THE 8800
by Nathan Phillips (1999)

******

"Where do you think we'll be in ten years?"

I opened my eyes. Tim was standing by my open window, staring at the water. Still on my bed, I could make out spiders and bluejays despite my eyesight, and could hear the daily lawnmower of the neighbors. It was the summer, our last before entering junior high school. There had been nothing to do all day, and we had not complained. We had, in fact, said very little at all. The night before, we had been energetic and loud. When we awoke late in the morning, the momentum had left us, the way it always did. That was the summer, that was Oak Island, that was spending the night with Tim.

He wanted terribly to be an arrogant person, but it was only around me that he seemed to have any outlet. I alone knew of his performance as the boy dreaming constantly of girls in short skirts slowly turning their heads to consider him. I knew of his frequent ambitions and failures, failures that came not from being pushed away but from never emerging at all. He talked of the girls we knew as if he were five years older, as if he expected that to make an impression on me. But that was Friday night talk. Saturday morning was lazier but more interesting, while I did not necessarily realize it until Sunday. Saturday morning, I knew how afraid he was. I knew how respectful he was.

"I'm going to be in college," I replied absently. "Probably in Raleigh, Durham, something like that."

Tim didn't turn to face me. "You didn't think about it, did you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm just asking."

"No, I guess I didn't. Why do you ask, anyway?"

"I don't know. I hope I'm far away from here."

I nodded but chose to argue. "It's nice here."

"Not as nice as it seems, right? It has teeth. You probably wouldn't understand. Everybody knows you. Librarian's son."

"I understand." I couldn't ignore, by now, the fact that he had been motionless, turned away from me, for the full duration of our talk. "Tim, what's on your mind?"

He shrugged. "Nothing. I want to know who you like."

"What? Why?"

"You wouldn't tell me last night. You got around it somehow."

"What does this have to do with where we'll be in ten years?"

He looked around, finally. "Do you think you'll have a girlfriend?"

"Probably not." I hated the idea of being single for the next ten years, but it seemed a foregone conclusion.

"Me either." Tim had mentioned the night before that he would never get married because he liked his "freedom," but now he gave a different reason: "I can't talk to them. I can't talk to people at all, really... And I'll tell you something else, if you promise you'll tell me who you like."

There was nothing Tim could say, no ransom he could devise, that would cause me to come clean about this. "You've got it," I lied.

"If I ever do get married, it'll have to be a person I can talk to. I know who it'll be. I figured it out this morning." There was a long pause. "Your turn."

"Wait. I don't get to know who this person is?"

"You'll find out, someday. If it doesn't happen, I'll tell you."

"In ten years?"

"In ten years. Until then, it's... totally under wraps."

"Right, okay. Well, the person is... Kimberly Granger."

"I knew it!" Tim clapped his hands.

"On the bus, she's always asking me the same thing you just asked me, and she runs down this list of everyone we go to school with, and she even says 'is it me?' sometimes, and I always have to lie."

"That's hilarious." He did not laugh, or even smile; he just looked rather thoughtful. "I'm calling her!"

The phone directory was hidden behind the other contents of my bookshelf in order to prevent Tim from finding it and landing me in hot water again with local hair salons and laundromats. Somehow, though, he knew, and in my smug victory I failed to notice at first as he crept directly to the shelf and launched his hand eagerly behind a set of small paperbacks.

I leapt up and tackled him, and we struggled for some time in a painful jumble of arms and legs until he gave in and promised that he would not call Kim Granger, ever, for any reason. The second I let go of him, nevertheless, he knocked twenty or thirty books off the shelf and grabbed the directory.

Naturally, I started to grab it from him, but he held it away from me, and was unfortunately in convenient proximity to the phone itself. "I'm not calling her," he assured me. "I'm calling for pizza." He found what he was looking for in the book and began to dial.

"Pizza? What are you talking about? You don't have money for --"

"No, no, no, never mind that now." I could faintly hear the ringing. "Yes, hello, I'd like to place an order for delivery, please? I would like a large pan-tossed pepp-- Oh, hi, Maxine!"

I was mortified. It just so happened that Maxine McLellan's phone number was a couple of digits away from being identical to the number for Domino's Pizza on the island, something that had led to many bizarre late-night calls at her home over the years. Tim, I thought, must have dialed her by accident, and she was the last person I had wanted to make an entrance into my weekend.

Maxine was a sore point for me; it had been weeks since we had spoken. We met in first grade, when she moved to the east coast and started going to my school. She had the desk in front of me, and on the first day, she threw up all over it and the janitor had to come into the classroom and clean it up. Her parents couldn't be reached, so she spent the rest of the day in the corner of the room puking into a trash can. The other kids made fun of her. Within a week, they were largely under her control. Within three weeks, I had told her -- at age seven -- that I loved her. Now, I hated her.

Tim was now standing in the corner, speaking quietly to my adversary. I was sure by now that she knew who he was staying with, and wondered what vindictive poison she was planting in him. Teachers and parents had an alarming number of misconceptions about Maxine. My mother, thanks to a closeness we'd attained early on, expected already for us to be married at the first opportunity. The teachers we shared had an idyllic vision of her personality, commenting at length on how sweet and quiet she was. I knew she was neither, and because I was a mutual friend, so did Tim.

For years, Maxine and I alternated between being the closest of friends and the most bitter of enemies, to both extremes with a seriousness that confused our peers, families, and often ourselves. I was fascinated by her; obliquely beautiful, she oozed energy, walking and talking at the speed of light. When she turned against you, which could happen any instant, the energy was as threatening as it was alluring. I knew she would go places, places I'd never see or even imagine. She was something.

Tim's voice was down to a whisper by the time he hung up the telephone and turned to me. "I told her I want to see that bridge."

My face fell. The bridge Tim spoke of was the cause of my current rift with Maxine. She had taken me on what she called her "Five-Mile Tour" via bicycle a few months before. The "Five-Mile Tour" sounded engaging enough to me, so with no shortage of poor judgment, I had agreed to join her. She seemed to enjoy watching me struggle and suffer as she rattled off anecdotes such as "This is where my sister threw up on her last tour!" while we maneuvered our way through impossibly bumpy pathways and large clumps of trees.

We came to the bridge, the "climax" of the tour, at sundown. It was a rickety, ancient, hauntingly vast and unreliable structure, literally boards strung together by rope with a drop of some intimidating number of feet (she'd made sure to tell me how many) down into an inlet. I had refused. She had gone across and egged me on. I had refused again. She had come back and egged me on more. I asked why she was trying to force me to do something I didn't want to do. She accused me of ruining her evening. She rode away before I could catch up with her, and not knowing the area (we were on the opposite end of the island from my house), I was lost for hours before I finally found a street I knew. I did not tell my mother where I had been, knowing it would change her opinion of my friend, even though I found myself hating her and continuing to do so for weeks afterward. During the final weeks of school, I did not feel it worthwhile to bear the usual taunts from male friends about my time spent with her, so I joined them, and she sat alone, until Tim took pity in the last few days.

"I don't want to do this, Tim," I said. "You can go."

"Why don't you want to go? You have to go! You're part of it."

"I'm sorry, part of what?"

"Part of the plan. She was telling me how you didn't finish her tour last time. The tour means a lot to her, Randy. You know that. She said you might be more willing to finish it if I'm around too."

I sighed. "Why wouldn't it be good enough for you to be the one who went over the bridge? Just you?"

"It's not like she has any other audience, you know. Let's make her happy."

This piqued my curiosity. "Why all this interest in enriching Maxine's life suddenly?"

"I like Maxine! She's nice... Hey, stop doing that bug-eyed thing, you know I hate that."

In the last year, Tim had been visibly caught under a spell of sorts, as I once had been; he seemed to be in a state of worship for all of the things he (and I) got from Maxine that seemed to come from no one else our age. I smiled, knowing that it would turn around on him soon enough. Nevertheless, I still had no interest in taking this trip. "Well, sure we can go, Tim. But you'll have to find her house. I don't remember where she lives."

"Oh, don't give me that. You know how to get to her house."

I shook my head with conviction.

"Why don't you know where she lives, Randy? You're her husband. Husbands should know their wives' addresses."

I grabbed the phone, stormed out of the bedroom and slammed the door. "We're not going!" I shouted. "Or I'm not, anyway."

"What are you doing with the phone?" Tim flew out of my room and followed me down the hallway. My mom was working, my dad was outside mowing the lawn, so no one could hear us shouting at one another, but I still felt embarrassed about it outside the confines of my territory, so I slowed down and hung up the telephone. Tim stopped to catch his breath and looked at me directly in the eyes, something we seldom did to one another. "Why this attitude about Maxine? You're, like, her best friend, aren't you?"

I looked down, Tim's gaze demanding honesty. "She kind of scares me sometimes."

Tim laughed, as I knew he would. "It must be love." Unsure of his intentions, I stood blank and unamused. He watched me for a moment then galloped back to the phone. "I'm calling her and telling her we can't come because you're scared of her!"

"No!" I screamed, pouncing on him and sliding with humiliating ease onto the floor beside him. I grabbed an end of the phone, but his grip was too fixed and determined. I gave in and agreed to take my second Five-Mile Tour, lamenting the loss of another Saturday afternoon to a stir-crazy Tim, who really, I felt, belonged at home by now.

By the time I had changed my clothes and made my way outside, Tim was already mounting his bicycle. My dad was struggling with crabgrass in the corner of the yard, oblivious to my own impending doom. I was still at the age when it would have been acceptable to cry for his help, but I decided against it.

Tim had decorated the girls' bike he'd inherited from his older sister with various odd decals to make it more of a male-oriented form of transportation. These consisted of names of various sports teams, none of which he or I had ever even heard of, and in the end it was fairly pointless because the only thing others ever noticed about the bike was that it was explicitly one for a girl -- complete with purple seat and glittery white tires. My own bicycle, for once, was not chained up by my dad; he had moved it so he could mow the area. I had counted on this as my last possible way out, since even Tim would not have wanted to bother my dad in the middle of a mow, given that he might very well have asked us to finish the job for him.

The next thing I knew, we were within sight of Maxine McLellan's house. She soon came into our view, waving from her front porch with fake “brochures” in hand. She'd always been fond of acting more official than she really was. My fate that day was already sealed.

