Even Mike was flabbergasted. "Wow. That's pretty intense."

"But, Chelsea," Greg said sternly, "you cannot do it twice."

"Well, that's stupid," I told him. "Who would need to do it twice? If the person you sent it to the first time doesn't understand that a shadoobie in the mail means that that friendship is on the rocks that friendship is on the rocks, he certainly isn't going to figure it out the second time. That would be a total waste of a stamp."

"Or two stamps, Chelsea. Depending on just how big that shadoobie is."

"So where are you guys going to go when you start hallucinating?" Sloane asked. "Back to the house to hang out with Mom and Dad?"

"Don't tell Mom and Dad that we did mushrooms, Sloane."

That was the last thing I remember saying before I started seeing flying Chinese babies. Sloane claims that Greg and I got up from the table before our food came and started dancing in the middle of the restaurant, together.

After she and Mike finished their meal, she came over to us and told us they were leaving and that we could take a cab home. Then she said that she told me, "There is no music playing, and you and Greg are related." I do in fact remember dancing, but I have a hard time believing there was no music.

About four hours later, I found myself in a cab back to my parents' house without Greg. I was still pretty high, but now the Chinese babies were at my eye level and were on foot.

At some point in the evening, my brother and I had separated. After the restaurant we'd gone to a bar across the street where they actually had an area designated for dancing, called a dance floor. I'm pretty confident I spent most of the night humiliating myself on it, but I had no idea when or where Greg had removed himself.

During the ten-minute cab ride to our house, I became increasingly concerned over Greg's whereabouts. Although I have been lucky enough not to ever have had a bad reaction to the drugs I've experimented with, some people are not as fortunate. It dawned on me that he could have been freaking out somewhere in a roadside bush. Once we pulled onto the dirt road that led to our house, the cabdriver recognized the road and said he had just dropped another person here an hour earlier. Thank G.o.d, I thought, and was able to go back to my previous jubilation of being in a paranoia-free zone of euphoria. This wasn't the first time Greg and I had crossed paths with the same driver in the hours of darkness.

A year earlier we had some hillbilly cousins from a small town outside Portland, Oregon, decide that it would be a good idea to get married. Neither of us had been invited to the wedding, but Greg called me in California and asked me if I wanted to crash. I had no desire to be in attendance at an affair that was most likely going to take place at either a VFW hall or a Chili's. He persisted in convincing me that we should go together and that it would be good material. Material for what was never specified.

I had no real commitments at the time, being twenty and just recently moved to Los Angeles, where I was in between thinking I should get a job and getting one.

"Fine," I finally said. "You need to use your miles for my ticket, and I'm not staying at a Super 8 or at one of our 'pseudo' cousins' trailers." I had to be very specific with Greg, as he is p.r.o.ne to spending as little money as possible, and that is something, try as I might, I cannot get behind.

"I want nice dinners, Greg. No Colonel Sanders s.h.i.t." I had nothing against the colonel himself but am very leery of the idea that there was ever a colonel in the first place. What kind of colonel would allow his establishment to turn into such a mockery? After a lengthy negotiation, we compromised on moderately priced dining, as long as I agreed to at least one serving of the colonel's chicken, or, as I had grown to refer to it, Kentucky Fried Pony.

The wedding "reception" took place at a karaoke bar, which is one thing I do not and will not partic.i.p.ate in. I've found that many of the people who have a pa.s.sion for karaoke too often have misplaced confidence, which can become aggressive and at times border on s.a.d.i.s.tic. I know my limits, and karaoke is where I draw the line. I wouldn't put anyone through the h.e.l.l of listening to me sing a song, and I sure as s.h.i.t wouldn't wait in line to do it.

The bartender told me the kitchen was closed, so I looked around for my brother, who was hard to find in the sea of mullets that were related to me. Since this wedding celebration hadn't provided any food, it was my duty to provide myself with some sustenance.

