The thing about Alex Mayne is that, even though he’s well-liked, not a lot of people know all that much about him. We know that his family has lived in town for generations, and that his older brother Cody is serving life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend, Tanya. There are plenty of rumors surrounding that whole scandal. Some of them were pretty expected, like that she was pregnant or cheated, or pregnant because she cheated. My personal favorite though is that she had decided to join an extremist terrorist group and when she attempted to convince Cody to join her, he upheld his civic duty and killed her. I don’t know who comes up with these things, but it was the biggest thing to rock Stanton Falls in a long time, so naturally it was all people gossiped about for weeks.

I mean, prior to that, Stanton’s claim to fame was giving birth to an athlete who went to the ’92 Summer Olympics in Barcelona for hurdles. She only lived here for a few years before moving somewhere bigger and better, and it’s a bit farfetched to believe she actually started hurdling during those first fragile years of life. You can decide for yourself.

The other widely-known fact about Alex is that he doesn’t date. Plenty have tried their hand but a friendly hug is just about as far as you can go with the kid, and even then he seems to be guarded. One can only imagine that Cody is to blame for that. I think Cody is to blame for a lot of things that are wrong with Alex that no one really sees.

On the exterior, you see Alex as a normal teenager who laughs and smiles like the rest of us, but the Alex that I spend these nights getting to know holds some serious pain, and he holds it close. He has a pain that is tangible in the air, and I can definitely relate to pain. I think he can feel that from me, too, in the same way I feel it radiating from him. When I sit here smoking with him, Alex doesn’t seem much different from me. We don’t speak about the negative things. We just sit, talk, and laugh, and when we’re not talking or laughing, we just sit, smoke, and feel.

Inhale. Hold it in. Exhale. Every time Alex Mayne throws a party at his parents’ lake house, this is where I eventually end up - down by the lake with the only other person who has ever witnessed me high, Alex himself. We aren’t particularly good friends, barely even exchanging nods in the hallways at school. I think he only does it when he could play it off like he was acknowledging someone else should anyone ever question him about it. Our social circles hardly overlap. We don’t hate each other, we just don’t hang out. Not everyone who doesn’t hate each other has to hang out to validate their not hating each other.

Yet here we are. Hanging out. Every other Saturday, I find myself side by side with him, our backs against a tree, our bums soggy from the late night moisture on the ground, sharing a joint or two. We always find each other here right when everyone else is drunk enough not to notice our absence. Every time I slip away “to take this call,” I think that surely this is going to be the time that he doesn’t show up. This is the time he’s going to leave me feeling like a fool. But that anxiety never comes to light, because he’s always there before I am, waiting for me to arrive before he lights up. Surprising, since it’s his party and literally every person in that house craves his attention.

This is the only time I smoke. My first drag was right in this very spot, and I think I probably coughed my appendix up, while Alex laughed at me. There is no better way to determine a first timer. By now I don’t cough anymore, but Alex still laughs. We have a good time together, but it goes without saying that we are to tell no one about our little ritual. As far as anyone knows, we’re just two guys who sometimes exchange nods in the hallways at school.