by Erin Mallon
“Uh. Yeah. Yes! Terrible. Owww.” He puts a hand to his lower back and moans. This man has many talents, but lying is not one of them.
“You should do yoga. It really helps with stuff like that,” Mabel continues. “My dad is on the older side and suffers from sciatica? And on the rare occasion he actually listens to me and stretches, he really does feel so much better.”
“Yeah, Ralph. You should try stretching,” I say with a smirk.
He just gives me a look.
“Alright, team, let’s take these bags to the front and get ready to welcome our guests.”
The night goes off without a hitch. The four of us don’t really need to do much other than wander around and make people feel welcome. Most of the Dino Digger kids are here with their families, and it’s actually really sweet to see them hanging with their mommies and daddies and brothers and sisters, showing them around ‘their museum’ like tiny little six-year-old tour guides. Looks like everyone is having a blast. Even Finn, who seems to be taking a much-appreciated break from antagonizing his friends—and me—tonight.
When midnight rolls around, all is quiet, except for Mabel, who is snoring like a wildebeest. The four of us found a place to camp out by an Apatosaurus, part of the permanent display in the main Hall of Dinosaurs.
Otto is sketching. I’m writing in my notebook. Ralph is resting on his side in his sleeping bag, smiling at me and trying to coax me into spilling what I’m writing.
It ain’t gonna work, fella. But you sure are cute.
I spot a parent shuffling by with his kid clad in adorable footie pajamas. I catch eyes with him and wave. He looks spooked when he sees me and the lanyard around my next announcing me as staff.
“We cleaned it up!” he blurts.
“Huh?”
“He peed in the Hall of Mammals,” the father confesses, “but we cleaned it up.”
“No problem, sir. I’ll send a janitor that way.”
The man looks relieved and hustles his sleepy kid back to where they’re camping out for the night.
I shut my book and get to my feet. “Okay, guys, I’m going to ask Jerry at the security desk to message maintenance about a cleanup.”
“I’ll walk with you,” Ralph says as he slips out of his sleeping bag.
That’s exactly what I was hoping he’d say.
Before heading out, I squat down to check Otto’s latest drawing, like I always do. “Oh, Otto, she’s beautiful!” I reach for his book to look closer, but he holds it out of my reach.
“Eh. Hold on one sec, kid. Just gotta shave a little bone off the tail here…”
Otto’s eraser does some quick work, then he blows the little rubbery shavings off the page in one big puff… right into my face.
I start coughing. And coughing and coughing.
“You okay, kid?” Otto peers into my eyes with concern but makes an obvious effort not to touch me.
“Fine, yeah! Badly.” I choke. “Timed.” I choke. “Inhale.” I choke. “It’ll pass. I just… need…”
“What do you need, Callie? What do you need?” Ralph shifts into rescuer mode.
“I need a sip of something,” I croak and wheeze.
“I don’t have any water. Anyone have some water!?” Now Otto’s shouting, and we’re surely going to create a scene.
“Gimme your tea, Otto!” I sputter out repeatedly between hacks, but get this… the bastard holds it out of my reach!
“I’m sorry, kid, but I can’t let you—”
“Dude, this is not the time to be a germaphobe. Give her a sip!” Ralph scolds.
“I can’t!” Otto looks panicked.
“Why the hell not?” I continue to wheeze.
“Just… trust me!” he hisses.
Since there clearly aren’t any actual knights in shining armor in this world, I decide to save my damn self, and I summon the absolute only skill I ever possessed on the elementary school basketball court—my killer high jump. As I spring up to meet Otto’s thermos squeezed high over his head, I’m able to bat the bottle to the floor, pick it up, and bring it to my mouth before he even knows what—or who—hit him.
“Oh, kid! You don’t want to drink that!” His words rush out.
Glug, glug, glug.
“Aaaaand... you’re drinking it. Shit. Oh, Goddammit.”
I gulp it down like my life depends on it because at this moment, it feels like it does. And thank you Jesus, the hacking stops as I chug.
