After kicking her husband out, Nellie Tankard reclaimed her maiden name and, following award by the court, retained the title to their dumpy little house on S Melrose. Susan, then 13, reacted by taking on what would come to be her signature affect–gregarious warmth and consummate optimism. Nolly, 19, didn't seem overly perturbed.
And so, to the relief of both mothers, the girls, and the court, Amelia and Susan were able to maintain the 6-minute walk that had been the initial source of their bestfriendship in 1st grade. From a very young age, either of them could be trusted with a simple turn left out of the Exegesis residence, left up S Fife, and a right on the alleyway after 13th which leads directly to the Esparses' backyard-frontdoor.
Wednesday, 29th June, 1994: Susan leaves a voicemail for Amelia, who has just departed with the announcement to her mother that she would be taking a day hike around Pinnacle Peak. Upon her return the next evening, and following a cool-down from the news of the recommendation letter, Amelia calls her friend back and agrees to another weekend at Nolly's, which, Susan rightly points out, they haven't done since graduation night, and weren't they going to be going over there, like, every weekend, to say sai-un-AR-ah to school days with a blast?
Friday:
"Where have you been, Amelia"?
"I'm sorry." She's got four fingers in each pseudo-pocket, UW shirt (Why are they always heather grey?) on under Apryl's cardigan, hair somehow larger than ever.
"Oh don't apologize; you give the game away already. Come on–"; the curls at the base of her perfect, slooping hairdo dangle as she leans forward, head turned, arms swinging like Tin Man. "Something's been up since graduation. And this!"—tugging at the cardigan's loose left sleeve.
The young women are heading east on 12th, ostensibly to Nolly's by way of Sprague, right on 8th, left on M.L.K., but just before Trafton, Amelia stops and prepares to dart across the street to the gas station. Susan is immediately incensed.
"Are you kidding me, dude? Don't make me–I'm not getting in his car, okay?"
Amelia glances up from her runner's block, affecting an almost callous disposition. "Just a few minutes. I'll buy you a Sprite."
"Amelia–!" Susan sighs aggressively, looks left and right and left, and trots across four lanes to catch up with her friend, who is flat-out sprinting the 20 metres between herself, the phone box, and the promise it brings of sex and drugs.
"Hii, Cable," doing that chewing grimace you make into the phone when you're flipping through potential reactions you'd wear if the person were here, "How's it going?"
"Hey baby, listen, I can't hang out today. Car's out of gas; gonna be until... uh, Monday or Tuesday before I can get it filled."
"Shit."
"You good? I can probably, uh, scrounge together a bit, you know."
"No, I'm fine. I was thinking, next time I see you, I'm gonna want to hang out for, uh, seven hours. Is that ok?"
"Yeup, yeup. I've got you. Call me back Monday afternoon. Sorry babe."
"–Oh, Cable. How much m–gas money are you gonna need?"
"Umm I can do 2 dollars eighty."
"Okay!" Tapping toes in turn. "See you then, ah; I'll call you then."
Amelia walks inside the minimarket to find Susan paying for nachos she's carefully decorated with jalapeño slices. "How long is he going to be?" Amelia shakes her head.
"Oh thank god—"
(back in the parking lot)
"Do you want one?" Susan holds out a saddle-shaped chip coated in tempera-yellow goop the texture of polyvinyl acetate.
Shaking her head more curtly. "No, that'll just make me–" [mimes blowing up Violet Beauregarde-style], "You don't even need to drink diet."
Susan seems genuinely hurt. "Ok now you're just being bitchy." She frowns, concerned, and they walk in silence for a time.
"Look, I'm not judging, I'm just–you said it was a party thing."
"Yes, and this–", holding her hands open to the city and to the divine, "Is party summer, is it not?"
Susan smiles infinitesimally. "I just don't want to–I'm gonna sound like your mom. If you guys start—"
"He's a 'fuck', not a 'marry', dude, come on. I've got a bucket list before I split; he's at the top. You know how long that's been–" She holds an index finger to her cranium and twists it.
Susan acquiesces with shy reverie. "Senior year?"
"Junior; let's be honest; I was paying zero attention to Ethan by that point."
Best friends laughing their way into Hilltop.
