The two of them had been arguing—mostly good-naturedly and hypothetically, Audrey had thought—but here, in the tiny kitchen of this tiny house, the strength of Eric’s intent was made much more real. Here were the flowers on Harper’s counter, their sweet scent already emanating. And here was Eric filling her silver tea kettle with water. And here was Merritt picking up his phone and reading the screen and saying, “OK, so to be clear: you’re willing to bet your life on advice given to you by total internet stranger the Shroom Savant?”

  “Not only him,” Eric said. “I know it kills you but I too have done my research on this subject.”

  “I’m not gonna be the one it kills,” Merritt said.

  He Dracula cackled at her.

  “This is ridiculous,” Merritt said. She turned around to Harper, who was on the love seat behind her. “Your friend is being ridiculous.”

  “All my life,” Harper said.

  Eric was now dropping the flowers, one by one, into the kettle. They were so large and delicate and white, he might have been dropping in silk handkerchiefs. He put in three, consulted his phone, and added a leaf from the same tree, honey, and a few orange spice tea bags. Then he put on the lid, placed the kettle on the stove, and clicked on the burner. While he washed his hands at the sink he said, in the voice of a teacher tired of reexplaining a fact, “Like I said, I’m not messing with the seeds or the roots, which are significant points of potency. I’m brewing a mild tea that I will drink only a little of to give me an introductory experience to this plant and its attributes. I have a lot of experience with introductions to substances. I am good at them.”

  “Has it occurred to you that maybe it’s a little uncharitable for you to force us to babysit you during your drug trip?” Merritt asked.

  “Who’s asking you to babysit? I’m asking you to come along.”

  “That’s the thing—nobody wants to,” Merritt said.

  “I mean—” Harper said.

  “You’re not serious?” Merritt said.

  “I am curious,” Harper said.

  “Me too,” Audrey said before she didn’t. “The sleep part sounds really good to me.” Harper smiled at her.

  Merritt did not. “Not to me,” she said. “No part of me. Are we going in the water?”

  “I am,” Harper said.

  “It will be freezing,” Merritt said.

  “I’ll keep you warm, girl,” Harper said.

  “Significant eye roll,” Merritt said. That’s what she said, Readers. I’ll leave it to you to determine what she felt.

  “I’ll meet you down there,” Eric said. “As soon as it’s ready.”

  “Take your time,” Merritt said. “Take all the time.”

  And so they left him at the stove brewing a flower potion in a tiny cottage by the shore.

  There was something to the three of them walking the same wooden stairs down to the beach that Libbie and Alex and their sapphic squad had walked all those years before. Not the same, the same, of course—over the years boards would have been replaced, likely many times, salt water is so hard on things—but the path they took, the quality of the light, the roil of the waves: it was the same enough and there was something to it.

  They spread their towels on the strip of sand, avoiding the stinking piles of seaweed and things washed ashore. Audrey had assumed they would sit for a while in the sun, talking or not, but looked up to find Merritt and Harper shedding their outer layers of clothing, down to their bathing suits. Audrey never went about things this way at the beach. She was not the type to immediately plunge into the water. She liked to acclimate, to take her time. But right then she needed to be a part of whatever they were doing.

  They as in the three of them, the three of them together.

  They walked in up to their ankles, the cold water aching their bones, all the way through their bodies to the roots of their teeth. It was freezing. And the floor was sharp with shells and stones. They went in a little farther, up to their knees, gritting their teeth. It was too cold and yet there they were in it. Smiling.

  Harper did it first—crashed under the roll of a wave. Then Merritt. Then Audrey. The cold sucked away her breath. She’d forgotten how salty it was. She always managed to forget that.

  They screamed from the cold, a tangle of seaweed in Merritt’s hair until Audrey plucked it out and flung it at Harper. They came alive in this water. They had to—how else could they bear it? Splashing and dunking, touching each other freely because for now they were only playing in the surf like children. There was no weight to this kind of touching. It was open and easy, reciprocal, wanted and without agenda.

