But Helio used to steal cigarettes for Franco is why him and Franco were friends, and one time Franco asked him to steal a can of butane, too, and when we brought all that loot back to Franco in his garage, he offered for each of us to take a cigarette, which Helio did and I didn’t do, and that’s maybe when Franco and I started our friendship because, right as soon as I said no to the cigarette, Franco said to me that I was a smart kid. He said, “Smart kid.” But if that’s not when we became friends, it was a couple minutes later, after him and Helio were finished smoking.
We were all just sitting there on Franco’s brown couch in the garage, listening to Franco III yelp about her chain being too short, and Helio said, “Can I put the butane in your lighter?”
And Franco said, “I don’t got a butane lighter.”
“Oh,” Helio said.
And Franco looked at Helio like he wanted Helio to ask him a question, but Helio’s not so smart — he’s smarter than Gino, but he’s not very smart, especially about people. One time I called him “Hell-io” by accident because I was yawning while I was trying to say his name, and he thought I was making fun of him, even though I was his best friend. He punched me four times in my back because of it and the next day he called me “fat stuff” in front of Jenny Wansie, which was one of the rare occasions where I really beat him up in a home/away situation.
I said to Franco, “Why’d we steal you this butane if you don’t got a lighter that needs it?”
Franco said, “So we could huff it.”
“Drugs?” Helio said.
“It’s not really drugs. It’s a inhalant,” Franco said.
“You want us to be huffers with you,” Helio said. “You’re a huffer,” he said. He said it fast and mean, with his lips all twisted. He was scared, and he didn’t want us to know. He’s tricky like that, Helio, dishonest about his feelings.
Then Franco, who was maybe my friend then, or would be in another couple minutes asked me, “What’s wrong with this kid?” He was talking about Helio. Then he said to Helio, “What’s wrong with you, kid? You sound like health class.”
“I don’t want to be a doper,” Helio said. He cracked his knuckles and made his eyes squinty instead of saying “Period,” like, “I don’t want to be a doper. Period.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said to Helio. “A doper does drugs. This is a inhalant.” I looked at Franco to make sure I had it right, and Franco shot me with both of his pointer fingers.
“Exactly!” Franco said. “Now, you huff this butane with us, or you go away. Period. And don’t you ever say I’m a huffer again. Got it?”
Helio got it. He hugged himself a little, but he stayed on the couch.
“Here,” Franco said. “This is how you do it.” Then he did it.
The way you do it is that the butane comes in a long metal can with a straight silver metal tip about three quarters the height of my thumb’s length, but a lot skinnier. Then there’s the white plastic tip shaped like a construction cone that’s about half the height of my thumb’s length. The white plastic tip fits over about two thirds of the silver metal tip. Each tip has a hole at the top. When you put the white plastic tip in your mouth so that the top of the ridge at the bottom of it is against the front of your teeth, you push the can into your face until the bottom of the ridge of the tip is against the top of the can, which means the silver metal tip goes inside the can as far as it can and then the butane comes blasting out into your throat. It’s cold and tastes a little bit sweet. You have to aim right and huff deeply, or else you get it on your tongue and it tastes fuzzy and bubbly and you have to gag a little bit. If you do it right, things change almost immediately. First, if you try to talk, your voice is very low, which I don’t know why, but I think it’s because the butane makes your voice box so cold and your voice box needs to be a little bit hot to form more high-pitched noises with the cords it has inside it. That’s not so important, but there’s a tradition around it. After you’re done with your turn huffing, you hand the can to the next guy and say something to show that your voice is frozen low. Since silence in your ears when you’re huffing isn’t silence but this really warm kind of wah wah wah that lasts till the inhalant wears off, what you usually say when you hand the can over is “Wah.” Franco went first and demonstrated. He said “Wah” to me, fell back into the couch, and gave me the can. I huffed it for longer than Franco, said “Wah” to Helio, fell back into the couch, and gave Helio the can. Helio let go of one of his shoulders to hold on to the can, but he only took a squirt of it, and I think he got the bubbles cause what he said was “Weh,” and it wasn’t so low.
Next thing I knew, all the things were gigantic and all the nothings were tiny. I looked at Helio and he was so much bigger than the garage door, I couldn’t understand how he got into the garage without cutting some of himself off first. I thought that was funny, and then I noticed I was warm. I tried to put my hand on Helio’s shoulder to show him I was his friend and isn’t this cool, but it took so much strength to lift up my hand, cause it was not only gigantic, but dense. Everything was dense, even the nothings, and it felt like the couch was slowly moving backward. Franco was the densest and the most gigantic. Just one of his blue eyes was bigger than all of me. I almost said to him, “Franco, you have the biggest blue eye,” but right when I thought of it, the butane began to wear off and I thought that might have sounded really faggy. I tapped Helio on the shoulder, and he gave me the butane. I huffed the butane.
“Wahhh,” I said.
“That’s a boy,” Franco said. Then he huffed. Then I huffed. Then Helio did a little.