Susan aims for the call button, but just then Nolly comes timbering out the door, holding it open for Amelia and blockading his sister against wall in the process.
"Ladies!" Finger guns. "Just going to get groceries."–turning around and walking backwards down the block.
"Grocery store?" Susan calls out from over Amelia's arm.
Nolly shakes his head and completes the spin. "Mart!"
Susan, slightly disappointed—"Oreos!"
Nolly holds a thumb some 2.4 metres up and disappears south on M.L.K.
Tacoma's Pennington Apartments are a lovely bit of brickwork in today's blasted hellscape of five-over-ones–assuming you're fine with constant sirens to the hospital next door12. Nathan Carter Exegesis moved in here when he hit the maturity inflection point of his mid-twenties and began to grow concerned for his mother's liability in his growing business. He also needed a closet for his personal grow, and, frankly, a worse part of town where his activities would fade into a background of louder crimes.
Nathan, or "Nolly" as he's been to all who've known him since some inscrutable point in 7th or 8th grade, is, to start, an archetypical gentle giant. He's also a pacifist, and will hand over his pack, no matter the weight or grade, nor the importance of the customer, if you so much as stick a knife his way. But considering his size—ah, insert novelist description of his hands as baseball mitts, and–more materially–Pennington's underground car park, this rarely happens. He brings in a steady enough income, supplemented by day with cold calls on behalf of DarcyBacon Industrial & Commercial Cleaners (C St and 24th), mostly for the pleasure of the IRS. He cares enough about Siddhartha's teachings to offer free books, statuettes, and incense to any customer willing to receive them. And he's the brother Amelia never had.
So it shouldn't be a surprise then, when Amelia and Susan land on the fourth level and let themselves into the apartment, that she lands directly in his disgusting, immaculate, enveloping, crevassular La-Z-Boy recliner. Only part of her face is visible, already in a blissful state. We don't have to imagine that there's ambient THC wafting about–honestly, Nolly's pretty careful about blowing out the windows–no, there's just something about the living spaces that followers of the Buddha cultivate for themselves, isn't there? I mean, what exactly does incense do, neurologically? I don't fucking have time; I have to write this chapter, but I invite you to explore on your own.
The way Susan takes off her sling purse makes her look like goddamn Venus incarnate. So un-self-aware; I think that's what gets everyone. She heads over to the little bar table by the window and opens up a mason jar of hybrid "Road Head". 13 A meticulous stoner, she caps it and turns to scrape Nolly's black-caked bowl before proceeding, pulling out a nug of Road Head and crumbling it13.
She turns and offers Amelia greens, but, from the depths of cloth, "I'm gonna wait for his recommendation. I want something super [alternating stab hands, big eyes] jazzy." Susan nods and allows silence to fall as she takes the first few hits.
Perhaps Amelia realizes it's been her turn to speak for several weeks now.
"I—did some B&E yesterday."
Big eyes from Susan this time.
"And got my recommendation letter from Professor Lindon. Not in that order, or—not related. Exactly.
"Umm... and some other weird shit happened."
Susan just looks at Amelia, whose neck has not budged from its comfortable rift in the headrest, whose eyes bespeak the intensity of God.
The nice thing about being best friends is you can move from "Why aren't you telling me?" to "You can tell me any time." without even a change of expression.
As if on cue, Nolly barges through his own door, tan plastic grocery bags in hand. "Okay okay okay, let's get it started!" He walks over with a Twizzler in the mouth and another in the hand, droops it at Amelia–
"You, madam, hab been holding out on ush. Where ya been?"
Amelia sighs theatrically–"Waiting for this letter to come in; dude, I've just been holed up in my fucking room pacing. But I—It's here–I've got it."
"Profezzer Esparsh, lez' gooooooo"–he's already at work on the bean cans, taking celery out of the fridge. "Bean chili?", directing the limp Twizzler at his sister, then Amelia. "Bean chili? Yesh? Rad."
"She wants something jazzy" Susan calls out, high Susan, the one the boys at school never saw, so careful was her practice–her narrow eyes, rate of flow slowed and breadth of flow enhanced, so she sways around, dreamlike, soul-crushingly hot.
