We passed pens like rumors in the bathroom, smoke curling into secrets we never wanted to keep. It wasn’t rebellion, more like trying to make the day a little softer around the edges, like padding a fall we already knew was coming. In health class, they showed us pictures of lungs blackened with smoke but none of that looked worse than feeling invisible in a hallway full of people, like they didn’t realize I was there until they bumped into me. Sometimes it was pills- they were small, neat lies in orange bottles- sometimes weed from a pen- it was hope disguised in THC oil- sometimes it was alcohol- happiness in a burning liquid. Whatever it was, we took it like communion from trembling hands. The world was heavy, so we we floated away, heads in the clouds as our bodies sat through lectures and bells and futures we couldn’t picture. We weren’t addicts yet, just bored and sad, just too aware and too young to name it. No one tells you that laughing through a high feels hollow when it fades. But for a while we lived in the gray area between reality and euphoria, encased in buzzes and blurs. And now I think of that kid, high in the back of math class and I wish I could tell her all the things I never heard.