A Summertime Journey

do that!?”
“What’s your problem, you fuck? It’s just a cat,” Ryan says to me as he grabs his left shoe off the ground, a black-and-white checkered Vans, and attempts to put it back on his bare foot.
“Yeah, dick, a cat that can’t defend itself,” I yell.
“Knock it off, both of you,” says Jeremy in an authoritative voice. “Dick, you ever hurt an animal in front of us again, and I’ll personally fuck up your world.”
“Fuck you, Jeremy, you dick,” Ryan says. “You go hunting every year with your dad.”
Jeremy fires back, “Yeah, douchebag, we hunt for food; we don’t do it to hurt animals.”
“Yeah, douche,” I say, “what are you, a serial killer? Most dickheads that torture animals grow up to be serial killers. You ever think about killing any of us, douche?”
Ryan, now feeling like everyone is ganging up on him, says, “Fuck y’all; if I wanted any of you dead, you’d be dead already.”
That pretty much ended our conversation about Ryan’s career as a serial killer.
We continue down the street, with Ryan, still smarting from being ganged up on, lagging behind the pack, puffing on another cigarette. As we reach the intersection, Joey and Ryan peel off and head down Edwards Street to Ryan’s house. As they’re leaving, Joey picks up a round, quarter-size rock and throws it at us. It hits Jeremy on his left shin with a one-hopper off the street. By the time it makes contact with Jeremy, they’re around the corner. “See you dicks tonight,” Joey yells as they vanish. We ignore him and keep walking toward my house.

CHAPTER SEVEN
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I OPEN THE GATE to the chain-link fence that secures my castle—a faded green and white single-wide trailer with sheets in the window to keep nosy neighbors from peering in. When Jeremy and I walk in, we immediately turn right and head straight to the little kitchen and the refrigerator. Our footsteps squeak on the faded linoleum. I sidestep to the left on the third row to avoid stepping on the ripped piece that’s peeling up in the center of the floor. I swing open the refrigerator door and peer inside: nothing changed from this morning—there’s a half-gallon of two-percent milk, an open package of bologna sandwich meat, a head of lettuce, and some condiments. It’s pretty bare, and I’m thankful for what we do have, but I’m not going to lie—I spend most days hungry. I shut the fridge and swing open the cabinet doors above the sink; it’s more of the same—bare, except for some flour, rice, a few cans of baked beans, and an empty box of generic, frosted-oats cereal.
“Damn, I’m tired of being hungry,” I say to Jeremy, who’s already sitting on my brown couch and turning on our black-and-white TV. It would be several years before my mom, and I would get a color TV, and it would even have a remote.
“Shut up and make me a sandwich, bitch,” yells Jeremy from the couch.
“Make your own if you want one, but we don’t have any bread.” I plop down next to him, and we start planning the rest of our day and the party.
I hear the barking and scratching from my room in the very back of the trailer. It’s Bear, my dog. I named him Bear because when he was a puppy, I wanted him to grow as big as a bear. I thought if I called him that he would have to grow that big. Well, he didn’t. Bear was a mutt mix of who knows what; he was ugly as sin with long, scraggly, wiry hair and ears that flop around when he runs. He was an average small dog, a long way from the size of a bear. He probably weighs ten to fifteen pounds.
I pass the smaller bedroom, a laundry area, and the bathroom all on the right side of the hall before reaching my bedroom. I turn the gold-plated doorknob on the cheap hollow-core door and Bear launches out, barely acknowledging me, and runs down the narrow hall to the living room. He heard Jeremy’s voice and is on a mission to find out who is in our castle. Bear goes airborne at the end of the hall and leaps into Jeremy’s lap and immediately starts licking his face. Jeremy laughs and starts wrestling with Bear on the couch, and both of them eventually end up on the green-carpeted floor. Bear is small, ugly, and pretty much worthless, except for the fact that he is my rock. Bear is my true best friend, and I love that dog only second to my mom. Jeremy gets up and opens the front door so Bear can run around in our tiny little bare yard, go to the bathroom, and bark at whoever or whatever is dumb enough to pass in front of our trailer.
“Lance, let’s go to the cabana,” Jeremy says from the couch as he tries to stretch his leg out far enough to hit the knob on the TV to turn it off. That’s what we call our makeshift fort we discovered shortly after I moved into the trailer park.
“Okay, let’s go, but let’s go to your house and get something to eat first,” I say.
“Fine, fucktard, let’s go.”
I let Bear back into the trailer, and we head off down the street, the TV still flickering. I’ll hear about it tonight when I come home, and my mom lectures me on the price of electricity and explains that once that TV goes out, we’re not getting another one.
About three trailers down, on the opposite side of the street, is Diana Reno’s house. She’s my neighbor, a high school girl who’s three or four years older than I am. She, like me, lives in a trailer with just her mom. We hang out when her school friends aren’t around. She’s taught me about music, high school, drugs, and alcohol. My crush started when I spotted her sunbathing in her little patch of