wide open. Bethie sat between them and held the square on her tongue, listening to a song about purple people eaters. The smoke got thicker, and the music got faster, and the dancing became more urgent to the Beach Boys, the Chiffons, Lesley Gore and Brenda Lee. Bethie watched male hands cup and caress the curves of female bottoms, female hands gripping men’s waists and shoulders. In the dim light, through the haze of smoke, all of the girls were beautiful, all of the boys were handsome, and Bethie felt her skin dissolving, her body floating away, somewhere up near the ceiling, a high perch from which she could look down at herself and the party. She peered through the smoke, looking for Harold, but couldn’t see him. At one point, the sleeping prince shook himself awake and stumbled off, and one of the dancers flung herself down in the space the boy had left empty. The girl had a wild, loose tangle of light-brown hair and pale white skin that glistened with sweat. She was barefoot, not thin, her hips wide above fleshy thighs, but she hadn’t seemed to be worried about her problem areas, as she spun in ecstatic circles, arms spread wide. Bethie had watched her in admiration, wondering how it felt to take up room like that, to force other people out of your way, to claim so much space for your own. Bethie’s father was dead, her mother’s life was small and predictable, her sister was moving on, heading toward a world Bethie couldn’t inhabit, and sometimes—a lot of the time—it felt like her skin no longer fit her, and her body was only a collection of flaws to be fixed or at least disguised, an endless source of despair. But now, it was as if her spirit was rising, leaving her body, and her pain, and her silly party dress behind. She felt like she was pure joy, excitement and anticipation and desire. She wanted to move on, too. She wanted to be born again, in this new place. She wanted to dance.
“Hey, little sister,” the dancing girl said. Bethie turned to answer her and felt her mouth fall open. The walls were expanding and contracting, but gently, like lungs, breathing in time to the music, which pulsed through the room like a wave.
“The walls,” Bethie tried to say. She lifted her arms, intending to point, but her limbs felt like they’d turned into some kind of very soft, heavy metal. She could imagine them bending and drooping, like petals full of rain. “The walls are breathing.”
“Cool,” said the other girl, not unkindly. She reached behind the couch and, like a magician pulling a rabbit from an empty top hat, produced a blanket, the kind of knitted afghan that Bethie’s bubbe had once made. Gently, the girl spread it over Bethie’s curled-up legs.
“You’re tripping. Just stay calm,” said the girl. “Enjoy the ride.”
In the months that followed, Bethie would learn that Devon’s woodsy smell came from the patchouli incense that he burned in his bedroom, and that Harold’s style of shirt was called a dashiki, and that the cellophane-looking square that Dev laid on her tongue was blotter acid, high-quality stuff that Devon, who once upon a time had studied chemistry, made in the U of M’s own labs. She would learn the lyrics to all of Bob Dylan’s songs, and “Like a Rolling Stone” would become her friends’ anthem when she arrived on campus nine months later. She would learn, too, that it was fortunate that no guy tried to touch her as she lay sprawled on the couch, watching the walls billow and retreat. Other nights, she wouldn’t be as lucky. But that night, Bethie stared at a poster of the beach that was thumbtacked to the wall, imagining that she could taste colors: the sharp acidity of yellow, the soothing cool of blue. The green was tangy and astringent, like an unripe banana, and the yellow was a rich ribbon of butterscotch. She tried to explain it to Harold when he appeared beside her on the couch. Harold listened, then repeated what the dancing girl had said: “You’re tripping.” Harold looked considerably less amused than the girl had been. “Let’s get you home.”
Tripping, Bethie thought. She had never been on trips, except in the summertime, to a cabin on the shores of Lake Erie, when her father had been alive. She remembered sunshine in her hair as a canoe went gliding