Portman's POV:
After the pills had worn off, we bummed around for awhile until we came across a group of kids playing street hockey. We knew them from around the neighbourhood and they asked us to come and join them.
This was what hockey was supposed to be like! Fast and hard but always fun, with tons of contact. Slamming and being slammed over and over. I loved the rough, informal aspect of it, a nice break from the strict refereeing and competitiveness of the school games. No penalty box here. Fulton and I had grown up playing this type of game, though because we used to live on opposite sides of the East End, we'd never run into each other before. Until he joined the Ducks, Fulton had never played any other kind of hockey, never even set foot on an ice rink before. None of the kids here had Rollerblades, just sneakers, so he'd never had a chance to learn how to skate. Me, I'd never had the chance either, till I was about ten and this coach spotted me playing. His team needed muscle, and I fit the bill. After a couple of weeks of lessons, he gave me some skates his kid had outgrown and told me to smash anything and everything I could reach. And I did.
It felt like ages since I'd had a good game of street hockey, and it got me all pumped for our Tuesday game against Windsor Academy. They had some real big guys on the team, and I knew Fulton was psyched for it too. We were going to have our hands full keeping them off Banks and the others, and this was good practice, I thought as some kid slammed me into the boards and stole the puck. Fulton was waiting for him, however; body met body and the kid went down, Fulton passed the puck back to me and I fired it in.
"Man, you guys are hot!" the kid Fulton had downed said to us, not angry in the slightest. "Haven't seen you two around much since you kicked ass in the Goodwill Games. Thought you might've gone soft, but you're as tough as ever. And Fult, your slapshot's even more wicked than before! Where you been at, anyways?"
"Our team got scholarships to this fancy ass boarding school," I said.
"No shit! What's it like?"
"Bunch of preppy kids, too many rules and teachers who actually notice if you skip class, but it's cool not having to live at home. And we get to play a lot of hockey."
"I'll bet," he grinned. "Alright, you two against us three. Next goal wins it."
We won it.
***
"Man, that was fun!" Fulton was practically skipping as we walked along, and he kept pounding on my shoulder. "When we get back to Eton, we gotta have more Ducks on Ducks games."
"Totally!" I said, unable to resist hopping up and down in excitement. "We got practice on Sunday, right? We'll set up a game for Monday, before we play Windsor."
"Rock on! We can show the Ducks that between-the-legs move that kid was doing! Betcha Adam'd love it!"
"Yeah! Are we gonna wipe the ice with Windsor or what?"
"YEAH!!!" Fulton screamed. We did a chest butt, and then he grabbed my head and slammed it against his. I guess he forgot we weren't wearing helmets, cause it damn near gave both of us concussions. After we'd recovered, we kept walking, now rather subdued by our aching heads.
"So where to, bro?" I asked. "We still got plenty of time to kill."
"You want to hit Johnny's?"
"Oh shit yeah, we promised we would next time we came back!"
Johnny Sheffield was a guy my mother used to go out with when I was about eleven. It didn't last very long, she was 28 and he was 21, but he was by far my favourite of her boyfriends. He ran a greenhouse up on 32nd street where he grew all sorts of shit, including a back room full of weed. He gave me my first taste, and taught me how to care for the plants, both the bud and the other stuff. I really took to it, and I would sometimes look after the place for him when he wasn't there. When I met Fulton, one of the first things I did was introduce him to Johnny. Now the two of us were the official greenhouse caretakers whenever he was away, and for this Johnny kept us in as much weed as we liked.
The greenhouse was in the warehouse district not far from where we lived, but off the main road. We used our keys to get in, and walked down the aisles of plants and flowers till we got to the back rooms, which you couldn't see into from outside. Johnny grew his weed in one of them, and the others comprised the spacious little suite in which he lived.
We had keys to get in, but we knocked on the door anyway, and Johnny greeted us with a smile. He was a tall, lean Hawaiian guy with thick black hair like Fulton's; he reminded me of a young Keanu Reeves. He was perpetually cheery and perpetually stoned; he had the whole surfer dude thing going on, bare feet, Billabong shirts, seashell necklaces and the like.
"Ah, the prodigal sons return! Just the guys I wanted to see, come on in! Man, you kids are sweaty as hell! What'd you do, run here?"
I told him about the game and he laughed. "I should have known. Guess you two don't get enough of hockey at school, huh? You want to take a shower, or what?"
