CALVIN

nineteen: the dealer

I opened the door to Ehsan and Nikita's room to be assaulted by a cloud. There was no furniture, no hard lines, only wispy silhouettes and the contoured wisps of condensed vapor. The disgusting smell of cotton candy amplified by ten fogged up my brain. "Guys, what the fuck."

"We're hotboxing this bitch," said Nikita, materializing at his desk. "Ehsan's nic level is crazy."

"You do know you can't hotbox with vapes, right?" said Patrick, coming up behind me. "More importantly, you're going to set the fucking fire alarm off."

"No I'm not," Nikita said, after blowing out a long cloud of vapor. "It's just water. The smoke detector doesn't notice it."

"I wouldn't bet all your money on that."

"If the smoke detector doesn't notice it," Leon said, arriving in the doorway as well, his head almost hitting the top, "then Mr Hayes will. You guys live right across the path from him, how are you this dumb?"

"The blinds are closed, dipshit."

"Well," I said, "either way, you both are gonna die from chemically engineered cotton candy particles, and then the smell of Rotting Idiot is definitely going to catch Mr Hayes' attention." I looked to Ehsan. "We were supposed to study?"

He puffed out a dense white cloud. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

"Jesus Christ."

The vapor in the air was dissolving faster than Nikita and Ehsan could replace it. Nikita pulled out a third vape from his filing cabinet and held it out. "One of you, help."

"Yeah, what's the payoff to this, exactly? Lung disease and leitungsrat?"

Ehsan coughed. "Cusick posted a video on Snapchat of a room in haus 15 being hotboxed. We're gonna out-box them."

"We have an econ test tomorrow," Patrick said, deadpan.

"Cusick did it with cigarettes, dumbass, not fucking vapes." Leon walked further into the cloudy room. "And it only worked because their fire alarm was being replaced. Remember how Neal jumped from the second floor and broke the fire alarm with his ass? Now their entire house smells like smoke and Calvin Klein cologne."

"Why cologne?"

"To try and offset the smell of smoke."

"Describe the Schlieffen plan in World War One and how it ties into the narrative of World War Two," I said, looking down at my notes.

"You guys are so stupid," said Patrick, starting to wave his hand around in the air to loosen the vapor clouds. "Denis almost burned the fucking house down with his asparagus, and we're already in trouble with the whole pee bottle scenario, like could you guys go one fucking week without sticking your dicks up all our asses?"

"Yeah, this is super immature," said Leon.

"Why was trench warfare unsuccessful in World War One?"

"You're the ones with dicks up your asses," Nikita argued. "You're all literally such pussies. The only reason you work out twice a day, Leon, is because you found out Maria writes Twilight fanfiction."

"My body is a temple, Nikita. Something you clearly wouldn't know."

"Yeah, and it's starting to look a lot like Jacob's temple, no?"

"The point is," cut in Patrick as he cracked open the window to a bout of protesting, "I'm not going to leitungsrat again. And Elias is right, you're going to get lung disease."