A Summertime Journey

all four of us, and we’re laughing at nothing and everything. I keep thinking, Is this real? Am I really walking down a street right now? Paranoia creeps in. Can any adults tell I’m high? What if a cop stops us? We really shouldn’t be this loud. I know I won’t be able to fool anyone. My paranoid mind turns back to the houses. I can see lights on as we pass house by house, and they remind me of pictures I’ve seen in magazines of mansions—in truth, they were probably middle-income homes.
At one house we pass, the red and black curtains are open, and a huge picture window facing the street gives us a glimpse of a family sitting at a long dinner table. One adolescent boy and one girl sit across from each other, and on two Queen Anne chairs at either end sit the parents. An elegant matching hutch proudly displays all the fine China only used for special occasions. The father, facing the window, is sipping a glass of red wine, his Freddie Mercury mustache obediently staying above the rim of the glass, his blue silk tie loosely hanging around his neck as he relaxes after another hard day’s work. The two kids are kicking each other under the table, barely able to reach without alerting the parents. Mom is dutifully dishing another helping of peas onto the boy’s plate. All of them are laughing and talking in between bites.
I think can they see me? Am I stumbling or doing something funny? Are they laughing at me? Once I realize they’re not laughing at me, I suddenly feel sad—they seem so happy, so stable, and they’re eating what looks like an amazing meal. I yearn for that at this moment. We don’t even have a real kitchen table in our trailer, and we rarely sit together to eat. Plus, I have no dad—at least not one that’s in my life—and I’m hungry. All I had to eat today was school lunch: chicken nuggets, greasy fries, fruit cocktail, and a carton of milk. Oh, I did have two Snickers bars and a can of Pepsi from the A&W—I forgot.
We turn right down a busy, two-lane road called State Street, jeering at each other and heckling the passing cars. A red Mitsubishi Starion drives by, and Joey frantically points, catching the attention of the driver who gives us a thumbs-up with a huge grin. There are scattered businesses every so often, a Dairy Queen, an old bar, and a gas station, and there, in all of its unfinished glory, is a Thriftway Building Store. It’s going to be big.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
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THE EXTERIOR IS ALMOST complete, and I think they’re beginning work on the inside. None of the workers are here now; they went home hours ago, so it’s empty. We round the north side of the building and make our way to the back. We pass loose stacks of two-by-fours, two-by-tens, and four-by-fours on one side of the dirt lot and massive amounts of gray cinder blocks on the other side. Heaps of scrap metal and a big yellow CAT front-end loader that has seen better days finish out the side of the building, and we finally arrive at the door to the back of the building. I reach the door first and expect it to be locked. I’m shocked when I turn the handle, and the door swings open. Joey looks at me and says, “You shitting me, they didn’t even lock the fucking door! Let’s go in!”
There’s no power in the building, so it’s dark and cold. We fumble around, and Joey finds the stairs to the rooftop by accident. He trips on the bottom step and scrapes his shin, cussing the rest of the way up. Paint buckets and loose nails pepper the bare stairs and obstruct our way. Once on top, we can see all around us, and it’s incredible. State Street is directly in front of us, and cars now have their headlights on in the dusk. We split up and go in different directions on the roof, checking out everything. When I come back to the center of the roof overlooking the street, Ryan is lying face down in the prone position. I almost trip over him.
“What are you doing?” I ask as I lie down next to him.
“Shhhh! We’re gonna ambush the enemy,” he says.
Joey and Jeremy are now lying with us in silence. All four of us pretend we’re in Vietnam, waiting to ambush the Viet Cong traveling down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. I find a rock in front of me about the size of a silver dollar, with a smooth notch that perfectly fits my index finger and I pull the pin on my grenade and start counting—“Six, five, four...”—and I heave the rock as hard as I can toward the road below. It lands short, but I pretend it hit its mark and destroyed a tank.
“BOOM,” I yell. “I killed that fucking asshole!” We search for more rocks, but there’s none worthy of a grenade, they’re all too small. That’s why mine landed short; it wasn’t big or heavy enough.
“Joey, go down and get us some grenades,” Jeremy yells from the darkness.
“Fuck you, twats, I’m not going down by myself,” Joey retorts.
“I’ll go,” I say. I want to redeem my weak throw.
Once outside, Joey goes left toward a field of small trees in an abandoned lot next to the building. I go around to the front, remembering a whole pile of rocks when we first arrived. As I scoop about a dozen grenades into my gray shirt, I hear what I think is a yell from where Joey was just a moment ago. Fucking Joey better not be playing games, I think. I’m a wimp when it comes to scary shit.
“Joey, you little bitch, you done?”
No answer from the darkness. I don’t know if it’s possible for pitch black to get blacker, but when I