Cue my sigh of relief and the blessed sound of silence.
“Thank you, Otto. I know that was incredibly rude of me, but… holy shit on a brick, what the fuck did I just drink?”
The aftertaste swirling in my mouth is nothing short of heinous.
“It’s… tea,” Otto says with a wince.
“Tea from where? Hell?!? Ugh!” I start using the sleeve of my sweatshirt in an attempt to windshield-wipe the taste off my tongue. It doesn’t work, though, and I just look insane.
“Otto? Level with us,” Ralph says, looking like he knows something I don’t know.
“Alright. Everybody relax,” Otto whisper yells. “It’s… elevated tea.”
“What the hell is elevated tea?” I ask.
“Enlightened tea? Uh… medicinal, if you will?”
Ralph grabs the thermos from where I’d unceremoniously chucked it to the floor. He takes one sniff through the tiny mouth spout and says with absolute certainty, “Yup. You’ve been shroomed.”
“Shroomed? I’ve been shroooooomed!?”
“Now, now, can we not say she’s been shroomed like I committed a crime against her?” Otto complains. “You were my witness, Ralph. She physically attacked ME. She stole MY property and ingested it without MY consent. Not the other way around.”
“Well, I didn’t know your drink was laden with drugs, you-you-you… druggie!!”
Okay, that may have been too harsh, but I’m freaking the hell out.
“Alright, alright, let’s keep our voices down,” Ralph whispers, and at that moment, he sounds an awful lot like my mother when we disappointed her in church.
“Thank you,” Otto says with an elegant bow of his head.
“You’re defending him?” I shoot daggers at Ralph.
“Sure,” he says with confidence. “Nothing wrong with shrooms. And you did take the tea from him against his will.”
“But I was—”
“In need of a life-saving measure, I know. Well… maybe you actually got one. In a bigger way than you anticipated.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m actually a bit envious of you right now.”
“What? Why would you be…? Wait a second, you? So you’ve actually…?” Clearly, I’m at a loss for words. “You’ve done the shrooms?”
He laughs at my lame phrasing.
“Well, yeah. Lots of times. Not in a while now, but damn college was a sweet time. What blend you rockin’ in here, Otto?” He takes another quick sniff from the thermos. “Low potency truffles?”
“Oooh, look at you, kid! You have the nose!”
“Thanks, I do, yeah.” Ralph and Otto have the audacity to look proud at this moment.
“I heard low potency. That has to be good. Low potency is good, right?” I squeak.
“Come here,” Ralph says in that sweet voice of his and goes to wrap one arm around me. And because I’m on the verge of losing it, I forget about our platonic museum personas, and I let him. “Yes, low potency is good for your first trip. You’re going to be just fine. I’ll take care of you.”
I bury my face in his shoulder, and mumble, “I’m sorry I called you a druggie, Otto.”
“It’s alright, kid.”
“No, it’s not. That was… judgmental of me.”
“‘Thinking is difficult. That’s why mos
t people judge.’ Carl Jung,” Otto responds.
Look at this guy, laying out the Carl Jung quotes!
“You know something, Otto? Your personality is suddenly making much more sense to me now that I know you’re constantly high.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m high all the time. More like… gently uplifted.”
I sway a tiny bit on my feet.
“Alright,” Ralph says. “Why don’t we sit you down for a few minutes, okay?”
“Okay,” I acquiesce. I’m starting to feel surprisingly easygoing.
We sit on Ralph’s sleeping bag, his arm still wrapped around my shoulder.
“You both should know,” I warn, “that drugs and I don’t get along very well. I’ve done pot exactly three times in my life. And each time was a shitshow of epic proportions. The first time, I got so paranoid, I sat on a stool in the middle of a party, covering my face with my hands and crying while everyone laughed and took pictures of me. I still don’t know if I was paranoid and only imagined they were laughing at me, or if they were laughing at me because I was paranoid. The second time I did pot, I got naked and performed repeated backflips into the pool at my friend’s family graduation party.”
