Recklessness and Water

* * *

The sun was just sinking over the horizon, staining the sky the color of blood. Or, if that was inappropriate, fire. Or, considering that wasn’t much better, Ryan’s Impala.

“Yanno,” Zach remarked, raising his voice a little to be heard over the wind, “Your car’s the same color as the sunset.”

Ryan turned to regard him, “No, it’s not.”

“It’s red,” Zach pointed out.

“Sunset’s orange.”

“And red.”

Ryan frowned, brow furrowing as he turned back to the road ahead, “Guess so.”

Zach smiled at the victory, leaning back in his seat, relishing in the whistle of the wind through his hair, “You know what that is, right?”

“Primary color.”

“A simile,” Zach grinned, “Ryan’s super-cool car is red as the sunset. Simile.”

“Getting literate on me, now?”

“It was gonna happen sometime,” Zach admitted, “Aw, sweet,” he pointed, “Deer.”

“No shit?” Ryan followed his gaze off road.

“Godspeed.”

“The summer reading isn’t that bad. Not like last year.”

“Yeah, well I wouldn’t know,” Ryan pointed out, “They don’t have book club in juvie.”

“Right,” Zach conceded, “Seriously, though, good book. You’d like it.”

“This the poetry book? Blades of Grass or whatever?”

“The other one,” Zach admitted, not wanting to get into how the poems gave him headaches, “My Side of the Mountain,” he bent under the dashboard and fished around in his bookbag for the already pretty dogeared paperback, “It’s about this kid who runs away from home to live in the woods.”

“Dumbass.”

“You never wanted to just cut out and run away from everybody? Go someplace nobody could find you?”

“Tried,” Ryan looked at him knowingly, “Didn’t want to.”

Zach smiled, “Not a bad book. There’s a picture of the guy and all his animal friends swimming in a pond, and the book calls it a ‘gay party’.”

Ryan snorted, “Honor Roll, here we come,” he negotiated a turn in the road ahead, sighing in a satisfied manner, “Shit, listen to that hum,” he rapped on the dash with his knuckles.

“You did a good job.”

“You too, Henderson,” Ryan smirked lazily, “If that Poet Laureate gig don’t work out, you’ve got a bright future with a wrench.”

Zach resisted the initial impulse toward modesty, (he was getting better at that all the time) folding his arms behind his head, “We can work the same garage.”

Ryan shrugged, eyes back on the road, “Doesn’t sound half bad.”

* * *

“Strike!” Ted cheered, dropping his bat, “Good job!”

“It was one strike,” Eli pointed out, rubbing his sore shoulder, “If I’m getting this right, I need three.”

“Yeah, well…” Ted jogged through the calf-high grass, “We all start somewhere. Baby steps.”

“This baby’s had enough self-abuse for one day,” Eli grumbled, stepping off the mossy hump of sedge and weeds that, once cleared of its second skin of food wrappers and condoms, had made a serviceable enough pitcher’s mound for their purposes, “I’m calling it.”

“You sure?” Ted asked, “You’re getting there. And your PT…”

“My PT says I have to work the arm three hours a day,” Eli finished for him, “Between you and me, Teddy, I’m starting to consider completing the rest of my workouts from my bed.”

“Gross,” Ted pointed out cheerily.

“Thanks, though,” Eli added, so as not to come off too shitty, “For helping me out. I bitch, but I needed to get out of that house.”

“Construction?”

“My mother,” he stuck his hands in his pockets, forgetting to his sorrow how sweaty they’d gotten over 300-odd pitches, “Which, come to think of it, I could conceivably have said at any point over the last 16 years and been correct, so maybe I’m part of the problem.”

“It can’t be easy,” Ted said cautiously, “What with the trial and all the reporters…”

“You kidding? Ma loves the reporters. She’s got it in her head if she finds the right sucker, we’ll be set for life. She’s already fancasting the movie,” he pauses, “She’s Julia Roberts.”

“They have the same hair,” Ted remarked helpfully.

“It’s Deanna, man,” he sighed, “It’s a fucking war of attrition between Dee and my Mom, and I’m about at my limit.”

“Because of…” Ted paused, “You Know Who?”

“You can say his name, Teddy. He’s not fucking Voldemort.”

“Kieran,” he cleared his throat awkwardly, “Are they fighting about him?”

“Probably, but not in so many words. Dee never talks about it, and it’s Ma’s favorite topic of conversation, so you can imagine what goes on. At the risk of sounding pedigreed pathetic, I’m feeling left out.”

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for, Teddy. Except kidnapping me, but that water’s all the way under the bridge,” he nudged Ted with his good side, “Seriously, thanks for this.”

“Teaching you pitching?”

“Getting me out of that house.”

“It’s nothing,” he shrugged, “Whatever helps you get better. Anyway, I owed you for the new swag,” he pulled at the lapel of his shirt: a Greg Maddux jersey that hung off his stick-thin frame like a tarp.

“Suits you,” Eli said lightly, making the conscious decision not to repeat his mother’s tired story of how she’d gotten the shirt for free after shacking up with the Braves’ water boy in 2002, “It’s very ’90s.”

“Stuck in the ’90,” Ted rolled his eyes, re-rolling his sleeves over his elbows which, compounded with his cargo shorts, crew socks, and ratty cleats, only made him look more like a West Coast rapper 20-odd years ago, “Must be the family curse.”

“Eh, no sweat, Teddykins,” Eli wrapped an arm around his shoulder, “We’ll get you into the 21st century some sunny day.”

* * *

“The day the cast was posted, I stood out by the theater door, afraid to go in…”

The spotlight was harsh as a second sun on his face, but Micah didn’t mind. Call him a narcissist all you want, but he was learning to relish the exposure.

“Everyone was crowding around, waiting,” he shrugged easily, pacing in a half-circle stage center, twisting his fingers together in front of him, “The sun was trying to come out, but the clouds were forcing it out of the sky…” stretched his hand out into the murky darkness of the repertory’s pit, “Big black clouds, just floating slowly, like clouds do. I watched them for a minute and I could smell the rain.”

He drew in a short, blissful breath, closing his eyes as he rolled back on his heels, “Remember that song from The Fantasticks?” a single person laughed; it was probably Chelsea, who’d done Fantasticks at a playhouse in Shreveport a few summers back and had the scars to prove it, “The one that goes…” he sang a bit, “‘Soon it’s gonna rain, I can feel it. Soon it’s gonna rain, I can tell?’”

Somebody else laughed: a hoarse, short guffaw, and not entirely complimentary. Micah, a seasoned professional, was determined not to be heckled.

“Well, I can always tell when it’s gonna rain. I don’t even have to see that there are clouds. I can smell the wetness in air…” another laugh; the same jokester. Micah pressed his lips together, steeling himself, “And that day, that cloudy dark day, I waited with a bunch of other kids to see if I got a part in the show…”

He headed downstage, the toe of his combat boot stopping just short of the precipice, craning his neck in character, goddammit, “There was this other guy, about my age, pacing and smoking a cigarette. I watched him pace and watched that trail of smoke wind up to the clouds to help block out my sun…”

It wasn’t like they had a full house. It wasn’t just the repertory, it was monologue night, so take anemic and divide by 2.

“He glanced over at me and gave me this tense smile,” Micah brushed a lock of hair from his eyes, making out a human outline in the shadows, leaning against the crummy brick wall, an unlit cigarette in his hand, “‘Nerves,’ he said and took a drag,” he continued, and didn’t give his biggest fan the pleasure of further attention, stalking to the other end of the stage.

Predictably, Micah was met at the stage door afterward, “Nice going, Efron. I could almost smell the festering inadequacy.”

Micah resolutely avoided his heckler’s eyes, “Sharing Tracy’s deodorant?”

Terrance scoffed, lifting himself from the wall, “Seriously, though. Great job. Really had me going for a second.”

“Glad it was worth your money.”

“Money?” Terrance echoed, “They let me in for free!”

“We’re a nonprofit,” Micah frowned, “You’re supposed to donate.”

“Fucking crooks, the lot of you,” but he reached into his bomber jacket and retrieved a crisp $20 bill, which he pressed into Micah’s hand, “Get yourself something nice.”

“Oh, I see,” Micah grimaced at the money, “This is a bribe.”

“I’d have gotten you a purse, but I figured you’ve got enough for the foreseeable.”

Micah rolled his eyes, not entirely pleased at the reminder of the springtime’s brief, deluded dalliance, “What do you want, Terrance?”

“Why, I’m merely following in the proud ancestral tradition of sponsoring our community’s arts and culture.”

“Well, if you’re so interested, maybe you can drop a hint to your Daddy to drop a check.”

“He’s in mourning.”

“And you don’t have an altruistic bone your scene kid body,” Micah stopped just outside the theater, folding his arms, “Cut to the chase.”

Terrance sighed exaggeratedly, propping his foot up against the wall, “I need you to talk to Bridget.”

Micah very politely laughed in his face.

“Very mature, Efron. Very smooth.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Micah advised.

“Look, I’m as confused that she values your opinion as the next guy, but she does, so…”

“Are you high?”

