Boy by Blake Nelson

Chapter 7

Naturally, since weed was cool now, Claude had to get some, since he was Claude and people expected him to have everything. I offered to help.

The first thing we figured out was that Bennett Schmidt was our school's main weed source. Claude and I both rolled our eyes when we heard this. Bennett was one of the biggest creeps in our class. He'd worn these dorky wire-rim glasses all through middle school and had terrible acne for years. He was best known for beheading live ants during a science class project in fifth grade. And then showing people—girls mostly—the twitching bodies through the microscope.

On Saturday we called Bennett and rode to his house on our bikes. His mother answered the door. She knew who Claude was—everyone did—so she was a bit surprised at the sight of us.

"Is Bennett here?" said Claude.

"Yes. Yes he is," she said. "He's downstairs in his room."

When she didn't move, Claude said: "Can you get him, please?"

"Oh," she said, flustered. She turned and called down the basement stairs. "Bennett! You have visitors!"

Bennett appeared from the darkness below. He told us to come down. Claude didn't want to go down there. Neither did I. But it didn't appear we had a choice.

We descended the stairs and entered Bennett's basement lair. It was pretty much what you'd imagine: a marijuana emporium. There were assorted posters: Snoop Dogg, The Big Lebowski, a big picture of Bob Marley with dope smoke coming out of his nose. There were different versions of the pot leaf stuck here and there. The ceiling was low. The lighting was dim. You had to respect the guy for dedicating himself so thoroughly to the drug-dealer thing. He used to be the gross-out king. Now he'd turned himself into Dr. Weed.

Bennett pointed at an old sofa that was along the wall opposite his unmade bed. Claude didn't want to sit. Neither did I. But this was part of the process.

I followed Claude as he maneuvered around a dirty coffee table. With great disdain, he lowered himself onto the old couch. I did the same.

"So you're interested in some cannibis," said Bennett. "Why else would we be here?" said Claude.

Bennett was not affected by this insult. He went to his large metal desk and unlocked one of the drawers. He took out several small plastic bags and lined them up on a tray. Then he brought the tray over to the coffee table and placed it, with some formality, in front of Claude and me.

"This is what I have at the moment," he told us. He proceeded to tell us what countries the different bags were from, what their different effects were.

"I don't care where it's from," said Claude. "As long as it gets you high."

"I like the Moroccan," said Bennett. "It has a more grounded feel. It's not so cerebral."

I glanced at Claude to see if he was going to laugh in Bennett's face. But he didn't. Bennett was showing a certain confidence throughout this interaction. He wasn't intimidated by Claude, not now. Claude had his status. And Bennett had his.

Claude unwrapped a couple of the plastic bags and studied the contents. I looked too. The clumps of marijuana at the bottom of each bag did look somewhat different from each other.

"Should we have a taste?" said Bennett. He pulled up a chair across from us and produced a small white pipe. He reached for the bag of Moroccan.

"I'm not going to smoke it here," said Claude, with growing annoyance. "How much is it?"

Bennett put his pipe away. "The Moroccan is forty," he said calmly. He took the plastic bag and rerolled it into a neat slender tube. He tossed it back onto the coffee table. Claude handed over two twenties.

"Can you believe that guy?" Claude said when we got outside. "What a moron."