It always starts around the fire. The air is still heavy with heat after dark here, for a few weeks in the summer, which it was that night. The Dennon’s live outside of town and don’t have any neighbors close by, so there’s nobody to snitch about noise, or beer. Time runs backward when the sun goes down. We turn into kids again, and there has to be a game. Sometimes truth-or-dare, or telephone. But that night at the Dennon’s, our legs itched to run. I was scratching at my mosquito bites, too. They’ll leave scars.
Ryder got some flashlights and the rest of us ran off into the dark to hide. No streetlights. Only the stars, and the flickering fire, and the moon, sometimes, but there was only a sliver of it behind the clouds.
Avery and I went into the tree row along the edge of the yard. We all knew the rules. No crossing the road, passing the trees, or going inside the house. Someone had to stay and watch the fire while everyone else played. Last one found is “it” next round.
We listened to the Dennon brothers yell at each other about who had to stay by the fire. More time to hide. There was some rustling, and we bumped into Mikey and Julia and told them to beat it. Big groups get caught. And we were there first. They went off toward the stream. The cattails were high. It was a good spot. They would be lucky if they were the first ones to claim it.
I put a knuckle to my mouth, scrubbing away a spot of sticky marshmallow with my tongue. We stood like statues between the branches. Rudy’s flashlight beam shot right over us, but he kept walking. There wasn’t anyone else around. I could have kissed Avery, then, with a chorus of crickets ringing in our ears. But I didn’t know if she wanted that, yet, I didn’t know if it would make things messy or what. Plus, there were branches in the way of her face. So we waited in silence. We watched a jiggling flashlight disappear behind the house. There was some action on the other side. Avery spat onto the ground. She said a bug had flown into her mouth. Guess that was her kiss.
We were laughing about it when we heard Julia start screaming.
We stayed frozen where we were for a stupid long time. Even when a group came running back around the house, silhouetted by Rudy’s swinging flashlight, I couldn’t snap out of the game. I was thinking it was some kind of strategy. But then why was she screaming for Mikey?
By the time we got there, it wasn’t just Julia yelling. They had already pulled his body out of the water. Julia and Charlotte were arguing hysterically whether to do mouth-to-mouth or chest compressions or what, and Luke wanted to call an ambulance but Ryder didn’t want the cops to show up since there was beer, and everyone had their phones out but nobody wanted to make the call, and the whole time Mikey was just laying there on the brown grass.
I don’t know if it was the shadows or what, but it didn’t even look like Mikey anymore. His face was swollen like a balloon over bones and my eyes stung. I saw Rudy jabbing at his own eyes so I didn’t feel like such a wimp, but then he started yelling at Ryder and I felt a cloud of heat burn my mosquito bites and I turned around to see the fire eating away at the yard. It was a dry year.
They already had a hose going so it was just a matter of aiming it at the flames. But there was a big patch of charred grass once they put it out, and the smoke filled the whole place, making everyone’s faces look like ghosts with the light of the screens. And Mikey was still laying there with his feet in the cattails.