“Not as much as I should be, given the entertainment. I rawdogged 10 one-man shows just to get your ear. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“It tells me you’re desperate,” Micah shrugged, “And, don’t let it go to your head, Terrance, but I respect you too much to see you doing this to yourself, so kindly let me take you out of your misery…”

He started down the street, but Terrance wouldn’t quit, “What would it take?”

“A personality transplant.”

“That can be arranged,” he moved in front of him, leaning against a lamppost, “Curb looks nasty enough for brain surgery. You want to kiss it, or should I?”

“Is that a threat?”

The word ‘no’ rose at once to Micah’s lips, but Terrance was smiling now: his lips parting wolfishly. He felt like a grade schooler being double dog dared.

He laughed, “You’re not gonna sell me.”

“You underestimate my powers of persuasion,” Terrance shrugged.

“You overestimate my powers of pity.”

“Snipe all you want, but you know you want to ride my hog,” he stuck his hands in his pockets, “We’ll stop for ice cream.”

Micah rolled his eyes, “I’m not grabbing your waist,” he started toward the bike.

“Your funeral.”

Infuriatingly, he didn’t even need to turn around to see he was grinning.

* * *

Wren Lake was a different place at night. The darkness seemed to magnify it, obscuring its farthest reaches in shadow, so that it appeared as a fathomless ocean, stretching on until it kissed the sky.

They parked the Impala by the pier, where it stuck out like a scarlet thumb against the mellow, blue-green world.

“Wow,” Zach breathed, walking up the worn white boards to the water, his Nikes creaking almost comfortingly against the slick, uneven surface, “Yanno, I’ve lived here my whole life…” he leaned against a pylon, “Kinda forgot how cool it looks.”

“Eh,” Ryan intoned behind him, “Still think they should fill it with concrete.”

“Football field?” Zach looked over his shoulder.

“Never again, Henderson.”

“Aw, c’mon.”

“I’m serious. I’m banned for life.”

“I know,” he conceded, “That sucks.”

“I made peace with it,” a soft pop as he opened the trunk.

“Still,” he shrugged, “I miss it. Having you out there. We made a good team.”

Ryan chuckled darkly, “If that’s how you remember it.”

“Okay, so maybe not all the time,” he admitted, “But imagine us now, right?” he bumped his fists together, “We’d be fricking unstoppable.”

Ryan made a noise that sounded like agreement, “You drinking?”

Zach opened his mouth to answer but someone beat him to it: “Oh, are we?”

He turned to the two figures walking leisurely down the hiking trail that hugged the water’s edge, “Hey, Eli. Ted.”

“Hey, man,” Ted nodded his greeting, jogging up to the head of the pier to dap him up as Eli lingered closer to the Impala, “So what’re we drinking?”

“Do I look like a soda fountain, Hudson?”

“No, but you sure are a tall drink of water,” Eli said dryly, “I’m busting your balls, man. Teddy and I are just passing through.”

“I’m teaching him how to pitch,” Ted explained.

“Is that what they’re calling it now?” Ryan drawled. Ted got all pink at the ears and Zach spoke up, “You guys can totally join us if you want.”

Ryan doubletaked as Ted shook his head, “It’s cool. We don’t want to…”

“Thank you, Zach,” Eli bowed his head grandly, “I’m parched.”

To his credit, Ryan didn’t kick up a fuss as he hefted a six pack of Coronas out of the trunk and joined him on the pier, “Zach?”

“No thanks, man,” Zach shook his head, “S’what I was gonna say. Gotta stay in shape.”

“Yeah, me too,” Ted interjected.

Ryan scoffed, muttering, “Jocks,” as he handed Eli a bottle, which he gainfully accepted.

“See? You need me, Keller, or else face the crushing despair of drinking alone,” Eli popped the cap, “Trust me: it’s not fun.”

Ryan lifted himself onto the pylon opposite Zach’s, sizing Eli up warily, “You on drugs or something?”

“Why, you want to sell me some?”

Ryan began to stand, but Zach gave him a look and he desisted, “I meant…painkillers. Because…” he indicated his side with his free hand.

“Not anymore. But thank you for thinking of my precious executive functions. Coming from where I do, I’m not used to being asked.”

There was a short silence before Ryan let out a throaty half laugh, “Join the club.”

“How’s it feel?” Zach asked Eli, “If you’re cool saying.”

Eli shrugged, “I’m not dead.”

“He’s getting better,” said Ted, “I meant, um, physically.”

“This guy keeps me on my toes,” Eli chinned toward him, taking a swig from his bottle, “And out of therapy.”

“That’s good,” said Zach, “Therapy’s cool too, probably. For some people.”

“If you’ve got the money to burn,” Eli pointed out caustically.

“It’s all fake,” said Ryan.

“Money?” prompted Eli, “That’s very philosophical.”

“Therapy,” he scoffed, “Fork over a paycheck so some creepy fuck can hear your problems. It’s a scam.”

“It works for some people,” said Zach diplomatically, “They can’t all be scams.”

A soft rumbling shook the air around them. Eli perked up, “Speak of the devil. Here comes Son of Shrink now.”

The motorcycle coasted down from the main road to the pier, kicking up a thin cloud of silt with it.

“Hello, ladies,” Terrance greeted them, dismounting gracefully and nearly being bowled over by his staggering passenger, “Excuse Efron, he hasn’t got his sea legs.”

“Never…” a green-faced Micah staggered up the pier, “Never again,” he balanced himself over a pylon.

“Hey, Micah,” Zach greeted from the next post over, “And, uh…Terrance.”

“Good to see you too, QB,” Terrance greeted silkily.

“RB,” Ryan corrected acidly.

“Nah, I just ate.”

“Yo, Hendricks, is your Mom a fraud?”

Micah lifted his head to Eli, “What?”

“Your Mom, the psychologist. Is she a fake?”

He scoffed, “I mean, depending on our metric for ‘realness’, she’s probably faker than your Mom, so…”

“Touché,” Eli granted.

“You’re lucky Terry’s on my shit list, or else I’d be compelled to be spicier,” he sat gracelessly down on the pier, pressing a dainty hand to his heart and indicating the Coronas with the other, “These free?”

Ryan rolled his eyes and Micah blew him a kiss, grabbing a bottle and holding it to his brow with a sigh of relief.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Zach began awkwardly, looking from Micah to Terrance, “But I didn’t think you guys were cool.”

“I’ve got the magic touch,” Terrance remarked as Micah spoke over him, “Oh, you’ll love this…”

“Mind my business, Efron, or I’ll mind yours.”

“Please,” Micah scoffed, “I’m an open book,” he grabbed a second bottle and handed it to Terrance, “Behave.”

Terrance grimaced, but accepted, as Micah turned to Zach, “This guy crashes my monologue tonight…”

“Is that why he gave you a lift?” asked Ted earnestly. Micah blinked vacantly, “Um. Sure. Anyway, he shows up and he wants me to vouch for him. To Bridget.”

“Dude,” Zach looked across at Terrance.

“Efron left out the best part,” Terrance pointed with his beer, “He’s considering it.”

“I am doing no such thing. If you want to waste her time, do it yourself.”

Terrance rolled his eyes, looking around, “So what is this anyway? We crash the group jerk sesh?”

“Keep it in your skinny pants, Smith,” said Ryan flatly.

“Ryan and I worked on his car today,” Zach answered, “We took it for a spin and then Eli and Ted showed up…” he gestured, “And now you’re here.”

“Community,” Eli remarked chummily.

“If we’re cramping your style, I can go. I just didn’t want to upchuck over Terrance’s bike.”

“Smart boy,” Terrance had taken out a pack of Marlboro Reds, offering one to Micah, who accepted with a potentially sarcastic smile.

“Price of entry, Keller?”

Ryan snorted, “No rich boy cigarettes?”

“I’m a man of the people.”

Ryan accepted the cigarette anyway, but not a light, doing it himself.

“You want rich boy ciggies,” Terrance continued, jerking a thumb at Micah, “This flamer smokes Pall Malls.”

“Whoa, dude, you can’t say that,” said Zach.

“You might think so, Zach, but I have bisexual immunity, and so can say anything.”

“Not the N word,” said Ted, “That’s not a sexuality.”

“So true…” Terrance began dubiously, cocking an eyebrow in an unasked question.

“I’m Ted.”

“Exactly.”

“I make no excuses,” said Micah loftily, “For flaming in all its shapes and forms.”

“Hell yeah, One Love,” Eli intoned monotonously.

They sat for a while in silence, no noise but for the clinks of their nails against glass and their gentle exhalations as they expelled smoke into the night.

“So what were you talking about my mother for anyway?” Micah asked at length, “If y’all are looking for a referral, I can finagle mates’ rates.”

“We friends now, Hendricks?” Ryan asked.

“I’m in a generous mood, Ry,” Micah shrugged, “Selectively.”

Terrance casually flipped him off.

“What do you want a shrink for?”

“I don’t,” said Ryan bluntly.

“We were just talking,” said Zach.

