Beach Body

you Malibu's Most Wanted, Mind of Mencia, Daily Show, Colbert, Mad TV, Mad TV, Scary Movie 3. I turned it off midway through Larry the Cable Guy's set from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. My eyes were a little watery. I'd been chopping down yew trees on Runescape for the better part of six hours. It was the first summer I'd convinced my mom that I didn't need to be at day camp while she was at work, and two months earlier I finally figured out what beating off was.

8th grade into freshman year. It probably helped my cause that they jacked up the camp fees that summer by almost $100. I preheated the oven and dumped out a sheet of pizza rolls. My mom is redoing my room and yesterday she put my old dresser with a broken leg out to the curb. During the night I heard this pickup truck with a rattling engine stop in the front of the driveway.

I lifted the blinds at the corner and saw some squat Mexican guy in a dirty trucker's hat with one hand on the top of my dresser like it was the hood of a used Camaro he was looking to buy. The back of his truck was practically dragging on the concrete. Arm chairs, washing machines, toilets, and a big umbrella. He'd built custom plank walls to contain it all and spray painted them. Juan's junk. I came to the window with my BB gun.

I don't know why. It was like I was in control of my body, but I wasn't. The pop can I'd shredded that afternoon was still laying in the grass by the mailbox. His friend, or maybe it was his kid, had jumped out, and they were trying to load my dresser. Like I said, I don't know what I was doing. I squeezed off a shot and hit him right in the square of the back. He dropped his side of the dresser and cursed in Spanish. Gay? Gay?

His son kept saying. I let another shot go and this one hit the truck door, loud enough that it could have just about passed for a real gun. They jumped in and drove off real quick after that and left the dresser straddling the curb halfway in the road, now with two broken legs. Lazy scum fuck garbage men, said my mom before she left for work. While I waited for the oven, I kept waiting to see the pickup truck coming down the street, or police cars. I wasn't sure which one would be worse.

Instead it was Kyle on his bike. He wanted me to come over and watch Wild Boys. His parents were out of town for a week and his sister didn't care what we did. She was hardly home anyways. And there were two computers in his basement. We could play RuneScape in the same room. I opened the garage, pushed my bike out, closed the garage, and jumped over the laser sensor on the way out. There was a poster for a lost dog on one of the telephone poles we passed. A little corgi. $200 reward.

Kyle tore it down, folded it up, put it in his pocket. We could buy three games with that and still have $20 left over. After a few minutes, I forgot I was supposed to be looking for a corgi. Something was happening downtown. D-Day, said Kyle. God, it was already June 5th. It had just turned June, and already it was a week old. At this rate, and next summer, I'd be eligible to work.

We were walking our bikes down the train tracks. I skidded down the embankment and grabbed a pinch of grass and rolled it between my fingers. I placed it on top of a page I'd torn out of my notebook and rolled it into a crude little cigarette. and then put it between my lips and lit it with one of the matches I carried on me ever since I earned my Firestarter badge. I'm smoking grass, I said. Does it do anything?

All I could do was shrug, and then I started coughing. Coughed pretty bad. Had to stop walking for about 30 seconds to recover. I asked him if he wanted to try it. Do you feel different? He said. I couldn't speak. My eyes were watering. I shrugged. I guess I did. He said sure, and then he took a drag and started coughing. There was a neighborhood-wide yard sale happening in his subdivision.

We stopped and snooped around a few, and at the third house we stopped at, Kyle became fixated on an old full-sized keyboard. 62 modes, he kept saying. He talked to the owner. The guy wanted $150 for it. It had wood paneling. Kyle said that he didn't have $150. He talked the guy down to $100 and then told him he didn't have $100 either. But he said he had it coming. Could he hold it for him until tomorrow?

The guy grumbled a bit, but agreed. We rode out to the field to shoot our paintball guns. The field was just a big dirt lot in the middle of nowhere, where no one would bother us. A long time ago it was slated for some kind of development and construction fell through like a weekend, so...