We both nodded gratefully, and Fulton headed for the bathroom while Johnny and I went into the living room, which was decorated in the most delirious amalgam of colours and styles this side of a Baz Lurhmann movie. The floor was covered in thick red shag carpeting, and the walls and ceiling were every colour of the rainbow. Johnny was a real good artist, and he had painted stuff all over the place. One wall was this awesome mural of a Hawaiian island, crystal clear water teaming with fish and other creatures, trees and a volcano in the distance, plus he had a hypno-wheel beside it, and when you looked at it and then the mural, the clouds and water and animals all seemed to be moving. It was a stoner's dream come true.
The place was filled with toys of every kind, yoyos and Koosh balls and things that light up and make noises and glow in the dark. There were couches circling the room, with a large open space in the middle where you could lie around on cushions or bean bag chairs and have a séance or do yoga or something. Between me and Johnny there was a glass-topped coffee table, and under the glass were the most beautiful rocks and seashells you had ever seen; Johnny had brought them back from Hawaii of course; I have got to go there some day.
There was art all over the place, but a lot of it wasn't Johnny's; there was a ton of paintings, some originals, like on canvas and stuff, some of them prints or posters. There was a lot of Slavador Dali, of course, plus a lot of other whacked-out shit that Fulton told me is something called dadaism. Fulton and I have sworn that when we graduate, we'll move out together, and that our living room will look a lot like this. I love this place, there's nothing but happiness and goodwill flowing through it like rain.
After Fulton and I had showered, we both sunk into a couple of bean bag chairs while Johnny sat down on the zebra-print love seat in front of the rock table. I noticed there were several large boxes on the other side of the room, and that Johnny's tv was gone.
Johnny nodded toward the boxes. "I finally decided to get my shit together and make the switch to DVD, and then I figured I might as well go all the way. Got a whole home entertainment system. Huge ass flat-screen telly with some sort of jazzed up DVD and stereo equipment. Unfortunately, I haven't a clue how to install it all, and I was hoping you boys might be of some assistance in that department."
Fulton leaned forward in his seat, his eyes were glowing and I could tell he was dying to get his hands on that much technology. He stood up and started to cross the room but Johnny waved him back down.
"In a minute, in a minute, don't want to put you boys to work as soon as you get here. We got plenty of time." Fulton sat back down, but he kept shooting longing glances in the direction of the boxes. "So now, what have you kids been up to? How're they treating you at that school?"
"Not too bad," I said, looking around, still glad to be back. "We're not exactly in the teachers' good books, but we've managed to avoid suspensions so far this year."
"Yeah, I bet you two don't fit in too well with their mission statement. How's hockey?"
"Really good, we've won 5 and tied one, and that should have been a win, but this stupid ref... Anyway, we got a game on Tuesday that promises a lot of Bash Brother action, so we're really looking forward to that."
"So you can sandwich some poor kid, maybe crack his skull open if you're lucky?" Johnny was a real pacifist, hard-core vegetarian, anti-war, anti- violence and all that. He was always saying he wished hockey were less 'barbaric.'"
"Maybe," Fulton said with a grin.
"Look, Johnny, you know we don't go pounding on little kids or anything, right? I mean, we keep our team safe, and we only hurt the big guys, or the ones who go after our players."
He grinned and put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Peace, man, peace. I don't think you're a couple of blood-crazed psychopaths or anything. In fact, for a couple of hockey goons, you're positively gentle." He ducked as Fulton whipped a cushion at his head. "So what else is new?"
We talked for awhile, Johnny filling us in on what was new around here, Fulton and I telling him stories about our time at Eton, many of which ended in penalties, detentions, or game misconducts.
"So how're the crops this year?" Fulton asked.
"Oh, great, it's been an awesome year for the bud, the new seedlings are about 70% male, so I should get maximum yield this summer, Plus I just picked up some killer new tropical plants I'll show you later. Oh shit, that reminds me, I'm heading back to Hawaii this summer, you guys gonna be around to look after things?"
"Of course, where else would we be?"
"Great. Stay here as much as you like, you'll be so used to being on your own, you probably won't want to spend two months with your parents. Speaking of which, how's your mom, Dean? She still with that Aaron guy?"
I nodded. "She's fine."
Johnny stared at me for a moment, then looked as if he were going to say something else, but Fulton piped up, "So why don't I try and set this shit up for you, Johnny?"
Johnny nodded. "Sure, we can try one of my new DVD's. Unless you guys have to be home soon or anything?" We shook our heads. Did we ever?