“Which, when you get right down to it, is all therapy is,” said Micah, breezily, taking another drag.

“Except I’m not paying you an assload to hear me bitch about my problems,” Ryan pointed out.

“Oh, if you’d prefer to compensate me for my services…”

“Christ, Efron, the prostitution instinct is strong in you,” Terrance leered.

“Ryan’s kinda got a point, though,” said Ted, eliciting surprised reactions from all present, including Ryan, who snorted in the back of his throat, taking another drink, “Lots of people feel weird paying somebody to hear about their problems.”

“Well, when you say it like that, Teddy, it sounds like a fetish thing,” remarked Eli, “So…”

“But it is easier,” Ted continued, “To just talk stuff out with your friends,” he looked around expectantly, “Right?”

Micah shrugged, “I’m the last person to defend the integrity of the institution that’s kept me fed and comfy my whole life…”

“Hell yeah,” Terrance fist pumped.

“…seriously, my folks have been grooming me to become a therapist since I could talk.”

“Fascinating word choice, Efron, do continue.”

“But there are some things to be said for talking to a professional.”

“Suicide!” Ted pointed. Micah looked at him, askance, “Sure. Suicide. Seriously, if one of you yokels put a gun in your mouth and started reciting a manifesto, there’s shit I could do about it.”

“Good to know,” Eli smirked darkly.

“But also…there’s things a therapist knows that ordinary people don’t. I couldn’t stop you from cutting yourself…”

“The hell are you looking at me for?” Terrance demanded.

“Sorry, babe, it’s the nails,” Micah dodged a kick, scooting closer to Zach, who caught him in the small of his back with the toe of his sneaker to keep him from falling into the drink. He turned to him thankfully, continuing, “But yeah. There’s things they know how to do. Talk you out of panic attacks, stop you from self-harming, interpret your dreams…”

“That’s real?” Zach asked. Micah turned to look up at him, but must’ve forgotten his awkward position had put him right between Zach’s legs. He looked from one motor-oil stained thigh to the other and, clearing his throat, scooted back, “What’s real?”

Self-consciously smoothing out the legs of his shorts, Zach asked, “Dreams. That shrinks…psychologists, whatever…they can really tell what dreams mean?”

Micah frowned perplexedly, but Zach was spared from stewing in the scrutiny by Eli, who remarked, “Yeah, I thought that was all made-up bullshit. No offense, Mikey.”

“I mean, I dunno,” he shrugged, “If you mean if your dreams predict the future or anything…that’s BS,” he considered, “Most likely. But dreams do tell you stuff.”

“About the past?” Ted wondered.

“About yourself,” Micah shrugged, “Which includes your past, but also…what you think.”

“About…”

“Life. The world. You. Your dreams don’t reveal anything you didn’t already know, it just…digs stuff up from your subconscious,” he tipped ashes onto the pier, “More or less.”

There was a long silence. Terrance chuckled softly, taking another drink. In the darkness around them, crickets began to sing.

“Huh,” Zach said finally, “Never thought about it that way. Dreams.”

“You dream, Zach Attack?” asked Terrance, “It’s an evolutionary miracle.”

“Keep talking, Smith,” said Ryan, “We’ll play ‘survival of the fittest’.”

“It’s cool,” said Zach, both to diffuse the situation and because, well, he guessed he couldn’t really be surprised. As far as people like Terrance…as most people, even…thought, there wasn’t a lot to him, was there?

“I dream sometimes,” said Zach, “Stupid stuff mostly.”

“Me too,” Ted agreed.

“But sometimes…” he shrugged, “Sometimes, I dunno. There’s a dream that feels…different.”

“A recurring dream?” Micah prompted curiously.

“That’s the same thing over and over,” Eli clarified.

“I know what it means,” Zach smiled awkwardly, “I guess. Not always the same exact thing, but…they’re part of a set, you know. Or maybe you don’t know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense…”

“No,” said Ted, “It does. I think.”

“I just wonder sometimes what it means.”

“Why’s it gotta mean anything?” asked Ryan, not meanly but gruffly.

“It doesn’t have to,” he shrugged, “But it’d be nice if it does.”

“Zach, don’t take this hard, but if you start paying some quack to tell you what your dreams mean, I’m staging an intervention…”

“Interventions aren’t funny,” said Eli evenly, “They’re a waste of time and resources.”

“What if you don’t have to pay someone to tell you what the dream means?” Ted prompted, “You can tell us.”

Terrance laughed, but Micah silenced him with a look, “What’s a bit of dream interpretation among friends?”

Terrance frowned, “Are we friends?”

Micah rolled his eyes. Eli stroked his chin with his free hand, “I mean…we’ve all been through the shit. That counts for something.”

“Trauma bonding!” Micah lifted his bottle for a toast, which Eli warily reciprocated, glass clinking against glass.

“Well…” Zach shrugged, “I think you guys are cool.”

“That’s a goddamn comfort,” Ryan smirked around his cigarette.

“I think you’re pretty cool too, dude,” Ted nudged him from his perch.

“So…friends,” Eli declared, “For one night only.”

There was a soft hum of laughter, mostly Micah, who had made some real headway with his beer. He propped his head up in his hand, “Limited engagement…but there’s room to grow,” he lifted his eyes to Zach, “So…what’s your dream?”

“Okay,” Zach sighed, gripping his knees, “I’m not sure how good I’m gonna be at describing it…”

“Bull,” Ryan interrupted, “You’re passing English this year, remember?”

He smiled, “Guess I am. Okay, so…it’s more of a feeling than a place. But there is a place.”

Micah’s patient smile had become somewhat fixed.

“It feels like a place, I mean, but the details are fuzzy so that by the time I wake up, all I really have are the feelings.”

“What kind of feelings?” Ted asked softly.

“Good ones,” Zach sighed, “Mostly. I feel…”

—

“…strong.”

A fist flies into his jaw. It ought to cost him a tooth or two, but he plants his feet into the dirt and holds fast.

“That the best you got, mate?” he taunts, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, in the same fluid motion ducking his bunkmate’s next swing, to the hooting approval of their comrades.

The night is cold and dry, but he barely feels the bite of the Russian frost on his bare skin, so warm is the fire in his blood. He’s young and powerful. Miles away from home, in a hostile country, he is utterly and completely in control.

“Keep talkin’ Harrow,” his opponent, friend, brother-in-arms, spits, “Might be you’ll find yourself sayin’ something.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” he feints, relishes in his opponent’s flinch, and undercuts, to the joy of the crowd.

His opponent scowls, but their overseer comes between them before he can lunge for it, lifts his arm high as the crowd chants his name, swapping bets and raising flagons high. They love him…and he, Zach, may want to love them in turn. To reward their friendship with friendship of his own…but Harrow has no such compunctions. He doesn’t need to please anybody but himself. He can be loud and brash and bold, can take what he wants, move fast, break things…

And not lose a scrap of their love.

“Well, don’t stop now?” he…Harrow, not him, never him…boasts, slapping bandaged hands against his bare, cold-resistant pectorals, “Who’s next? C’mon, don’t be shy!”

—

“I can do this all day!”

“Nobody said anything,” Eli pointed out.

“I dream I’m big and tough and can do stuff I don’t have the stones to do when I’m awake,” he chuckled dryly, “Guess I don’t really need a shrink to tell me what’s up with that.”

“Man, you went on the run with me,” Ryan pointed out, “We ran Richard fuckin’ Steele off the road. You’re tough.”

Zach smiled, “Thanks, man. But…” his voice caught.

“You okay?” Ted laid a gentle hand on his arm and Zach nodded, reaching to a suddenly throbbing temple.

“Cool. Just…it’s a lot to remember, I guess.”

“But that’s normal,” Micah felt compelled to say, his heart aching with unexpected pity for the football jock.

“In your professional opinion?” Terrance asked languidly.

“I think we all have dreams like that sometimes,” Micah explained, trying not to sound too much like he was lecturing, “Where we dream we’re different from how we are. It’s how our brains sort out what makes us…us. The things we’re proud of and the things…”

“That disappoint us,” Zach smiled, “Yeah. I guess.”

“It’s our subconscious telling a story. A song to ourselves.”

“Like the homework!” he brightened up, pointing at Micah, “Blades of Grass!”

“Leaves of Grass,” Micah corrected, “But yours makes more sense.”

“Henderson’s a reading man now,” said Ryan smugly, “Ask him about the little boy’s gay party in the woods.”

“What, My Side of the Mountain?” Eli prompted.

“You’re reading it too?”

“Don’t need to. They assigned it to us in 6th grade.”

“Welcome to Lakewood,” said Terrance airily.

“The, uh, poems and stuff are kind of hard for me,” Zach turned back to Micah, “To get my head around.”

“Me too,” Micah admitted, “But I like how they sound.”

“Theater queen can’t resist a monologue.”

“And what about it?” Micah rolled his eyes at Terrance, “I can recite a bit now, if you want.”

“Don’t push your luck, Efron.”

“Philistine,” Micah stuck his tongue out, “But yeah, I don’t think it’s a weird dream, Zach.”

