"I think I'll just go home." "What, you're afraid of a hookah bar?" Jerry smirked, and our friends looked at me.

"No, it's just that I'm sensitive to smells. I really wouldn't like it."

"C'mon, we're having a great time. Why break up the gang?" He looked around to build support for his peer pressure, but none of our friends gave him any. "What's the big deal?"

"Look, if you really want to be an ass about this, it's because there's a tiny ghost that lives in my nose."

That stopped him. "What?"

"There's a tiny ghost in my nose, and he doesn't like tobacco smoke. So I'll just skip the hookah bar, okay?"

Our friends were laughing. "What kind of bullshit is this?" Jerry demanded. "If you don't want to go, just say so."

"I did, Jerry, and you were an ass about it. So now it's a ghost." I started walking to my car, and a couple of our friends followed.

"This is stupid," Jerry called after me. "There's no ghost or whatever, you're just being a stick in the mud."

"There is a ghost, Jerry," I said over my shoulder, "and right now he's flipping you off."