The first time Sasha got high, she stood face-to-face with a black bear in the backyard of her friend’s house. She was giggling while her two best friends Jade and Colt stood behind her absolutely terrified. She wasn’t sure why this was her reaction or what other drug those edible gummy bears were laced with, but the bear looked adorable standing on its hind legs and raising its snout into the air. “Don’t scream,” Sasha said, still giggling. “It will only provoke it. Where I grew up, we had bears in our woods all the time. If you don’t move, it will go away eventually.” “You’re out of your fucking mind,” Colt snapped in a harsh whisper. “Honey, I don’t…

When my grandfather passed away during an early winter, my family scrambled to rid the house of his belongings before the first major storm. The asphalt-shingle roof of his one-story home was collapsing inward after years of neglect and most of the windows were boarded up with cheap plywood. Instead of paying for the repairs, my parents decided to leave the fate of the quaint brick abode up to Mother Nature.  It was the first time we had visited since they relocated my grandfather to a nursing home, but the place somehow looked the same as when he lived there. We found the house stocked with canned goods, furniture, machine parts and magazines that he had accumulated over the years…