  Above them loomed Spite Manor, and above it loomed its strange tower, that single arm blocking the sun and casting a long dark shadow down the terraces and over the rocks. But for now, they were happy on the beach below.

  Time had become very slippery.

  When they saw Eric on the stairs, they crashed out of the surf and back to their towels, their lips drained of color, their skin cold to the touch and rippling in goose bumps from the breeze. Eric was carrying a thermos and wore the proud smile of a parent at a dance recital.

  “You’re mermaids,” he said. “And I’ve brought you an offering.”

  They formed a dripping knot around him as he twisted off the lid and steam rose from the container, along with the heady scent of angel’s trumpets steeped in honey.

  “Are we doing this?” Harper asked.

  No one answered.

  For a few moments, they stood in that knot and let the sweet steam swirl between them. Then Eric tipped the thermos to his lips and drank and swallowed and then once more. He passed it to Harper, who did the same, and then Audrey did so as well, when it was handed to her. Still no one had spoken.

  Audrey offered the thermos to Merritt. She held it before her, looked down into its mouth, and said a thing that was, just then, the only thing that could be said. The words were Mary MacLane’s: There is something delirious in this—something of the nameless quantity.

  And then Merritt took a long drink. She passed the thermos back to Eric, who walked the few feet to the water and poured what remained into the bay.

  “I’m surprised,” Audrey said to Merritt.

  “I didn’t want to be left out,” Merritt said. “I might already regret it.”

  “None of that,” Eric said, walking back to them. “We have to set our intentions now for the experience we want to have. If you launch your ship in negativity, you’ll spend your trip that way.”

  “So deep,” Merritt said. “Deepak Chopra deep.”

  “There she is,” Harper said.

  “How long will it take?” Audrey asked.

  “No idea,” he said. “An hour?”

  “How long will it last?” Harper asked.

  Eric shrugged. “I mean, nobody drank very much.”

  “Oh Kind Devil,” Merritt said. “What have we done?”

  From a tall tree in the woods, a flock of birds lifted. They were noisy with their calls and the beat of their wings. This as the wind skipped over the water. Our heroines shivered.

  “Is it worth getting in?” Eric asked them, tilting his head at the churning foam.

  “It’s freezing,” Harper said.

  “I know somewhere that’s not,” Merritt said.

  Back at their houses, they provisioned quickly. Eric insisted they bring drinking water, so much drinking water, because they’d need it. Dry mouth was, he promised as he loaded a canvas shopping bag with bottles, a guaranteed side effect. He also recommended chocolate to enhance their experience. Merritt said they’d want real shoes, not flip-flops, for their trek through the woods. But they kept their swimming suits on.

  Audrey thought she’d like to sink into her bed and stay there, but she’d like it even better if the others stayed, too. If they all took a long, lazy, afternoon nap while they waited for the tea to do its work. Maybe by then, when it finally kicked in, it would only serve to keep them in sleep, throughout the rest of the day and night and on into morning. She would have liked this best.

  But there was a message on her phone—on her new, nonbroken, production-provided phone—from Bo: Try to get Merritt talking about the Rash brothers. Also, flat rocks—you’ll see them—are best for hanging out once there. Good angles. Please drink water! Lots!

  They walked two by two, Harper and Eric trailing behind Audrey and Merritt.

  Audrey held her hands out to her sides and let her fingers brush the reaching tips of the tallest ferns. She listened to the way their footsteps fell. She listened to the way Merritt breathed next to her. She tried to decide if she was already feeling something from the tea, but she couldn’t decide and anyway, Eric said it was too early for that.

  They’d hit one of those patches where cell service decided to work, and an explosion of notifications landed on Harper’s phone. She stopped to scroll and Eric stopped with her, but Audrey and Merritt kept walking, letting the gap between their foursome grow.