I looked in the closed kitchen. The perfect condition I like a kitchen to be in when I decide to test out my culinary skills. I opened the freezer, got out some hamburger patties and some frozen onion rings, and then looked around for something to cook these items in or on. Soon after, I gave up and walked outside. I was standing in front of the bar, looking at the adjacent strip malls and intersections, with my forefinger pointed at my temple, trying to find something that piqued my palate.

Taco Bell was in the near distance, but I was in no mood to walk more than one-eighth of a mile, so I waved down the first car I saw.

A man in a dark brown Toyota low-rider sort of sedan stopped. When I leaned in, I saw that he had a nice smile, weighed close to four hundred pounds, and was solely responsible for the car being low-riding. "Any chance I could get a ride to that Taco Bell right over there?"

"Sure thing, kiddo, hop right in.

"You are a lifesaver." I smiled, calculating how many tacos I could buy with five dollars. I walked around to the pa.s.senger-side door and hopped in. "I know it's not far, but I'm at this wedding with no food, and I'm starving." I looked at his body out of the corner of my eye and concluded that if circ.u.mstances called for it, he would be able to crush me. However, he would have to catch me first, and unless he was some sort of Transformer or fat vampire, this was unlikely in his condition. are a lifesaver." I smiled, calculating how many tacos I could buy with five dollars. I walked around to the pa.s.senger-side door and hopped in. "I know it's not far, but I'm at this wedding with no food, and I'm starving." I looked at his body out of the corner of my eye and concluded that if circ.u.mstances called for it, he would be able to crush me. However, he would have to catch me first, and unless he was some sort of Transformer or fat vampire, this was unlikely in his condition.

He was a very nice man indeed, and I liked the way his big fat body leaned when we were turning in to the intersection. He asked me where I was from, and when I told him New Jersey, he slapped his thigh. I couldn't tell which because together they equaled one gargantuan slab of meat. I wondered how many chicken tacos the geniuses at Taco Bell could make out of his carca.s.s. Realizing this would require a measuring instrument, which I didn't pack, I pressed on to the task at hand.

"Well, what kind of coincidence is that?" he was saying. "I just drove a fella from New Jersey to the very same Taco Bell. He was an accountant. Real nice guy, real hungry."

"Was his name Greg?"

"Yes, it was," and then he slapped his leg again. "He done try and walk through the drive-through, and when they sent him away, he came and hailed me down in the middle of the road!"

"That sounds about right." We were at the window now, so my first goal was to get in my order for two Taco Supremes. Then I asked my date if he wanted anything.

"Oh, G.o.d no. I can't eat this c.r.a.p."

"I'll take three, then!" I yelled back into the window.

When we pulled back in to the parking lot of the karaoke bar, I spotted Greg sitting on the top part of a bench facedown in a burrito.

We pulled up right in front of him, and with half of a taco in my mouth I yelled, "Greg, look who I found!"

Greg looked up and walked over to the car with a big smile on his face. He liked this kind of nonsense very much. "Good evening, Chelsea, I see you've met my friend Large Luke."

Greg still keeps in touch with Luke to this day, because that's how Greg is. He finds extreme joy in people who no one else would pay attention to. Then he'll invite them to stay at his house for the weekend while his wife hides in the bedroom with their three children and makes porridge.

By the time I got back to my parents' house, it was midnight. I walked in the door to find Sloane and Mike sitting at the kitchen table each having a bowl of cereal and my other brother Ray watching a Mets game in the living room.

"Is Greg here?" I inquired.

"No," Ray said, looking up from the game, eyeing the matted hair stuck to my forehead. "Where are you just coming from, a pole vaulting cla.s.s?" I had gotten quite a workout dancing and had probably lost a significant amount of water. I was laser-focused on weighing myself.

"Don't ask, Ray," Sloane interrupted. "I thought Greg was with you."

"He was, but we lost each other, and the cabdriver said he dropped him off here an hour ago."

"I haven't seen him," she said, and then asked Ray if he had.

Ray has the demeanor of someone who really isn't bothered by much and would greatly prefer to watch the Mets lose one game after another while he idly sits by. "Heartbreakers," he mumbles every time a game ends. "These guys are killing me."