We unloaded the boxes together, and Johnny started leafing through one of the thick instruction manuals. "Christ, this shit is intense. Okay, we have to find wire A--"
"Relax, man," I chuckled, plopping back into my bean bag chair. "It's under control. Fulton Reed has never used an instruction manual in his life."
Johnny and I sat back and watched as Fulton zipped back and forth between the various machines, installing wires, screwing screws and pushing buttons. Within 15 minutes, he had everything set up. We placed hung the tv from the wall and placed the speakers around the room, then Fulton had to take another 15 minutes to show Johnny how to use it all. He tried to explain about recording onto DVD's, but that was too much.
"Show me some other time, my brain's still trying to absorb all that other stuff you told me. All this from the kid who nearly failed the ninth grade."
I remembered that. Last year, Fulton and I hadn't been doing so well in school. In fact, we'd pretty much been failing everything. The Dean called our parents in to talk about it, and Johnny had pretended to be Fulton's dad. The school had Johnny's number on file instead of Fulton's, and good thing too. His mom was way too out of it to come to a meeting, and his father would have killed him. Johnny acted real upset about it, started yelling at Fulton and everything. It would have been real funny if the Dean hadn't threatened to kick us out if we didn't pass the term. After that, Fulton tried to teach me enough to help me pass, and when he couldn't he helped me cheat. We finished the year with a C average, and this year we kept up our healthy regime of tutoring and cheating. No way were we gonna lose hockey.
"Alright, now that I know how to use the channel changer, let's have some fun! Portman, you wanna grab old Betsy?"
I brought the treasured object out of her home in the hall closet and set her down in front of Johnny. Betsy was a water bong, but not just any water bong. She was made out of one of those 5-gallon jugs, the kind you use for water coolers. Fulton and I had made it, and given it to Johnny for his birthday a year and a half ago. The bowl led through a hole in the base, and you had to fill the jug with smoke, and breathe it all in. It required skill to use properly, and some people never got the hang of it, but for those who did, it was pretty great, as long as you didn't use it that often, or you'd kill your lungs. It was like smoking an entire joint at once, one hit and you were sailing through the stratosphere.
Johnny had just finished filling the bowl when Fulton's stomach let out a loud rumble. He blushed and murmured an apology, but Johnny turned to face us, concerned. "What have you kids eaten today?"
I thought about it, and realised we hadn't had a thing all day. "Nothing, I guess."
Johnny leaped up from the couch. "Jesus Christ, why didn't you say so?" He headed to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later laden down with food of every kind. He set it all down on the table and stood there looking at us with his hands on his hips. "Now make sure you eat some fruit and cheese and stuff, too. Shit, you kids must be starving!"
I hadn't really thought about it before, but when I saw all that food, my stomach started to growl as well, and I realised I was famished. Fulton and I tucked into the feast gratefully, while Johnny sat back and watched us.
"Aren't you going to have some?" Fulton asked, his mouth full of cheese-- Johnny always had the best crumbly white cheddar--while he reached for another mandarin orange.
Johnny shook his head. "I'm fine, I'll probably join you in a bit, though. Shit, Dean, have they stopped feeding you at your place too?"
Johnny was real protective of Fulton and me, he'd always tell us to come and crash at his place whenever we wanted to, and he made sure he always had plenty of food, even when he was going away. He knew Fulton never got anything to eat at his place, and it bugged him something awful.
"Nah, we just haven't been home all day," I said as I made myself a peanut butter and banana sandwich. When Fulton saw it his eyes went wide. I laughed, handed it to him, and started to make another for myself.
"Alright, but make sure you take some food with you when you go, even if you're staying at Portman's tonight. You guys are too big to go that long without food, it's not healthy."
We just nodded, both of our mouths too sticky with peanut butter to speak. After we'd stuffed ourselves, we each hit the water bong and sat around watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, alternately killing ourselves with laughter and tripping out during the hallucination scenes. The picture was so big and clear, we all got convinced we were watching a live performance, which made it even cooler.
When the movie was done we hung around, playing with Johnny's toys and tripping on his Dali art. I got one of those sticky arms caught in Fulton's hair, and Johnny got a gobstopper stuck in his throat and couldn't breathe until Fulton squeezed his stomach and it went flying across the room and landed in the tropical fish tank. Johnny showed us his new plants, and we fed and watered them all, and pruned the old leaves. It was past one when we finally headed home, our pockets full of weed and fruit, and with dazed, slightly dopey smiles on our faces.