  Audrey worked on a Rash brothers question, a lead-in that wouldn’t announce itself as such, but it was Merritt who spoke first. “I thought Bo’s Hepburn impersonation was unnecessary. Earlier.”

  Audrey was almost as surprised by this offering as she was by Merritt drinking the tea. “Yeah?” she said. “Maybe. But his point was valid.”

  “Was it?”

  “I think so,” Audrey said. “When I listened back, some definite cringe moments. There was so much else going on this morning with the delays, I wasn’t focused the way I needed to be. I wasn’t Clara, I was playing Clara.”

  “Is that really how it works for you?” Merritt asked. “That’s what it feels like?”

  “When it doesn’t feel like anything is usually when it’s going well,” Audrey said. “But Clara Broward has a confidence I wish I had, so maybe I’ve been trying too hard to project that. I’m sure I have been doing that.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Merritt said, “for the very little it’s probably now worth to you—I’ve been thinking the last few days that you suit her.”

  “It’s not worth little,” Audrey said. “Thank you.” She almost didn’t say the next thing but this afternoon, thus far, felt so peaceful to her. Easy. So she did say it. “I got the sense you weren’t my biggest fan. I mean back in LA.”

  “Yeah, I act like that sometimes and then regret it after. I’m sorry. It wasn’t really about you, if that helps.”

  “I think it was about me, actually,” Audrey said.

  Merritt smiled. “Yeah it was. But I’ve grown up since.”

  “What, are angel’s trumpets a truth serum, too?”

  “You joke,” Merritt said. “Will you do me a favor?”

  Audrey laughed in surprise. This she really wasn’t expecting. “I mean, maybe,” she said.

  “If this gets intense, or if you feel like it’s too much—or if you think I do, but I won’t say it—will you stay with me? I know we’re all together, but Harper and Eric have their whole history, so . . . will you be my trip buddy?”

  “Yes,” Audrey said. “If you tell me something.”

  “Oh God. What?”

  “I’m sure it’s not whatever you’re thinking,” Audrey said. “I wanna know—I mean, I’ve been thinking about it and wondering why you didn’t put the whole story of the Rash brothers in the book, like not just as a footnote?” She felt a little guilty about using what had been a nice moment of connection between them to do Bo’s bidding. But only a little.

  “I think it’s generous to have even given them footnote status. I don’t care about the Rash brothers. Fuck the fucking Rash brothers!” Merritt now shouted into the trees.

  Audrey laughed. That was enough for her. She didn’t care if Bo wanted to hear more about the Rash brothers. She didn’t.

  Harper and Eric came charging from behind. “Who are we fucking?” Eric yelled.

  “The Rash brothers!” Merritt yelled back.

  “Oh, those cunts?!” This from Eric.

  Were they feeling the tea now? Audrey tried, again, to tell if her reality had altered. She couldn’t say for certain. It might have been the sunlight through the leaves and the scent of pine pitch and the permission granted by having an afternoon to do something like this in just the place for it. It might have been her lack of sleep.

  Merritt pointed to the left, where, in the distance, there was a noticeable density to the understory, the brambles bramblier. “That’s it,” she said as she started in that direction. “Part of it.”

  “I mean, hold off on the mockery if you can, but should we be at all worried about yellow jackets in here?” Audrey asked.

  “Probably,” Merritt said, pulling back a branch to help them clear the entrance.

  Audrey was the last one through and just after, her shirt was snagged by something. When she turned to look, she saw it was the thorny arm of a blackberry bush clustered with ripe berries. She picked and ate one and it was so sweet and fat with juice, so perfect an experience, that she did not want to pick and eat another and be disappointed by it.

  Merritt and Harper were examining a stand of delicate pink flowers on thin stalks, which Merritt, of course, identified as “lady’s slippers—a kind of wild orchid.”

  “I see lungs,” Eric said.

  “I see vulvas,” Harper said.

  “Oh, I’m switching to yours,” Eric said.

  “It’s not a Rorschach,” Merritt said.

  “Everything in the world is a Rorschach,” Eric said.

