I began going out with them every night, Betsey and whoever else was going, and there were always too many of us. We pulled chairs up to booths and pushed tables together and made life hell for the waitress since we didn't know what to do with ourselves (I didn't) and we spoke loudly and sometimes without purpose. Betsey told me that every seven years your cells regenerate and your body is completely reborn. She told me toxins build up in your pores and cuticles and that drinking a lot of water or sweating helps the detox process. One night she took me back to her house where we smoked a couple of cigarettes on the front porch then dropped the butts over the railing. I'll explain the importance of this later. I remember that Betsey commented on the sky's greenish color (there'd been a brutal storm that afternoon), and as I listened to her talk about this and other things occasional breezes carried droplets of rain from the wet tree leaves onto my face. It was a pleasant sensation, and I found myself thinking I hadn't had or noticed I'd had a pleasant sensation in many months, maybe even a year. Was that possible? Before we went in I looked over the railing and noticed that our two cigarette butts by chance lay absolutely perfectly parallel to each other on the grass, and I took this to be a sign either that we would stay together or that something else was going on which I would understand in time.