“My name is Aerith.” Cloud looks up as the girl smiles decadently. “No, I don't have a lisp.” She has an obnoxious flower crown on her head, handmade from the looks of it. “I guess you could say I'm the poster child for affluenza. People don't think it's a real disease, then the son of a box office blockbuster trilogy shoots up his college campus and people throw the term around on CNN.” A clatter of bohemian bangles clutter her wrists, tiny tattoos adorning her forearms. “If only after school programming actually worked as a babysitter, designer drugs would be much less alluring.”

The counselor tuts lightly under her breath, scribbling a series of pencil marks on her clipboard. “It sounds like you're doing a lot of finger-pointing, Aerith. What about taking ownership of your addiction?”

“I take ownership of the fact that I was born bored and into too much money,” the girl says, rolling her eyes in this aggravating way Cloud finds that he dislikes and craves. The easy dismissal, so similar to what he would do. He knows his faults, has his father speaking an itemized list of them endlessly in his head. He knows how obnoxious the entitled youth look, how he looks. “I take ownership of texting and driving while drinking and driving while popping ADHD meds and drinking. I take ownership of my totaled BMW and my revoked driver's license.” The girl glares daggers at the room of addicts. “I won't take ownership of your disdain or your patronizing. You don't know me. You don't know my life.”

“Oh, boo hoo,” Cloud says, mirroring her rolled eyes and lazy disdain. “Oh, I'm so rich. Oh, my mommy and daddy make too much money to spend diverting their attention from me.”

The girl with a lisp for a name turns to study him, taking stock of his designer jeans, his spoiled director's son contempt. “Let me guess,” she says, tapping her chin in mock thoughtfulness. “The cops rolled up on you smoking a blunt on Santa Monica with some late 90s gangster rap rattling the windows of neighboring motorists.”

Cloud allows her the benefit of a chuckle. “Gangster rap? I'm almost offended.”

“Almost?” Aeirth says, clapping her hands. “Getting an almost anything out of a stoner like you is like like raising the dead.” She nods at the counselor. “There you go, boss. I've performed my miracle for the day.” Her bangles jingle as she gets to her feet. “I'm out.”

Cloud's impressed with the length of her hair as she exits the room, a cascading unruly mane around her shoulders. He bets she smells like Banana Boat and lipgloss.

–

They're out on the beach for “recreation” which amounts to a pitiful game of half-assed beach volleyball and aging, overwrought or underweight, pasty bodies laying out for more of a sun-slapped look as opposed to sun-kissed. Aerith is sitting right where the waves meet the shore, feet buried under sand. She toys with a clump of wet sand, picking out the mole crabs before they scurry out of her hands and back into the surf.

“Gross,” Cloud says, plopping down beside her. She flinches at the sound his body makes against the wet sand. “I heard you could boil them and eat them if you caught enough.”

“Murderer,” she says, looking right at him. So few people look right at him anymore, there's something almost alarming about the way she does it.

“What?” he says after she does it long enough, the sun beside him going right into her eyes.

She shrugs, realigning her gaze with the distant horizon. “You're nice to look at.” It's a compliment, sort of. Logically Cloud knows he's good-looking, has fucked enough boys and girls to know he's good-looking. Somehow the implication of being “nice to look at” is different.

Aerith is pretty, but she's much less nice to look at. There are terrible raised scars on her legs, an ocean of them on her thighs, angry looking tattoos drawing the eye to them. A cupcake, a ribcage, a lipsticked kiss. They're small, mostly black ink as if she's done them herself. He imagines her pussy tastes like vanilla frosting and salt water. Like a lot of lonely nights in rooms full of people. Her nails are chiseled into points, painted black and adorned with trinkets. The Chanel logo, gemstones. She inhabits herself well, he thinks, dragging a hand up the length of her arm and watching the salt fleck off. The gesture gets her attention.

“I don't mind looking at you,” he says, maybe sneering a little. Whatever his face does, it works well enough to get her to agree to walk along the beach with him, a counselor shouting at them to keep two feet between them like they're second graders at day camp.

She's intelligent and prone to self-flagellation, calling herself names with the air of someone who has spent years convincing themselves that they are worthless. Her laughter when he says something charming or something accurate is brittle, like it might break into a sob.