Now there are random piles of rubber here and there, random holes, a long berm maybe 8 or 10 feet high snaking through the middle, and a bunch of sections of big concrete pipe that never got laid or buried. Or some that did get laid, but not buried. and a few that formed above-ground tunnels, tall enough to walk through. A dozen more were scattered around, sitting upright like little huts. The graffiti wasn't ours. We never saw anyone else out here.

We had our base in a section which had been buried but was still open to the surface. It branched in two directions. One led to a second room, a short crawl over, and the other continued on farther than we ever knew or ever found out. We suspected it was the connection running all the way back to the town grid and never opened up into anything you could stand up in, at least as far as we ever explored.

Kyle was always braver with that type of stuff than I was. Always went farther than I would dare to. It made me claustrophobic, not being able to turn around. Imagine the whole thing just caving in on top of you. I wasn't there to spelunk. I was there to sit in the cracked white plastic lawn chairs we had in the main room and drink the Dr. Pepper we kept in our fridge, which was a milk crate. Better to drink warm DP that was ours than cold ones we'd taken from our parents' house.

Even if we had ultimately taken them from our parents' houses a few weeks earlier. There was a humble stash of fireworks in the other room and a box of Playboys which Cedric found in the dumpster behind the pool. and gave to me to take home for him because he couldn't take it in the car with his mom, and then he never came to pick him up.

It had also, as of late, become something of a storage locker for a small collection of some of Kyle's old toys which his mother had tried to throw out. I might still want to do something with a lot of these. They might be valuable. Or what if I want to give them to my kids someday?

There was also an old sleeping bag I'd pilfered from the linen closet after I spent almost the entire summer of seventh period Spanish class staring at Kaylee Songham's bra straps three rows ahead and one over, and imagining scenarios in which I could string her along out to the future.

with me and Kyle on the camping trip we were planning. Kyle could have the main room of course and we could sleep in the side room. We were going to build a fire and cook on it and everything. If she was my girlfriend she would be obligated to come.

I just had to talk to her first. On our way back, we did three laps around Kyle's subdivision on our bikes and didn't see any corgis. So we headed down the shortcut, passed the retention pond, and left our bikes on his back deck. When he was home alone, Kyle liked to keep the thermostat at 60 degrees. It was like stepping into a meat locker. Kayla was in a room upstairs listening to Kelly Clarkson with the door closed. First, to his room.

He showed me the Gatorade bottle he kept in his closet, which he had filled with just about every disgusting or foul-smelling thing he could find around the kitchen or the yard, sometimes things he managed to smuggle home from restaurants and to-go boxes. including an egg, which had been fermenting for four months and which he was plotting to someday open and leave under someone's back deck. Then he showed me the machete. Our machete. He, Ryan, and I. We each owned a third of it.

and let me spend a minute holding it and swinging it around the room on the last day of school ryan came into homeroom and said that he'd been to lowe's with his dad over the weekend and saw they were selling machetes so after class instead of getting on the bus we all walked there There was a big orange 18 plus sticker on the plastic shell that it came in, but the guy at the checkout counter didn't look much older than us, and didn't look like he cared, if he even noticed.

We spent the rest of the day till dark out in the woods, hacking at anything and everything we could find, blazing, haphazard, schizophrenic little trails all over the place. Down in the computer room, we were trying to run a scam on some kid for his full set of rune armor. Every now and then, one of us would get up and run across the room and do a half-back flip on the couch or something. Something like something we'd seen Steve-O do. When the phone rang, it was Kyle's parents.

He took the stairs two at a time with the phone pressed to his chest. I always worried about the banister at the bottom of the stairs to the second floor, the way it bent and groaned every time he spun around it with all his weight. And once a couple of summers ago, we were riding slides down the stairs, and I crashed into the railing at a bad angle, and it made a cracking noise that sounded really awful.

There wasn't much I could do by myself, and a second later the kid we were scamming logged off anyways, so I followed him upstairs. I found him leaning out his sister's open bedroom window. He backed up to let her climb in, and she took the phone from him. Hello? I looked again and there was another girl outside the window. It felt a lot like what a lot of people say it feels like when you see an alien. There was an unreality to it.

