Alistair had no first memory of Charlie Dwyer, no specific moment to revisit, to say this is where their relationship began. Charlie was there, always. Cross-legged in front of the television, or standing at the front door, or pleading on the telephone for Alistair to come over and play. He was Alistair’s neighbor and, by default, also his best friend. At least for a time.
When they were four, they would sit in a sandbox together, dig their bare toes in, and imagine that they were giants ruling over some vast desert. Plastic action figures were the inhabitants of this desert, and the boys crushed them with their feet, but not because they knew all that much about death.
“I wanna see how far they bend,” Alistair said once, and Charlie wanted the same thing.
Sometimes they would try to dig to China.
When they were five, they learned to ride bikes together. Tottering up and down the driveway on training wheels, they’d encourage each other.
“You’re getting it!”
“You’re doing it!”
“We’re the best in the world!”
Charlie’s brother, Kyle, who was eleven at the time, didn’t agree with the silly superlatives, but he did agree to help them. “Don’t stop pedaling,” he told them time and again. “You stop, you fall. It’s that simple.”
Alistair was the better cyclist of the two, but no one ever clued Charlie in on that fact. Not even Kyle, which was saying something.
When they were six, Alistair and Charlie presided over a funeral. Alistair’s goldfish, found belly-up in his bowl, was buried in Alistair’s backyard, and the boys wore ties and played music. Alistair’s sister, Keri, watched through the window of the house, and even though she was already eight and knew that countless goldfish died every day, she cried a little bit and turned away from the glass, switched on the TV, and searched for cartoons.
* * *
Alistair did have a first memory of the Riverman, of the one who would call himself the Whisper. Of course, Alistair didn’t realize what he was seeing, not back then. But revisiting that moment was like rewinding a mystery, going back over the evidence that may not have seemed like evidence in the first place.
It was June, a few weeks after the goldfish funeral, and the two boys were in Charlie’s backyard. Long piles of cut grass spit out from the lawn mower looked like anacondas speckled yellow, due to all the dandelions. Alistair ran his fingers through the clippings and felt the dampness and smelled the greenness. The warm weather, the long days—summer had finally arrived in Thessaly.
Charlie sat next to Alistair. In one of Charlie’s hands, there was a jar of rubber cement. Wedged in the crook of his other elbow and balancing on his forearm like a waiter’s tray, there was a piece of limestone. In the middle of the stone, there was a potato bug, frozen by fear, by the sight of the boy.
“I’m making a fossil,” Charlie announced.
Alistair examined the ill-fated bug. “Can we sell it to a museum?”
“Probably,” Charlie responded as he lifted and tipped the jar of rubber cement. The goo fell slowly, like tree sap. When it finally hit the stone, it wrapped itself around the bug and enclosed it in a round shell, a bubble that would dry the color of root beer. Charlie set the stone in the yard where the sun could firm it up.
“How many do we have to make to get rich?” Alistair asked.
“A hundred,” Charlie said definitively.
“That’ll take a long time.”
“I have a plan,” Charlie said, handing Alistair the jar and forging a path on hands and knees to the other side of the yard. It was there that a wasp crawled along the edge of a hole in the ground. It examined the dirt with its pincers and antennae, touched the grass, eventually decided there were more interesting places in the world, and took to the sky.
“There’s a whole hive down there,” Charlie said, pointing at the hole. “Dad ran over it with the mower. He’s gonna have to use Raid. Unless…”
Alistair took this as his cue. He poised the open jar of rubber cement above the hole. Minus the small amount that Charlie had poured on the potato bug, the jar was full. “How many are in there, do you think?” Alistair asked.
“A hundred at least. Enough.”
“And how do we get the hive out once it’s covered?”
“Shovel.”
It seemed like a good plan, and Alistair had visions of a papery hive the size of a watermelon, sheathed in rubber cement, wasps trapped on its surface or in the middle of flight, a real-life fossil created for the cost of craft supplies and displayed in a glass case at a natural history museum.
So Alistair tipped the jar.
As the rubber cement oozed into the hole, it disappeared from sight. Was it coating everything like glaze on a donut or was it soaking into the earth? The answer didn’t come right away, but when it came, it came in force.
Wasps burst out of the hole like water from a broken pipe. In stories both boys would tell later, the wasps would number in the thousands, but in truth it was probably only thirty or so. Still, enough to cause some serious pain.
A wasp stung Alistair first, in the dead center of his wrist. Yelping, he dropped the jar of rubber cement. Another wasp lanced Charlie in the ankle, and as he reached to swat it, yet another one skewered the back of Charlie’s neck.
“Run!”
Charlie’s brother, Kyle, now twelve, had a clubhouse at the edge of the yard, near a swamp. The boys headed toward the clubhouse because that’s the way they were facing. Kyle was inside with his friends, yakking loud enough that Alistair could hear them through the wooden door.
Charlie tried the handle. Locked. “Let us in!” he howled, batting the air around him.
“Password!” Kyle hollered.
“Abracadabra! Open Sesame!” Charlie responded.
“Bzzzzz! Wrong! Try again!”
The wasps were relentless, zeroing in on every untouched patch of skin. Targeted attacks. Bam. Bam. Bam.
“We’re dying out here!” Charlie screamed.
“Nice knowing ya, then!” The harmony of laughter made it clear that all the boys inside found this very amusing.
“Water! Keri says they hate water!” Alistair yelled as he abandoned hope of the clubhouse and sprinted past it and into the swamp.
It was muck and puddles—nothing more than half a foot deep—but it would have to do. Alistair’s sneaker sank, and the ground held on to it. He stumbled forward, and his foot came out droopy-socked and snagged a branch. There was no controlling his momentum now, and he flopped into the mud. Charlie followed. He launched his body in the air and landed next to Alistair.
* * *
Ten minutes later, stretched out on the picnic table next to each other, they endured the chill as Charlie’s father sprayed them with a garden hose. Charlie’s mother stood by with calamine lotion as muddy water spilled onto the patio. Their skin still throbbed from the stings.
“Don’t worry,” Charlie whispered. “I’ll keep you safe. I’m It, you know.”
“You’re what?” Alistair asked.
“It.”
“Like tag?”
“Sorta. I’m the one who gets to decide when things end.”
Charlie’s whisper was strong. It was reassuring. He reached over and grabbed Alistair’s hand. They wrapped their fingers together and held them like that for a while.