Chapter 8: The Middle of August

Before the End of August

A week later, after everything that happened, our plan seemed foolish, haphazard. Suddenly, we couldn’t get back to the silo to return the photos or to retrieve the empty jewelry box. Every option wasn’t open to us anymore. Just as our futures had become definite—Lydia never getting together with Box once he was with Devi, Jenna and Jay parting ways for good, all of us about to be blasted out in our different directions—our decision about the silo that day became definite as well, before any of us realized it. 

We didn’t mean for word to get out about the construction site, but the rumors began flying without our help. Jenna, Lydia, and I knew about it, of course, but we were careful not to mention it to anyone else. Jay’s friends knew, and they had known for a while, but like all good secrets among teenagers, eventually word leaked down from the college and working kids into our group of barely-out-of-high-schoolers. Suddenly everyone was talking about the mystery construction site, and the party that would happen there on Saturday night. 

“Eduardo told me about it at work,” Lydia relayed to us. “He has no idea that I’ve already been there a bunch. From the way he was describing it, you would think it was some kind of hedonistic dreamland for teenage boys like him, just kegs on every corner and joints passed for free.” 

“Jay mentioned something too,” Jenna added. “He said that someone told the younger kids, and now they were all gearing up to crash it this weekend. He thinks that I leaked it to people like Eduardo, which is crazy, because I would never tell Eduardo my middle name, much less where the construction site is.” 

Word had gotten around, even floating past me in the library where I overheard two boys from a nearby school who were using the computers in one corner. “It’s supposed to be, like, haunted, or something,” the first one said. I stiffened, worried they were talking about more than the construction site, that someone else had found the tennis court and silo. 

“I mean, yeah,” the second replied. “It’s like a bunch of abandoned houses. If it’s not haunted, I bet there are criminals hiding out there.” 

It seemed so absurd, even after what had happened to me at the site, to picture hardened criminals hiding out in our suburban town, running from the law among partially built Tudor-style mini mansions. It seemed extra absurd, knowing that criminals really had once come here to hide out, at a palatial lodge, complete with a tennis court, that had burned down decades ago. 

Soon news of the site and the impending party reached our friend group. Box and Devi arrived at Sparky’s one night as we sat outside, eating our milkshakes in the floodlights from the parking lot. “We all have to go,” Devi insisted, her fingers woven through Box’s as she handed him another fry. “I heard that Steve McDogul is back in town and is going to be there.” 

Steve McDogul had graduated three years before us. He was a senior when we were freshmen, and he was a legend at our school. He had graduated to play football in California, but he had messed up his knee so he switched to acting. The year before, he had had roles in two procedural shows, one of them even a talking role, and he was rumored to be starring in a pilot airing this fall. 

Box acted insulted, “Hey, why do you need Steve McDogul if you have me?” 

“You are great, but have you ever played a corpse on television?” she teased. “My mom loves that show, and when I pointed out Steve, she was so impressed. She kept waiting for him to start talking, and she was so disappointed when she realized he was just a corpse.” 

I turned to Ralphie. “Are you going?” 

He shrugged. “Probably. It will be something to see at least. Plus, don’t you want to see Steve McDogul talk?”

By the time we left Sparky’s, every one of our friends was going to the party, and from the rumors flying the rest of the week, it sounded like every other friend group was planning to go as well. Even if Steve McDogul was still back in California filming his pilot, there was no way the party wouldn’t be legendary.

✷

Most people planned to drive to the party, parking on side streets and cutting through backyards to reach the legendary spot. Word had traveled on how to reach it: a kid named Beco who went to Warhouse lived in the neighborhood that backed up to some of the lots. His house had the rooster mailbox on one of the streets in the poet-named neighborhood. If you cut through his yard, you could walk across a water retention basin and get into the construction site. 

While our classmates were trying to figure out where Beco lived, hoping to trespass behind the right rooster mailbox, Jenna, Lydia, and I agreed that we could extend our hidden entrance to our other friends, now that summer was drawing to a close and the secret was out anyway. As night was wrapping tight around our neighborhood, the three of us waited near the library on our bikes, circling around the book drop. 