***

In the latest seconds of our ride, I pulled out my last resort. "You know, I didn't really want to hang out with Maxine today." Tim didn't say anything, so I drove it home. "I wanted to hang out with you."

Tim smirked. "You know, it's funny you should say that."

"Why?"

"No reason. Hey, Maxine!"

Maxine greeted us with outstretched arms, for no particular reason since we were still on our bicycles. "Timmy! Randy! My pride and my joy, both in the same place for once." I groaned. "Randy? Hello?"

"Oh, hi."

"'Oh, hi?' That's your enthusiastic greeting?"

"Why should I be enthusiastic?"

Maxine raised an eyebrow. "What's his problem?"

"He... didn't want to come."

"He'll get over it."

I didn't like people acting as though they knew my feelings this intimately. "I won't get over it," I muttered.

"Look, Randy." Maxine handed me one of her cute color-penciled brochures with a rather confusing map of the island. "We're going to have a great time. We're gonna see the world! Our part of it, at least. And you won't be allowed to ruin it, so don't try."

Maxine's sunny attitude, fake smile, and all-too-empty gestures toward a recently defunct friendship disgusted me. I turned around and prepared to go back from whence I came. It was at this point that something cracked in the others, and they apparently knew at last that I was being serious.

"Listen, Randy," Maxine said in a softer voice than I had to known to escape from her lips in all the years I'd known her, "we're just trying to have a nice time."

"Seriously," Tim added. "You don't always have to be so serious about everything. You can deal with living a little on one Saturday in a month instead of sitting in your room."

"We lived last Saturday, didn't we?" I growled.

Tim rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah. Talk about living. We went to Dairy Queen with your parents, where you ordered the same thing you always order, then we went to the arcade, but you were too freaked out by the crowd to go inside.

"What about you, Tim? Some girl playing putt-putt by herself was staring at you and you wouldn't stop talking about it but you were too damn scared to go and say anything to her."

"Shut up. I've seen you do exactly the same thing, but can we please not discuss that here?" He was signaling me in some obscure fashion I couldn't comprehend.

"It's just as well," Maxine said in another vain attempt to cheer me up through defense. "Probably a blonde girl, right? I don't want you guys chasing little blonde girls around. I'll get jealous."

"I bet she doesn't drag people around on stupid bike tours, either."

Maxine's eyes widened and she gave up all her attempts to be a cooing sweetheart, hopefully for good. "Look, am I dragging anybody around? I don't think so. Is my bike tour stupid? No, of course not. Is it better than staying inside all summer? Undoubtedly."

"You got Tim into this because he thinks it's going to be fun. I've already been. I hated it. I'm only here because Tim's here."

"Oh, we're still not talking?"

"No more than we have to. I really don't want to be here."

Tim threw up his arms in exasperation. "Then why don't you leave?"

"We're not making you stay," Maxine added.

I sighed. "I'm gonna stay."

"Why?" they said in unison.

"I don't know."

"You have to do better than that," Maxine insisted.

"Because if I go home, I will be in bed tonight wondering what would have happened if I had stayed. That's the only thing I can think of."

Maxine smiled, making eye contact for the first time in our visit. "Let's go get our supplies." I watched her walk up the steps to her front door before following. She had an unusual face, rounded but thin, with eyes that stood far apart and looked strange when she wasn't wearing her glasses. Although her appearance was unconventional, she looked rather graceful, something she did not take advantage of in the least, often seemingly taking pains to be as clumsy and awkward as possible. For whatever reason, when Tim and I were her sole audience, she suddenly seemed almost glamorous.

Her house did not. Maxine had so many brothers and sisters that I had never been able to come up with an exact figure, but they seemed to emerge from solid walls whenever I entered her home. We followed her to her bedroom, where she picked up an empty backpack, a camera, sunscreen, and a radio, four items which I couldn't imagine we would actually need on our late-afternoon journey through a well-populated small town. It was evident that Maxine simply liked the idea of gathering supplies, whether they were needed or not.

Once outside, we lined up our bicycles perfectly with the edge of the street, so that Maxine could take a picture commemorating the beginning of another Five-Mile Tour.

"Okay, my friends," she began. "First we're going to be cutting through the golf course to get to our first stop. There are a lot of stray golf carts around, so hang on, stay behind me, watch me for signals, and don't get hurt. And remember that the contract you signed stipulates that I have no responsibility for what happens to you."

"We never signed any contract," Tim pointed out.

"That's okay. If they ever find the bodies, I'll claim ignorance. Nothing to worry about! Ready? Let's go!"

I watched Maxine speed off into the golf course, still uncertain about whether I really needed to know how the evening would turn out. I started to ask Tim a question, but he was already right behind her. As soon as he caught up, they began talking in low voices. These two were obviously scheming against me. I sighed, thought about it for a moment, decided not to go with them, and then went anyway.

***

It didn't take long for the first casualty. My golf course ride was not quite as well-timed as Tim and Maxine's; they were now well in front of me, and I was stuck dodging golf carts in the open air at breakneck speed. All those hours of Pole Position came to nothing; at moments like this, it was tough to be logical.

Ahead, I could hear that one of the golfers was infuriated at our intrusion into his country club. "Hey! I pay good money to golf here!" he screamed.

"Hey! I pay good money to live here!" Maxine screamed back. My game continued, the rate of passing carts seeming to double every second.

As we gained momentum and encountered less competition, I began to enjoy myself, with the sun beginning to sink and the speed cooling me off a bit, and even lost sight of where I was headed, fixing my glare eventually on an old man in a slow-moving cart with the words “POP WOLFE” on the license plate. After he went out onto the highway and faded from view, I looked straight ahead to discover that I was heading directly for an immobile golf cart, into which I violently crashed.

"That was stupid!" Tim announced from fifty yards ahead.

My wife agreed. "Christ, Randy, how the hell'd that happen?" They had turned and were now approaching.

"I slipped."

"You threw yourself onto an unmoving object at full speed. How is that slipping?"

Maxine was always a bit too challenging for me. "Look, it was an accident. I'm sorry."

"Well, Jesus, don't be sorry. You're the one who fell backwards onto concrete."

"Uh... right."

"Well," offered the always-inventive Tim, "we might as well take a break."

"A break?" Maxine shot back. "We've only been on the road for three minutes! I know, because I've been keeping time." She threw her watch-clad arm into Tim's face.

"Can we at least have some water?" Tim begged.

"No."

"What the hell? Are you telling me when I can and can't drink? Why can't I drink? I'm thirsty and Randy wouldn't give me anything to drink."

Still on the ground, nursing my knee, I chimed in. "He wouldn't drink our water because he claims it's poisoned and I wouldn't let him have any soda. Last time he drank soda at my house, he ran outside in circles for three hours chasing a roll of electric tape and then passed out on the back porch."

"I see. Well, Tim, I'm not an ogre like Randy, so let's have some water, shall we?"

Maxine led us over to the refreshments area; Tim lagged behind and she turned to me. "That sounds entertaining, actually. Maybe we should buy him some soda."

Tim had exceptional hearing. "That would be great!"

"Don't do it, Maxine. He doesn't know what's good for him."

Maxine glared at me for the split second that biking would allow. She was careful to lower her voice. "Too hyper for you, huh? You know, Randy, it sounds sometimes like you're trying to turn him into you."

"Well, I don't mean to." I found the notion absurd but didn't feel like arguing. "I just... think we have more fun when he's calm."

"You have more fun."

"Why doesn't he say anything, then?"

"Well, what the hell do you think he was just --" Tim had caught up and sped by; we had arrived at the fountains. The conversation, luckily, stopped there.

Tim spent a considerable amount of time consuming water, while Maxine and I observed a well-placed pile of pointed cone-shaped cups. Maxine picked one of them up, studied it for a moment, then put it back in its place and turned to me. "I can't tell you what those things remind me of," she remarked.

I was dumbstruck. "Uh... what do they remind you of?"

Maxine began to giggle. "I can't tell you, man. I mean, look at them. Ugh!"

"They're cones. So what?"

"Well... think about it."

I wasn't getting the image. "Maxine, what are you talking about?"

"C'mon. Think about it."

I tried to think about it, but Tim finished drinking and Maxine's focus was altered to continuing our journey. I told the two of them that I was also a bit thirsty. "Just don't drink from the cups," Maxine told me.

Just out of spite, I decided to drink out of one of the cups. I was rather consumed by the fact that I had no idea what these stupid cups were supposed to remind me of. Had she made that up just to put me off, or was I still too immature to understand her immature joke? The hell with this; I was tired of drinking out of a cup I didn't understand. I tossed it aside and prepared to move on.

Maxine quickly led us out of the golfing region and onto the highway. She didn't even stop to check the traffic flow, but she was invincible, so it hardly mattered. Once we made it to the driving region, Tim, being Tim, weaved out of our area once in a while, causing chaos on the part of the road dominated by actual cars. He survived, of course; the motorists were logical enough to see the large moving object possibly heading their way and dodged him skillfully. Maxine probably would have preferred if they hadn't. She was always looking for new historical moments to add to the mental scrapbook.

Noticing that Maxine didn't turn off at her regular point, I felt it necessary to break the ice. "So, Maxine, where are we headed now?"

"Wait and see," she told me.

"You'll find out," Tim said, his tone overflowing with fake defiance. "And so will I."

This pissed me off, as it always did. "You're always saying that to me. You know I hate it when you say that."

"When he says what?" Maxine asked, more interested than usual in my petty squabbles with others.

"'You'll find out,'" I repeated in a mocking voice.

"I know you hate it. And usually, I don't say it. But sometimes, it's good to piss you off."

Maxine flashed Tim an evil grin. I was certain now that there was something amiss.

"What the hell is going on with you two?"

"Oh, for god's sake, don't start with the paranoia!" Tim yelped emphatically.

"You learned that word from Maxine, didn't you?"

"What if I did?"

"Please!" Maxine screeched. "Not now."

I wasn't satisfied. "How's our status on the Five-Mile Tour coming?"

"We've almost started."

"Almost started? We've been on the road for at least fifteen minutes!"

