Excerpt from Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

His fingers felt clumsy around it. He saw in flashes how it might fall to the ground and ruin everything, the privilege of being there so new. On the inhale the air came too easy and felt like nothing.

"Here," Elena said, moving his finger over the hole on the bowl's side. Like a music teacher, she was patient. "Tap."

He looked at Jared, mercifully unaware, picking something off his tongue.

When Simon pulled it into his lungs, the weed turned to orange embers, darkening again on the release.

"Hold it in," Elena said, and put two painted fingernails, pink and green, to his lips. It burned him up bad on the inside, but he would never cough onto her rough little fingers, her star scar.

The smoke had to come out somewhere, though, and it came out in his eyes. His vision blurred and tears trembled in the corners, waiting to fall the moment his head tipped a centimeter this way or that. Elena, with no expression he could read, kept her fingers to his lips, almost cruel—was she trying to kill him?

When she finally did take her hand away, Simon tried to keep his choking on the inside. Was he high? Was this high? He was happy and afraid, but this had more to do with Elena's knee brushing his where they sat Indian style on the poured concrete and sharp bits of pebble and glass.

Now Elena took a long, slow hit and let the smoke out smoothly, as if it were only hot breath on a cold night.

How he knew he was stoned had to do less with a feeling and more with the fact that when he smiled he went blind, eyes so small. Jared's eyes, at least, were red, but Elena's were round as ever, calm, curved pools, surface life on the plane of her face. Maybe she'd built up a tolerance for weed, or a total immunity. That would be sad. Or maybe she was high all the time and had one of those miracle faces that never showed it.

"Look at fucking Simon," Jared said. "He's turning Japanese-a."

They both started to laugh. You're blowing it you're blowing it you're blowing it. Stop smiling, you idiot. You have nothing to smile about. The sound of Elena laughing made the cotton in his mouth sink down into his stomach and grow. This helped some, brought his cheeks back to normal, though his eyes still felt small, like pink and green fingers pressed to his lids.

Jared clapped his hands together. "Your face is amazing, man."

"He's cute," Elena said, but like she felt sorry for him. Simon's mouth was dry and probably he had to throw up. He felt like a science experiment gone wrong, and what if he just cried in front of them.

Elena leaned closer. "You are cute to smile," she said, her English worse than it should have been. Had he ever even heard her speak before? Was this the first time he was hearing her voice?

Before he realized it, she was kissing him, once, not long but sweetly and sweet, sugar granules pressing off her lips, that thick, musty smell on both their mouths stronger when multiplied, and Simon did the worst thing he could have done. He smiled, so that she kissed his teeth.

She straightened up, wiping her mouth, the star a comet across her face. She leaned her head back against the car door and closed her eyes. Jared had done the same. Simon sat and waited for someone to do anything, but they seemed to have gone to sleep. He cleared his throat. Jared scratched his nose.

Simon saw himself out.

On the subway home, he cursed himself for the smiling and the dryness of mouth. Also, for not buying a soda at the bodega on the corner, that was a mistake.



It was half past six when he got off at the Eighty-sixth Street station and started for home. Coming up on the corner of Broadway was the supermarket where a hundred times on the train he'd imagined himself buying a can of Sprite, but before he reached it, he saw his sister, sitting on the wooden bench put out by the ice cream shop. She was looking down, apparently into her belly button, and her short, feathery hair fell forward, hiding her face. She hadn't seen him, and the Sprite was so close.

Excerpted from Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpont. Copyright © 2015 by Julia Pierpont. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.