  “Do you feel anything yet?” Audrey asked them.

  “Maybe,” Harper said. “I can’t tell. This place is a trip on its own.”

  “You don’t,” Eric said.

  Audrey couldn’t help herself: she took another blackberry. Actually, she took several from the same cluster, popped them in her mouth and crushed her teeth against their ripe flesh. They were just as sweet, just as good.

  They continued on, slowly, picking through bushes and pulling back vines, until Merritt said, “Here.”

  She knelt on a bank so thick with moss it might have been a sheet of green velvet, her hand tipped below the ledge where Audrey couldn’t see until she came closer and saw the bend, the pool, the feathers of algae—Merritt’s fingers floating among them like fish.

  “I think we’ll all fit,” Merritt said. “Mostly.”

  There were the flat stones Bo had mentioned. They set their things upon them and shed their clothing like snakeskin. Merritt and Eric climbed in first, each of them squealing at the slimy floor, the heat of the water. Harper propped her phone, turned to video mode, in the V of a nearby branch and set it to record this experience for later uploading. Then she slipped into the hot springs next to Merritt, exactly next to her, their bare skin touching in places.

  Audrey still hadn’t gotten in. She drank water, half a bottle. She heard, she thought, voices from off in the woods and wondered if it was their trailing camera crew not being quite quiet enough.

  “Hey, will you play music? Something?” Eric asked her. “You’re the only one who still has dry hands.”

  Audrey chose a playlist and turned up the volume. She sat on the mossy bank and dipped in her feet and legs up to her knees.

  “You’re not getting in?” Harper asked like this was a personal affront.

  “Eventually I will,” Audrey said. For now, she let herself fall back onto the moss, which was cool and plush. Her feet and ankles stayed in the warm water. She could hear the three of them talking softly about something but soon their voices were no different to her than the hum of the bugs. She closed her eyes to sleep.

  And she did sleep. She thought she might have slept for hours, a deep dreamless sleep, like entering a cave and the entrance closing behind her.

  She woke when there was a dripping shadow over her. It might have been the shadow from Spite Tower, a blocking of the sun, but it was only Eric trailing slimy algae from his swim trunks. He was holding her phone.

  “Sorry,” he said. “We got tired of your playlist and I was finding something else.”

  She tried to lick her lips, but it felt like moving two pieces of Styrofoam against each other. And she had blackberry seeds in her teeth. She could feel them now, back in her molars and along her gums. She needed water. She sat up, reached for a bottle, and caught Merritt and Harper kissing. Or maybe she didn’t catch them doing anything. They weren’t hiding it.

  If Eric wasn’t here, she wondered, what then? Maybe nothing. Would she have wanted something?

  Audrey unscrewed the cap, took a long drink of water, swished it around and around her mouth in an attempt to loosen those seeds and flush them out. Anyway, it didn’t matter, because Eric was most definitely here, standing above her while dripping and complaining.

  She drank again. The water was warm now and unpleasant tasting. It seemed to coat her mouth without solving her thirst. But she could at least feel it dislodge some of the seeds. She stuck a finger in her mouth and dragged it along her gums until she’d collected them.

  At first, when she looked down at her fingertip, she thought she’d pulled out a chunk of blackberry that had somehow escaped her chewing, a fleshy section of three still-plump drupelets. But right before she flicked it away, she saw what it really was: the tiny, severed head of a yellow jacket, its empty eyes staring back at her.

  The moss beneath her seemed to undulate as she took it in, as she tried to make the head turn back to being a blackberry segment.

  “The fuck’s up with your phone?” Eric asked. He sounded so far above her he might have been in a tree.

  Audrey did not answer. She stared at the head, tried to make it unreal. She could feel other things still in her teeth, even more than before. She dragged her finger along her wet gum trench again, pulled it out. She thought she might vomit, could feel it bubble in her throat. The yellow jacket head was still stuck to her fingertip but now it was there along with other chewed pieces of its body.