"Yeah, but this is just the prologue. We have to get to the starting point before the real tour begins."

"Great, so this is all for nothing?"

"Well, we've got to get there somehow." I moaned dramatically. "Look, it's summer. Time for fun. Calm down. You're going to injure yourself if you stay this uptight much longer."

By now it was after 7:00. The sun had begun to fade even farther into obscurity and I realized I wouldn't be home before dark. We continued pedaling along the main road for around ten additional minutes before we reached a stoplight and Maxine explained that the time had come to make a right turn.

The street we then found ourselves on was your average residential zone. The inhabitants were all doing homeowners' grunt work -- mowing the lawn, checking the mail, taking out the trash. Old men and women waved as we passed. Tim and Maxine waved back; I didn't. We moved by a group of construction workers building a new house, one of whom was clad in a T-shirt bearing the number "33." Tim inexplicably felt a need to taunt him about his outfit ("Hey, number 33! How ya doin’?") until I scolded him and Maxine ordered us to keep moving.

When we got to the end of the street, Maxine had us stop for a moment. "Gentlemen," she began in her best good-citizen-running-for-public-office voice, "this is the beginning of the Five-Mile Tour."

***

It didn't look very threatening from where we were standing. We were near the ocean, and in front of us was a series of large condominiums. Tim began to turn left but was stopped. "We're not going that way," said Maxine.

"Oh, okay, we're heading to the right? I thought that was just a dead end."

"No, Tim. We're going straight."

"Straight? But there's nothing there except a bunch of buildings and parked cars! And an ocean..."

"Yep. Fun, huh?" And she was off.

"You know," I told Tim, "we don't have to follow her. We could just go home right now."

He just looked at me and kept going, pedaling off with me not far behind, across the street and underneath the nearest of the departmentalized gray buildings.

It was pitch black in the parking deck, and there was much to avoid. Cars were everywhere, as were many wooden staircases, each lit by a single bulb, leading up onto the second level. The building was so old I secretly worried that my bike bringing impact to the wooden posts might result in the entire structure falling on us.

Tim never left my sight; he seemed even more disoriented than I was. After we wandered speechlessly through the maze of parked cars for a while, we heard Maxine's tiny, stinging voice from above.

"Hey! Up here!" she cried. She had climbed one of the staircases, complete with bicycle.

"What are you doing up there?" I demanded.

"It's a little side trip. Come on up."

We both picked up our bikes and ascended the steps. We were now in an open area, so through a screen lining the walls we could see the ocean. It was high tide and we were at the far end of the building; the water was almost directly below us. Tim was the first to speak. "Now what? Are we gonna go fishing or something?"

"Look out there, Tim," Maxine replied promptly. "Look at it. It can't see us, but we can see it. It's all ours." She looked at us, hoping for some reaction. "Well, what do you think?"

"Very romantic," I grumbled. "Why can't we just stay here for the rest of the afternoon?"

Tim was still standing quietly at the top of the steps, not wholly invested in the majestic view. "Doesn't sound like much fun."

"We have to keep moving!" Maxine shouted, mounting her bicycle. "Follow me." Navigating this floor was much more difficult, since we not only had to watch out for the steps moving on to the condos above, but also the holes in the floor going back down to the parking deck. Maxine weaved about like a pro while Tim and I suffered through the situation. Eventually, we all made it to the opposite end and found ourselves facing an unbelievably steep ramp. "This," she announced, "is the fun part!"

Down she went, gliding with perfect control. Tim followed, considerably less confident. "Look! No hands!" he screamed after reaching the halfway point. Half a second later he started weaving off the ramp, so he had to cancel his stunt.

I did my best not to think of the dangers here, and drifted back down to earth, my face catching a storm of wind and sand. During the downward voyage, everything seemed suddenly quiet, an increasingly rare occurence in my town. I relished the moment, but as soon as my eyes opened I saw Maxine and Tim back on the street. That single split-second of trickery on a ramp had been the entire purpose of our stop here. Numb and robotic, I was behind them before I had fully registered any of my actions.

To our direct right was the first line of houses, and beyond that was the oceanfront. Occasionally, we passed steps leading down onto the beach. Every time we came to one of the parking areas, our small lane in the road dropped considerably, so not only did Tim come even closer than usual to falling off and breaking his neck, but I had a bit of trouble as well, and I could even see Maxine wobbling a bit.

After five or six blocks of this procedure, she screamed to announce a right turn. This was despite Tim's disapproval; he didn't seem to enjoy the idea of careening down wooden steps on a flimsy bicycle.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"C'mon, Tim. Add a little thrill to your day." Maxine swerved sharply to the right, and Tim hesitated. Since he was the only reason I was out here, I elected to pause as well. Maxine saw that we had come to a stop, hit her brake just before the gravel met the wood, and looked back in our direction impatiently.

"So let me get this straight," Tim said, his voice quivering. "We're going to ride our bikes down that staircase."

"You went up a staircase a minute ago," I offered. "What's so bad about this?" Shortly after saying this, I wondered why I was playing into Maxine's grand plan and decided not to press the issue, but the damage had been done.

Tim's color changed, as it did only occasionally, when someone or something had hit a nerve. I had seen it once before, while I was pushing him higher and higher on a swingset. His face puffed out, and he slurred his speech. "I feel like I'm gonna break my arm again," he told me in a near-whisper. "Don't say anything to her about it!"

"You're not gonna break your arm, Tim!" she shouted from several yards away, not even turned in our direction.

"Can we please skip this part? I mean, surely a four and a half mile tour wouldn't be such a bad compromise."

"Oh, God, I've never seen anyone so melodramatic in my life!" Maxine complained. "It's four little steps!"

Even though I didn't entirely disagree with Maxine, I sided with the fear. "Let's go home!" I said to Tim. "Let's forget about this and we can go home and do whatever we want."

Tim eyed me viciously, beyond the exhaustion in his face. "Whatever you want."

Maxine could sense the emotional havoc she was inflicting. After we sat there on our bikes for a moment, she finally piped up. “Do you... need to take a break, Tim?”

He sounded like he was having an asthma attack. “I... I think so.”

"That's fine! You can, right after this." Off she went, down the steps and onto the beach. Tim moaned and followed, walking his bike down the steps as slowly as possible, before Maxine made him do it again, this time actually on the bike. Once she begged him to do it once, for her, he obliged. I did the same, and we all survived.

Tim was back to his usual self within seconds and we were now upon much more tranquil premises. The beach was deserted save for the usual small group of swimmers and surfers. He still found plenty of reasons to weave; he nearly hit but always dodged sand dunes, small pools of calm water, sand castles, large sticks poking out of the ground, unusually large mounds of sand, foam, any sand that he found threatening, and even a few crabs. The sun was still setting as clouds began to take over much of the sky; the view was pleasant, and for that brief period, so was the ride. Maxine got bored fast.

"Randy, I have a question." For the first time in the entire day, she was speaking in a normal tone. "Why were you so upset about the Young Authors thing?"

"What?" It took a moment for me to remember what exactly she meant; it had been almost two months. Tim jogged my memory with a curt "Don't get him started again."

"Why," Maxine continued, "did you want to read in front of the school, again, to begin with, and why did you kick and scream so much when they let somebody else do it?"

"Wouldn't you have wanted to be up there? I mean, all that... I don't know, all those people focused on something you've done?"

"Yeah, I'd love it!" she exclaimed. "I would have loved it all those times that they chose you over me! I got over it. I never burned effigies of you. And it's not like you take it as seriously as I do. You've never submitted anything, you don't even care about what you can do with it as long as all the idiots in our class can sit there and laugh at it."

"You sound like my mom."

"Your mom's a smart woman, Randy!"

"Yes, she is. My mom is too smart. My mom thinks it's a phase."

"Everything is a phase. You're twelve years old."

"You're eleven years old!" I snapped. Maxine obviously took offense at this, fact or not. "My mom doesn't think I take it seriously because she doesn't think I work at it."

"You don't work at it. I know you don't. Does he work at it, Tim?"

"Huh?"

"Randy's the cosummate writer guy, right? Have you ever seen him writing? Have you ever seem him do anything except these two-page jokes that make the kids happy?"

"No, never." It was possible that Tim was saying this just to go along with Maxine, and it was absolutely true, but it hurt anyway.

"Maybe I want to make the kids happy," I continued. "Mom is around these great works of art all the time, she expects me to live up to that."

"Could it be that your mom knows you won't live up to it if you only write when it's absolutely necessary?"

"She's said things to me, especially lately, things that actually hurt. If I ever show her anything, it's not good, it's just 'different,' everything's different. She thinks it helps to throw all this stuff on me."

"She gave you a legitimate project for the summer at the library!" Maxine was now speaking at the highest volume. "How can you not be grateful for that?"

"Writing a puppet show for seven year-olds to perform is a legitimate project?"

"All you'd be doing is sitting on your ass this summer anyway."

"Look," I sighed, "I'm sorry if I don't want to do things your way, or Mom's way. I'm sorry if my idea of this is different from you, but people do like what I write. I mean, you like it, right?"

Maxine looked away from me in a way that seemed distinctly performed. "No comment." Tim guffawed behind us.

"What? All this, and you don't even think I'm a good writer?" She didn't answer. "Tim, don't you think I'm good?"

Tim was still laughing about Maxine's reaction. "No comment," he echoed.

I stopped my bike. They kept going for a moment before turning back and staring at me expectantly. "Here comes the speech," Tim said, still highly amused.

I was about to cry, but I did my best to look like anger was overtaking dejection. "There must be something wrong with me," I said, "because I can see things other people can't." I remembered someone I admired writing this in his diary and thought it sounded impressive. It didn't; Tim and Maxine, respectfully enough, concealed a fit of laughter. I scrambled for something to add. "I... am a disturbed soul." The two of them finally broke their composure. So did I. "I'm sorry, okay? I am. I know, I know. But... the things you're talking about." They were still laughing. "You think it's a joke? This is my life."

My expectation was a cutting remark from Maxine about how much that sounded like bad dialogue, but instead, there was quiet for a time. She looked at me, her face flushed but otherwise now fully recovered. "Start acting like it," she said. I felt all four words in my stomach.

