PATCH

Without having to look, I knew Matthew was behind me. I could sense his rage in the heat, another harmonic alongside the electrical hum of the bugs.

The summer before, challenging each other to Trail Races, I’d managed to win most of the time. I had natural pace. And because I was smaller than Matthew, I was nimble over the rough ground. But Matthew must’ve grown an additional foot since then.

On our very first day at school, getting changed for gym, every boy in the locker room had stolen a look at the small nest of hair between Matthew’s legs, something noticeably absent from our own bodies. And now that hair was thicker still, not only between Matthew’s legs but below his knees as well. There was even a hint of mustache above his top lip, Matthew’s whole body bursting with the strength of Samson.

Which meant now I wasn’t sure whether I was faster than Matthew. I was running flat out through the stifling heat, hoping that my advantage still held, pushing my smooth hairless legs as hard as I could.

The trail to our secret spot carried you on a thin path that ran along the top of Swangum Ridge. To my right the ground fell away steeply to a valley with Sunset Ridge on the other side but that was nothing compared to the sheer drop to my left, a cliff face that ran straight down to the Hudson Valley. It must have been more than a thousand feet, the valley floor below nothing but haze.

Even walking that path was tricky, so running was downright dangerous. The topsoil was thin, the trail a tangle of tree roots, an assault course of half-buried rocks. But I sprinted as fast as I could and despite the danger and my fear of Matthew, I remember feeling exhilarated, my lungs sparkling with life, my body performing at its absolute peak for that first quarter mile, when suddenly a bad thought leapt into my head.

Maybe I could get to Hannah first but even if I won this race, what then? Matthew wasn’t going to offer me a gentlemanly handshake. You win, Tricky, well done. We play by your rules now.

Now I was thinking too hard about this problem and the overthinking was hindering my movement. My stride was losing its focus and I could feel my uncertainties mixing together, frothing up like the insides of a bottle rocket. How close was he now?

I believe I can actually remember thinking the words don’t turn around but it’s like that old thing about being told not to think of a white cat. Instantly you go ahead and think of a damned white cat.

It was only a glance, a quick peek over my shoulder, but one glance was enough. I went down hard like the sprung bar of a mousetrap.

I don’t know what it was my skull thudded into, tree or root or rock. All I remember is the sense that my head felt made of stone in the moment of impact.

*   *   *

EVERYTHING WAS A BLUR WHEN I awoke. And then blur turned to treetops and sky sliding by. Matthew was pulling me off the trail by my arms.

At the point where I’d tripped, the path ran maybe thirty feet in from the edge of Swangum Ridge but I’d fallen close to a spur, one of several along the way that would bring you right up to the edge of the cliff for the panoramic view. He was dragging me along one of those spurs.

Everything hurt. I let out a moan and Matthew let go of me, the pain shooting higher as my hands smashed down against rock and my head hit the ground. That’s when I noticed a sharp damp pain in the back of my head, my skull singing high notes.

Now Matthew was on me, pinning my wrists, straddling me the way he sometimes did if he wanted me to cry uncle in a play fight, threatening to make me eat grass or dirt or a live frog. As he glanced around, wiping his mouth, I thought I could see all the thoughts spinning behind his eyes like the wheels of a slot machine.

All you ever do is watch, Tricky, he said, not sounding mad at me, just weary. You stand to one side, watching and watching like a statue. You think because you didn’t join in, that’s OK? You’re off the hook?

I didn’t say anything, staring at him as I tried to think away the pain.

So you’re telling me the first time you ever decide to do something is when it’s too late? When it screws me over and screws you over and Hannah’s still just as dead? Matthew’s voice had shifted from weary to bitterly amused. It’s too late, Tricky, he said. You didn’t even say anything.

He gave me a hard look, daring me to disagree, but I didn’t speak. I don’t know why but something told me I had to lie there playing possum, the grand tactic of my life.

Matthew’s eyes fixed on my hands. Quickly he moved one of my wrists on top of the other so that he could grip them both at the same time. I had slender wrists but even so, and as weak as I felt, maybe I could’ve wrenched free of his grip but I was in a lot of pain.

Matthew began to rise, pulling me up with him.

Once we were standing, he started backing me up. I didn’t look around or fight him. I was trying hard not to cry out in pain as we moved together like awkward prom dates stumbling across a dance floor.

When we stopped, I think I felt an updraft from the valley floor. If I were an eagle I could have soared away. The screech of the pain was so loud that I let my body surrender to him, like the moment when the lady in old movies collapses into the hero’s arms.

Him Tarzan. Me Jane.

I let my eyelids fall as Matthew took his hand away from my wrists and then my shoulder. Open your eyes, Tricky, he said.

But I couldn’t, it was as if I were standing on a high-wire and even the slightest movement might be enough to overbalance me.

Matthew yelled at me, I said open your eyes.

Still I didn’t do what he said, thinking instead about the time we found a fat timber rattlesnake and when Matthew shot it, it moved like a whip and we ran for our lives screaming and when we stopped running we laughed so hard we thought we were more in danger of dying from the laughter than we ever had been from that snake.

Tricky, I swear … Just open your goddam eyes right now.

I thought about lake-swimming, deer-stalking and can-plunking. We’d had a lot of fun together in the Swangums.

My chest felt like it was painted with a bullseye.

I thought I could sense something moving, only the breeze perhaps, but then after a long pause, I heard Matthew speak, the sound of his voice having moved farther away. OK then, OK, he muttered. OK, Tricky.

I opened my eyes. Matthew was ten paces back, his shoulders slumped and a look of defeat on his face. He smiled bitterly at me. By the way, your head’s cut pretty bad, Tricky, he said, reaching into his back pocket, pulling out his red bandana and draping it over a rock. You know, he said, you realize no one ever needs to find out you were actually there. Really it was nothing to do with you at all. I’m sorry, Tricky.

And with that, Matthew turned around, giving me a dejected wave as he headed off into the trees, back toward the bikes.

*   *   *

I FELT FAINT IN THE heat, the sickly pine resin air. Stepping away from the drop, I wanted to sit down and sleep but the pain in my head flared again. I reached back and started pushing my fingers timidly through my wet hair. I had a huge thatch of hair back then—people said I looked like a young version of Bobby Ewing from the TV show Dallas—and maybe that proved to be lucky, as if my head were wrapped in layers of gauze. The hole was right at my crown and all sticky. My fingers moved down and just kept on moving, down, farther down.

And then I swear I heard a squelching sound, like a boot landing in mud, and yanked my hand away in shock thinking I must’ve touched my brain. Looking at my hand it was almost as if the blood couldn’t be mine. Too bright, too thick, too much. I wiped the hand on a rock, picked up Matthew’s bandana and pressed it to the back of my skull.

I had to get to Hannah but my head was all swirly in the sick-making heat as I started to wonder how long it would take for a corpse to rot in this weather. When would her body start to smell? And now I couldn’t stop thinking about Hannah hanging there, meat for the vultures, blood dripping from the milky white hooks of their beaks.