“Thanks, man.”

“I have one too,” he added before he could stop himself, determinedly tuning out Ryan’s drawn out sigh behind him, “A dream.”

“Jesus, Efron, half a beer and you turn into fucking My Secret Garden.”

“The book about the little girl?” frowned Ted.

“Sex fantasies,” said Micah and Eli, almost at the same breath. Micah blushed, “Mom has a copy.”

“Hey, ditto,” Eli toasted him.

“And here, I thought you were totally secure in your sexuality,” Terrance intoned, “I’ve gotta admit, Efron, I’m disappointed.”

“Oh, shut up…”

“You seriously dream you’re some alpha tough guy?” Terrance scoffed, “I mean, at least with Zach, it’s vaguely achievable…”

“Thanks,” said Zach flatly.

“You’re livin’ in Disneyland, girlfriend.”

Micah scowled, blowing smoke into Terrance’s face (he didn’t flinch, because of course he didn’t), “It’s not the same dream. But it’s in the same genre. I dream of myself, but…different?”

“Different how?” asked Zach earnestly.

Micah thought about it, “Good ways and bad ways. If I had to call it anything, I’d say…”

—

“…edgy.”

The walls shake with music, the air saturated with smoke, scented with the heady incense of perfume and eager bodies.

It’s not his music, though, but it ought to be, it could be, and the awareness of this fills him with a pulsing, almost physical need.

“Ben!” a hand tangles in his hair…a woman’s hand, he’s dimly aware, and a woman’s voice, but it doesn’t feel wrong as much as it doesn’t quite feel right, “Benjy!”

She’s beautiful, with a mane of thick dark hair and bright gray eyes like moons. He looks at her and wants her with a different want than he’s used to.

“You like that, babe?” he asks, tilting her chin up to his, feeling the hardened nubs of her breasts against his bare chest and surging with a desire he has never known in his other life, “I ain’t even started yet.”

He wants, but it’s a different kind of wanting. Not the desperate, hopeless yearning that’s paved his entire emotional development. Benjy doesn’t want what he can’t have. He wants so powerfully that everyone wants…needs…him back.

The girl writhes beneath him, lost in the spasms of her ecstasy. There’s a necklace around her neck, caught between her breasts: a silver bird, its wings spread in such a way it appears like an arrowhead, or a compass rose. He takes it between his lips and bites the cold metal as he finishes, her pliant legs trying to pin him as he comes and failing.

Micah has values and ethics, or he thinks he does, but Benjy has no such handicaps. He feels and wants and gets…

But, as he lifts his eyes from his spent partner to gaze out for another in the smoky room, Micah does wonder if that’s enough.

“There you are!” he calls into the murk, raising his voice to be heard over the music, “Get over here…”

—

“I don’t bite.”

Micah cleared his throat, “Not particularly evolved of me,” he looked chidingly at Terrance, “I know.”

Terrance snorted, “You’re full of surprises, Efron.”

He reddened, “Well, what about you, Candyman?”

“What about me?”

“You’re gonna sit there all smug and act like you’ve never dreamed you were different?”

“That’s a cute euphemism for ‘wish fulfillment porno’,” Terrance dragged on his cigarette, “I’m good, but…you do what you need to do, Edgy Boy.”

There was another silence. Ryan gave Terrance a sour look, which Micah seemed to notice, though Ryan averted his eyes when Micah smirked at him.

Ted shifted on his perch, twisting his hands together. He had a funny feeling, compounding more by the minute. Maybe it was the smell of the guys’ cigarettes, or the cool, wet kiss of the breeze off the lake, or the crickets’ song around them, but he felt simultaneously comfortable and restless.

It was the kind of feeling he hadn’t gotten since he was a kid. Christmas with his family at Uncle Roger’s. The memories were harder now, with the farm destroyed and Roger’s reputation with it. Still…they were good for what they were. All of them sitting around the table, his Mom laughing at something his Dad said. His mother reaching over to show him how to hold a knife and fork; his father pulling him aside for a sip of beer which would invariably double him over.

It was the feeling of a memory being made in real time; the knowledge that this would seem unreal as early as the next morning. That he must live in this for as long as he could, while he could.

“I think I will have one,” he indicated what remained of Ryan’s six pack on the pier between them, “Please.”

“’Atta boy, Teddy,” Eli smirked as Ryan waved dismissively to indicate he could help himself.

“Don’t feel pressured,” Micah said lightly.

“Do feel pressure,” said Terrance, “Feel your betters cripwalking all over your fickle individuality.”

“Cripwalking?” Ted echoed.

“Told you, man,” Eli gestured to Ted’s outfit, “Straight outta Lakewood.”

“West Coast hiphop?” Ryan cocked an eyebrow, “Seriously?”

“Ryan likes East Coast,” said Zach helpfully, “DMX and stuff.”

“Either let me fly or give me death,” Ryan intoned cheekily, “Let my soul rest, take my breath”.

“I don’t really know rappers,” Ted admitted, “We’re, like, a country household.”

Terrance scoffed, but Ryan shrugged, “It’s a country ass town.”

Zach must’ve seen Ted struggling with his bottle because he reached over, “I got you, dude,” and popped it.

“Thanks,” Ted smiled, “You, uh…you want the last one?”

There was a brief silence before Eli started clapping his bottle against his knee, chanting, “Do…it…do…it…”, gradually picking up the pace as Terrance…but not Ryan, noticeably…joined in.

“Sure,” Zach nodded, “Why not?”

Ryan smirked, “You listen to Teddybear, okay,” he tossed Zach the last bottle, “I’ll remember that.”

“He asked nicely,” Zach remarked, popping off the cap to land with the others on the pier. Ryan shrugged, presumably aware he couldn’t argue that.

“Eh, it’s kinda cheap,” Terrance shook his nearly drained bottle.

“You drank it, sugarboy,” Ryan drawled.

“Desperate times.”

“I meant the lake,” Ted interrupted, waving toward it with his free arm as if they couldn’t see, “Lived here pretty much my whole life, and I don’t think I ever really noticed.”

They all looked out at the lake together in companionable quiet, watching the play of the moon on the water’s surface.

“It’s nice, I guess,” said Zach eventually.

“Once you get past the smell,” added Terrance.

“Half of that smell is the garbage your family’s been dumping in there for the last hundred years,” said Micah.

“What do you want to do about it?” asked Terrance, “Burn the plant down again?” they all looked at him and he shrugged, “Generally speaking.”

“Guess I’m too much of a cityboy,” said Eli, still looking at the water, “I don’t get the appeal.”

“I dunno,” Ted shrugged, “It’s not really the lake, it’s how old it is. How much has happened here.”

Micah self-consciously looked down at the pier beneath them where, a few months ago, Ted’s deranged cousin had been shot dead and where, 20 years before that…

Well. You know the story.

“You think it’s really haunted?” asked Zach.

“Sure,” said Terrance quickly, “We’re haunting it right now.”

“You know what I mean,” he took a sip of beer and grimaced.

“Maybe Terrance is right,” Ted said quietly.

“Thanks, Tim.”

“I…” he chuckled softly, embarrassed, “It’s weird.”

“We’re all being weird, man,” Zach smiled, “No worries.”

“You and, uh, Micah were talking about those dreams. Feeling like…different people,” he shrugged, “I have a dream like that too. And sometimes it feels so real it’s almost…” he turned the bottle around in his hands.

“Like it did happen?” asked Eli quietly, “To someone else?”

“Yeah,” Ted nodded, “I know it’s stupid…”

“What kind of dream?” asked Micah, “I mean…what’s it like for you?”

“Well…” his face was burning, but he realized none of them looked scornful or dismissive…not even the likes of Terrance, who merely looked bored, which was easier, “I don’t know if there’s a better way to say it, but…in the dreams, I’m…”

—

“…cool.”

The wind rips through his hair, the air ringing with the hum of engines. The road winds ahead, stained a flat gray by his aviator shades. The others fan out behind him, like geese flying in V formation, perfectly ranked behind the leader of the pack.

It’s a hard won title, and he hasn’t come by it without getting a little greasy…in a manner of speaking.

They roll up, bikes lining the street all the way down to the corner. Passerby dart suspicious eyes at them, giving them a wide berth. Ted would wince at the attention. Towering over them all, he would still manage to shrink into himself, to hide, to surrender before he’d even been called to fight.

But here, now…

“Check the redcoat, Deano,” one of his lieutenants whispers as they enter the diner,  chinning to a knot of lettermen in a booth.

Dean follows his gaze to the lantern-jawed six footer with the Johnny Unidas cut and smirks, “One in every port.”

The jock lifts his eyes from his Coke, “What you lookin’ at, greaser?”

Ted would make excuses, sputter an apology for an offense he couldn’t even name. Ted, raised to never make waves, to resist every impulse to make a fuss, to distinguish himself in every way from the infamous uncle he never knew by being as indistinguishable from the crowd as possible would never go looking for trouble.

Dean, who knows no mistress better than trouble, grins, “The biggest idiot in the place,” he pockets his shades, eying the girl at the jock’s side, “Pet shop out of poodles, kid?”