The ride continued in silence along the beach, still quiet and peaceful but now pregnant and unsettling. I lagged behind the others, eventually catching up in time to hear the first bit of conversation in ten minutes or so. Maxine looked at the two of us with actorly, whimpering eyes.

"Hey, Tim," she said, slowly.

"Yeah?"

"Didn't you say you were... uh, maybe going to need a break?"

“I'm okay now, thank you.”

"But don't you think you could use a break, I mean, a serious little breather? Maybe get some ice cream or something?"

"Uh... not really. I'm actually starting to enjoy this... Dodging those sticks was a real blast, I have to tell you."

I bailed her out. "I could use some time off the bike for a few minutes, I think," I said.

"Uh-huh," shot Maxine, "that's what I figured. You guys should get more exercise, build up that strength. Now, let's go up there to the pier, I think there's a snack bar."

We stopped outside of the aging store, a building placed there mostly to sell bait and tackle to the crusty guys who hung around the pier for the latest catch. Maxine still looked unsatisfied. "I don't know," she said, surveying the water again, "I'm not sure I really need a snack." I knew what was coming. Although she was one of the thinnest people I'd ever known -- replete with a kind of giraffe-neck -- Maxine was constantly expressing concerns about her weight. She pulled up her shirt a bit without explanation. "Look at that stomach," she whined.

Tim stared, said "wow," then realized that wasn't what he was supposed to say and kept quiet.

"I don't think I need to do any eating right now. Maybe just a soda."

"Would you stop it?" I said, rolling my eyes. "You know you're a toothpick."

"Yeah!" Tim was vehement. "You're not fat at all, Maxine! I'd say you're just about perfect! Really! I mean it! I mean, you're a beautiful girl, Maxine! Really! You don't need to worry about a thing! Stop it! You're being silly!" She just let him keep going like this for some time.

I took the initiative to interrupt. "If anything, I think it's a little shallow of you to be uptight about this. What would be so bad about gaining a little weight? Eat something."

"Maybe you need to eat something, Randy. It's unnatural, the way you look."

"You'd prefer I looked like Tim?"

"Shut the fuck up!" Tim looked at me, gaping, while Maxine smiled, proud of the division she'd managed.

"I'm sorry, Tim," I said, "she was leading me in that direction. She did it on purpose."

"Oh, come off it, Randy." Maxine took on an angelic voice, or the closest approximation in her range. "I didn't say a word!" Her ego boosted, she was now ready to eat.

Tim and I stayed outside. Maxine, on the other hand, had no qualms about taking her transportation into the store with her. While we watched in a mixture of awe and horror, she pedaled in and half a minute later burst out with two bags of Fritos, a Cherry Coke, and an ice cream bar somehow divided among her two hands. She tossed me one of the Frito bags and kept the rest for herself, much to Tim's dismay.

"Don't I get something to drink?" he inquired.

"You didn't ask."

"Well, c'mon, Tim," I said, munching on the Fritos which, thanks to the sea air, began to taste like fish, "you have money, right? You were going to get a pizza, remember? Go in and get something!"

"I don't have money! I was humoring you, stupid!"

"Oh. Well, whatever then." I smugly consumed more Fritos, even though they tasted awful.

"Let's take a little walk," Maxine suggested, eating everything she'd purchased all at once. She finally stored her bike alongside ours, near the front door. We walked along the pier, the wood creaking beneath our feet, watching as the sun surrendered to the rain clouds ahead. Tim, still well behind us finagling for some money in his Mickey Mouse wallet at the door, ran as fast as he could to catch up with us and commenced looking pitiful.

"Maxine?"

"Yeah?"

"Have you... uh, opened your drink yet?"

"Yeah?"

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Could I... maybe have a--?"

"No."

"Oh."

"Uh-huh."

"I promise I won't --"

"No, Tim."

"Well, then... hmm... you bought some ice cream, right?"

"Yeah?"

"Have you unwrapped it yet? Is it --?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Right."

"And what about --"

"Forget it, Tim!"

"Dammit... can't I at least have a sip of the Coke?"

Maxine held up her bottle, with just a small bit of fluid left within, and gleefully poured what little was left off the side of the pier. "I'm sorry, Tim, were you saying something?"

He was ready to kill her. I was quite pleased, preparing to ask Tim if we could now go home and work on a revenge plan. However, quickly realizing that she might have crossed the line, Maxine decided it was time to resume before either of us could say much, and the windy cacophony of the seaside atmosphere added a few hurdles to quiet communication. In a moment she was back on her bike and on the road again. Tim and I went after her in what, to an unfamiliar bystander, might have looked something like faith.

The scenery did not change for some time. Recovering eventually from his heartache, Tim began to get bored. "Where are we going, Maxy?" he begged after a long silence, still slightly aggressive.

"Don't ever call me that again, you scumbag."

"Um... okay."

The silence continued for a few more minutes before Tim's voice again intruded. "You didn't answer my question."

"Excuse me?"

"I asked you where we were going?"

"What do you think this is, a family vacation, Tim? I'm at the wheel here. You follow me. Never mind where I'm going."

"Whatever."

"Okay then."

Finally, Maxine held up her hand and veered to the left, signaling our turn onto a much older, less populated road. The pavement was cracked and nearly destroyed from storms in years past and well beyond repair, most likely because no one except Maxine knew it existed. Because it was a bumpy ride. my irritable mood worsened.

"So what the hell is this about?"

"Huh?" Maxine replied, distracted.

"Yeah, I'm talking to you, Maxy." I was not to be mistaken for my cohort.

Tim cautiously remained silent, and while we continued to move along the demonically cracked back street, he stared in mild fascination as the drama unfolded. “What... did you just call me?” Maxine coldly demanded, never faltering in her balance or speed.

"I said, where the fuck're we going, Maxy?"

"Randy, do you want to live to see your home again?"

"Well, I don't know. I wouldn't want to interfere with your touring plans."

"Randy?”

"Yes, Maxy?"

"I think you and Tim are going to get a very special Five-Mile Tour today."

"It seems special enough to me already."

Maxine could have broken then and kicked me in the ass, but she didn't. This was typical; her civilized veneer always seemed ready to explode in someone's face but never did. When she was angry or bitter, she didn't argue or hide, she just found the right way to be cold and hurtful, more than all the violence and verbal abuse in the world. She was going to quietly destroy me from the inside, and I knew it. I took preventative measures.

"You can't intimidate me, you know," I said. "You're not the only one with a few tricks. I have some stories I could tell." She wavered a bit. "I know I said I would never do that. I know you don't think I would. I would, you can believe it. Just keep that in mind, okay? I'm not as easygoing as you think I am. I can haunt you in your sleep."

Maxine wavered again, this time from laughing. She covered her mouth to try and keep me from noticing, but when it was clear that it hadn't worked, she erupted. "Yeah, because you see things we don't, right? Hey, everybody, 'I am a disturbed soul!' Hey Tim, Randy's a disturbed soul! He's gonna get you in your sleep! You'd better watch out!"

It happened faster than I could think. I had seldom before reacted so violently to anyone. Her scream shot me back into reality; I had pushed her, on her bike, onto the side of the road, and she had fallen into a ditch, the bike's front wheel still spinning, its back tire resting on her leg. There had been a crunch, one that had only reverberated and clarified afterward. I could also faintly hear Tim shouting, but it was only the vaguest, most indistinguishable noise at first, and maybe he wasn't forming words, but more likely it was me that couldn't discern them.

"Oh my god, Randy! What did you do? What the fuck did you do?" Maxine was lying motionless in the grass and mud; I knelt down beside her. "You're going to kill somebody, if you haven't already," he continued. "You have got to calm down, man! This is just like when you ran out in front of that car over in --" I slapped him before he could finish, only the second time I'd hit anyone in the face. Everything about what these two people knew about me was uncomfortable, terrifying. I immediately felt guilty, because instead of breaking down and crying, like the first person I had ever hit, Tim kept his fixed, burning stare on me. I was humiliated.

"I'm sorry, okay? Look, I don't know. I'm sorry."

"It's okay!" The voice was a muffled female one. I spun around sharply to see Maxine pulling herself up, spitting dirt from her mouth before standing up, looking more powerful and stunning than ever, now caked in grime, grinning like a maniac. "You can hurt a girl, Randy. I kind of admire that."

"Shut up."

"I mean it. In a million years Tim would never have done that." She bent to pick up her bike, entirely unfazed by her condition. "That's your blessing and your curse, Mr. Clam."

"You're damn right I wouldn't have done it," Tim exclaimed. "He could have just killed you, do you realize that? Do you know how lucky you were that it happened where it did? Look, Randy, you have got to ease up a little bit."

I grabbed Tim's shoulders and got into his face in just the way I knew would annoy him the most. "Tim, do me a favor, okay? Stop. Talking. Just don't say a word, okay? I don't want to hear it. Nobody wants to hear it. I don't even want to be here. Just let's turn around and walk away and forget this ever happened. I'm sorry I hit you. Maxine's okay, I've calmed down. Now shut up." The instant I eased my grip, Tim twirled around, mounting his bike, and began pedaling furiously. Maxine and I stood, watching.

"What is with you, Randy?" Maxine's tone had changed again to something resembling what one might hear in day-to-day life with a normal person.

"What do you mean? You knew you were playing with fire, you know how --"

"I'm not talking about me. I almost wanted you to push me. I almost liked it. But why do you treat Tim this way?"

"What way? It's the only way I've ever treated Tim. It's the way he treats me."

"No, he doesn't. And that's just it. You act like his surrogate father or something. Trust me, I've met Tim's dad, he doesn't need another one. At least you talk to me like you respect me. You talk to him like he works for you or something."

"Look, Tim is different from you or me."

"Oh, stop it. Look, listen to me for a second. I know what you're doing, okay?" I shook my head, but she continued. "I do the same exact thing to my mom. I know it and I try to stop it. It's hard. But Tim doesn't have to deal with you."

"Tim dragged me out here. I'm not going to listen to --"

"Randy?" she cooed. "Is it really so bad out here?"

"I don't want to be here." I started to walk off. She grabbed my shoulder, transferring some of her acquired mud to me.

"Randy, lighten up, okay? Try and be a little nicer to him."