“Atta girl!” Otto says.
“Otto. It was a family graduation party.”
“Oh. Well. Some people are too uptight.”
“Finally, the third, and last time I ever did pot—”
“Smoked pot. Not did pot.”
“Don’t correct me right now, Rolph.”
“Don’t call me Rolph, Cally-ope.”
“So,” Otto interjects. “Are you kids sleeping together or what? Because there’s so much groovy energy bouncing between you.”
“The third and last time I ever did pot…” I decide to steamroll right past Otto’s question. “Oh man, I don’t think I can actually say this one out loud.”
“Sure, you can,” Ralph coaxes.
“I’ve never told anyone this. It’s just so shameful.”
“You can tell us,” Otto encourages. “You’re amongst friends.”
“AM I, THOUGH? I’VE JUST BEEN DRUGGED!!!”
“Kid, you thwacked my thermos out of my hand when I clearly was trying to keep it away from you and—”
“Otto, shhh. It’s okay. Everything’s okay,” Ralph croons. Otto’s shoulders instantly relax, and that crease between his eyebrows smooths itself away. The same thing happens to my shoulders and creases whenever Ralph speaks. The dude just has such a way of soothing everyone around him. Me especially. “Callie?”
“Yeah?” I answer on autopilot.
“Go on. What happened on the third and last time you did pot?”
He gestures for me to continue.
Here goes nothing.
“It was the summer between high school graduation and the start of college. I suppose I should have learned from the naked backflips incident, but it seems I did not. There was a sleepover at my friend Sasha’s house, and I ate one too many pot brownies.”
“How were they?”
“They were fucking delicious, thanks for asking, but apparently not enough for my munchie-crazed self. All the other girls passed out, but I was still wired. And hungry as hell. So around four o’clock in the morning, I checked to make sure everyone else was truly asleep, then I tiptoed down into Sasha’s parents’ epic open-concept kitchen with a farm sink and breakfast nook and shiplap everywhere you looked. And this was before Joanna and Chip Gaines came on the scene, so damn, Sasha’s parents were always ahead of their time. Anyway. I… ransacked the shit out of the double-wide stainless steel refrigerator. It was like an All-Calliope-Can-Eat Buffet. You know how when you were a kid, everyone else’s parents always had better food options than you had at your own house? Well, this was definitely the case here but multiplied by a hundred. I ate what should have been my fill, but no, high-as-hell Calliope had one more crime to commit. You know what I did?”
“Ooh, I can’t wait.” Otto rubs his hands together.
“It’s awful, Otto!”
“It can’t be that bad,” Ralph encourages.
“I ate the entirety of their seven-year-old daughter’s bagged lunch, which was packed for her class trip to Dorney Park the next day. Ham and cheese sandwich. Capri Sun. Cheddar Bunnies and everything. All gone. There was even a love note from her mommy that I crumpled up and threw in the trash to hide the evidence.”
“Ooh, that is low,” Ralph says.
“YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT! KEEP THE DRUGS AWAY FROM ME!!”
“I think you’ll find that mushrooms are different, kid,” Otto says. He looks and sounds like a flesh-colored Yoda chugging from an old-school thermos. Oh my God, why does Otto suddenly look and sound like a flesh-colored Yoda chugging from an old-school thermos?
Ralph must see the glaze come over my eyes and makes a split-second decision. He reaches his hand out for the thermos Otto is clutching. “May I?”
“May you what?” I say in a voice that doesn’t quite sound like mine. It reverberates around my brain on a loop, and dare I say, it sounds kind of … sexy? “May you what? May you what? May you what?” Oooh. I never realized what a sensual voice I have. Yum.
“Course, kid!” Otto says, seemingly without a second thought.
“You sure? Because I don’t want to take what’s left of your stash.”
“Kid, my fridge is full to the brim with brew. My dehydrator is always at the ready, and I have enough pizzas speckled with psychedelics in my freezer to feed an army. Drink up.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Shhhhhhh!” I whisper so damn loudly that it defeats the point of whispering in the first place. “I wanna show you something.”