Ralphie, Box, and Devi rode up, with Cocoa and Peter a minute behind them. Peter was always riding bikes with Box and Ralphie, but it was odd to see Cocoa here with us, adventuring through the night on a borrowed black bike. Lydia set the pace, leading us under the overpass, through the golf course, to the secret path. 

She paused for a moment at the tall lilac bushes, letting the rest of us catch up. 

“Is this it?” Box peered around her at the path between the trees, just pushed aside enough to make an entrance, with nothing but darkness visible behind. 

“Yep,” Lydia replied, and she leaned around the group to call back to Jenna and me. “We’re good to go in, right?” 

“Why wouldn’t we be?” Devi asked.

As Jenna and I began to reply, Lydia started forward. “Never mind,” she brushed off her concern. “It’s fine.” 

And we began through the trees, the eight of us, a single line through the darkness. Lydia, Box, and Devi plunged ahead. Jenna, Cocoa, and Peter. Me, and Ralphie behind me. 

I could hear Devi and Box commenting ahead of us as the path ended and the gravel road of the subdivision began. 

“Whoa, creepy.” Devi looked at the skeleton houses around her, each yawning with darkness inside. The moon was high in the sky now, a perfect night for a party on an unlit, undeveloped street. 

“It’s this way.” Lydia pulled ahead again, leading us crunching across the gravel in the moonlight. We moved out of the cul-de-sac and down the main street. In the distance, we could hear shouts and the hum of conversation.

The party had already started on the next cul-de-sac up. I breathed a little easier, seeing everyone clustered down at this end of the construction, no one aware of the silo that held so much for the rest of us, hidden at the far end of the road. 

Eduardo was already there, with a girl who was friends with Beco, whose rooster mailbox had led the way for everyone else. We rode up on our bikes from behind, the rest of the party surprised to see us coming from the other direction. Eduardo, realizing who it was, put his arm around his date, pulling her closer to him in their spot standing near Beco’s boombox. 

Beco was a small boy with light hair and eyebrows that were pinched with skepticism all of the time. I only ever met him that one time, so my memory of him is in shadow, pale skin and hair next to Eduardo, sarcastic comments flying as he ran to and from the retention basin to wave more people in the right direction. 

The group had clustered around the center of the cul-de-sac, where scruffy grass was growing back, despite the gravel. The boombox sat at the center, pulsing Top 40 hits, and snacks and drinks appeared around it, brought from various cars that were parked along Beco’s street. 

We dropped our bikes at the entrance to the cul-de-sac and joined the rest of the group. It was still early, and most of the kids were from other schools, or they were younger ones from our school. Eduardo had started angling toward Cocoa with his date, and Cocoa tugged Peter away.

“Let’s take a walk,” she said. 

Ralphie and I joined them, and we walked toward one of the looming houses ringing the cul-de-sac, a sad tree standing alone in the front yard. 

“Have you ever been inside one?” Cocoa asked me.

“We’ve peeked in, but we’ve never gone inside. It’s just so weird, you know? They’re houses without any guts, just the frame outside.”

“Should we?” Peter stepped onto the porch, a bare slab of concrete, that jutted out from the rest of the foundation. 

“Is it dangerous?” Cocoa whispered. 

“I don’t know.” 

Cocoa and Peter disappeared into the house, and Ralphie and I followed. I pulled out the flashlight I had brought. I wasn’t going to come here at night again unprepared. The foundation of the house had been poured, and the first floor was intact. 

“I’m guessing there’s a basement below us, since I saw another one being dug up on our way in.” Ralphie said.

“Oh, that’s so creepy to think that there’s a basement downstairs!” Cocoa shivered. My flashlight lit up her hand grabbing Peter’s hand. “I don’t think I can do this anymore!”

Peter seemed relieved. “Do you want to go back to the party? It’s Eduardo or a ghost in the basement.” 

Cocoa laughed. “Eduardo doesn’t seem so bad compared to a ghost.” She curled her arms around Peter’s shoulder. “At least I have a sweet boyfriend to protect me either way!” 