After the pills had worn off, we bummed around for awhile until we came across a group of kids playing street hockey. We knew them from around the neighbourhood and they asked us to come and join them.
This was what hockey was supposed to be like! Fast and hard but always fun, with tons of contact. Slamming and being slammed over and over. I loved the rough, informal aspect of it, a nice break from the strict refereeing and competitiveness of the school games. No penalty box here. Fulton and I had grown up playing this type of game, though because we used to live on opposite sides of the East End, we'd never run into each other before. Until he joined the Ducks, Fulton had never played any other kind of hockey, never even set foot on an ice rink before. None of the kids here had Rollerblades, just sneakers, so he'd never had a chance to learn how to skate. Me, I'd never had the chance either, till I was about ten and this coach spotted me playing. His team needed muscle, and I fit the bill. After a couple of weeks of lessons, he gave me some skates his kid had outgrown and told me to smash anything and everything I could reach. And I did.
It felt like ages since I'd had a good game of street hockey, and it got me all pumped for our Tuesday game against Windsor Academy. They had some real big guys on the team, and I knew Fulton was psyched for it too. We were going to have our hands full keeping them off Banks and the others, and this was good practice, I thought as some kid slammed me into the boards and stole the puck. Fulton was waiting for him, however; body met body and the kid went down, Fulton passed the puck back to me and I fired it in.
"Man, you guys are hot!" the kid Fulton had downed said to us, not angry in the slightest. "Haven't seen you two around much since you kicked ass in the Goodwill Games. Thought you might've gone soft, but you're as tough as ever. And Fult, your slapshot's even more wicked than before! Where you been at, anyways?"
"Our team got scholarships to this fancy ass boarding school," I said.
"No shit! What's it like?"
"Bunch of preppy kids, too many rules and teachers who actually notice if you skip class, but it's cool not having to live at home. And we get to play a lot of hockey."
"I'll bet," he grinned. "Alright, you two against us three. Next goal wins it."
We won it.
***
"Man, that was fun!" Fulton was practically skipping as we walked along, and he kept pounding on my shoulder. "When we get back to Eton, we gotta have more Ducks on Ducks games."
"Totally!" I said, unable to resist hopping up and down in excitement. "We got practice on Sunday, right? We'll set up a game for Monday, before we play Windsor."
"Rock on! We can show the Ducks that between-the-legs move that kid was doing! Betcha Adam'd love it!"
"Yeah! Are we gonna wipe the ice with Windsor or what?"
"YEAH!!!" Fulton screamed. We did a chest butt, and then he grabbed my head and slammed it against his. I guess he forgot we weren't wearing helmets, cause it damn near gave both of us concussions. After we'd recovered, we kept walking, now rather subdued by our aching heads.
"So where to, bro?" I asked. "We still got plenty of time to kill."
"You want to hit Johnny's?"
"Oh shit yeah, we promised we would next time we came back!"
Johnny Sheffield was a guy my mother used to go out with when I was about eleven. It didn't last very long, she was 28 and he was 21, but he was by far my favourite of her boyfriends. He ran a greenhouse up on 32nd street where he grew all sorts of shit, including a back room full of weed. He gave me my first taste, and taught me how to care for the plants, both the bud and the other stuff. I really took to it, and I would sometimes look after the place for him when he wasn't there. When I met Fulton, one of the first things I did was introduce him to Johnny. Now the two of us were the official greenhouse caretakers whenever he was away, and for this Johnny kept us in as much weed as we liked.
The greenhouse was in the warehouse district not far from where we lived, but off the main road. We used our keys to get in, and walked down the aisles of plants and flowers till we got to the back rooms, which you couldn't see into from outside. Johnny grew his weed in one of them, and the others comprised the spacious little suite in which he lived.
We had keys to get in, but we knocked on the door anyway, and Johnny greeted us with a smile. He was a tall, lean Hawaiian guy with thick black hair like Fulton's; he reminded me of a young Keanu Reeves. He was perpetually cheery and perpetually stoned; he had the whole surfer dude thing going on, bare feet, Billabong shirts, seashell necklaces and the like.
"Ah, the prodigal sons return! Just the guys I wanted to see, come on in! Man, you kids are sweaty as hell! What'd you do, run here?"
I told him about the game and he laughed. "I should have known. Guess you two don't get enough of hockey at school, huh? You want to take a shower, or what?"
