Glancing in the rearview mirror, I see my younger brothers pass the bottle of vodka we won in our family’s white elephant game back and forth. I catch myself before I tell them to knock it off, instead deciding to let it go. We’re only two minutes away, and I’m fairly confident there’s no one patrolling my aunt’s senior citizen complex. It feels good to be the cool older sister for once.

Even though we’re all in our twenties now, as soon as we pull up to the hotel, Teddy, Niko, and I race up the stairs to claim the best bed, just like we did when our parents took us on road trips as kids. We don’t stay in the room long, though.

“Think fast,” Niko shouts, tossing me a little baggie just as I’m about to plop down on the bed. I take a whiff of that dank, earthy goodness and shoot my brother a sly grin. “Merry Christmas,” he laughs.

Teddy asks what it is, but before I can answer, he smells it, too. “Let’s fucking gooooo,” he says, too loud for this time of night, but I’m the only one sober enough to notice.

We head back down the stairs and wander onto the pitch-black golf course that bumps up against the hotel. We sit cross-legged in a circle. Even in the dark, it strikes me how similar Teddy’s and Niko’s facial features are—especially their noses. Though all three of us were adopted as infants (me first, Teddy two years later, and Niko another two years after that), Teddy and Niko are half-brothers. They’re pretty different otherwise—Teddy’s more of a lanky, mountain-man-meets-Deadhead type, while Niko’s stockier and cleaner cut. But the soft, rounded nose they share is undeniable evidence of that genetic connection. They have their birth mother’s nose. 

I wonder what I would look like with that nose …

I don’t let myself dwell on the thought long, turning my attention back to the task at hand. As I carefully grind up the bud and sprinkle it into the rolling paper, we laugh about how we left all the “adults” in the family to get wine-drunk at our aunt’s house while we do this.

I finish rolling the joint and offer it up to both Niko and Teddy, who insist that I do the honors. I take the first hit, and we pass it back and forth silently, gazing up at the stars blanketing the vast desert sky. I chuckle to myself when I realize we never shared this well as kids.

“What’s so funny?” Niko asks, and my paranoid ass can’t tell whether he thinks I’m laughing at him, and he’s offended, or if he’s genuinely asking. 

Always the mediator, before I can say anything, Teddy blurts out: “Yo what the fuck was mom talking about with Aunt Kathy? Something about how expensive we all were to adopt?”

“Not us … just her,” Niko answers through his exhale, blowing a cloud of smoke in my direction. “Cuz her adoption was private.” He exaggerates that last word, jokingly, but the distinction he makes between us stings. 

There’s little space between us, but this night is particularly dark, and he can’t see the way my face twists when he says that.

Niko laughs, “Yup, you’ve been a problem child since Day 1. Tsk tsk, costing Mom and Dad all that money.”

I bet I was cheaper than your rehab, I’m tempted to retort, but the weed is kicking in, and I find myself floating into the space between feeling everything and nothing, a state of euphoric apathy. And I love it here. I’m pretty sure some people spend a lot of time and energy meditating and practicing mindfulness techniques to achieve this level of Zen. I guess they don’t know they can just smoke their way to enlightenment.

The flash of anger I feel at Niko’s comment melts away as I take one final, long pull of the joint. Time is losing its meaning. As my brothers continue to swap war stories of the wild things our mom has said after a few glasses of wine, I’m fading back into a memory of the last time the three of us sat outside together passing around a joint on a starry night. Teddy was about to graduate from college, and Niko had just hit six months sober (he assured us weed didn’t count). Though a lot happened in the two years between now and then, this little circle and the three of us in it feel (almost) exactly the same. We were huddled up around a fire pit in the backyard of an Airbnb in Montana, but it might as well have been this golf course in the middle of the California desert. Niko and I were cooling off after a heated exchange that Teddy had attempted (with mild success) to arbitrate. Niko has always had a knack for saying the exact right thing to lure you into a fight you never wanted to have in the first place, and I have always had a knack for falling for it every time. 

Enough time has passed that I don’t even remember what the argument was about. I do remember the conversation that followed, though, all three of us blissfully stoned and unbothered by the words that had been exchanged earlier.

Teddy, staring off into the purple nothingness of that evening, giggled and said, “You two are fire … and I’m a stooooone. Everything just washes over me.” Niko laughed, while I took offense to this comparison, instinctively interpreting his words to mean that being a stone was superior. Teddy must have seen my scowl, because he quickly explained, “No, no … it’s a compliment. Fire keeps us alive.”

“How do you figure?” I asked, still skeptical, but intrigued.

“You know … fire is passion. It’s warmth. It’s what gets you through a cold night. And,” he added with a smirk, “it’s what activates the cannabinoids and terpenes in this beautiful bud we’re enjoying tonight.”

“Oookay,” I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “Now you’re just waxing poetic. What’s so good about being a stone, then? Being tumbled around and forced to go wherever the current dictates?”

Teddy shrugged. “That’s the beauty of it … when you’re a stone, you don’t have to care. You just let go and enjoy the ride.”

In the midst of envisioning myself as a pebble in a stream, Teddy asks a question that pulls me back into the present: “Did you know Mom thinks the flood from the whole Noah’s Ark thing is what caused the Grand Canyon?” 

“The fuck?” Niko and I blurt out.

“Yeah, like, she thinks the flood from that story in the Bible is what carved out the Grand Canyon. I heard her telling her cousin about it. I told her I was pretty sure that Noah wasn’t floating down the Colorado River through Mesopotamia, but she didn’t want to hear it. Good ol’ mom …” He chuckles, not seeming terribly bothered by this information. I have questions, but I make a mental note to ask them later when we’re sober. 

“The Grand Canyon is dope, though,” Niko says, moving on faster than I’m ready to. “Do you guys remember that bridge with the glass? That was sick.”

Teddy nods, but I say I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon. 

“Yes, you have,” Niko pushes back. “Remember? We went over some spring break a few years back?”

“No, you two went with Mom and Dad over spring break. I wasn’t invited,” I say blankly.

“Ohh, right. Wait, I didn’t know you like … weren’t invited. I thought you just had school or something?” Niko says with the obliviousness of a youngest child.

“Yeah, don’t you remember?” Teddy answers Niko. “That was when Mom and Dad were being all weird and homophobic, and they weren’t talking.” 

Niko’s eyes get big as Teddy talks. “For real? That’s fucked.” He pauses for a moment, reconfiguring his memories of the trip to fit in this new piece of information. “Damn, I missed a lot back then.”

“You were caught up in your own shit. We all were,” I assure him, deciding, for now, not to mention how lonely that time was. 

“Man, Mom and Dad really had no clue what they were getting into when they got us, did they? A lesbian and a tweaker. Which do you think pisses them off more?”

“Depends on the day,” I answer, only half joking.

“Hey, at least you waited until after the 30-day return window to come out of the closet. No refunds, am I right?”

“Jesus Christ, Niko,” Teddy snorts, doing his best to stifle a laugh. He glances at me, eyebrows raised, waiting to see if I laugh, too.

And, despite myself, I do.