Peter and Cocoa left out the front of the house, and Ralphie and I stood alone in the center of the first floor. 

“It’s weird to imagine someone living here in the future.” Ralphie looked up the stairs. “Like seeing a notebook when it’s still blank or a completely empty refrigerator.” 

I pointed the flashlight toward the stairs, and we walked toward them. At the top, we could see out of the house’s frame to the night sky beyond. 

“It’s pretty bright, even up there. Should we go up?” Ralphie started up the steps, but my flashlight beam stayed still. He turned back and offered his hand. “Only if you want to.” 

I paused. “I want to. Sorry, I’m calculating the chances of spiders. It’s a new house so the chances are lower, right?”

Ralphie laughed. “I’ll protect you from spiders.”

“But can you protect me from Eduardo? Or the basement ghost?” I asked. I reached out and grabbed his hand, sudden contact with the warmth that had been just out of reach all summer. His hand was rougher than I had imagined, and then I realized that I had imagined holding Ralphie’s hand, at different moments earlier in the summer that I hadn’t acknowledged until now. We crept up the stairs, scanning the flashlight over the second floor. 

Ralphie tested the floor gingerly with one foot. “Seems pretty solid to me.”

We moved into the room, and the moonlight flooded around us. It was so bright that I clicked off the flashlight, and the frame of the house pieced off the endless night sky around us. The stars were visible, scattered across the blackness, and the trees from the neighboring yards barely reached the floor where we stood. Above us, the moon shone bright, with only a few stray puffs of clouds roaming the inky expanse. 

“It looks like a painting,” I pointed up at it, and Ralphie’s gaze followed my hand upward. Our other hands were still locked together, no protection at all if the floor below us gave out, but maybe a slight consolation against ghosts. I was suddenly aware of his voice again, not over my shoulder anymore, but right next to mine, both of us talking upward at the moon, our voices soft, carried like the wisps of cloud above us. 

“It’s weird to think that this will be an attic someday, and no one will be able to see the sky at night.” 

“We might be the only ones to ever see it like this, not even the people who move in someday will know.” 

We thought about that together, and I felt the weight of the sky moving in on us, two people who went from sharing a spooky adventure in an empty house to the only two people in the world to see the sky exactly like this, on exactly this night, with this moon and these clouds hovering around it. 

“I wonder what will happen,” I said it out loud, almost not meaning to, talking about myself and Ralphie and everyone else in the world all at the same time. “I wonder who will live here. I wonder what their lives will be. I wonder if they will see the sky from someone else’s house someday, and the chain will go on and on.” 

“That’s kind of beautiful.” Ralphie turned his gaze from the stars back down to look at me. I felt the rush of the sky falling in on me again, my hand suddenly sweating in his, my feet on the plywood that didn’t feel so safe anymore, my sudden awareness of the soapy smell of Ralphie’s shampoo, and the complete absence of any other smell in the world. 

Underneath a painting of the galaxy, we kissed, our bodies made up where our minds were not. 

Ralphie pulled back to see my face. I looked up at him and said, “That was kind of beautiful too.” 

It was all new and different, and suddenly the world felt small again. We heard the pulsing music and shouts, and we walked toward the front of the house to look out. 

Down below us, the mass of teenagers had grown larger, filling up the center of the cul-de-sac. I couldn’t spot Jenna or Lydia in the darkness, but I knew they had to be there, probably wondering where I was and noticing that Ralphie was missing too. 

From our spot on the second floor, I saw a car driving up the main gravel road. 

“Oh dang, do you think that’s the cops?” Ralphie saw it too. My heart jumped, adrenaline on top of the adrenaline from the kiss. 

The car came closer. “No, I think the car is green. It doesn’t look like a police car.” 

The car turned into the cul-de-sac, and we watched from above as fifty teenagers had the same reaction that we did: terror, then relief. The car pulled up to the group, edging in, almost rudely, and three guys stepped out. 