We both nodded gratefully, and Fulton headed for the bathroom while Johnny and I went into the living room, which was decorated in the most delirious amalgam of colours and styles this side of a Baz Lurhmann movie. The floor was covered in thick red shag carpeting, and the walls and ceiling were every colour of the rainbow. Johnny was a real good artist, and he had painted stuff all over the place. One wall was this awesome mural of a Hawaiian island, crystal clear water teaming with fish and other creatures, trees and a volcano in the distance, plus he had a hypno-wheel beside it, and when you looked at it and then the mural, the clouds and water and animals all seemed to be moving. It was a stoner's dream come true.
The place was filled with toys of every kind, yoyos and Koosh balls and things that light up and make noises and glow in the dark. There were couches circling the room, with a large open space in the middle where you could lie around on cushions or bean bag chairs and have a séance or do yoga or something. Between me and Johnny there was a glass-topped coffee table, and under the glass were the most beautiful rocks and seashells you had ever seen; Johnny had brought them back from Hawaii of course; I have got to go there some day.
There was art all over the place, but a lot of it wasn't Johnny's; there was a ton of paintings, some originals, like on canvas and stuff, some of them prints or posters. There was a lot of Slavador Dali, of course, plus a lot of other whacked-out shit that Fulton told me is something called dadaism. Fulton and I have sworn that when we graduate, we'll move out together, and that our living room will look a lot like this. I love this place, there's nothing but happiness and goodwill flowing through it like rain.
After Fulton and I had showered, we both sunk into a couple of bean bag chairs while Johnny sat down on the zebra-print love seat in front of the rock table. I noticed there were several large boxes on the other side of the room, and that Johnny's tv was gone.
Johnny nodded toward the boxes. "I finally decided to get my shit together and make the switch to DVD, and then I figured I might as well go all the way. Got a whole home entertainment system. Huge ass flat-screen telly with some sort of jazzed up DVD and stereo equipment. Unfortunately, I haven't a clue how to install it all, and I was hoping you boys might be of some assistance in that department."
Fulton leaned forward in his seat, his eyes were glowing and I could tell he was dying to get his hands on that much technology. He stood up and started to cross the room but Johnny waved him back down.
"In a minute, in a minute, don't want to put you boys to work as soon as you get here. We got plenty of time." Fulton sat back down, but he kept shooting longing glances in the direction of the boxes. "So now, what have you kids been up to? How're they treating you at that school?"
"Not too bad," I said, looking around, still glad to be back. "We're not exactly in the teachers' good books, but we've managed to avoid suspensions so far this year."
"Yeah, I bet you two don't fit in too well with their mission statement. How's hockey?"
"Really good, we've won 5 and tied one, and that should have been a win, but this stupid ref... Anyway, we got a game on Tuesday that promises a lot of Bash Brother action, so we're really looking forward to that."
"So you can sandwich some poor kid, maybe crack his skull open if you're lucky?" Johnny was a real pacifist, hard-core vegetarian, anti-war, anti- violence and all that. He was always saying he wished hockey were less 'barbaric.'"
"Maybe," Fulton said with a grin.
"Look, Johnny, you know we don't go pounding on little kids or anything, right? I mean, we keep our team safe, and we only hurt the big guys, or the ones who go after our players."
He grinned and put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "Peace, man, peace. I don't think you're a couple of blood-crazed psychopaths or anything. In fact, for a couple of hockey goons, you're positively gentle." He ducked as Fulton whipped a cushion at his head. "So what else is new?"
We talked for awhile, Johnny filling us in on what was new around here, Fulton and I telling him stories about our time at Eton, many of which ended in penalties, detentions, or game misconducts.
"So how're the crops this year?" Fulton asked.
"Oh, great, it's been an awesome year for the bud, the new seedlings are about 70% male, so I should get maximum yield this summer, Plus I just picked up some killer new tropical plants I'll show you later. Oh shit, that reminds me, I'm heading back to Hawaii this summer, you guys gonna be around to look after things?"
"Of course, where else would we be?"
"Great. Stay here as much as you like, you'll be so used to being on your own, you probably won't want to spend two months with your parents. Speaking of which, how's your mom, Dean? She still with that Aaron guy?"
I nodded. "She's fine."
Johnny stared at me for a moment, then looked as if he were going to say something else, but Fulton piped up, "So why don't I try and set this shit up for you, Johnny?"
Johnny nodded. "Sure, we can try one of my new DVD's. Unless you guys have to be home soon or anything?" We shook our heads. Did we ever?