"Well, I'm a little concerned, Sloane," I said. "I don't know where he is."

"He's thirty-four," Ray said. "I'm sure he's fine. Chelsea, why don't you go into the kitchen and have some Gatorade? You look a little pale and stupid."

"I'm going to check in the bas.e.m.e.nt," I announced, and headed toward the sliding gla.s.s door that leads to our front deck. "Ray, come with me. I'm scared."

"Wait for this inning to end."

"Sloane, come with me. I'm scared."

Sloane got up and came outside. We walked around the deck to the set of stairs that leads down to the bas.e.m.e.nt, and we saw all of Greg's clothes folded neatly on one of the steps, with his sneakers next to them.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" I screamed, grabbing Sloane. "He probably swam to Chappy!" Our dilapidated house in Martha's Vineyard is positioned in front of Katama Bay. On the other side of it lies Chappaquidd.i.c.k. Chappy, for short. This is the smaller island that became famous for the incident where a drunk Ted Kennedy drove his car off a small bridge and left a woman there to drown. Silly Kennedys.

The distance between our beach and Chappy's beach is a little under a mile. Greg likes to swim through all the boats docked in the bay to the other side. This activity performed sober and in the daytime is risky for anyone other than a salmon.

"Oh, my gosh," Sloane said.

"We have to go get him. He'll drown." I sprang into full panic mode, and it was infectious. Sloane was instantly on board with my paranoia, and we ran inside to get the boys.

"You guys, Greg went down to the water and swam to Chappy in the dark. We have to go get him!"

This was Mike's first visit to our summerhouse, and he had no idea if swimming to Chappy was good or bad, but he definitely reacted with the appropriate look of panic in his eyes. He was already perplexed by the fact that my parents had a house on Martha's Vineyard, even though my father hadn't had a real job in a decade and dressed like a circus carny.

Mike glanced at Ray, who was still reclined on the sofa. "He's fine. He does it all the time."

"Not at night, Ray!" I wailed.

"He's on mushrooms!" Sloane added.

"Who has mushrooms?" Ray asked.

"I did," I told him. "Greg and I split them. There aren't any more."

He looked back at the TV. "Well, no wonder you're acting schizophrenic, Chels. Why don't you go weigh yourself or something?"

"I am not being schizo," I told him. "We need to go down to the water and see if he's okay. That is our brother, Ray!"

"Mom hid the scale," Sloane announced.

"What do you mean?" I asked her. "You can't hide a scale."

"She hid it because she thinks you weigh yourself too much. You're becoming obsessed."

"Where did she put the scale, Sloane?"

"I have no idea. She just said she was hiding it."

"Check in the washing machine," Ray suggested. My mother pulled this number often with the TV remote control when she was sick of watching my father sitting on his a.s.s all day. More often than not, she forgot about it and ended up washing several remote controls throughout the summer.

The scale turned out to be in the dryer, so I took it out and slid it underneath for later, where I knew no one would ever see it. Then I refocused myself on the task at hand.

"Okay, Sloane," I said, clapping my hands. "Ray, are you coming or not?"

"Girls, it's a bay. There are no sharks or manatees or whatever you think is going to get him. He's done it a million times. Please relax. If he gets tired, he can just hop on one of the boats. Seriously, girls. You are giving me severe headacheage."

My next move was to burst into tears, which caused Sloane to also start crying. Mike walked over and, with absolutely no conviction, put his hand out to comfort us but then retracted it and, not knowing what else to do, crossed his arms.

"Let's go," Sloane said, and we headed back out the sliding door. "Mike, go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and get a flashlight."

The water was about a hundred yards from our deck. Mike met us at the front of the house with an industrial-size flashlight. From there we headed across the lawn to the dirt road and found the path that went down to the water.

Sloane and I were still crying as we ran like lunatics through the pitch black with the flashlight bouncing all over the place. The tree-canopied path that leads to the water is riddled with thornbushes, poison ivy, and wet marsh gra.s.s that may as well be a giant placenta.