“I wonder who that is,” Ralphie said, and we watched as they joined the throng. 

“It might be this guy Jenna knows from work.” I lost the driver of the car in the crowd, unable to tell who anyone was again. 

“Oh good,” Ralphie seemed relieved. “That’s good, right?” 

I groaned. “Maybe, maybe not. I should go check.” 

We made our way back down the stairs, and our hands parted. As we stepped out the front of the house, I wished I could pick up his hand again. But I wanted to find Jenna, to get back into the group without too much attention, so we slid back into the crowd unnoticed instead, two separate humans, untouching, as if we had never touched. 

Jenna had found Jay, and they were leaning together against his car. Across the cul-de-sac, Lydia, Devi, and Box were talking with Peter and Cocoa, who screamed at us as we returned. 

“We thought you were kidnapped by ghosts!” Cocoa jumped to hug me, and her warm vanilla smell suddenly wiped out the scent of Ralphie’s shampoo that had been lingering with me. 

“Yes, ghosts, those notorious kidnappers,” Lydia quipped. Behind her, I saw Eduardo watching Cocoa hug me, continuing to stare as she gave Ralphie a hug too. Eduardo rolled his eyes. 

Jenna and Jay circled around to us, and Jenna introduced him. Jay was not what I expected. Shorter, standoffish, and a little droopy-mouthed, though my perceptions of him were never going to be flattering. We told her about exploring the house, and Jay looked unimpressed. 

“Yeah, there’s not much to see,” he said. “I know some guys who have been through all of these. You aren’t going to find anything.” 

I opted not to protest. If Jay couldn’t see anything interesting here, then he didn’t know what to look for. Now Ralphie rolled his eyes at me in the dark. I smirked. 

Cocoa was watching Jay, making a connection in her mind. “Wait, aren’t you the guy from Warhouse who stopped that car from crashing into the football game?” 

Jay laughed. “Yeah, that was crazy.” 

“Oh my gosh, I was cheerleading at that game. You’re basically my savior!” Now Jenna looked unimpressed, and Cocoa threw her arms around Jay. “Everyone here tonight is so cool. No one was kidnapped by ghosts, and this guy saved my life. What a random party!” 

I didn’t know what to do with this side of Cocoa, and I don’t think anyone else did either. Peter seemed familiar with it, laughing at Cocoa’s enthusiasm. Lydia looked entertained, and Jenna was unhappy with Cocoa throwing her arms around Jay uninvited. 

Suddenly from behind Cocoa, Eduardo stepped into our circle. “So you’re just hugging anyone now? Is that it?” 

“Oh, do not start, Eduardo.” Cocoa threw up her hand and turned away from him. 

“Who even is this guy?” He pointed at Jay. 

“I don’t have to answer that. Stop talking to me. Go away.” 

Peter stepped in front of Eduardo. “Dude, you need to back off. Just leave us alone.” 

Eduardo looked Peter up and down. Jay, no longer the center of attention, lost interest. He spotted someone else he knew and wandered away without a word. Jenna watched him leave.

“You want to fight?” Eduardo raised his fists at Peter, and Peter looked at them, confused. 

“Why would I fight you?” Peter protested, “I’m not doing that. That’s dumb.” 

Suddenly Jenna stepped forward. “You need to go away, Eduardo. This is enough. Just go back to the girl you came here with, and let us all have a good time.” 

At this moment, I remember Lydia and me locking eyes around Jenna, both confused about where this was coming from. Later, as I reflected on it, I would picture the moment differently. What we chalked up in the moment as something random was not random at all. Random things happen less often than you’d think. Sometimes people you love just grow so quickly right in front of you that the only sense you can make of the change is that it happened at random, a spontaneous generation of ethical philosophy or moral high ground, or sheer uninhibited goodwill for a girl who was being oversaturated with love, just as Jenna was being undersaturated with it. 

“You need to leave us alone, or you need to leave here right now.” Jenna stood her ground.

Eduardo threw up his hands and turned away. “Fine, whatever. I’m not going to fight a girl,” he mumbled.