From where I was standing, the sun seemed to be rising behind Maxine, and explosions of orange light emerged all around her. Somehow she seemed more human today, visibly begging for somebody's mercy. "I've never seen you this serious," I said.

She smiled. "Do you like it?"

"No."

She let out a laugh that sounded like it struggled to escape. "Fuck you."

"Are you guys coming?" Tim was back, as I knew he would be, glaring up at us impatiently. I was still ready to go home. Maxine was ready to take us around the world.

***

We soon found ourselves on Sunwater Terrace which was, as a sign at the corner proclaimed, “an exciting planned community for true ladies and true gentlemen.” In other words, wealthy socialites who liked to play golf.

Maxine summed it up. "This is the Yuppie road." It was freshly paved and moved steeply uphill, making it a difficult bicycle commute. Various elderly couples carefully mowed and gardened in their identical fenced-in yards outside their identical houses, all with two stories and big garages.

After we'd silently passed five or six of the flawless tinkertoy homes, we came upon a small vacant area on which nothing had been built yet. Instead, a number of the locals were gathered at a picnic of sorts. Out of nowhere, Maxine twirled, maneuvered around a ditch, and sank into the trees approaching the afternoon tea party. Tim was gullible and followed. I hesitated but eventually decided to be just as gullible.

The Yuppies didn't like us. Maxine didn't care. She did offer them some warning before riding straight through the middle of one of the large blankets set up with food on them. "Coming through!" she announced, watching as the angry group of women around the area moved the baskets and plates out of the way. An infinite number of other ways she could have moved through the clearing existed, but she elected to drive into the busiest area while Tim and I stayed clear to the left. We paused and watched her ecstatically slide around the various tables and blankets, avoiding anyone who came in her path but doing nothing to keep from running over her fair share of sandwiches and salads. Finally, she turned over to our location, still looking like the happiest girl on the planet.

"Man, you guys never want to have any fun."

"You call that fun?" I probed. "The whole community probably hates you now."

"No, they don't. They're used to this. In just a second they'll start throwing food at us." They did. "Anyway, we're going right in here, through these trees."

"Into the woods?" Tim asked nervously.

"Yeah, Tim, and don't even try to take a break this time. It's time for some good old-fashioned physical exhaustion, and anyway, you could stand to lose a few pounds." With that, she sank from our view. Tim stopped at glared at me.

"Hey, I didn't say a word," I said, entering the forest.

This being 7:30 in the middle of summer, there was still enough sunlight left so that we could see in the maze of tall trees Maxine had led us into; we just couldn't figure out where we were going. Tim broke the ice.

"Hey, Maxine!" he screamed.

"You rang?" she screamed back, sounding not the least bit interested in what he had to say.

"Where are we headed?"

"The other side!"

"No kidding. Are we even going the right way?"

"Oh, come on, kid. This is an island. We go one way, we hit water. We go another way, we hit a road. We go another way, we hit another road. There isn't a wrong way."

My turn. "Wait a minute. Don't you have any idea where we're going from here?"

"Well, see, it's all based on chance. Wherever we end up, we'll mess around for a while until we get back on the main road, then it's on to our grand finale. Exciting!"

"I can't believe this."

"Well, look on the bright side, Randy," Tim offered. "In the woods, there are two types of people: The ones who go in circles, and the ones who go in really big circles."

I didn't give this much thought. "Maxine, why do you insist on making me miserable?"

"Since when is this about you, Randy?"

I couldn't see her, buried somewhere in the surrounding trees, looking for the nearest way out, so it was now easier to argue with her. "You made this about me. You brought up the story and everything."

"I made you miserable because of that?"

"You know you did!"

She laughed. "Is it my fault you're a bad writer?" Tim chortled.

I was furious, again. "Laugh all you want. Nobody cares about what you think. That's why you don't get along with your mom. She doesn't care about your opinion. Nobody does. Nobody ever will. You're just an insignificant little girl lost in the woods." I was enjoying this rant until I turned in the middle of the last sentence to see Maxine leaning on a tree, watching me wide-eyed, looking wounded enough that I immediately regretted everything. We stared at one another like alarmed cats for a moment before Tim came bounding into the area, cackling about nothing in particular, and she covered her face and walked away.

We were still nowhere near the infamous bridge, and the day had already been an emotional rollercoaster. I had not anticipated that my words would be any more than the usual banter, but they had made a mark. She ignored everything I said, every apology and offering, everything. I knew she was crying. Without seeing her, I knew it. It was the only thing that would shut her up for so long a stretch.

Trying to lighten the mood as soon as she felt recuperated enough, she chimed in amid a few supressed sniffles. "You know what's really weird?"

"Uh... what?" Tim responded.

"I saw a dead squirrel out here once."

"Yeah, so?"

"So. Isn't that weird?"

"Not really... I'd think there'd be a lot of dead squirrels out here."

"Oh," she said, looking disappointed. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Oh, well."

"Was there something strange about this particular squirrel?" I asked.

"No, I guess not." Maxine sounded sadder than I'd ever heard her before. "Don't you think someone should give those things a proper burial? I mean, those poor squirrels, just left to decompose in the middle of this little clump of trees."

I had to laugh.

"Hey, shut up," she ordered sharply. "I just think, you know, maybe we should all put together this little organization to bury all the poor little birdies and squirrelys and --"

"Woah, yeah," exploded an overly enthusiastic Tim. "I bet there's a lot of money in that."

"Who the hell's gonna pay you, the squirrel's heirs?"

"No... maybe their government or something."

I laughed again.

"Man, what's your problem?" Tim flashed me that glare again. "Squirrels could have a government. They're, like, almost as smart as humans, you know."

"No, they're not, dude. You're thinking of dolphins."

"What? No, it's squirrels!"

"Actually," Maxine agreed, "he's right. You are thinking of dolphins."

"Oh," Tim sighed, sounding pained. The ride was silent for a few minutes, then he opened up once more. "I just always thought squirrels were so cute... hey, look, there's one." He hit his brake abruptly and looked down at a squirrel perched in front of one of the many trees. Maxine and I both stopped and watched in horror as Tim incomprehensibly turned into Ranger Rick.

"Hey, squirrely," he said in a disgusting tone. "Come here." He began to approach it, holding out his left hand. What exactly he was expecting the squirrel to do went over my head, but the inevitable happened and his little friend elected to take a nice bite out of his index finger.

"Ow!" Tim screamed. "Let's get out of here." He mounted his bike and raced out before the remaining two of us could even fully understand what had happened.

"Anyway," Maxine continued, "I was just thinking maybe, instead of setting up a lemonade stand like most of the career-motivated kids, we could have a funeral home for squirrels."

"Uh... right."

"And you two could be my business partners!"

"Yeah!" Tim said, slipping Maxine a high-five.

I wasn't so taken. "Well, I'm not sure. Seems kind of weird..."

"I'll bet that's what they said to Bill Gates."

"Bill Gates wasn't marketing animal coffins."

"So? We're just like Bill Gates. We're helping out the community." My lack of a response was apparently conspicuous. "Well? Don't you have some smartass argument?"

We were obviously the really-big-circles variety, I was thinking. "I just want to get out of the damn woods, okay?"

Miraculously, we didn't have to wait much longer. Soon enough, we came out onto a road directly opposite the street we'd been on before our little dance in the trees. It was one of the less scenic parts of time, the only noticeable vehicles being a few abandoned cars parked on the side. The trees were bent into bizarre shapes and the way their shadows hit the ground made me shudder. My companions stayed ahead of me, discussing their new career path, ignoring me save Maxine's glance back in my direction when it came time to turn.

Right about the time I started to get a little more comfortable with my surroundings, we came upon a man lying in the middle of the road, sleeping on, of all things, a tire, with a Judy Blume book resting on his stomach. His face was covered by a long beard.

"Hey, Maxine," I whispered, approaching the others. "What's this guy's deal? I didn't know there were people like that on the island."

"Oh, he's always there," she replied nonchalantly.

"Yeah, man," Tim concurred. "Even I knew that."

"What's he doing?"

"Birdwatching," they replied in unison. Maxine went on. "His wife died a while back. Didn't you read that story in the society page about his house in the woods and everything?"

"No, can't say that I did."

"Oh... well... sorry, jerkass." She turned back around and continued her conversation with Tim.

We crept along the dirt road a while longer. Halfway down the line, it narrowed, and just afterward Maxine decided to turn right after telling Tim and me that it was "time to run an errand."

"What kind of errand?" Tim asked.

"An important one. We're going to the store." She went ahead of us again, navigating through a field of various forgotten objects that bore a striking resemblance to a battleground. The pronounced abundance of old toys lying around suggested that this clearing was full of memories, and they weren't all good ones.

Just beyond this barren pinestraw desert was Dutchman Creek, known fondly as D.C. to its residents. I had never actually seen the place. It wasn't exactly a popular weekend destination for anyone, much less the youth of the community. It was easy to see why -- the more well-off portion of the neighborhood consisted of five suspiciously trailer-like houses, most of which had lawns that appeared not to have been mowed in decades upon decades. Windows were broken, shingles were long-lost, and most of the homes looked ready to collapse. “Dutchman Creek: An Exciting Planned Beach Community,” read the graffiti-splattered sign at the entrance.

One house was particularly frightening. It was painted white, with a shaded area at the front clearly intended as a garden of sorts. Instead of a pleasant home, though, the place looked like something uncovered at Pompeii, with a little bit of the deep south thrown in. The entire front of the house was covered with a large spraypainted message: “The Lord is watching.” On the ground near the front door, next to a badly-beaten Isuzu, was a cardboard sign in the shape of a cross reading simply “R.I.P.” It had been knocked over and stepped upon, but several sets of dead flowers still surrounded it.

Maxine saw me staring at this house and laughed, then stopped her bike just ahead of its almost invisible driveway. "This is what we call a real fixer-upper," she told me, proceeding to slap my shoulder painfully and guffaw, and within seconds resume moving along the road.

"What the hell are we doing down here?" Tim wondered. "First it's the woods, now it's the fucking ghetto?"

"This is much worse than the ghetto," I quietly tossed in. "This is just scary..."

"Now, guys, there's nothing wrong with D.C.; some people aren't as well off as us."

