activity, biking or kayaking or, in the winter, skiing or snowshoeing. It used to be the only kids who belonged to it also belonged to FUCCU! (Friends of Urban Connecticut Conservation Unite!), Chandler’s environmental group, and Cheesed Off, Chandler’s vegetarian society; they wore hiking boots with every outfit, carried around tattered copies of The Prophet, and cared deeply about the fate of the Sumatran tiger. But in the last couple years, the club’s really caught on with the cool boarder crowd. Jamie and Ruben had both joined, Nica and Maddie along with them, and I’d never understood why. And then a breeze stirs, coming from behind Shep, sending a waft of patchouli-scented air my way, and suddenly I do. It wasn’t the natural world that attracted them, it was the natural high.

Marijuana.

I can’t know this for sure since when I was a student at Chandler I avoided situations in which Shep was likely to be present, and that certainly included any organization he might be head of. And since I also avoided situations in which Nica, Jamie, Maddie, and Ruben did drugs—well, not drugs drugs, pot mostly, a tab of acid every once in a while—because, though I always kept my face a careful blank whenever Jamie opened his Altoids tin or Ruben whipped out those small squares of what looked like origami paper wrapped in aluminum foil, Maddie claimed she could still feel my “narc eyes” on her, and they ruined her experience. I think I’m right, though. It’s not that tough to get loaded on campus, but it’s definitely easier off. And Shep’s the type who’d ask what the funny smell is, believe it when he’s told incense, preferring to imagine it’s his senses that are lying to him rather than his students. God, that explains Nica and the others’ weirdly indulgent attitude toward him, why they put up with his touchy-feely cluelessness. He’s a sucker. His touchy-feely cluelessness is the best part.

Shep taps the flyer with his index finger. “I’m thinking of taking the club to Narragansett Bay the last weekend in September. Teach those landlubbers how to surf. I figured this movie would put them in the right frame of mind.”

“Yeah, it should,” I say, eager for him to get to the point so we can wrap up this conversation and I can be on my way. “I’ve never seen it. I’ve heard good things, though.”

“Well, you’ll see it on Friday at the club meeting, won’t you?”

Putting it together, “Oh! You want me to run the movie for you? Like for work? For the A/V Department? That’s why you called?”

“No, I want you to watch the movie, for you. And not for work. For, like, fun. I called to invite you.

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