“But that's enough about me,” she says, winding down her tale of adolescent intrigue and hedonism. The counselors are waving them back, calling in the last of the stragglers. “What about you? Besides smoking pot and being bad, what's the deal with you?”

They turn back toward the others, walking slowly to avoid the inevitable drone of evening meetings before dinner and quiet “reflection” time. “Got kicked out of grad school for never going to class... which was really just a cover story for being the campus pot supplier. I'm staying at my mom's place in Venice—can't really say I moved in since there was never any discussion about what I'm even doing there—and... that's it, really. I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't know where I'm going.” He catches her looking at him with that dead on stare, seeing through him. “Really, I'd just like to smoke a fat ass bowl with you and fuck in the sand. That's pretty much my top priority right now.”

She laughs like candy glass and tugs him toward the steps back up to the buildings. “Reign it in, Cassanova.”

–

The days aren't less or more interesting now that Cloud fantasizes about touching every part of Aerith with his tongue and his hands, they just take on a different tenor, a different lens flipped down for sedated viewing of his still same, stalled existence. There's a touch under the table at dinner, the way she licks the four cheese sauce off her fork after taking a bite of macaroni. There's the perfumed air that surrounds him as she walks by right after they cross paths back to their respective rooms for reflection time: grassy, sweet, and damp like spring mornings and thunderstorms. There's something so reckless about her, and it's this curious fixation that Cloud doesn't think he's ever been sober enough to understand. Sure there were other lays—other girls with perfect, firm tits and other boys with gloriously strong hands, slender desperate wrists—but there was no one with all those mysteries written on their bodies, marks made to stand the test of time. Hurt that is forever. Whatever it is speaks to something in Cloud, that place inside him where echos of the past whisper to him when things get quiet and clear.

His suitemates keep to themselves, nodding off like clockwork around 11pm every night, long after reflection time gives way to lights out. They aren't allowed TVs, but there's a bookshelf in one corner where self-help books and all sorts of religious texts line the shelves. Threaded through the pages of a New King James is where Cloud finds a hypodermic needle. No syringe, no fix, just the needle kept safe, kept holy, for late night nefarious uses. Upon its discovery Cloud thought he might try to slice open a vein, bleed out his stupid existence into the sink. That first night after finding it, just a handful of days into the program, he didn't think he could even feel the needle passing through his skin. There was a prick, the welling up of blood. Where was the pain? Had he forgotten what pain, real bodily pain, felt like?

It became a game: how much pain can a single needle elicit? For the first couple weeks it was a sweet, sharp relief, but as time went on, as the chemicals left his body, as things reattached in his brain and began firing anew, things felt different. A prick became a stab became a wound became a hurt, a real shooting pain. So maybe he was dead to things before, numb under a suffocating cover of pot and pills and piss poor liquor.

But no one ever used drugs and alcohol to mask a happy, healthy life.

–

What's weird about any environment that exists in a bubble, be it college life or prison or detox clinics, is that it's easy to keep swimming. Your body adapts to that new world, a metal plate inserted between joints and fusing seamlessly, becoming integrated with new bone growth. Pop the bubble open and reintroduce that single metal plate back into the real world—that newly graduated college student, that newly atoned ex-con, that newly sober addict—and then you see what sinks and what swims. Real life isn't about wake up calls at 6am, a delicious and nutritionally-informed breakfast ready and waiting for consumption. Real life isn't about addiction support groups and one-on-one therapy. Real life is your kid brother and father sitting in the visiting room because it's your birthday. Real life is your mother sipping Ketel and tonics in Monaco rather than sit in rehab with overpriced Sprinkles cupcakes for your 25th birthday.

“Son,” Cloud's father says, clapping him squarely on the shoulder in greeting. Hayner looks a little squirrely like they might be admitting him next, the telltale haze in his eyes like he just lit one up in the parking lot.

“Come here, dude,” Cloud says, pulling Hayner into a hug. “How's that little friend of yours?” he asks, remembering that sexy piece of ass. So desperate, so needy. God, filling that ass was like pouring hate into a black hole.