We unloaded the boxes together, and Johnny started leafing through one of the thick instruction manuals. "Christ, this shit is intense. Okay, we have to find wire A--"
"Relax, man," I chuckled, plopping back into my bean bag chair. "It's under control. Fulton Reed has never used an instruction manual in his life."
Johnny and I sat back and watched as Fulton zipped back and forth between the various machines, installing wires, screwing screws and pushing buttons. Within 15 minutes, he had everything set up. We placed hung the tv from the wall and placed the speakers around the room, then Fulton had to take another 15 minutes to show Johnny how to use it all. He tried to explain about recording onto DVD's, but that was too much.
"Show me some other time, my brain's still trying to absorb all that other stuff you told me. All this from the kid who nearly failed the ninth grade."
I remembered that. Last year, Fulton and I hadn't been doing so well in school. In fact, we'd pretty much been failing everything. The Dean called our parents in to talk about it, and Johnny had pretended to be Fulton's dad. The school had Johnny's number on file instead of Fulton's, and good thing too. His mom was way too out of it to come to a meeting, and his father would have killed him. Johnny acted real upset about it, started yelling at Fulton and everything. It would have been real funny if the Dean hadn't threatened to kick us out if we didn't pass the term. After that, Fulton tried to teach me enough to help me pass, and when he couldn't he helped me cheat. We finished the year with a C average, and this year we kept up our healthy regime of tutoring and cheating. No way were we gonna lose hockey.
"Alright, now that I know how to use the channel changer, let's have some fun! Portman, you wanna grab old Betsy?"
I brought the treasured object out of her home in the hall closet and set her down in front of Johnny. Betsy was a water bong, but not just any water bong. She was made out of one of those 5-gallon jugs, the kind you use for water coolers. Fulton and I had made it, and given it to Johnny for his birthday a year and a half ago. The bowl led through a hole in the base, and you had to fill the jug with smoke, and breathe it all in. It required skill to use properly, and some people never got the hang of it, but for those who did, it was pretty great, as long as you didn't use it that often, or you'd kill your lungs. It was like smoking an entire joint at once, one hit and you were sailing through the stratosphere.
Johnny had just finished filling the bowl when Fulton's stomach let out a loud rumble. He blushed and murmured an apology, but Johnny turned to face us, concerned. "What have you kids eaten today?"
I thought about it, and realised we hadn't had a thing all day. "Nothing, I guess."
Johnny leaped up from the couch. "Jesus Christ, why didn't you say so?" He headed to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later laden down with food of every kind. He set it all down on the table and stood there looking at us with his hands on his hips. "Now make sure you eat some fruit and cheese and stuff, too. Shit, you kids must be starving!"
I hadn't really thought about it before, but when I saw all that food, my stomach started to growl as well, and I realised I was famished. Fulton and I tucked into the feast gratefully, while Johnny sat back and watched us.
"Aren't you going to have some?" Fulton asked, his mouth full of cheese-- Johnny always had the best crumbly white cheddar--while he reached for another mandarin orange.
Johnny shook his head. "I'm fine, I'll probably join you in a bit, though. Shit, Dean, have they stopped feeding you at your place too?"
Johnny was real protective of Fulton and me, he'd always tell us to come and crash at his place whenever we wanted to, and he made sure he always had plenty of food, even when he was going away. He knew Fulton never got anything to eat at his place, and it bugged him something awful.
"Nah, we just haven't been home all day," I said as I made myself a peanut butter and banana sandwich. When Fulton saw it his eyes went wide. I laughed, handed it to him, and started to make another for myself.
"Alright, but make sure you take some food with you when you go, even if you're staying at Portman's tonight. You guys are too big to go that long without food, it's not healthy."
We just nodded, both of our mouths too sticky with peanut butter to speak. After we'd stuffed ourselves, we each hit the water bong and sat around watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, alternately killing ourselves with laughter and tripping out during the hallucination scenes. The picture was so big and clear, we all got convinced we were watching a live performance, which made it even cooler.
When the movie was done we hung around, playing with Johnny's toys and tripping on his Dali art. I got one of those sticky arms caught in Fulton's hair, and Johnny got a gobstopper stuck in his throat and couldn't breathe until Fulton squeezed his stomach and it went flying across the room and landed in the tropical fish tank. Johnny showed us his new plants, and we fed and watered them all, and pruned the old leaves. It was past one when we finally headed home, our pockets full of weed and fruit, and with dazed, slightly dopey smiles on our faces.