The girl blushes, hiding a guilty giggle behind her hand as her boyfriend (for the moment) gets to his feet, flanked by a couple of meathead confederates, “If you’re lookin’ for a fight, punk, you’re gonna get what you ordered.”

“Ain’t that good service?” Dean laughs softly, brushes a loose lock of oiled hair back into its proper place as his pack cracks their knuckles behind him, “If you’re quick with it…”

—

“I’ll even leave ya a tip.”

“It just feels…real sometimes,” Ted lifted himself off the pylon, stepping carefully around Terrance, who was lying on his back, spanning the pier from end to end, “And, obviously, the things I’m dreaming never happened to me, but…”

“But it feels like they did,” Micah’s lips curled, “Like a past life.”

“You think so?” he stepped on one of the discarded bottle caps, and the beer must’ve gotten to him because he stumbled wildly, windmilling his arms with cartoonish whimsy that shouldn’t be as endearing as it was.

“We’ve got a live one,” Eli smirked, leaning forward, “Take it easy, lightweight…”

“I’m…” Ted began as Eli grabbed him by the hem of his Braves shirt, intending to steady him and having the exact opposite effect, “Fi-aiie!”

He stumbled back, into Eli, nearly knocking him off the pylon, scattering beer droplets from his still mostly full bottle over the both of them.

“Easy, tiger!” Eli grunted, eying the water behind them, “Fuck, what’d you have? Three sips?”

“Six,” Ted shifted awkwardly against him, “Five?”

“Dude,” Eli laughed breathlessly, “Don’t worry, we’ll corrupt you yet.”

“Looking forward to it…” Ted said woozily, trying to stand and immediately collapsing back against Eli, who was at least ready for it now, digging his nails into the worn wood of his post.

“Shit, Hudson,” Ryan smirked, “You order a lap dance without saying?”

“Oh my God,” Zach laughed guiltily as Ted, scarlet faced, tried to stand and stumbled again, which did nothing for how this all looked.

“Okay, bud, easy…” Eli coached him as Ted slid bonelessly to the base of the post, leaning between Eli’s legs, directly across from Terrance.

“Almost there,” he commented, turning his finger in a semicircular motion, “Just a quick 180 and X marks the spot.”

“Get those directions from your mother, Terry?” Eli asked.

“My old man, but good try.”

“You’re all gross!” Micah laughed lightly, taking another drag on his nearly spent cigarette, “Totally gross. I feel contaminated…straight by association.”

“I thought Smitty had bisexual immunity?” Eli wondered.

“Allegedly,” Micah smirked lazily.

“That’s erasure,” Terrance pointed, “You biphobic bitch bigot.”

“Boo,” Micah popped the B sound, giggling, “Yanno, Terrance, for someone theoretically open to everyone, you’re worse than an auto shop air freshener.”

Terrance grimaced, “The fuck?”

“You pine!” Micah explained, looking around at them blankly, “You pine for one person. Pine! Like an air freshener? The little pine trees?”

There was a short silence before Zach let out a short, polite laugh.

“A little over the group reading level, Efron,” Terrance set his empty bottle down with a hollow thunk.

“So wait…” Eli interrupted, partly to shut Sugar Baby up and partly because he was more invested in the unfurling meta-narrative than he by all rights should be, “Ted, you really think you have dreams of a past life?” he put his hand on Ted’s shoulder.

Ted, in kind, scooted forward just enough so his face wouldn’t be planted at Ground Zero on the 180 as he turned back to him, “I dunno. Maybe? I didn’t really think of it like that before now, but now that we’re all talking about it…”

“It’s not that crazy, is it?” Micah asked, “We wouldn’t be the first people to wonder about reincarnation.”

“What, like the fucking Chinese?”

“Language, Ry,” Micah chided, “Also, possibly racism.”

“It’s true, isn’t it? They believe you die and come back as something else.”

“I thought that was Hindus,” said Eli.

“It’s both,” Micah shrugged, “In different ways.”

Ryan furrowed his brow, “You believe that shit?”

“I don’t know what I believe,” Micah waved a hand dismissively, coming a hair’s breadth from brushing Ryan’s thigh tattoo (as best as Eli could figure, a broken spear) had Ryan not pulled his leg back, “But it’s a nice thought, isn’t it?”

“Time being a flat circle?” Terrance asked dryly.

“No, that’s different. That would mean living as yourself over and over again.”

“Ugh,” Zach grimaced, perhaps unaware he was saying it aloud.

“Right?” Micah agreed and, at Zach’s embarrassed smile, “No thank you. But if we have many lives, well…forget about marathon encores. You’re booked for life. At every stage on the strip.”

He smiled warmly at them all, not even flinching when Terrance diagnosed him, “Gay.”

Eli could have left it there and probably should have. He liked these guys, mostly, or thought he did, but more days than not, he still felt like a stranger around here and his family instantly attaining infamy didn’t help.

It was really just Ted and, wholesome as the skinny dork was, Eli sometimes wondered if he was a bad influence on the poor fuck. But he’d sounded so serious talking about his dream self past life, letting Ryan’s beer make the miracle run all the way up to his pointy head…

“Is that really a good thing, though?” Eli asked, purely for the catharsis of Ryan sighing, “Exactly,” in an instant of unexpected kinship.

“What if your other lives suck?” he continued bluntly, looking around at the others, “What if you aren’t some alpha bro casanova sex god, going wherever your dick takes you?”

Ted folded his arms, “You mean…what if you were normal?”

“But we’re all normal already,” said Zach, “Our own version of normal, but…”

“I mean,” Eli continued, “What if the…other you has it worse off?” he shrugged, “Hard as that may be to believe.”

Terrance smiled inscrutably, reluctantly budging as Ted scooted back, the toes of his cleats just touching Eli’s ratty sneakers, “So…what do you dream about?” he smiled, sort of cock-eyed, and Eli reddened.

“Go home, Teddykins, you’re drunk.”

“Hey, you don’t have to say anything,” Ted shrugged, “But…”

“But for science,” Micah prompted, “For the class.”

Eli let out a short sigh, “Alright, since I can’t get out of it…”

Micah let out a little whoop of approval, seconded by Zach, as Ted smiled almost apologetically which, somehow, galvanized him.

“So I have possibly…” he held up his hands, “Possibly experienced experiences similar to the experiences experienced by you boys. And I don’t know if I’m just too dirty with the stink of original sin, but they’re not exactly fun.”

Micah’s smile faded as Ted dug his fingers into the groove between two planks, asking softly, “What, uh…are they?”

“A lot,” Eli smiled darkly, shrugging, “Harsher, faster, more…”

—

“…reckless.”

His knuckles burn as if thrust into hot coals, but still he keeps going, fists flying in an indecipherable blur. He will feel the pain later, but for now the fire against his skin is nothing against the fire in his blood, in his brain, burning behind his eyes.

“That’s enough!” another voice from behind him, a thousand miles away. He hears but can’t stop, can’t even see, “You’re hurting yourself…”

“I don’t care,” his voice, small and strained, impossibly tiny given the scorching, all-consuming rage filling every other part of him.

“Well, I care!” hands on his shoulders, and a body in front of him: a shield between himself and the rotted out tree he was bent on pulverizing, “I care, Jim.”

And he…Jimmy, not Eli, not him, he has never worn his anger so boldly on his sleeve, and hasn’t he been better for it…blinks as though seeing his friend for the first time, “That’s your first mistake, Leo.”

His best friend looks at him through wide, watery eyes, “Is that the score? You get to bail me out of trouble every time, but I can’t stop you from killing yourself?”

Jimmy struggles to catch his breath: a dozen needles shredding the inside of his lungs, “Don’t be dramatic.”

“Look what you’ve done to yourself!” Leo grips his wrist with one hand and, as if anticipating Jimmy turning away, takes his chin in the other, forcing him to look at the raw, open wounds over his bruises.

“I’m just…blowing off some steam. And why not?” he snaps, “Why not? It’s just a fucking tree, okay, it’s not…” he falters, and Eli thinks hasn’t he been so tired, so frustrated, so angry, picking up after everyone, earning all the money, cleaning all the messes, dredging something like love for the people he shares his life with, the ones who hurt him most and who he can’t envisage a life without?

“It’s not a person,” Jimmy says emptily, pathetically, “Drop in another time, if you want to save a life…”

“I want to save you!” his voice shakes, “I want to help you, Jim. You’re the only guy who’s ever stuck up for me. Why won’t you let me return the favor?”

“There’s nothing to return, Leo,” says Jimmy, who has lived his life forgotten by his parents, overshadowed by his sister and scorned by his peers; who has grown up with the comforts Eli always wanted, and has never been free enough of his rage’s shackles to recognize them, “Just let me be.”

“If you go on like this, letting everything those assholes say set you off, you’re going to…”

“Flame out?” Jimmy finishes for him, “Then I’ll flame out, man.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“You, you’ve got a lot to live for. You’re smart, you’re funny, and don’t think I haven’t seen how you look at my sister.”