I point down the long hallway to the locked door leading to Trix and Monty’s exhibit hall. Then I look Ralph square in the eyes. Well, as squarely as I can when things are looking all blurry and beautiful. Lifting the badge hanging from the lanyard around my neck, I pretend to nibble it. And lick it. And fondle it. You know, like a seduction. Though I don’t actually put my mouth or tongue on it because… germs.
He laughs. Not exactly the reaction I was going for, but okay.
“You’re taking me into the exhibition hall?” he whispers.
“That’s right, baby. I’m a girl with… access. Come on.”
I grab his hand and start tiptoeing like I’m in an episode of Scooby-Doo.
“Hey,” I say, “how come you don’t seem loopy at all? You chugged that stuff, and I only had like a sip.”
“Well, I have a lot more experience than you.”
As we continue to tiptoe down the hall, I whisper, “Oh, I’m not actually a virgin. So don’t worry that pretty little head of yours.”
“No, no! I meant I have more experience with shrooms, not with… Wait. Why would I think you were a virgin? And why would I be worried about that?”
“Remember when we were in the heart, and I confessed that I had a dirty dream about you?”
“You actually didn’t fully specify that it was dirty”—he smiles—“but yes, I remember.”
“For the record, it was filthy. Anyway. After my confession, I treated you to a list of the recurring dreams that I have, one of which was being pregnant even though I’m still a virgin.”
“Right, right...”
“Well, I’m not. A virgin, that is. That’s just the case in the dream.”
“Fair enough. Hey, why are we talking about this? Do you think we’re going to—”
“This is where you say ‘Neither am I.’”
“Calliope, I’m really confused right now.”
“Oh, shit. Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“A virgin. Yet to be deflowered. You know, ‘Not a girl, not yet a woman.’”
“Brittney fan?”
“D
uh.”
“Respect but no, I’m definitely a woman. I mean a man! You know, if the lyrics were ‘Not a boy, not yet a man,’ that is. Though if I sang those exact lyrics, I would be singing a lie. Because I am most definitely a man. Shit, maybe the shrooms are getting to me more than I thought. It has been a while.”
“You can be a virgin and still be considered a man, Ralph. Don’t be a hater.”
“I know that! Geez. I’m just trying to go along with your musical metaphor.”
“Oh, well, I appreciate that. You’re such a team player.”
He pauses for what feels like a long time.
“So, are we going in, or…?”
Oh, will you look at that—a door.
“Yesyesyesyesyes,” I say with glee as I fumble with and fondle my badge again. I wave it in his face and hiss, “Accesssssss.”
I go to swipe my badge and get lost in a moment of pure beauty.
“Wowwwwwweeee. Is this door made of water?” I purr as I stroke my hand up and down the length of what I thought was a solid door, but now? Now I’m not so sure.
“And those would be the shrooms talking,” Ralph says in a hush. “Let’s get you inside.”
I swipe my badge, and he guides me with his hand on my lower back as we enter. That gorgeous wobbly door clicks quietly closed behind us, and I give it one last stroke. We walk to the place of honor in the center of the room where Trix and Monty stand in all their glory.
“Wow,” Ralph breathes.
“I know. Aren’t they just… everything? I need to sit. When I’m in their presence, I need to sit to let them fully wash over me. I just love them so fucking much.”
“Aw, that’s sweet. Okay. Yeah, let’s sit.”
We take a spot on the floor, and I cuddle right up next to him. He puts his arm around me.
And Trix… winks at me.
That gorgeous, empowered female Tyrannosaurus Rex just winked at me!
Right? Didn’t she?
“Did you see that?” I ask him.
“See what?”
“What she just did?” I point at Trix.
“The T-Rex?”
“Yeah!”
He looks at me strangely, then shifts his gaze to Trix, who I swear to God is smiling at me! If the shroom life means I get to connect with my babies on this kind of level, then sign me up for more.