"Right, and I don't really mind that," Tim replied, raising his voice, "but I really don't want to be shot at, so you could be please kindly let us off this awful road?"

"No, I can't, Tim," Maxine insisted in a much louder tone. "The store is on this road."

"What store?" I asked.

"There are businesses here?" supplemented Tim.

"Yeah, Tim! Where do you think they get their handguns?" We both broke out laughing. I didn't mention that I had stolen this joke from a boy I knew who lived in the neighborhood.

Maxine stopped her bike and positioned it so that we both nearly crashed into her; she spoke through gritted teeth. "Did I not just say that this is a perfectly safe neighborhood?" She looked at me with hatred in her eyes. "Oh, I forgot! My opinion doesn't matter! Never mind." I stayed behind for a moment after the others moved off, resigned and not particularly surprised to her reaction but still mildly alarmed by how severe it seemed.

Staying well behind Tim and Maxine, I could hear him repeat his question about the store. "It's a really cool store," she said. "They sell Cokes for fifty cents and I get half price 'cause the weirdo in the store says I'm pretty."

"Sounds like you have a secret admirer," Tim teased. I prepared for Maxine's wrath, but she seemed to take taunting in stride coming from someone who wasn't me.

"No kidding. It's easy to say he's just a crazy old man, but he's actually a crazy old man who went to prison twice."

"Wow. Don't you think maybe you should avoid that place?"

"Hey, what kind of idiot do you think I am? I'm not passing up cheap drinks." She dismounted in front of what looked like an ancient outhouse with several half-asleep men lounging in rocking chairs out front on a wooden deck larger than the building itself. "Maybe you guys'd better stay out here. Wouldn't want you to get hurt," she laughed, heading up the rotting steps to the deck. "Hi, Larry, J.P., Mark, Patrick," she nodded.

"Hi, Maxine," they all chanted back.

"Uh, look, sweetheart," said the guy on the far left, "I think the store's closed, and you probably wouldn't want to go in there anyway."

"Why's that?" Maxine wondered casually, tugging on the door.

"Well, listen for a second." The three others, wrapped in other conversation, paused while Maxine listened.

Tim and I could also hear it from where we were standing. There were bloodcurdling screams coming from within the store.

"What's going on?"

"Old Man Peterson's son came down for a visit," one of the others told her. "I don't think he was too happy about it."

Tim: "Old Man Peterson?"

"He owns the store," Maxine explained nonchalantly. "C'mon, Tim, let's go. Oh, by the way, Larry, how's the wife?"

Larry's face brightened. "She's doing better. She's walking again, I think."

"Oh, that's good. Well, I'll see you fellas later then."

"Bye, Maxine!" the guys chanted.

"Well," said Maxine, preparing to ride off once again, "that really sucks. We have to go to the other store now. The convenience mart. I feel like such a corporate tool."

"Listen, are we ever going to get to the damn bridge?" Tim demanded.

"All in due time, pal," she answered quickly, riding off with us behind. I secretly hoped we'd never make it all the way there, that either the world would end before that time came, something would kill us all quickly and painlessly, or Maxine and Tim would get distracted, preferably the last one. I found myself yearning for the squirrel conversation again, but Maxine only became that ridiculous when she was really upset, which also was not something I particularly wanted.

I was increasingly preoccupied, now, with something else. "Oh, my god," I yelled. By now it had also grasped Tim's attention: We were back at the golf course.

Now it was time for me to get riled. "What the hell is this, Maxine?"

"Maybe it's a different golf course," Tim muttered.

"Uh..." Maxine's voice cracked. "It's the same one, but, I promise you, we're just taking a little side trip to the store so I can --"

"No!" I retaliated. "We're not taking any damned side trip, we're not going through this bullshit anymore. I'm sick of this, so you can fuck your Goddamn Five-Mile Six-Mile Whatever Piece of Shit This Is Tour. I'm going home."

Maxine began shouting. "I'll be damned if I ate a perfectly good hour and a half out of my Sunday to take you guys on a perfectly good deluxe Five-Mile Tour and have you and Tim ruin it all."

Tim got defensive. "Excuse me? I didn't do anything!"

Maxine flailed her arms about and shouted in a screeching, mocking tone. "You're an ass, Tim! You didn't do anything but wander around on a pier and harass a bunch of picnickers! This was the stupidest, wimpiest Tour ever, and it's all your fault 'cause you're fat!"

"What!?"

"I said you're fat. You are. I mean, seriously fat. You're not even fashionably plump. Just plain fat!" By now, Maxine was crying again; Tim just looked puzzled, having understood even before I did that she meant none of this. "Is this better, Randy? Is this how you like to treat people? Tim, nobody cares about you because you're fat! And I am a lost fucking soul! How's that? Am I okay in your book now, Randy?"

I was taken aback. "Look, I'm not upset with you, you're not the one who made me come here."

"I didn't make you do anything," Tim corrected.

"But I'm not mad at either of you. I'm just --"

Maxine broke in once again. "You're the one who says I'm worthless. You're the one who tells me he doesn't want to be around me."

"Listen, I didn't mean what I said. But earlier you were attacking something that's really sacred to me, you know?"

"I was trying to help you. You asked me my opinion. Ha! It's a funny thing, how my opinion doesn't matter but you ask me for it. Isn't that funny, Tim?"

Tim was not interested in any involvement. "Um, I don't..."

"I hate the fact," she continued, now quieter and more focused, standing just inches away from me, "that I care enough about how you feel for it to matter to me what you said. But it does matter."

"Why does it matter, Maxine? All I was saying was... it doesn't matter what you or I or anyone thinks. We're just people."

"Just people, just people," she chanted. "You're not just a person to me. You're somebody who matters to me. Does that get through to you? At all?"

It didn't, ever, certainly not now. "Of course it does. But why should it matter what I think?"

"You know why."

"I don't."

"Then you're never going to. See you guys later."

***

She was still within sight when I started to regret, more than usual, all of my actions from the prior hours. "Well?" I looked at Tim. "Aren't you going to run after her like a lapdog?"

"This is what you wanted, right?" said Tim. "I'm going home."

"Do you think we should call her when we get there? I feel kind of --"

"I'm going to my home. See you." He began to bike off in the same direction as Maxine, but I believed what he had said.

It could have ended there. I could have gone home. I followed Maxine McLellan, who was heading anywhere but home, instead. It did not take long to catch up with her. She probably wanted one of us to. I couldn't stay away; I never had been able to, really.

"What can I say now, Maxine?" I said as I approached.

"Whatever you couldn't say in front of your friend."

"What's that? What can I not say in front of Tim? He obviously worships you. I didn't even know it until today, but apparently..."

"Tim has not said the kind of things to me that you have. And don't ask me what I mean by that because you already know. The ten nicest things anybody's ever said to me are all you, Randy. And as of today, the meanest thing, by far, that anybody's ever said to me is you too."

I did not tell her that almost everything she'd said to me was on my secret "meanest" list, nor did I tell her that if she had berated me constantly for the rest of my life it would not be enough to make me regret knowing her. "So what can I say now? That I didn't mean it? That your opinion matters to me? It does. You already know it does. Why do you need it spelled out? Do you need me to tell you you're a great person and I like being with you?"

She still wouldn't look at me. "There are two things. There's something I want, and something I need. I want to see you when you haven't been forced to see me, and if that has to be the way I want to not be constantly reminded that you don't want to be there. What I need is for you to admit you're wrong. You can compliment me for the rest of your life and it won't be the same as knowing it means something. So tell me you're wrong about something, Randy Clam. Show me what's ticking in there for once."

"I'm wrong about everything," I offered, much too quickly for her tastes, it seemed. "Let's get Tim, okay? Every bad thing I've said, I take it back, okay? Let's just find Tim and get this over with."

She rolled her eyes. "Fine," she sighed. "We're not doing very well with our deal so far, Randy, but I forgive you. For some reason I miss you when I don't." I didn't answer. "See? That was a sincerely expressed human admission. I'd love to hear how you feel sometime."

Maxine had never talked this way before; it was the summer night doing it, I assumed. I biked ahead of her unconsciously, just to feel the breeze. Behind me, I could hear her try to call me, come up beside me and try to get in another fight, then start following me quietly again, but I only heard it. I didn't look and I barely noticed. I just stayed on my little bicycle and kept quiet. It occured to me that I might be making things worse in my daze, but as the speed picked up faster than I thought I could go, I looked over at her and she smiled; she understood what I was doing and was doing the same.

Finding Tim turned out to be easy; he was waiting at the convenience store when we got there, a grin of recognition on his face. We marched into the store, sans bikes this time around, and looked around for a reason to give the place our business. Tim went straight to the candy rack and prepared to hound us for money while Maxine and I spied the slushy machine in the back.

"You want to get a slushy?" Maxine asked.

"Mm."

"Uh... okay."

"Right."

"You okay, man?"

"Fine."

"Sure?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. What flavor do you like?"

"What flavors do they have?"

"Well, let's see." Maxine began reading the labels on the small containers that resembled soap dispensers. "There's Bursting Bubble Gum, Likable Lime, Let's Lick Lots of Lemons, Mango Melon Misty Mixer, Coconut Chocolate Cola-Riffic, Bursting Bubble Gum: The Revenge, Peppermint Passionfruit Papaya Punch, Banana Berry Blaster, Stupendously Sour Apple, Serious Orange Action, Kava Kava Koffee Killer, Blender-Buncha-Berry-Buzz, and Cherry."

"Serious Orange Action? What the hell?"

"Look, I don't make up the flavor names, Randy, so take your pick."

"Well, I don't know... so many choices..."

"Actually," droned the young man at the counter watching a game on his portable TV, "they're all cherry. We ran out of the other flavors."

"Oh," I said, trying to sound like I cared as I did my best not to fall asleep standing up.

"Well," Maxine continued cheerfully, "I guess we know what kind we're getting, huh? Well, Randy, make us some slushies."

"What?"

"Make us each a slushy. You do know how to do it, right?"

"Look, Maxine, I'm not really feeling up to this. Can you maybe do it this one time?"

Maxine looked nervous. “Uh... no, I just can't do that. You do it."