“Since when do you do hugs, dude?” Hayner asks, shouldering out of his embrace. “That friend is off the market,” Hayner says, glancing at their father. Far be it to insinuate that either of his sons associate with homosexuals. That kind of distancing that begs for a bowl a sticky, crystal-laden weed. That kind of silencing that made everything Cloud did, everyone he did, Not Right. Not Okay.

“I could've made an honest man out of him,” Cloud says steely, staring right at Hayner. It's a trick he's been learning from Aerith: how to really look at someone. Their father casts a concerned glance at Cloud, frowning.

“Are you talking nonsense already?” their father asks, setting the box of cupcakes down to cross his arms. That's the signal that the topic is closed for discussion. “I've had enough nonsense from you. We're here to celebrate your birthday with these cakes.”

“Cupcakes,” Hayner interjects.

“These cupcakes, ridiculous things that they are. You like these things?” their father asks, popping open the box. “These sweet, cloying sugars and creams and cakes. This is your mother's business, your mother's doing.”

Cloud reaches into the box and lifts a cupcake to his lips, tongue darting out to whirl around a lick of frosting. “Yeah, I like cupcakes, dad. I like cupcakes and surfing and smoking pot and listening to music.” His dad throws his hands up, turning to walk away. Cloud just talks louder. “I like kissing boys and eating pussy and reading books and quoting Stephen Crane and watching foreign films.” Hayner gapes at him, hands spread wide and questioning. “You've tried to erase every part of me that doesn't work for you. I'm not a film you can edit or a script you can write. I'm a fucking person. I'm your fucking son. I exist. I'm allowed to be human,” Cloud shouts at his father's retreating figure, a hand shooting out to glance the ideas away as if fanning the wind would make the cries disappear.

“He's gunna kill you, dude,” Hayner says, reaching for a cupcake to cram into his mouth.

“Nah,” Cloud says, peeling away the paper liner from a cupcake. “He'll just pretend I don't exist. But I do, dude. I do, I have a right to, and I'm not going to edit myself for his benefit anymore. He was a shitty busy dad who tried to buy our love with stuff. You can't buy love with stuff. You can't buy love at all.”

“Ok, Mr. Self-Help. Happy Birthday. Chillax. I brought you a blunt.” Hayner digs in his pocket, is just about to pull the blunt out from the hypothetical space of non-being and into existence, when Cloud swats his hand away. He wants it, he does, but he wants a lot of things. That's the glory and despair of existing: you want so, so many things.

“No, dude. I'm clean. You'd quit that shit too if you knew what it was doing to you.”

“Pot is a plant, man. God made plants.”

“You sound like a fucking moron.”

“Yeah, well, God made plants and shit and it's all natural and can't kill you, so your brainwashed guru bullshit won't work on me,” Hayner says, glaring angrily.

“God also said do that shit in moderation. Tell me where in the bible it says Thou Shalt Wake and Bake Every Damn Day. I'll tell you where, Hayner: NOWHERE. You're doing that shit every single day and you're missing out on what things even feel like anymore.”

“You're so brainwashed, Cloud. Smoking weed is a sensory experience. It enhances sex. It's a stimulant.”

“Ok, dude. No judgement. If you smoke for stimulation and enhancing your jerk sessions, that's all well and good for you. I didn't smoke pot for any of that shit. I smoked it and smoked it and smoked away all my concern and all my fear and all my inadequacy. I smoked to cover the fact that I turned you on to drugs and I'm supposed to be your big brother. I'm supposed to watch out for you and stop you from getting into shit, and instead I fucked you up along with me.”

Hayner looks offended, throwing his hands up in exasperation. There's a smear of buttercream on the side of his mouth and Cloud feels the crush of failure, of disappointment in himself more than ever. Without a vice to numb the shout of guilt, it rings clear, stings with its gravity. A pin pressing every day into your skin: guess what, you're alive. Guess what, being alive hurts.

“I smoked because mom fucked all our married neighbors while dad was at Tribeca and at Cannes and at Sundance. I caught her on the tennis court with what's his face from two doors down. He had a tennis racket in her vagina, Hayner. God knows how fucking drunk they were. How do you unsee that when you're twelve years old? You don't, so you cover it. Cover your eyes, Cloud, cover your eyes, Hayner. Aren't you tired, man? I'm tired of hiding from all the shit they put us through. And not just them, me too. All the shit I put my body through, all the people I put myself into. Your little friend? What's his name, Alex? I fucked that kid for months and I can't even remember his fucking name.” Cloud covers his mouth with a fist, fights the urge to punch himself in the mouth. “He was sad and hurting and I was sad and hurting and I ruined everything I could touch. I was a mess. I am a mess.”