“Jim…”

“If I ever did one good thing in this life, Leo, it was meet you,” his eyes burn with piteous, hateful tears, and Eli, who has been inured from pity by a crash-and-burn mother and a narcissistic cousin and an aunt who wasted away before his very eyes, hates this thing his dreams wants so badly for him to see, “After that…”

—

“…it’s a wrap.”

Eli was quiet for a bit, looking at Ted with an odd, forlorn cast to his eyes, “Sorry to be a vibe killer.”

“Wow,” Ted said after a heavy silence, “Wow, man. That’s…that’s rough.”

“You have them a lot?” asked Zach, “Those dreams?”

“Now and again,” he shrugged, “It’s whatever. Sorry to piss on your parade, but…they’re dreams.”

“Exactly,” Ryan exclaimed, loudly enough that the half of them he’d previously judged most susceptible (you’ve been following along: make your own deductions) jumped, “It’s not real,” he dropped his cigarette stub to the pier and ground it out beneath his sneaker, “And why the hell would you even want it to be?”

Nobody said anything at first, but Eli shrugged, smiling with his eyes as if in agreement.

“Well,” said Micah, “I never said I believed it.”

“Nah, you just love the sound of your own voice,” remarked Terrance.

“But I can see why some people do. Who doesn’t love a second chance?”

“But that’s not how it works,” said Ryan, “It’s not a chance. You just keep living, again and again, over and over, and every time you die, it don’t matter if you were the littlest cancer patient or fucking Jim Jones, you have to do it all over again,” he scoffed at their stricken little faces, “That’s not a ‘chance’, it’s a conviction. And if you any of you boys had ever been locked up, you’d know better than to ask for it.”

His leg was shaking restlessly. You’d think he’d be pretty mellow by now, after the drink and the smoke, but that must’ve been too much to ask.

“Yeah,” said Zach heavily, “It sounds like a bad deal.”

“Look,” Ryan got to his feet, so quickly that Micah winced, “I don’t know what we’re even doing here.”

“Now who’s being existential?” Terrance intoned.

“Hey, don’t take it out on them, man. I invited them to stay…”

“Stop,” Ryan pointed at Zach, “Stop apologizing.”

They were all staring at him. Ted chewed his lip guiltily while Eli glowered above him, whatever bit of good feeling Ryan had just mustered up in him seemingly squashed.

Making friends everywhere you go. Keep up the good work, Keller.

He turned away, heading to the end of the pier, the frayed edges of his laces dangling over the edge.

Poor Teddy boy had it all wrong. Wren Lake might be beautiful sometimes; it may look nice in some glossy postcard, if people still even sent postcards. It might even pass muster for some bimbette travel vlogger’s Instagram feed, if they could ever wring the bad juju out of the backstory.

But by night, with the moonlight casting its grid on the water, like so many silver bars, it just looked bleak. Empty.

Someone put a hand on his arm. Ryan didn’t need to recognize the grip to know there was only one person well-intentioned and stupid enough to even try it, when he was worked up like this.

“Dude,” Zach met his eyes, “You okay?”

He drew in breath, hating himself and wanting to be hated and wondering what the fuck was wrong with him and Zach alike that no matter how much he pushed and Zach pulled, they kept putting up with each other.

“Fine,” he nodded, not pulling away and trusting Zach to know to let go of him, which he did, “I’m fine,” he turned back to the others, “Lost my shit. Sorry.”

“You should be,” Terrance drawled, “Pissing all over my aura like that. I was just beginning to feel well adjusted.”

“Don’t push it, Smith.”

“I’m sorry too,” said Micah, “On his behalf,” he nudged Terrance, “And mine.”

“Forget it, Hendricks. You didn’t do shit.”

“I made it a ‘thing’ and it didn’t have to be,” he shrugged, “I have a habit.”

Ted shrugged, smiling guiltily, “I didn’t mind talking about it. But, yeah…it did get pretty deep there for a second. I can’t blame you, Ryan, for not wanting to hear it.”

“I can,” said Eli, “But I won’t, since you got me drunk enough to talk about it to start with.”

“Y’all were just yanking each others’ dicks,” said Ryan, “Not my ministry, but…whatever, right? If you want to play pretend, go for it. Figure we earned it.”

“Maybe that’s all it is,” said Zach, “The dreams, the other lives. Maybe they are just pretend.”

“Roleplaying,” Micah smirked, “With the subconscious.”

“Kinky,” muttered Terrance.

“Could be, though,” he stood up as well, shrugging lazily, hands in the pockets of his patched-up jeans, “If they’re nothing else, dreams are just our brains sorting through things we feel but can’t describe when we’re awake. They’re stories.”

“Or songs,” Zach pointed out with a smile, “To ourselves. Like…” he paused, “Leaves of Grass,” and appeared quite satisfied to have got the title right this time.

“Just like that,” Micah nodded, exhaling. He stood there for a bit, right in the middle of the pier, not looking at any of them in particular, before opening his eyes and beginning to recite.

“Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much?” he said the words, not like a poem, but like a speech, like it was a real question, addressed here to Ted and Eli, the former of whom blinked confusedly as the latter rolled his eyes.

“Have you reckon’d the earth much?” he turned next to Terrance, who made a rude hand gesture which Micah mimicked in kind, turning next to Zach, “Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?”

Zach nodded, a mischievous glint in his eye, and Micah laughed under his breath like they’d been friends for years, letting Zach pat him on the arm.

“Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?” this, addressed to Ryan who had nothing to say, and so must not get the poem, and what a relief that must be, compared to the fevered alternatives smoke and swigs hadn’t succeeded in suppressing in his mind.

“Stop this day and night with me,” Micah looked around at them all in turn, like an old time storyteller inviting them to a campfire, “and you shall possess the origin of all poems.”

And it was pure, dumbshit stupid but, looking into his wide, hippie-dippie face, he almost wanted to buy in. He almost wanted to believe they weren’t just six drippy inmates sitting at the edge of the prison that raised them, but watchers, observing from a safe distance as the world unfurled around them, safe in the knowledge that what’s past is past and secure in the faith that the future is not final.

“You shall possess the good of the earth and sun…there are millions of suns left,” he turned in a slow circle, his ponytail sliding gently from his shoulder to slap at the back of his neck, waving like a pendulum on an old clock, “You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books…”

Ryan didn’t have much brains, barely any wits, hardly even knew what he was doing here or whether he liked any of these people but, just for now, he wanted to. Even for just a moment, he wanted to be part of this, whatever this was, if even any of them knew what they were doing and, even if not, to be content knowing they were at least clueless together.

“You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,” Micah turned back to Ryan, pointing at him square in the face; his eyes were gleaming, probably from the beer, or maybe he just got like this whenever he was working, “You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your se-argh!”

He fell forward, right into Ryan, who only had long enough to stammer an, “Ay, what the fuck…” before he ran out of pier and the water rose to meet them.

Some latent lifesaving instinct must have kickstarted the second the water his his skin, because Ryan sort of pushed Micah up, ensuring he broke through the surface first, despite having been caught blind by the assault.

“You bitch!” he shrieked up at Terrance, now leering down over the edge of the pier.

“Sorry, Efron. I’d have thrown a tomato, but I was all out.”

“Oh, shit,” Eli cackled, hurrying over, a wide-eyed Ted in his wake, “You guys can swim, right?”

“Not in these clothes!” Micah protested.

“Jesus, take this however you like, Efron, but you are such a girl.”

“Pickin’ on a woman, huh?” Ryan shook his hair out of his face, surprised to find a smile alighting on his lips, “Classy, Smith.”

“It’s cool,” said Micah, “I’ve got this.”

“That’s so precious,” Terrance smiled patiently, “What you gonna do, baby? Poem me to death?”

“Even easier,” Micah undid his ponytail, shaking his chestnut locks out, “I’m going to hoist you by your own petard.”

“Eh, not sure you can say that…”

Micah grabbed Terrance by his ankle and tugged him, Vans and all, into the drink, to the hooting approval of the others on the pier.

“Bitch, you just got hoisted!” Eli pointed as Terrance gulped and squirmed.

“Motherfucker!” he splashed Micah, who yelped in protest.

“Oh, don’t be a baby!”

Ryan grabbed the edge of the pier, looking up at the laughing Zach, “Remind me to kill candy ass later.”

“I think there’s a line, man,” Zach reached down a hand, staggering as he did, “Whoa.”

Ryan frowned, “Zach?”

“Fine. Just…stood up too fast.”

“Man, you’re drunk.”

“I’m fine, just take my hand.”

Ryan obliged, at which point Zach completely ate shit. Or, well, lake water, but given which lake, same thing.

“You dumbass!” Ryan laughed, clearing his lungs roughly as Zach resurfaced.

“I’m fine!” he declared unnecessarily, “Jeez, that’s cold!” and turned to the pier, “Come on! Water’s fine!”

“You’re not serious,” said Eli as Ted began shedding his Braves shirt. At Eli’s incredulous expression, Ted shrugged, “It’ll wake us up.”

