; it’s the girl saying, I dare you, into my ear; it’s me doing whatever she says; it’s always me like some kind of child; it’s me like some kind of dog; Jump, she says; How high, I say; so obedient; so weak; it’s the pill we split in the washroom; and the world now flat like worlds in cartoons; and the grass sucking down in tiny holes; like a thousand mouths pulling us deeper in; and I would happily go there into the holes, my ears stuffed full of grass and dirt; and how pleasant it might be in the dirt, if nothing slithered through it; how pleasant to hide so deep below the ugly noise of this ugly world; but the woman has left her purse on a table; and the girl has dared me to take the purse; and how fucking high; as high as you fucking can; like this one night at the rides; it was us behind a trailer; it was two pills on her outstretched hand; it was a big pill and a small pill; I didn’t know what either pill did; and I remembered, then, a film we saw in school about drugs; it said not to judge a pill by its size; the big pill might look more dangerous; but it could be nothing, like a vitamin; it could make your nails grow long; but the small pill could make you crazy; it could make you try to fly off the roof of your house; that night, I took the small one; I chewed it up to make her laugh; I opened my mouth to make her laugh harder; but then the pill kicked in, and things got rough; and the night changed; and we’ll get there; for now, we’re standing on the boathouse lawn; we’re wearing dresses our mothers bought; we’re sinking in heels and wishing we were guys; there are people holding trays of food; it’s a party for my father; we’re celebrating my father; he’s done something impressive; he’s often doing these very impressive things; now someone on the other side of the lawn is clinking a glass with a knife; that someone wants to give a speech about my father; so my father now is walking to that side of the lawn; my mother is walking beside him; the woman is walking slowly behind them; the woman is closer to my age than my mother’s; I’m the only one, at this point, who knows about the woman; I’m the only one who saw them, on another night, in a washroom; I’m the one who saw the woman’s face against my father’s face; when I think of her face, I think I shouldn’t have seen her teeth; I think I shouldn’t have seen her eyes half-closed; I think the word animal when I think this; I think the words piece of shit; I swore to my father I wouldn’t tell my mother what I saw; what my father said I thought I saw; what my father said I didn’t see; and he made me swear on my mother’s life I wouldn’t say one word; but I don’t believe in the power of swearing on people’s lives; I don’t believe anyone is listening when I swear; or I do believe someone is listening; and I believe that someone knows I have no other choice; so there will come a night I’ll tell it all; I’ll make it a fucking exposé; and it’ll ruin my father; it’ll ruin my mother; it’ll ruin the woman; it’ll ruin the windows of our house; and the windows of our cars; and my reputation; my entire future; but tonight is a party for my father; it’s a perfect night for a party; the sun is setting behind the boathouse; and I’m more fucked up than I’d meant to be; so I’m creeping across the lawn; I’m sinking in holes and everything seems to be slowing down; everything could come to a stop right now; and what would we even lose; but the girl says, Go, and pushes my back; she says, Fucking go, so I go; she doesn’t even know whose purse it is; she never gives a shit whose thing it is; she always just wants the thing itself; she just wants the things inside the thing; but I want the owner of the thing; I want to own the owner in some brutal way; I want to own this woman in that way; so which one of us now is in charge; is it the one who dares the other; or is it the one who dares to do the fucking thing; I can hear applause from the other side of the lawn; my father will act like he doesn’t deserve it; my mother will hide behind her dark glasses; the woman will plan a life that will never be her life; and as the applause fades out, and my father starts a speech about himself, we reach the table, and I take the purse, and we’re running now to the dock; we’re screaming, and what can I say about this; just something about the girls we are; or the girls we have to be; so we’re spilling the purse out to the slats; the girl puts on the lipstick; I open the pack of gum; I stuff stick after stick into my mouth; and I feel so crazy doing this; and the girl looks crazy sitting there; and what have we become; just animals; just lower than dogs; and is there anything lower than that; the night at the rides I was too fucked up to walk; but we got on the dumbest ride there was; it was this boat-shaped thing that swung; and there was music playing from somewhere; and there were guys watching from the ground; and when the boat started swinging, I was laughing; but when it went higher, I said, Get me off of this fucking ride; I hadn’t realized the power of this machine; that it could swing straight up to ninety degrees; that every time at ninety degrees, I could feel myself slipping out of the seat; that every time, my whole ass lifted straight up out of that seat; there was a metal bar to keep us down; but the space between the metal bar and me was as big as I was; I could have slipped out through that space, and what; in the film we saw in school about drugs, a kid kept saying, I can fly; I was secretly hoping he would try it; I wanted to see him soaring; I hoped to feel that good one day; but not to feel that alone; from up high, you could see the other rides and you could see the whole boardwalk as lights; from up high, you could see people like the nothing specks they were; it was colder up high than down below; and the sounds up high were weird and wrong; and going down you felt your gut, just awful, sinking; I closed my eyes and could still feel everything around me; the girl was touching my arm; I could feel the heat from her hand; it felt like the worst thing in the world; like the very last thing before it all goes dark; then she screamed into my ear, Let go; she screamed, Let go of the bar; she knew I could have died like that; she wanted to bring me as close as she could; so I let go of the bar; so I think I prayed; I mean know I prayed to someone; I mean I was saying something to someone; I mean I was swearing to someone, begging for something, believing in something else; the ride eventually slowed, then stopped; we walked off, and the ground was shaking; all of the air was shaking; it was like finally, and I stood very still; and I waited for something that didn’t, that night, come; that didn’t, for some time, come; then we walked away like nothing; and the night went on; and the days went on; and now she’s lying flat on the dock; and I’m looking down and thinking how much I hate her; I’m thinking how much I hate; I throw the gum wrappers into the water; I throw the lipstick into the water; I throw the purse as hard and as far as I can; I take the wallet and leave the girl lying there, eyes closed, looking dead; walking past the boathouse, I hear the party still going on; by now the woman is frantic; by now she’s turning over tables; my mother tells me these details when she gets home; how the woman screamed in the face of every person holding every tray, Where’s my fucking purse; how much I wish I’d seen this; and had I seen it, I might have claimed it as my own; I might have clinked a glass and said to the crowd that the plan was my idea; I might have said that I pointed to the purse, that I knew the girl would dare me; and I might have said what I saw that night in the washroom; how she looked at me from over my father’s shoulder; and how much she looked like an animal; like the kind you see in the dark; and I might have said how hard she laughed; and don’t you love this detail; and don’t you love this woman; and don’t you love my father; and aren’t you impressed that I, of all the people, am now at the center of your world; so listen up; I want to tell you the end is near; I want to tell you to box your things; I want to tell you it’s going to hurt; I want to tell my mother, my God; but I’m too fucked up to deal with her now; so I go to my room and close the door; I look through the woman’s wallet; the picture on the ID looks just like the girl; it’s the hair, perhaps; or it’s the teeth; so I’ll give the ID to the girl; and the ID will never fail her; she’ll storm into the market; she’ll slam her bottles to the counter; she’ll take the ID from her pocket; she’ll look straight into the cashier’s eyes, get what she wants;