A Summertime Journey

later, he reappears with a pump BB rifle. Standing on the porch, he slowly begins pumping the handle—one, two, three, four, with each pump increasing the velocity of the BB. Earlier in the year, Brian killed a stray cat in the same tree with a single shot after twenty pumps.
“TWENTY-FIVE!” he yells with satisfaction at Jeremy as he levels the rifle and takes aim. Jeremy told me later that he didn’t believe Brian was going to shoot him. A searing pain instantly turns Jeremy’s left leg into mush as the BB penetrates his skin and settles in his meaty thigh. Jeremy nearly fell out of the tree but was able to hold on with his other three extremities. He lay there, hugging the tree for an eternity, ignoring his brother’s pleas to come down and not tell Mom. His mom came home hours later, scolding them both and eventually grounding them—Jeremy for a week and Brian a month. Jeremy still has a small bump on his thigh from the BB just under his skin.
“Your brother’s such a dick. Why does he pick on me?” I ask.
Jeremy, bewildered, looks up at me, still holding both his hands on his knees, breathing heavily, and says, “The same reason everyone picks on you: you don’t defend yourself.”
Fair enough. From that point forward, I decided that even if it means I get my ass kicked every day, I’m going to fight back.

CHAPTER NINE
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WE’RE AT OUR FORT—the cabana—getting ready to go to Larry’s party. Jeremy, Ryan, Joey, and I are sitting in the living room on folded pieces of cardboard, so we don’t get our clothes dirty from the soot and ash. Joey has stolen some skunk bud from his older brother, so we’re starting the party early. As soon as Joey pulled the sandwich bag out of his front pocket, we all immediately got a whiff of the telltale odor of the potent bud, and Ryan reacted like Pavlov’s dogs hearing a bell: he immediately began salivating. Ryan jumped up and raced to the bathroom to fetch our makeshift marijuana pipe. He secured the paraphernalia from the toilet holding tank once he was in the disgusting little bathroom. Ryan took a quick glance at the moldy, scaly, blackened shower tiles and pursed his lips together and shriveled his nose in disgust. He’s been very vocal to all of us that he believes a serial killer was murdering unsuspecting victims in that bathroom. A couple of weeks ago, while we were all high, Ryan told us an elaborate story of what he believed happened, and that it was the killer’s last victim who set the trailer on fire. Through our gut-wrenching laughter, he insisted that one day he would be proven right.
He said, “One day you’ll all see. We’re gonna come rollin’ up to the cabana like pimps to get our party on, and it will be surrounded by cop cars, and yellow cop tape will be everywhere. A little five-foot-tall police chief will be standing on a milk crate in front of this very trailer”— he pounded his open hand on the floor—“with a bullhorn telling everyone exactly what I’m saying to you dickheads.” We started laughing harder, and all of us were asking Ryan to “please stop,” but he kept on going for another ten minutes. He eventually stopped but not until he gave each of us a charley horse in our legs. Every time we’re at the cabana, I think of Ryan’s story that night, and I laugh, and tonight was no different. Ryan came running down the narrow hallway from the bathroom, pipe in hand, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Killer Clown, Killer Clown is coming for all of you dicks!” his feet kicking up little clouds of black soot.
“Pass that over here, you dick,” I say to Jeremy as he passes our homemade pipe to Ryan, smoke swirling around his head and shooting out of his nose like a raging bull. Our pipe is a well-used Pepsi can crushed in the middle to make the “bowl,” the holes masterfully poked out by the tip of Joey’s knife. None of us are experienced stoners, so we didn’t know you have to poke a hole at the end of the can to get a big hit.
The cabana has no electricity, so we don’t have any tunes to listen to while we get high. Joey does, though; I can hear the music from his Walkman earphones hanging around his neck. “Is that Madonna, ‘Like a Virgin’?” I ask through my laughter.
“Shut up, dick, it’s the radio. I didn’t pick the song,” he says as he turns off his Walkman. Too late. We are all laughing and making fun of him, refusing to pass the “little preppie” the pipe.
We had power once, about two months ago. Ryan stole one of his dad’s extension cords, and we plugged it into one of the outlets from the trailer next to us. But the owner found it a couple of days later and kept the cord. What were we to do? We could not knock on his door and ask for it back. So here we sit in semi-darkness, puffing on a Pepsi can, excitedly talking about the party we’re going to in less than an hour. Ryan and Joey debate about life—Ryan’s going to join the Army and be a sniper, and Joey’s going to be the biggest pot dealer in Los Angeles, even though he lives in Idaho.
We leave the cabana, but not until we’ve smoked every bit of the weed—stems, seeds, and all.


CHAPTER TEN
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WE BEGIN WALKING TO Larry’s house down the same road we take to school every day, but this time stoned, everything seems the same… but different. It’s like walking down a street of a movie set—all of the houses brightly painted, and the trees appear overgrown and loom overhead, blocking what little light is left from the setting sun. Everything is funny to