“I’m plenty awake.”

“Maybe for you, but if I show up home smelling like beer, Mom’ll kill me,” he kicked off his cleats and peeled off his socks, “What? Can’t swim?”

“I took lessons at the community pool while my Mom picked up the lifeguard.”

Ted grinned, “City boy,” and dove in, shattering the white lines and showering them all with the pieces.

Ryan had no idea why, but the thought made him laugh. Zach looked at him perplexedly and started laughing himself.

“I thought this lake was haunted?” Eli prompted, removing his shirt and swinging his legs over the pier.

“It is,” Micah reminded him, “We’re haunting it right now.”

“Swell,” and he dropped in with them.

The next few minutes passed in a rippling blur. They swam, over and under each other, bodies brushing for brief intervals in the too-cold water. Ryan shed his tanktop and threw it wild, not even checking to see if it made it back to the pier.

He hadn’t really felt drunk, and yet being in the water revived him. The air was full of their voices: laughing, splashing, yelps and taunts.

Terrance was occupied for a chunk of time trying to chase down his duster, which was floating like a bloated garbage bag.

“You’re paying for this!” he snapped, “With your credit line and then your life.”

“I did you a favor!” Micah called from farther out, “Seriously…leather in July?”

Ted reached the float first: it was a simple, raft-like structure, hovering a good distance out from where they’d started, but still way off the lake’s center.

“What’s this doing out here?” he asked, grabbing onto it and climbing on.

“Parties,” Zach panted, swimming up to him, “We used to have…parties. Out here.”

“Lake kids used to have a game,” Ryan explained, “Whoever passed out first got floated out here.”

“What, like hazing?” Ted guffawed, “Why’d you stop?”

“Lost all our best players,” Zach’s cheeks were flushed pink, his words melting into moonmist over the water, “And it wasn’t cool anyway.”

“Oh,” Ted’s expression darkened briefly, “Right.”

“Check out frickin’ Kate Winslet over here,” Eli swam up to them.

“Who?”

“Titanic?” Eli frowned, “This is a roundabout way of guilting you into helping me up.”

Ted chuckled, “Yeah, sure,” he lifted himself onto one knee. In the moonlight, his lithe, lean body had an eerily pearlescent quality, like a marble statue, his short black curls given new luster by the water. He hardly seemed the same person.

Eli accepted his hand, but seemed to do most of the work lifting himself up, much to Ted’s surprise. His eyes widened, “Oh, wow. I forgot…how’s your side?”

“Well, it’ll probably bitch me out in the morning,” Eli indicated the jagged pink scar down his abdomen, “But right now, I don’t feel a thing,” he collapsed down onto the float with a satisfied sigh. Beside him, Ted brushed his hair out of his face and muttered something out of Ryan’s hearing, lying beside him, feet parallel with Eli’s head.

Ryan and Zach floated nearby, watching Terrance and Micah doggy paddling after each other in the distance.

“Hey, Ryan,” Zach began eventually, “About before…”

“Huh?” he doubletaked, “Oh. Yeah, man, forget it. I lost it. My bad.”

“You know you can tell me stuff, right? Like…anything?”

“You’re not my shrink, man.”

“I’m your friend,” his lips twitched, and Ryan was struck suddenly by how much he’d…they’d changed. Not even two years ago, they’d been near strangers. Zach had been so much shorter then, his face rounder, his body pudgier. Ryan, tall for his age, but far less tatted and with only an embarrassing dusting of peach fuzz on his chin.

He’d thought he was so tough. That he was untouchable.

Fucking Zach never got the hint.

“You got some life advice for me?” he prompted softly, “Hit me.”

“Advice? Forget it,” he chuckled, “I don’t even know what I’m doing. But what you said before?”

“When I lost my shit?”

“In the car. About how we could…have our own garage?”

“I was bullshitting, man. You’re gonna get some bigshot scholarship and end up starting for LSU. Sky’s the limit, Henderson.”

Zach chuckled briefly, the moon in his eyes, “I’m really glad you got cleared, man. And that Kieran went down for what he did and you didn’t have to take the wrap…”

“I’m pretty glad too.”

“But sometimes I think about what would’ve happened if you weren’t cleared,” Zach spoke quickly, almost guiltily, “If they never caught Kieran, and if we weren’t stopped from running away and if we just kept driving, together, on the road. Forever. Away from Lakewood, away from everything…just you and me against the world. And I feel shitty about it because it wasn’t me that was wanted for murder…”

“Zach…”

Ryan caught his breath, the water seeming to still around him, the crickets’ song miles away. He’d rather Zach had just taken him to task over losing it before, or even just given some cutesy bit of advice. Something he could smile and nod and brush off as easily as the tepid, stinking water around them.

The happy little bastard can’t make it easy for him, can he?

“Yeah,” he answered finally, “Yeah, we do,” stowing away a thousand other replies deep down inside him, so they’re as unreachable as the Gen X mass murderer who’s been polluting this lake since before they were born.

“I appreciate you, man,” he told Zach, thinking to himself he’s worthless, he’s pathetic, he’s a stinking, sniveling…

—

…weakling.

Their taunts remain long after he’s gotten away from them. They ring in his head like the clamoring of alarm bells, only competing with the staccato frenzy of his desperate breaths.

He all but throws himself against the bathroom sink, his glasses falling into the basin with a sad clatter. He doesn’t have time to mind the loss of his vision, though, possessed by the skittering, crawling, biting things all up and down his arms, down his chest, up his neck.

“No, no, no,” he stammers wildly, shoving his hands down his shirt, fussing with the buttons, watching the little black specks falling into the drain, to scurry off, if they were lucky, or more likely to drown or die on impact.

It’s not their fault. They’re just ants. They have no idea why they’re supposed to be funny, why the other kids thought it would be just hilarious to stuff them in his locker.

Todd doesn’t want to hurt them. Todd doesn’t have a dangerous bone in his body. Todd is perfectly inoffensive, never says a word against anyone, and the universe has nominated him the public punching bag for his trouble.

He watches the ants scurry away, locks of greasy hair obscuring his already shot vision as his eyes water, “I’m s-s-sorry,” he sniffles, miserably, wretchedly, to the little guys who never asked for this abuse, and whose short lives were now endangered because of him.

Because he’s inadequate. Because he’s weird. Because it’s easy.

Ryan knows this loathing as well as he knows the face that looks back at him in the bathroom mirror. It creeps into his dreams, visceral and intense, disgustingly personal. Too wretched for pity, too real to be dismissed as subconscious flotsam and jetsam or whatever the fuck.

He’s got to give it to Todd, though. The poor bastard is honest. Everything about him: every single thing they all hate him for…it’s him, pure and unfiltered. He doesn’t hide. No tats, no tank, no scowls.

The world has nothing but shit to throw at him, and his heart’s wide open anyway.

What the hell is Ryan’s excuse?

Todd looks at himself, seeing every imperfection blown up to a hundred times its size, and chooses, as Ryan did for so many days in the cell pride and greed earned him and so many days after, to lie, “T-tomorrow…”

—

“…will be a better day.”

“Any room on the lifeboat?” Terrance swam up to the float, “I’ll pay top dollar for a seat.”

“Don’t believe him,” Micah warned in his wake, “He’s a double-dealer.”

“Biphobic,” Terrance singsonged.

Ryan looked at them, seeming to be jarred from some deep thought, “Your skinny jeans shrink yet, Smith?”

“Excrutiangly. Wanna do a touch test?”

“Sorry, guys,” Ted leaned over the side of the float, “I think two’s pushing it already.”

“I’m light,” Micah pointed out, “And thoroughly inoffensive.”

“Um…”

“Cut the pout, gal pal,” Eli offered him a hand, “We’re a tolerant people.”

“I wasn’t going to pout,” Micah smiled as he settled on the float between them, “It’s more like a baleful sigh.”

He wrung his hair out, lying down with a satisfied sigh, his teeshirt (Ani DeFranco at the Orpheum, 2012) hiking up to expose his navel, which Eli seemed to note with a smirk.

“Keep it on, Efron,” Terrance chided, “You trying to blind someone?”

Micah flipped him off casually.

“This is nice,” said Zach with some of his usual heartrendingly imbecilic earnestness, “We should hang out more.”

“Don’t any of you chucklefucks let it go to your head,” said Eli lazily, “But you’re pretty chill when there isn’t a psychotic murderer chasing after you.”

“I do have to beef up my rolodex of straight guy friends,” Micah chuckled, “I feel dangerously close to being inducted into the frat.”

“There you have it, gents and germs,” intoned Terrance, “Sean Cody’s youngest fan…”

“We can’t all commission our own boutique porno,” said Micah, “Also, I will never be as basic as it comforts you to think.”

“Who’s Sean Cody?” asked Ted.

“Independent filmmaker.”

“Cool.”

“Seriously, though,” Zach continued, “You could help me figure out the grass book.”

Ryan scoffed audibly as Micah smiled, blowing Zach an exagerrated, flattered kiss, “That’s a nice thought, Zach, but you’re putting a lot of faith in me.”