Hayner, who is high, says, “A hot mess. A heated mess.”

“You stupid fuck,” Cloud snarls, grabbing his brother into a hug.

“Ouch, dude, my back,” Hayner says, stiffly, swatting him reassuringly across the shoulders.

–

There's only a week or two left in his program when Aerith walks into Cloud's room in the middle of the night. He is, thankfully, between suitemates. People come and go like the tide, being kicked out for this reason, admitted for another. She's as quiet as a ghost when she slides in, Cloud glancing up from a Gordon Ramsay cookbook he found on the bookshelf.

She holds a finger to her lips, gliding over to where he's laying propped up in bed. Her cutoffs are short enough to leave all the right parts to the imagination, a draping, nearly translucent racerback leaving nothing. “Run away with me,” she whispers next to his ear, tongue lapping at the lobe. Her breath smells like mouthwash and licorice.

“No,” Cloud smiles, closing the cookbook. Two weeks to go, and here is this wild creature of the night, flirting with disaster.

“Ok, fuck me,” she exhales, lifting her top away from her body. Cloud's hands move automatically to cup her breasts, fingers rolling against her nipples. She seems a little manic, her body humming at a different vibration than his own. He'd love nothing more than to swallow her whole, mimic in reality everything he's already done in his dreams. His whole body is a want, the way her mouth is open, lips glossy in the lamplight.

“No,” Cloud says, hands stilling against her waist, holding her in place.

The hum of her body quiets and she looks him, pierces right into the center of him. “I'm so bored, Cloud,” she says in a soft little wail, collapsing down around him. Every part of her is soft and quaking, her descent like exhaustion after making love. He carefully smooths her hair as she shakes against him. “Nothing is exciting, not sober and not high. Nothing tastes good or smells good or means anything. There's you and your body and my body. That's what there is,” she whispers, hands moving down to grab hold of him. He's hard because he's a fucking animal, and her grip is vicious, cunning. She knows how to move her hands against him, unlocking the things in the pit of his stomach. The things he would do, tasting each and every sound coming out of her mouth...

“No,” Cloud says again, holding her tighter against his chest. She deflates almost immediately, limbs dying in his arms.

“You're no fun,” she says tonelessly. “And I leave tomorrow, so this was definitely your last chance.”

There's a twinge of regret firing all along his new nerve endings. “Why, you don't want to hang out on the outside?”

“You don't know me on the outside. I'm not this nice.” She heaves herself up and away from him, pulling her shirt back on. “I'm a bitch in the real world, Cloud. I'm a spoiled, self-righteous little brat and I won't have time for you in between Coffee Bean and barre class. I won't have time to smoke on the beach with you and suck that thick cock in your little boy bedroom.”

“I'm not this broken on the outside,” Cloud says, sitting up. She stands at the side of his bed and does her stare. “I'm cold and uncaring and terrible at texting.” He stands, grateful his erection has calmed down enough to not look ridiculous standing there in boxers. “But out there or in here one thing doesn't change. I don't mind looking at you.” She rolls her eyes and goes to turn away, head out the door, but he catches her hand. “I don't mind looking at you because I think you're beautiful.”

“Liar,” she responds without missing a beat.

“Your skin is beautiful because it talks to me without you even having to open your mouth. Don't think I haven't got this on lock. I've been thinking about everything I want to say to you for the last 80 days. Your eyes are beautiful because there's a color in them that only exists when you're looking at me and the sun is setting. There's so much more I want to know about you. You're so beautiful, Aerith.”

Her hand goes up to hold the back of his neck when she pulls him down for a kiss. Red Vines, it tastes like, and some kind of cotton candy lip gloss that she shudders against when he goes in for a taste.

“I'll forget your name in two weeks,” she whispers against his lips, hands sliding up the angles of his back. “I won't even know my own name in 24 hours.”

The baser instincts in him win as he reaches in up under her cutoffs to push a finger into her, her body rocking against his hand.