Cocoa threw her arms around Jenna. “That was amazing,” she crooned. “You are such a good friend!” 

Jenna let her finish the hug and patted her back. “Careful, don’t you know that hugging almost got you in trouble just now?” 

Cocoa squeezed her tighter. “I don’t even care!” 

✷

The moon was still high and bright in the sky after Eduardo left. Jay and his friends piled back into his car, and they were gone too. I had a feeling that Jenna wouldn’t worry about finding him again. 

The boombox battery had died, and the snacks were running out. People had started looking for bathrooms, and the eight of us had pulled away into our own cluster again, not needing the rest of the crowd to keep ourselves entertained. 

Later, the police would ask us what we had been doing. “Nothing,” we said, not because we had something to hide but because it was hard to describe what we had been doing as anything other than nothing. And if any adults don’t believe teenagers when they say they are doing nothing, they forget how entertaining doing nothing as a teenager can be. 

We were sitting around by our bikes in the dewy grass. We were talking about the last weeks of high school. We were reminiscing about bad middle school teachers. We were all watching the rest of our classmates circle among themselves, waiting to see if any last dares would be placed before we all burst off to college in a few weeks. In our circle, everything was happening at once, but when we described it to the police, it really was nothing. 

It was just after eleven when we heard voices. Our group was sitting nearest to the main gravel road, and I was the first to hear something odd. 

Behind the house where Ralphie and I had kissed, up the street toward the silo, I thought I heard a shout. There were so many screams and shrieks of laughter coming from the cul-de-sac party that I wrote it off as another person gone exploring, maybe finding the same basement staircase that had scared Cocoa away. 

Then I heard another yell, this one laced with anger. Ralphie, sitting next to me on the grass, stiffened. He had heard it too. The shouts got closer. We heard car tires on gravel. The group of kids at the center of the cul-de-sac noticed that something was wrong. 

“It’s the cops,” someone speculated, and the news was passed along as fact before anyone could check. People started running toward Beco’s house, leaving chip bags and drinks scattered behind them as they fled.

“I don’t think that’s the cops.” I looked at Ralphie. Unlike earlier, I wasn’t relieved to think that now. 

We all jumped up from our place on the grass, grabbing our bikes by the handlebars and hopping on. We pedaled back toward the golf course entrance, but as we neared the cul-de-sac, Lydia, who was at the front, suddenly veered back to the main street and pedaled down the dark road. As we flew past our usual cul-de-sac, I looked over and saw the red car, parked in front of the same house where I had seen it fly away a few weeks earlier. 

Shouts came from the house. Shouts came from behind us. We all pedaled in unison, no one left behind, the eight of us shooting down the darkened road where the construction trucks must come in, not one of us knowing where it would lead. 

✷

Only Devi and I heard the gunshot. Only Ralphie heard any of the shouts clearly enough to quote them later. Only I saw the body fall. The police didn’t think we would have to testify. They said that our statements were enough. 

It all seemed clear enough from the pieces we put together. A couple hiding out in a vacant house on a new construction site got into a fight, what the officer called a domestic dispute. The man started to drive away but turned around and came back. She was on the top floor of the house, waiting with a gun. When he came back up the stairs, she warned him not to come any closer, and when he did, she shot, his body falling out the open edge of the house and onto the gravel cul-de-sac below. 

“Don’t come closer,” is what Ralphie heard a woman scream. Enough testimony to know that the man was warned, and we weren’t told anything more about the case. 

Even that much, I had to find out through bits and pieces in the news. Ralphie’s brother knew someone who had a dad in the police department, and that gave us the final piece—that the woman who shot the gun wouldn’t have hurt us. That the man whose body fell might have, if he had turned down the cul-de-sac where we stood around the stereo, if he had been the one with the gun, if fifty teenagers had realized that the red car wasn’t the police. If eight of us on bikes hadn’t pedaled as fast as we could down a dark road at night, spitting out into the back parking lot of the grocery store, where we raced around the building terrified, and dropped our bikes and ran inside, begging the cashier on the night shift to call the police.

✷