“Yeah,” said Ryan, “Pass English on your own juice, man. I believe in you.”

“There’s nothing wrong with help.”

“Full disclosure: I don’t really get the poems either,” Micah shrugged, “I just like saying them.”

“Which is your way of saying you like the sound of your own voice…” Terrance pointed, “Clocked it.”

Zach shrugged, propping a beefy elbow up on the edge of the float, right at the toe of Micah’s sodden boot, “Still. But you read them better than I can. Makes them easier to understand.”

Micah’s lips curled, “If you say so.”

“If you start this shit again, Efron…”

Somebody splashed Terrance from behind. Ryan gave him one of those ‘You have time for this?’ looks, which he was pretty sure was just cover for Zach’s angelic little smile at the enterprising poet’s knee.

But he didn’t kick up a fuss, as Micah closed his eyes again and did what he did best.

“Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul,” he tossed his hair over his shoulder, looking for all the world like some grunge reject Venus, flanked by two lanky, pasty-faced cherubs, “Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen…”

Zach watched with a kind of polite attention, his smile frozen at the corners of his mouth. Beside him, Ryan watched not Micah, but Zach, his expression unreadable, miles away.

“’Til that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn,” he leaned down, on his side, the ends of his hair kissing the surface of the water, “Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age…”

Terrance listened with imperfect attention, too aware of his soaked clothes clinging to him, his hair dripping down his neck. It grated on him…the indignity, sure, and the fact that he’d been petarded or whatever but, on a pettier level, it was fucking annoying Efron knew all these bullshit words.

“Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself…”

“What you looking at me for?” Terrance asked, happy to kneecap the mood.

“Rorschach effect,” Micah shrugged, “The verse calls for a preening narcissist…”

“The verse says you’re the preening narcissist.”

“Artist’s interpretation,” he shrugged, winking a brilliant hazel eye. Around them, Zach turned away to disguise a yawn, Ryan communicating some inscrutable thing to him with a look and a smirk. On the float, Ted stretched comfortably, his kangaroo feet dangling over the side. Eli sat by his head, knees drawn up to his chin, looking out at the darkness across the water.

“Yanno, Terrance,” Micah said at length, lowering his voice to a breathy stage whisper, “You’re a funny guy.”

“See, you would say that, being in love with yourself to the point of psychosis…but I think you’re funniest when you’re not trying to be.”

“I will drag you down in the drink, Efron.”

“We’re already soaked as each other,” he smirked, “You don’t need me to say anything to Bridget.”

“For Christ’s sake, we’re still on this?”

“If you wanted Bridget’s attention, you could get it. You wouldn’t even have to try.”

“Aw, shucks.”

“But you can’t do that, because it would be easy. You can’t just walk up and apologize, or ask for her apology, or wherever you two left off. That’s just too straightforward. You, Terrance, need the game.”

“More roleplay?”

“Or something like it,” Micah shrugged, “I don’t know where it comes from, but you have this compulsion to toy with everything and everybody.”

“Don’t hate the player,” Terrance smirked, “Hate the game.”

“I do,” his smile faded, and Terrance experienced the brief thought that the theater twink was being serious here.

“You sure you don’t want to take up the family business? My head’s shriveling as we speak.”

“Oh, I’ve long ago given up pushing for your epiphany, babe,” Micah shrugged, “But trust I’ll be right here when you snap out of it with a burnished brass ‘Told ya so’, letters about six inches high.”

He scoffed, “So…since you’re such an expert, Efron…am I playing a game now?”

Micah laughed and didn’t answer directly, “You really don’t have any dreams?”

“I have a couple.”

“Like the ones we talked about…past lives or whatever.”

“You’re not tired of that shtick yet?”

“It doesn’t really matter to me, Terrance. I’m just curious…and a little embarrassed to admit it.”

“That’s not like you.”

Micah gave him a look, his lips curling, cat like, “Well, Terrance, don’t let it swell your head back up but, as you know, I have dreams like that sometimes and, it’s the damnedest thing…”

—

“…you’re there too.”

The room is too smoky for its size, too small for all this sound. He hates these dives, not so much to play in, but for what playing in them promises.

This isn’t what he signed up for, he tells himself, as warm, wet lips work him from below, priming him like a graven image in a pagan temple. He doesn’t want this, he tells himself as he feels every muscle tighten in anticipation. It’s always ever been only about the music, about art, about…

“There you are!” the voice calls across the den to him, curtailing the pivotal moment, before it can come.

Restraint, Chester reminds himself, control, and pulls out. It’s a useful skill, and it hasn’t been acquired easily. Terrance can’t do that and, moreover, why the hell would he want to? Life is short, the world is his oyster, and why shouldn’t the spoils go to whoever has the cajones to bag them?

“What’s wrong?” the enterprising would-be groupie asks breathlessly, full lips still pursed into a plaintive vowel of want, “Did I do something?”

“No, baby,” Chester is seized with a spasm of pity…Terrance is not above pity, no, but he’s certainly more selective about it. It’s a grown-up’s world, and we all have to make our own way in it. Pity’s for losers and, half the time, the miserable sons of bitches wouldn’t spare you a pot to piss in if the rolls were swapped.

“Not you,” he readjusts himself as best as he can, peering through the haze to his partner in crime…

“Get over here!”

He’s destroying himself. Lost in drugs and sex and the intoxicating fantasy of his own delusion. Talk about roleplay. Talk about playing games.

Chester has no say. Chester doesn’t lead, he follows and, time after time, bails the leader out. It’s a thankless task, but someone’s gotta do it.

Of course Terrance has dreams. Everyone does. Whether or not they mean anything…that’s for the New Agers and the eggheads to figure out. The way he sees it, if you spend all your time thinking about your dreams, you’re not living a very full life in the waking hours.

And if your dreams from time to time suggest some wonky mirror of that waking life, well…

“Had enough yet, Benj?” Chester asks the long-haired wraith at the other end of the room.

It’s all a coincidence. It doesn’t mean anything. It is, after all, only a dream.

But even if it is a dream, must it mean something? Must it mean something that he has that face…

“Getting there,” Benjy grins, an unfamiliar charm hanging around his neck: a bird with silver wings, “Like the new shine? A present.”

Chester watches the charm swing against his best friend’s chest, “Pretty. Now, what you say we take a feather out of his book…”

—

“…and fly?”

Terrance smirked coyly, teeth flashing through thinly parted lips, “Think that says a lot more about you than me, Efron.”

Micah shouldn’t be disappointed, but he deflated all the same, “I have a name, Ter-Bear.”

“You sure do,” he shrugged, “A few. Not all of them fit for print.”

Which Micah, always searching for meaning wherever it may present itself, had no choice but to take, if not as an admission, then an acknowledgment, which was good enough for him.

They subsided into a shared, communal quiet. The night was wearing on and, really, it was probably past time for them to be going home. Probably more than one of them was thinking it, though none wanted to say as much.

It felt, not so much like having friends, as like having partners. Companions on a shared journey without a set destination. It was odd. They’d only really shared each others’ lives for a short time…a few years, and really only a few weeks of any great significance within them.

The most important time of their lives, and wasn’t that a sobering thought.

Terrance had turned his back to him, kicking his legs leisurely in the water, content in his obstinance. He was the kind of person who needed his victories, and Micah wasn’t about to deprive him.

Ryan was floating with his eyes closed, in a torpid trance. Zach, at the opposite end of the float, had a dreamy, vacant smile on his face. Micah caught his eye as he readjusted himself, and winked at him without quite knowing why.

He was a good guy. With a twinge of sentiment he didn’t quite appreciate or understand, Micah supposed they all were, despite everything.

Behind him, Eli and Ted were lying parallel to each other, Eli’s feet propped on Ted’s chest, rising and falling with his sleepy breaths.

This was nice. In the morning, it wouldn’t be so…there’d be messes to clean up and apologies to be made. Probably, most of them would be a little embarrassed.

Now, though, it made no difference. Now…

“I am satisfied,” more Whitman, though Micah resolved to keep the poetry to himself for now, “I see, dance, laugh, sing…”

The moon was brilliant tonight: a shining silver disk, preternaturally huge in the sky, as if magnified by sheer proximity to the lake.

“As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread, leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with their plenty…”

They float on the water’s surface, their scrappy Six Man Breakfast Club: jock, bad boy, outcast, boy next door, rebel, theater kid. Below them, the water holds their images, shifting but steady behind the white lines of starlight and the gauzey scrim of moonmist.

“Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes, that they turn from gazing after and down the road, and forthwith cipher and show me to a cent…”

Above them, the world is vast and wide, open from horizon to horizon. Above them, there are no prophecies, no ghosts…no lives but the ones they’re living now.

Above them is the future and, beyond that, an ending, closer and closer every day. The thought should be frightening, alienating. But, for now, with his fellow travelers around him, Micah is just fine.

He lifts his eyes to the moon and smiles.

“Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?”

* * *

Nightswimming, remembering that night
September’s coming soon
I’m pining for the moon
And what if there were two
Side by side in orbit
Around the fairest sun?