Finding Mary Jane Read Online Free

traditional sense. He stretches out his leg and reaches into his pocket, retrieving a plastic bag full of joints. He puts one in his mouth and grabs a lighter from under the bed.
    “Dammit, Ben!”
    He lights it and takes a hit. I know I can’t overpower him and take it away. Ben may be stoned, but he’s still way stronger than me. “I think you’re high enough. You don’t need anymore. Please put that away.”
    He takes another long drag on the joint, just to spite me. “It’s not like I’m going to overdose.” He smiles. “That’s impossible. Here Lex, take a hit.” He holds it out to me. “Puff, puff, pass, little sis.”
    I shake my head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
    “Never mind me,” he says, pointing at me with the joint. “I know your dirty secret.”
    “I have no secrets,” I lie.
    “You got high with Bluntz.” His eyes meet mine, daring me to object. When I don’t say anything, he continues, “You don’t have to be ashamed. I’m proud of my baby sis.”
    “Shut up.” My mind is whirling with a million excuses and lies, but none of them are believable. If Ben knows what I did, he’ll know I’m a hypocrite. I’ll lose my ability to help him.
    “You need to stop taking my shit away from me, trying to be my mommy. Because you’re one of us now, Lex.” He flicks the lighter and holds it to his joint again, taking another hit. Then holds it out to me. I wonder if he’ll talk to me if I get high with him. Maybe he will confide in me more, knowing I’m in the same state of mind as he is. But the other night is still fresh in my mind, the head rush and the dizziness and how completely wrong it made me feel. I can’t do it.
    Ben leans forward, pushing the joint even closer to me now, begging me to take it. I want to make him happy. I want him to talk to me. But I can’t bear to smoke again. Even though Bluntz looked so cute when he taught me how to inhale correctly so I could feel the high.
    Hmm, I have an idea.
    Taking the joint and holding it up to my lips, I watch Ben’s smile turn to relief. Barely inhaling, I raise my chest to make it look like I had taken in way more than I did. My charade probably doesn’t have to be this realistic; Ben is so far gone now, he doesn’t seem to know where we are. He looks around the room in awe, taking in the sight of his possessions that he sees every day, only experiencing them differently now that he’s high.
    He reaches for the joint but I hold it away from him at arm’s length. “I smoked. Now you talk to me.”
    “What do you wanna talk about?” He rolls his eyes to the ceiling.
    “What’s bothering you?”
    “Nothing.” Ben draws out the word like it’s an obvious answer to a question too stupid to be asked in the first place.
    “Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be with Marla?”
    His face contorts painfully as he stares down at his hands. For the first time since I walked into his room, he’s not smiling. He reaches under the baseball cap next to him and pulls out a folded note. Instinctively, I reach out to take it, and for a moment it looks like he’s going to hand it to me.
    But then he crumples it in his fist. He stares at his white knuckles for a moment and then slowly lets his eyes meet mine. For the first time in my life, I feel like the older sibling.
    He frowns. “Marla broke up with me.”

Chapter 5
     
     
    When I was a kid, we had a family emergency plan for if the house caught on fire. Everyone was supposed to leave all of their belongings and run outside to our special pre-appointed meeting place: the big oak tree in the back yard. We also had a safe word in case a stranger ever came to pick us up from school. It was Belle. My mom had chosen it because I was the youngest kid and she didn’t think I’d forget my own middle name in an emergency.
    We never had to use the safe word for anything, and our house never burned down. I think the most tragic thing to ever happen to our family was the