Free Loving Emily by Anne Pfeffer Page A

really.”
    I heard the striking of a match as this guy, Josh somebody, lit a joint and took a drag. Miss Anderson had warned us what would happen if we did drugs on a school retreat: “You will be immediately expelled.” I was sweating, picturing myself thrown out of school after only three weeks. But if I left now, I’d look like a total wimp.
    The joint started moving around the circle. Phoebe, standing next to me, inhaled noisily and handed it to me. I did the only socially acceptable thing and sucked in a lungful of smoke, and then more lungfuls as the joint kept working its way around to me.
    Soon, I was in some kind of time warp. Just lifting the joint to my mouth took about five minutes, and it was taking me ten minutes or so to inhale the smoke. Phoebe was laughing very, very loudly, a high-pitched laugh that went into my ear drum like an ice pick.
    My head turned very, very slowly and I registered, far away, as if through the wrong end of a telescope, Michael on the bed with Kayla, and three or four minutes later I realized that
he was lying on top of her!
They had their clothes on, but
still!
I started to crack up, then stifled my laughter, willing myself to be cool.
    I was in a big armchair with Phoebe, who seemed very far away, even though she was right there in the chair with me. She was doing something wet and frantic to my mouth with her mouth. She must have popped a breath mint or something, because I caught this intense blast of peppermint.
    I went with it. I didn’t really like this girl, but her tongue was in my mouth, which made up for a lot.
    I knew nothing about kissing at age twelve, but I did my best. Doing it with Phoebe was like wrestling with a suction hose. I was sure kissing had to be better than this – otherwise it wouldn’t be so popular. But at the same time, I had a wicked hard-on and was sliding my hand lower and lower down her back until it was
almost on her ass!
She seemed fine with it. See, Michael? You’re not the only one with game around here.
    Then, someone said, “Heads up! I hear something!” We all froze. Phoebe’s pointy elbow was boring into my ribcage. Footsteps walked up to our door and stopped. Then a soft tapping on the door, as if the person outside was testing to see if anyone was awake in there.
    In absolute silence, we waited. I thought my heart would knock Phoebe off the chair, it was pounding so hard.
    The footsteps started up again and disappeared down the hall.
    “Okay, that’s it, I guess!” I threw off Phoebe, peeled Michael off of Kayla, and dragged him down the hall to our room. Once safely back, I let go of his arm and said, “Dude! We could have got thrown out of school!” My lips felt huge and rubbery, and the room was slowly rotating around us.
    “But we didn’t.” Michael was already climbing into bed.
    I fell into my own bed, my head pulsing, thanking God we had escaped uncaught.
    “Hey, Ryan.” Michael’s voice was muffled from his pillow.
    “Yeah?”
    “Phoebe’s hot, huh?”
    He could have her.
    On the bus ride home from the retreat, the guy who had been in the room with us, Josh, was caught with weed in his backpack and was expelled from Pacific Prep.
    “Bummer,” was Michael’s comment. After that, he started smoking dope and trying harder stuff too with this druggie crowd at school. “Come party with me, man!” he would say, and I did a few times, but finally told him I didn’t like it and didn’t want to get into trouble. We stayed best friends, though. What with our regular lunches and tennis games, schoolwork, and the closeness of our two families, Michael was too much a part of my life to be anything else.
    As for Phoebe, I avoided her for the rest of the school year and was glad when she transferred to this alternative hippie school for eighth grade. I heard she thought the Pacific Prep kids were boring and uptight.

Chapter 17
    M y folks have been talking to Nat and Yancy a lot since the funeral and have invited