I sighed. "Maxine, do it yourself. You don't even have to make me a Slushy. I just need to use the bathroom. See you." I wandered to the back of the store, where I found the door to the mens' restroom locked. It couldn't be a coincidence that our own Tim was nowhere to be seen.

As I waited outside the restroom, Maxine showed up. Her hands were sticky with slushy syrup and her shirt was stained with the same mysterious liquid. In her hands she held three of the icy substances in cups, handing one to me silently before motioning to her shirt and complaining, "Look what happened to me, Randy! You left me alone to do the slushy engineering myself, and now my happy shirt has gone to hell."

"Your happy shirt?"

"Yes! It's my happy shirt! I wear it for good luck. I wanted it to be a good tour. One I'd always remember, but now that's all over, thanks to you guys. And to top it all off, my happy shirt is ruined. First the mud you pushed me into, now the slushies."

I didn't dignify her with a response, first because I was amazed she wasn't angrier that I pushed her into the ditch, second because I couldn't tell if she was joking. Instead, I looked around for a place to sit; elaborate gas station that this was, there was actually a set of tables near the front windows. In one of these we sat down, leaving room for Tim when his journey to the center of the earth concluded, and I noticed that within half a second Maxine was slumping down to invisible status in her chair.

"Um, what exactly are you doing?" I asked, lazily sipping on my awful cherry slushy. She evidently had filled the cup with syrup and added a few inklings of the crushed ice.

"I hope no one sees me here," she answered.

"What?"

"I'm sliding down so no one will come in and see me!"

"What, are you embarrassed to be in public with me?"

"Well, of course I am!" She smiled. "And my happy shirt is stained."

Before I could consider the ups and downs of knocking her chair over on her and leaving, Tim arrived and was as bright and hopeful as ever. "Why do we have to sit here?" he whined, pulling his chair closer and resting in it. “Can't we just hurry up and get to the bridge? It's almost 8:00..."

"Uh... we brought you a slushy, Tim," I said, sliding his cup over to him. His face brightened up by a thousand percent. “Thanks, guys,” he laid on us enthusiastically, sipping and staring at his cup in deep thought. "You know," he began after a moment, "have you ever noticed that it would be really easy to steal these things?"

"What things?” Maxine tiredly wondered.

"That slushy syrup and ice. I mean, it's right there out in the open. I think they should have a cop whose only job is to guard that slushy machine."

I looked over at said machine, despite Maxine's whispered protests (“Don't look over there, please”) and noticed something very strange. The entire surface of the counter around the machine was covered in... well, slushy.

"Jesus, Maxine, what were you doing over there?"

Without warning, she began to cry. "I tried," she whimpered through the tears that rolled down, wrecking her excessive childish makeup. "I tried and I tried, but I just can't do it!"

"Can't do what?" I pried cautiously. This put new perspective on her excessive emotion from several minutes previously, but maybe it was just burnout.

"I can't mix a slushy the right way! I always mess it up!" Here she banged her first on the table, knocking over Tim's messed-up drink. "First I tried to just put a few drops of the syrup in and add a bunch of ice, but I tasted it and it tasted like water, so then I threw those cups away and put in a little more syrup and less ice the next time around, but it overflowed all over the counter and the stupid guy at the counter refused to clean up my mess. Finally, I got mad as hell and filled the cups up with syrup and added a shitload of ice, but that overflowed too and most of the ice didn't make it into the cup."

"Oh," Tim said, nodding but a bit too fascinated by his slushy to give her mistake much thought.

"I see," I yawned.

Maxine looked angry and nervous. "Well... well... I'm sorry!" she shouted, storming out of her chair, tossing a few dollar bills onto the counter and racing out.

I watched her pace around outside thoughtfully. "Hmm..."

"What?"

"I think that what I said really got to her earlier, don't you?"

"What?"

"Do you think we should join her?"

"What?"

"Do you think we should go outside where she is?"

"Who?"

"Maxine, stupid!"

"Oh."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Jesus, man, what's wrong with you? Do you think we should go and talk to her or something?"

"Talk to who now?"

He stared at me with narrowed eyes as he sipped his slushy. "Never mind, Tim. I'm going to the bathroom."

"What?" he replied. I didn't answer. I approached the door to find that it was occupied once again, going along with this being my lucky day. After cursing to myself and turning around again, I found that Tim had left the store in a hurry and was now outside with his arm around Maxine, rocking her back and forth. This I had to be a witness to; I ran across the building and out the door and could immediately hear Maxine's cries of "Why me, world? Why?"

"Tim," I began, "I thought you weren't coming out here."

"Where'd you get that? She was out here, looking so sad, and you didn't do a damn thing about it!"

"Excuse me? I told you --"

"Oh, don't you think you've done enough damage already?" he yelled, pointing at Maxine's face. "She's just an innocent little girl, and all day long, at every given opportunity, you've given her your usual bullshit."

"What are you --?"

"Well, we're tired of it, mister. I think your friend here is a little too upset to talk to you right now, but I, for one, am ready for payback. We're getting you across that bridge and then we're going home, and we don't want to see you following us. Maxine and I are moving on to better things, and you're not" Tim jumped on to his bike -- oddly enough, it didn't break -- and began to ride away. Maxine flashed me another big smile.

"So I'm the one who condescends to him, huh?" I said, trying to tease but probably just sounding grouchy.

"We're just kids, remember? It's all a big game anyway."

"Maybe to you it is. You seem so much older when it's just us."

"I wonder why." She flashed a glance I'd never seen on her. Whether it was hopeless or scathing was debatable, but it was certainly unfamiliar. Soon she too was making a left turn behind her buddy.

Nothing was said until Maxine told Tim, riding alongside her, to make a left turn, and Tim resentfully turned back to me and did the same. As soon as we turned onto the next road, Tim spied a dead snake and began laughing at it, as did Maxine. I could faintly hear them discussing their burial ground again, but now I knew it was too late to get them distracted. My stomach churned painfully. The sun had nearly disappeared but the sky was still dark blue and we could still see as it approached 8:30. There weren't many cars where we were riding, but occasionally one would pass, and I wished that I was in one of them as my destiny approached with each passing block, each streetlight, each second. I knew it wouldn't be long before I'd be riding across the bridge that had left me sick for a week last time. My heart was racing.

"Are you okay, Randy?" Maxine called back, sounding genuine enough.

"I'm fine," I said.

Why didn't I just veer off one of these side streets, I wondered? They wouldn't even notice. Why didn't I just disappear, then act like nothing had happened the next time I had to face them? I even came close to dodging off onto one of those roads, but I couldn't do it. The time now seemed to slow down. I wondered if we would ever arrive at the bridge; we biked and biked, with nothing visible. I glanced at my watch and realized that it still wasn't 8:30 yet. I thought to myself that everything would be over in ten minutes.

And there it was.

The structure, seeming even larger than it had before in the full sunshine, was lying a few hundred feet straight ahead, its foreboding silhouette seeming to stretch out for miles onward. It bent and twisted around, then stooped for a bit and moved steeply uphill and came out on the other side of this small body of water that appeared to share the Grand Canyon's size from where I was as it came into view.

Maxine and Tim got excited. They laughed and talked beyond my range of hearing; I was by myself and the end was near.

***

It was quite some time before either of them addressed me once we'd stopped by the bridge. I was increasingly enraged all the while, wondering what had allowed me to end up here, knowing the answer and growing in fury because of it. The heat was catching up with me now, as sweat and anger seemed to overtake me. The air was thick with humidity and mosquitoes, neither of which were a problem for my comrades.

"Well, here we go, Randy!" Maxine said, grinning, before removing her glasses and pocketing them. "Tim and I can just ride over the thing and then ride back, if you like."

"No. I... no."

"Oh, did you want to go over the bridge?"

"Well, that's what this is about, right? You two trying to embarrass me, making me go over your stupid bridge?"

Maxine rolled her eyes, brushed her forehead, and put her glasses back on. "What this is about is spending time with people I like. Nobody's making you do anything."

"I've heard that before. I've heard that last time. Then you said I ruined your evening."

"Well, you were a little ornery, you know? But I'm sorry I said that."

"Ah-ha! You're sorry! See? People slip sometimes, don't they?"

"Don't I know it," she fumed. "Tim, let's forget this and go home. Let Lassie have the kennel."

Tim looked heartbroken. "Come on, Randy. Let us have fun. You don't have to go over the bridge!"

"No, no," Maxine said, gathering herself and mounting her bike. "Let's not make Randy unhappy. He has sacrificed so much for us, after all."

"Both of you, shut up!" I wanted the domineering moon to hear me. The others were startled. Even the bugs and birds seemed a little startled. "You know I don't want to be here. I've told you all day."

This seemed to bother Maxine even more; she put her head down but didn't say anything. Tim protested instead. "Why don't you go then, Randy?"

"I don't have to tell you that."

"Why don't you tell us why? Tell us why or go home. Ride over the bridge with us or don't. Just... do something."

"Talk to us, Randy," Maxine said without lifting her head. "You want to know what we want, that's what we want. That's all."

I didn't move. "Randy, listen," Tim said, grabbing me in much the same way as I had grabbed him a while ago; I assumed Maxine had given him a pep talk. "You can stand here and whine, or you can turn around and go home."

Again, I was motionless. An eternity seemed to pass before Maxine lifted her head, looked more irritated than ever, and made things worse. "Leave him alone, Tim. He's a disturbed soul, remember?"

"Fuck off, Maxine!" I threw Tim's arm off my shoulder and walked over to the dropoff.

"Uh-oh, watch out, Tim. The disturbed soul is getting angsty again! Maybe he'll write one of his masterpieces now."

"Maxine!"

"Yes, master?"

"Shall I tell Tim about how we met? Do you know how Maxine and I met? Do you know what happened? She hates it when I tell people, did you know that? She does. So do you want to know?" I riffed on this question, my primary blackmail message, for a good while before resorting to asking Tim if he wanted to know what kind of underwear Maxine wore (she still had the "days-of-the-week" panties; I had seen her mother buying them). Neither of them reacted. With every word I seemed to worsen the situation. At last I stopped and stared down into the bottomless pit.