Sloane was holding on to my ponytail, which was becoming looser and looser as a result. The first time I veered to avoid a branch I saw at the last minute, she was able to avoid it, too, but my ponytail completely came loose, and her second and third interactions with branches weren't as fortuitous.

"s.h.i.t!" I screamed, trying to a.s.sist Mike in helping her get to her feet after her first tumble. Everyone in our family suffers from extreme lack of coordination and an immoderate amount of clumsiness. Even though this is a path Sloane and I had been down hundreds of times during broad daylight, the familiarity of it was completely lost on us. Add to the mix a wooded marshy path in the middle of the black night and you might as well have put us in a minefield with Bose headphones and a water gun.

At the end of the path was a small wooden dock that took you over the marshiest part and fell out on the beach. Once on the beach, I started yelling Greg's name.

"Greg! Greeeggg! Greg!"

Sloane chimed in with screams of her own, and so did Mike, who was surprisingly becoming the forefront of Operation Seafood Tower Rescue.

"We have to get out there. We need a boat," I told them.

"We can take one of the dinghies," she said, shining the flashlight on a bunch of little rowboats that people used to get from the beach to their bigger boats.

Mike grabbed the closest one, flipped it over, and pushed it into the water. It had two benches in the middle and a smaller bench on each end, and two sets of oars inside. The perfect mode of transportation if you were a family of midgets on The Amazing Race The Amazing Race trying to make it through w.i.l.l.y Wonka's Chocolate River. trying to make it through w.i.l.l.y Wonka's Chocolate River.

I took control of the flashlight so Mike could grab the first set of oars and start rowing while Sloane took the other. After ten solid minutes of huffing and puffing and becoming completely dizzy, it occurred to us that we had made no progress at all and were in the same exact place we started.

"Sloane!" Mike yelled. "You're supposed to be rowing forward like me, not canceling out my row!"

"I can't see which way you're rowing!" They were seated with their backs to each other, and I was in the middle as the captain.

I grabbed the oars out of her hands and started rowing myself.

It was impossible to see anything beyond the three to four feet the flashlight illuminated, and impossible to tell if we were making any headway.

"Chelsea, find a boat or landmark with the flashlight so we have a point of reference," Mike ordered.

"Done. There's a red anchor buoy thingy right there."

"They're all red, Chelsea. That doesn't help us!" Sloane screamed.

"Then you you find something, you big Mormon." find something, you big Mormon."

Mike ordered us to just keep rowing in the same direction so that we would eventually make some progress in getting over to the other side. He also told us both to stop arguing and to focus on saving our brother from a dark, untimely death.

Sloane decided it would be a good idea to come back to where I was seated at the end of the boat and supervise.

"Get out of the back of the boat, you dumba.s.s. It's gonna fill with water!" Before this sentence even left my mouth, Mike had fallen out of the boat, because half of it was already submerged in water. Sloane fell out next. I grabbed the front end of the rowboat while it got higher and higher but let go right before it capsized. Now we were all in the water with our flip-flops floating beside us. I took this opportunity to relieve myself.

Mike had started swimming toward the dinghy and was trying to turn it back over.

I looked at Sloane, who was treading water in a manner that suggested she wasn't going to be afloat for much longer. "You really are a d.i.c.k," I told her as I swam over to her. She grabbed my shoulders, pushing my whole head underwater.

"Sorry!" she yelped as I went down.

I released her from my grip and swam back up to the surface. "What is wrong with you?"

"I'm so tired. I think I have whiplash."

"Well, I'm not a f.u.c.king flotation device. You can't just push on me and expect me to keep coming back up. You are so weak. Lie on your back, and I'll hold you. That's easier." We did just that, and I looked over to see where Mike was. I noticed that the water went from cool to lukewarm a little too quickly. "Are you peeing?"

"Yes," Sloane answered. "But just for a second."

"There's an oar!" I yelled to Mike.