“I know. I need to relax. I’m trying.”
“Here’s the thing . . . you’re trying to relax. You’re even pushing yourself to do that. You push yourself too hard.”
“I know. I know.”
The world slowly righted itself. Sabrina took a deep breath and straightened up.
“Keep going,” she said. “I’m fine.”
They continued on another fifty paces or so, until the flashlight revealed a small structure. It was a box in the woods, about eight feet long and four feet high.
“Here we are,” Eric said, approaching it.
“What is this?”
“An old hunting blind,” Eric replied, handing her the flashlight and lifting the large lid with both hands. “Hunters would hide inside while they were hunting deer. It’s got little openings in the side they could look out of.”
“Creepy,” she said. “But I guess hunting is creepy by definition. You creep behind animals to kill them.”
“True. Anyway, this one hasn’t been used in a long time.”
That much was clear. While not completely rotted, the box was on the path in that direction. The boards were weatherworn and bowed, and some of them were coming away. It was now most likely home to spiders and snakes and various other critters, so she cringed a bit as Eric climbed inside and started rooting around in a pile of discarded wood. She made a mental note to check herself carefully for ticks when they got back to camp.
“Where is it, where is it. . . . Ah. Here we go!”
He stood up and proudly held aloft a crumpled McDonald’s bag.
“That’s it?” Sabrina said.
Eric climbed out of the box and closed the lid.
“Shine the light,” he said.
He set the bag down, opened it up, and removed a used Big Mac box, two hamburger wrappers, and a used cup, still with the straw.
“I can see you’re not impressed,” he said. “But behold. . . .”
He opened the Big Mac box. The container was brimming with fresh, fragrant marijuana buds. As were the hamburger wrappers and the soda cup. Sabrina had seen marijuana before—small amounts of it, usually in the form of joints—but she had never seen this much. This was an extremely illegal amount of marijuana. A scholastic-career-ending amount. A definitely arrestable, criminal record amount.
“No one looks at trash,” Eric said with a smile. “Especially trash inside of something that also looks like trash, out in the middle of the woods. Pretty clever, wouldn’t you say?”
“I guess.”
“You guess? I’ll have to try harder. Come on. Time to get to work.”
Back in the clearing, things were looking much more inviting and cheerful. There was a fire going, and a camp lantern sat on one of the logs. Two sleeping bags had been unzipped and spread out as blankets, their soft plaid flannel
insides resting upward. The portable tape player was piping more Led Zeppelin into the velvety darkness. （They were Diane’s favorite band. Sabrina didn’t like them at all, but if you hung out with Todd and Diane, you had to get used to it.） Todd and Diane were stretched out on one of the sleeping bags, munching on chips and staring up at the sky.
“Behold!” Eric said, brandishing the bag aloft. “Your milkman cometh!”
He cupped his free hand over his mouth and made the tooting sound of a triumphant horn. He and Sabrina sat down on the other sleeping bag, which had been opened up for them. Eric handed the bag to Diane, who set it down on a stolen dining pavilion tray. She moved the lantern a bit closer and dumped out the contents of the Big Mac box and picked through it expertly.