"The disturbed soul feels misunderstood, Tim," Maxine gloated. "The disturbed soul thinks we can be bought with information. He watches too many spy movies, I think. It must be because he's so alienated. Look at him over there. He's probably going to teach us all a lesson by jumping off the bridge."

"Is that what I should do?" I chimed in. "Would that put an end to this?"

"It would put an end to something," she said, unimpressed.

"Should I do it?" I begged desperately. "Do you dare me?"

"You've got the gun," Tim said. "Pull the trigger, bitch."

As they already knew, I was not going to jump off the bridge that night, but perhaps I could just as well have. The world seemed even bleaker than it had fifteen minutes before. The world can often seem very bleak to a child.

"Why are you out here, Randy?" Maxine asked, obviously not expecting an answer. "You're never going to tell, are you?"

We were a misshapen triangle, just eyeing one another, waiting for the next move. The most desperate one, as usual, was the one who gave in. "Why are you out here, Tim?" I demanded.

"Probably for the same reason you are." Tim smiled; he seemed to have changed a great deal in the last day. "But we can see how that's turning out." I glared at him more. "And it's not Kim Granger, is it?" Although I didn't answer, nor did I ask another question, he sensed one coming. "Well, for once, I thought maybe I could decide something fun we could do." He looked at me straight-on in the eyes, preparing me. "I had fun out here the last time."

As he intended, I was shocked. I could see that Maxine's confidence had suddenly fallen, even though the darkness mostly concealed her features. "You never told me that you'd been doing things with Maxine."

Tim didn't need Maxine's encouragement to proceed. "Well, you know, you never told me about all the things you did together. And that's okay. So why should I tell you everything?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Meeting by the stairs at the school every morning, staying in the technology room for hours, going to the park on days when you told me you were puking your guts out."

"Well, why are you pissed at me? She didn't tell you either. It was our business."

"I'm not pissed."

"You're yelling. At me."

"I'm not yelling."

"You're addressing me."

"I'm addressing you because Maxy told me about all those things." ("Tim, please stop calling me that," Maxine begged softly.) I stopped breathing for a moment. He continued: "I'm addressing you because I know she invited me and I know you said you didn't want me there. It's okay, you know."

I scrambled for a line of defense that I knew wasn't there. "I didn't want you there because I -- you know why."

"Stop now, Randy," Maxine pleaded. "Don't say any more. Nobody wants anybody around all the time. Tim understands. It's okay. Right, Tim?"

"Right. But now, I want to know why."

"Oh, god." Maxine retreated back into the woods, but didn't leave, too curious not to watch.

"You know why, Tim."

"No, I don't. why?"

"I... you're not the same as us, Tim. We're... we're on a different level." It sounded bad even before I said it, but something was in my bones that evening that brought everything into the light.

Tim got angry frequently, in the years I knew him. It was never a verbal anger, not until tonight. He did, as usual, throw things at me, this time a bunch of rocks. "Do you think it's some kind of privelege to be your friend, Randy?" he screamed. "You're an asshole to everybody. It's a wonder we put up with it at all. It's a wonder you have any friends, not that you will much longer. You wonder why you don't have more friends. Just ask any of us, we'll tell you why. How can you say that to me? How can you do that?" I didn't react. He went deeper. "By the way, I know how you and Maxine met. She's told me already. See, I can be really close to people too. I can find out secrets too. I'm not too stupid to understand them, believe it or not. And even if I were, she wouldn't act like I was less important than she was. And I'll tell you something else I know --"

"Stop." I already knew what he was going to say and that he would probably have a less wholesome reason for being able to say it than I did. That was how it worked in my mind then, anyway. "Don't you think we're too young for this bullshit?"

He stood up straight, unmistakably a foot taller than me when he didn't slouch. "No," he said, "I think we're too old for it, or I thought we were." I turned away from him, tired of the speeches. "That's what's different about us. You think that someday, it'll all be figured out. You'll still think that ten years from now, and ten years after that."

"I probably will," I sighed, telling perhaps the first complete truth I had offered that night.

"Good luck to you," Tim replied before returning to his bicycle.

I stared down at the mass of wooden doom. Maxine had emerged and was talking with my other kidnapper but I didn't hear a word. I merely studied the task before me, terrified and frozen. Now, after all that, I couldn't avoid the bridge, the bridge that was swinging back and forth in the wind; even the wind was against me.

So was Maxine, after a lengthy discussion reaching faint tones that made me uncomfortable. "I go first!" she finally yelled.

"No, me!" protested Tim.

Maxine put on her innocent face. "Please, Timmy?"

"Oh, all right, Maxy."

This time Maxy didn't get mad; she just giggled. She did indeed go first, without even the slightest hesitation. I could hear the tires knocking against the many boards, some broken and rather sharp, that composed the bridge. "Weee!" she shouted, at one point putting her hands into the air, announcing that "we should make the disturbed writer do this! He'll love it! Maybe he'll write a brilliant story about it someday!" Maxine finished and let us know it. "Land ho!" she screamed. "C'mon, Timmy!"

Tim looked a little too excited, the venting session seemingly having offered some kind of relief. He put on his stupid baseball cap, dedicated to another team we'd never heard of, which upon purchase he'd promptly thrown on the ground and stepped on to make himself look tough. "I bet no one'll mess with me," he'd said. No one messed with him anyway, but it didn't matter to him. I wondered if he remembered that stuff now.

He sped through the first half of the bridge with Maxine cheering him on, then got stuck at the halfway point and started screaming. Maxine laughed. Tim walked the rest of the way up the bridge, now looking genuinely freaked, and when he made it to the other side, Maxine hugged him, gently and sincerely. This was significant because I had barely touched Maxine in all these years, and had never witnessed such affection from her.

Now my time had come. Maxine cupped her hands and gave me my orders. "Okay, Mr. Clam! If you're doing this, let's move!"

I most certainly couldn't let my best friends down, so I pedaled and got closer to the bridge, took a deep breath as I watched the others staring at me a thousand miles away, and prepared for battle. I took one last look at the beautiful world, one last look at my murderers, and one last look at their wooden accomplice.

"Go, fucker!" screamed Tim.

I sighed and, my heart, head, and stomach ready to explode, rode onto the bridge and began the long journey downward. Every board was like hitting an especially prominent speedbump at fifty miles an hour. My bicycle and body must have looked especially ridiculous bobbing up and down, but I just moved; my mind was long gone.

"Move faster!" Tim ordered. I wouldn't go faster.

"If you don't, you'll get stuck like this dumbass over here!" Maxine insisted. I went faster.

My vehicle now was flying up in the air each time I hit the slightest crack, and the bridge was bouncing right along with me. A light breeze came, and I felt that I would soon be blown off into the water. As my mind raced, I alternated between all-consuming teeth-chattering fear, a kind of blank emptiness, confidence, and trying to save face while I listened to the girl on the other end. "What the hell's your problem? Let's move, move, move!"

All of my mental capacities that remained undamaged were now concentrating on getting to the other side and killing Maxine, or at least hugging her. I hit the uphill passage and closed my eyes, putting everything I had into making my way up the bridge and onto the other side.

The situation was improving somewhat when I heard a pop. I opened my eyes and peered backward, swerving slightly, to find that my tire had sprung a leak thanks to one of the many broken boards. I was now nearly to the other side. "Hey, guys, you're gonna need to help me out with th--"

When I looked up, Maxine and Tim were gone. Completely gone.

In the length of time it had taken for me to turn and perform a visual checkup, they had whizzed off into the distance, wholly uninterested in me.

I made my way up the rest of the hill; on the way I heard another pop. My front tire was now dead, and the previous leak had completely destroyed the other one. I was stuck. Looking around in the woods on the other side of the bridge, I could see Tim and Maxine light-years ahead, beyond layers of trees and shadows, moving away from me on their bicycles. I squinted and spotted Tim nobly reaching a hand out, the offer readily accepted by his mate.

I had no idea where I was. I'd practically been asleep on the way to this place. My bike was a lost cause. In a furor, I picked it up and threw it at the nearest tree, watching as a few leaves fell to the ground. Then I sat against the same tree for a minute and glanced at my watch, expecting it to be after 10, and found instead that it was actually just reaching 8:33. However, what little light there had been as we began our bridge adventure was now gone, and it wouldn't have given me much of an advantage on a road so consumed with darkness anyway.

For a long time I followed this same avenue. Civilization was nowhere in sight. When I came to another road, it looked even more abandoned and long-forgotten. I was unaware of such places existing in our pleasant beach community; it was unpaved, the streetlights were broken, and for whatever reason dust was hanging in the air as if suspended by invisible strings. I didn't dare turn onto it, but I might as well have. Over time, the winding street I was on narrowed and turned into a clone of the other one, or perhaps the roads just wound into one another and I was now stuck in the web.

I wandered for half an hour, hoping that maybe some miracle would occur and I would stumble upon my house. Soon I was so lost I couldn't hear the ocean. I just walked aimlessly with my mutilated bicycle, seeing no cars, signs, or paved roads.

Finally, I cut through a small path in a vacant lot and came out on the other end to find a familiar area: I was on 11th street. My house was at the end of 40th. Twenty-nine blocks. At least I knew where I was.

***

The next ten minutes were uneventful. I had just reached 22nd street when it began to lightly sprinkle. I didn’t mind. Five minutes or so later, it rained harder, and the precipitation continued to intensify. I was soaked, and after another quarter-hour and twelve blocks of this, I just gave up. I kicked my bike into a ditch and found myself just lying there as the rain came down on me in sheets.

Soon I came to my senses and walked the rest of the way without my former transportation. The rain didn't hesitate to make even this a trial. I started running. I had never run so hard. When the sign for 40th appeared, I was gasping for breath.

I slowly walked up the driveway and approached the steps. The aching in my stomach was gone, replaced by a severe migraine. I barely had the strength to take out my key and open up the front door. My parents weren't home, which was for the best since they would surely have had questions about my being out so late and losing my bicycle.

I didn't want to eat or drink or sit down or anything. It was 9:45, over an hour since I'd finished Maxine McLellan's Five-Mile Tour. I wondered if I would speak to her or Tim again. It pained me to know that I certainly would, and that I would dream about them that night. I groaned and stumbled into my room, collapsing on the bed, sound asleep within seconds.

*****