The Three Little Pigs

Jake was the first to do everything. The first to steal a pack of Lucky Strikes. The first to smooth pot into a long slender line and lick the rolling paper. He liked to test the drugs before giving them to Emily and Allison, his girls.

Tight, studded with the coolness of Anthony Kiedis and the angst of Eddie Vedder, Jake walked them down the hallway the first day of their freshman year and quickly became their in-between man. Jealousy only existed in relationships outside the trio, and jealousy often forced loyalty.

He snorted for three months before inviting the girls into his bag. Emily had giggled. Allison had waited to see what happened to Emily before shocking her nose with the burn. Two hours later, Jake pulled over into a Thorton's gas station, and for the next hour, snubbed one butt-less cigarette after another into the curb while Emily and Allison detailed his car.

He only supplied them on the weekends; eventually starting the weekend on Friday morning so they could crash on Sunday, then adding a Thursday to make it a four day weekend. They didn't worry much at first, even after Emily's nose started running pink and Jake's tawny cheeks became flecked with scabs. They had each other and a loyalty to the bag.

Allison was the first to find the smoke, the good stuff; the better quality, the less Jake would pick at the imaginary mites on his skin; the better quality in smokable form, meant the flesh in Emily's nose might have a chance to heal.

She tried it first, a taste with the dealer, but unlike Jake, she was anxious to share, anxious to help her friends, and couldn't get over the fact that when she sucked the pipe, it felt like she was smoking pot. She wasn't over the edge after all. She was slowly backing away.

Allison spent all her money on the smoke. It was more expensive, but it was healthier, she told herself. If it had just been her, she would have kept it up the nose, but she had Emily and Jake to think about. Still, she couldn't afford a good pipe. And she didn't know the right people to tell her where to get one, besides the guy who told her she was too young to smoke but still sold her the bag after she said - while leaning against the door frame, all prettied up in a dull haired, crank sweating kind of way - that she was buying for her dad.

Allison was always the smart one though. She unscrewed the bulb in the bathroom since it had a vanity light and an overhead, tapped and twisted until the silver bottom sat in her hand like a popped off button, sucked the smoke into her pink lungs, then offered it to her friends.