We parked and I followed her up the hill along the main path. Eventually it opened onto an overgrown clearing. I shielded my eyes and saw a run-down plantation house, its windows shattered and its paint long peeled away.
“This is my place,” Bee said. “I come here to get some privacy and develop my photos.”
“It’s creepy,” I said, rubbing my arms despite the pleasant weather.
“I know, right? I looked it up in town hall—nobody’s lived in it since the ’50s.”
The grass pushed back like water as we walked. “Why was it abandoned?”
Bee lit another cigarette, cupping her hand around the flame as a strong wind kicked up. Her cheeks sucked in as she shrugged. “Damned if I know.”
The wind gathered strength, rippling across the grass. I looked up at the second-floor balcony, with its darkened windows and pillars disintegrating from rot. For the first time all summer the cicadas’ song completely faded. The world felt bigger and lonelier than it had a moment before.
“I found some graves out in the woods last year,” she said.
“You think they buried slaves there?”
“Or soldiers. They turned it into a hospital before the war ended. Can you feel it?” She sat on the porch’s groaning top step as she finished her cigarette and removed a professional-looking camera from its case.
I stood a few feet away from the steps, still waist-high in the grass. Bee pointed her camera at me and clicked the shutter four times in quick succession. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” I told her.
“I didn’t ask if you believe in ghosts,” she said. She flicked her cigarette into a rusted-out bucket near the door and headed inside. An anxious shiver ran up my back as I followed her. “I asked you what you feel. You can’t have art if you spend all your time forgetting pain.”
Broken glass littered the floor inside. A small plastic table and a camping chair stood to the left, an electric lantern casting a bright ring in every direction. I wondered if Bee knew how privileged she was to be able to feel anything at all, if she knew just how scary numbness could be. How it felt, sometimes, like a darkened room with no way out.
“I want you to play the honesty game with me.” The sky flashed outside and thunder rolled across the sky. I looked up and saw white and gray clouds hurrying past the sun as a shadowy line rushed across the clearing. Storms always followed a heat wave. The hotter it burned and the longer it lasted, the worse the storm would eventually rage. “Probably foreshadowing. The honesty game is intense.” She walked into the other room and returned with a stool, gesturing for me to take the camping chair.
“What is it?” I said, already certain I didn’t want to play. Outside, rain began to fall in a slate-gray sheet.
“It’s Truth or Dare without the dirty shit, pretty much. How it works is we take turns telling the other person something about us they probably don’t know. You do it five times, starting with something dumb, then you escalate and, by the end, you share something you never thought you would tell anyone. The challenger—me—goes first. No matter what you say to me, you’ll know I can’t blab because you’ve got all my dirt.”
“I don’t think I want to.” I fidgeted in the chair, biting my lip. I imagined all the things I couldn’t tell her. Could never tell anyone.
“You don’t have to,” she said. She blew her hair back into place and reached for her pipe and a shimmering plastic baggy. She carefully stuffed dried green leaves into the bowl.
“Could I get high first?” I said, my hands balled in my lap.
She tilted her head. “I already think you’re cool, you know. You don’t need to smoke to impress me.”
“No,” I said. I imagined my insides taut like piano wire, humming as they prepared to snap. “I just want to … I want to relax. I haven’t really relaxed since … well, since ever.”
She nodded, once, and put the pipe and the lighter on the table between us.
“It doesn’t always make you relax,” she said. “For the record I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m not your mom, though.”
Two more thunderous peals growled at us before I worked up the courage to touch the wavy-lined blue-and-green pipe. Its glassy surface felt like the unicorn tchotchkes in Mom’s bedroom. I almost laughed at the association as I picked it up and held it. The mouthpiece tasted warm and wet as Bee instructed me on how to do it.
“Don’t cough yet,” she said as smoke flooded my lungs.
I held my lips shut. My chest heaved and my eyes watered. Finally the sizzle in my chest hurt too much and I let the coughs come. A blinding halo surrounded my head as I bent double, coughing long after my lungs were empty.
“I think I did something wrong,” I said. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Everybody says that,” Bee said. “Give it a sec.”
I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, a tingling feeling beginning to spread through my body. I felt brave and free in a dizzy, nauseated way.
“So I guess it’s up to me to start.” Bee lit another cigarette and thought for a moment. “I competed in beauty pageants until five years ago.”
A laugh sprung from my insides, buzzing through my lips before finally breaking free.
“If you weren’t high I’d take offense.”
“I’m not high,” I said. My voice sounded slow and warped, like it came through a pink toy-store bullhorn, which made me laugh even harder.