"One million percent, I've got you." The second Twizzler has disappeared; now he is focused on the meditative task of cooking. "Look at the Monkey Paste."
And that's about the last thing Amelia has a clear memory of from the rest of the night; such are the effects of retrograde amnesia. Traditionally, she takes a baby hit, then one more, upon goading from the siblings, then stays pretty resoundingly high until it's time for bed, right where she lays, in the La-Z-Boy. Amelia is not an acolyte of cannabis, per se; she stops in to pay her respects, but when you've got a DOC, you're not aiming for more than a business hotel fling with the others. But tonight, for whatever reason, it's balls to the wall, and she ends up taking four (five?) deep lungfuls, the kind that get you coughing aggressively for a minute, that get your friends patting your back and saying, "Alright! She's in for it now."
Monkey's Paw is a classic Acapulco/Mendo hybrid that had been going around the PNW generally for a decade at this point. It's known for punchy flavour and a balanced high, lots of visual space, back massage, and womps. Lemon Paste, on the other hand, is a fucking abomination created by some Spokane psychopath intent on breeding Jack Herer, Thai Stick, Maui Wowie, and something he calls Citrasol. Their bastard child, Monkey Paste, has a terpene profile alone that Amelia's CB1 and CB2 receptors are not ready for.
It always starts slowly at first, even if you go way overboard. There's that fifteen minute grace period you have to say goodbye to your smartphone, knowing the lock screen will soon be alien to you. Without this distraction, Amelia focuses her remaining moments of sense on the technology of her day.
[craning her neck up] "So what are we watching tonight?"
"You like Dune?"
Susan sours–"That one was weirddd, no."
"No, no; I didn't finish. You like Dune, Amelia? Or like, Star Wars?"
Some kind of a zooming effect is coming over her, speeding straight forward. Copyrighted warp drive effect. A firm hand places into her lap a bowl of restaurant-style vegetarian chili, sprigs of parsley out the side and sour cream puddled in the middle. Already a bit couch-locked.
"Okay,"–Nolly sits in the kitchen chair to Amelia's left, Susan migrating to the couch for her dinner. "Um, picture epic sci-fi, stuff like that. An entire alien society."
"What's it called?"
You–I?—cranes her neck ultra-slow towards Susan. Susan. The crown jewel of Foss High. Not my type–I'm not gay!—Then why do you keep talking like one?—What, a lesbian? ...I mean, she's just marvelous. Why are we even friends? Because you go back so long. No, she likes me. She likes being around me. It's not her fault she's skinny no matter what. I mean, how do you even go through life like that? Just being... perfect. Fuck me, man; I can't talk to myself like this. I wanted blow. Cable. Cable...
"Amelia?", waving a hand in front of her face. "Do you wanna watch it?"
"Mm? Yeah." I'm smiling at her as warmly as I can, some beyond that. Just so warm, to have this creature in my life. I'm grateful for all of it. Cuprate would call it serotonin.
"Iss okay Amelia," Nolly turning back from the smoking table and towards her. "Crazy ass sci-fi movie about a planet ruled by trees. A trillion years in the future. You're gonna love it."
As he goes to put in the first tape–"And I've got all three on VHS, so we can just keep going if you guys like it. Capisce?"
Susan nods and I'm still enraptured by how her face glows around the edges. When the FBI logo pops up, I drift back to the TV. Nolly turns off the lights.
This is going to be intense.
[12] And, judging by ApartmentRatings.com results I just gathered (Oct 2025), you can expect additional amenities such as: "last week someone picked the lock to my apartment while I was home came in without me noticing and I turned around from in bed and someone was crouched down and had my laptop and ran out the next day when I woke up to reported to management no one was available so I called the property manager who is a pompous --- and did not want to help me with anything all I wanted was to be able to break my lease or get some kind of compensation for my troubles I have lived at the Pennington apartments for the last four months and would honestly rather just watch the whole place fall apart."
[13] Time and time again, I find the medium of writing insufficient. Proof that movies are simply a better art form. Words confuse, do evil, waste time. How can we show Susan making a joyous little spiral upwards with the tip of her nose as she follows the escaping aroma of Road Head? How can we see her royal purple nails as she crumbles it? Without words. But what can I do? I am a writer.