She had dark hair and was crouched on the roof finishing a cigarette. She was wearing a tank top with the spaghetti straps that showed some of her stomach and a little pigeon henna tattooed an outline on her hip. She looked at Kayla pacing around the bedroom. Then at me, then flicked her butt in the gutter and gave me a shh and a wink and climbed in like a cat. Okay, yeah, whatever, bye. Kayla hung up the phone. Ugh.

Her mom was making her deliver a pair of earrings she'd finished before their vacation to Susan Oliver, who had ordered them from her craft shop the month before. Kayla only had her learner's permit, but Susan only lived a mile and a half away. Nobody else in the car, her mom had said. Even I heard that part. We all piled into the family minivan, me and Kyle in the back, Kayla's friend Alyssa in the passenger seat.

She hadn't looked at me or spoken a word to me since she'd winked at me. Kayla fumbled with the keys a little bit and overcranked it. The engine wheezed and started. It was gurgly, like you've got a bunch of phlegm in your throat. Okay. Kayla centered herself and looked down to examine the gear shift. Foot on the brake. She put it in drive and the car lurched a bit. Kayla! Alyssa shouted. Her voice didn't sound as I expected it to sound.

I don't even remember how I expected it to sound, but as soon as I heard it, it never could have sounded any other way. You have to open the garage door. I could tell that Kyle was not having a good time. He always got very quiet when he was really upset or worried, and his lips became very thin. Caleb was searching around the center console for the garage door remote. Fuck, I think it's broken. Kyle, is the battery dead?

What? The thingy, Kyle. How should I know? She kept pressing the button with two fingers and then smacking the button and then it was like it was burning hot and she could barely stand to touch it as she fumbled with it and it fell to the floor. Alyssa picked it up and pressed the button and the garage door sprung to life and began creeping upward. Daylight. I felt kind of funny and Kayla almost let the car roll down the driveway and into the road and an oncoming car. Jesus.

Kyle's still got his arm crossed. He's trying not to let it all get to him. Kayla, are you high? Says Alyssa. And I don't know why. It wasn't even all that funny of a thing to say, really, but something about the way she said it, I couldn't help but snicker. Kayla slugged her on the arm for it. She had to stop midway through and put it in reverse and do a three-point turn to turn onto the street.

But after that, the drive was uneventful. We dropped off the earrings, and then Alyssa asked if Kayla would drive her to her boyfriend's house. Her boyfriend. That's in Mishkawana. So? I'd have to get on the highway. That's what it's there for. Kyle's really fighting for his life now. How do you even meet someone from Mishkawana way out here in the first place?

What about these two? said Kayla. Alyssa turned around in her seat, sat up on her knees, crossed her arm on top of the headrest. She looked at Kyle, and I looked at her cleavage. For a second, not even a second, but... They were just right there. My eyes flashed. It couldn't be helped at all. They were just hanging right there, not even for half of a second. And when I looked up, she was looking at me. Totally expressionless. I could feel the blood draining out of me.

I tried to stammer and couldn't even manage that. It came out as a barely perceptible trembling of the jaw. One corner of her lips turned up into what was almost a smile in her face softened. What about them? She said. She brushed a piece of her hair back behind her ear. Kayla never left the right lane and she didn't go above 35, but she made it the three exits to Mishkawana.

The boyfriend lived with his grandma on a split level in a little development behind a Hooters in a Jiffy Lube. His name is Alex. He goes to MCC, said Alyssa. We walked in the front door behind her without knocking. There was an old woman asleep and a lazy boy in the front room, her mouth open, a soap opera blaring on the TV. She was still wearing her nightgown. There was a beat thudding throughout the house, somehow louder than the TV, running through the walls and the floor.

50 Cent. We found Alex in the den playing Halo. There was a bong on the coffee table. He turned the stereo down when he saw us come in. He hugged Alyssa, and he seemed genuinely happy to see her. He had bright blue eyes and a little spit of hair on his chin. The hair on his head was gelled. Kyle nudged me. He had the lost dog flyer in his hand. Reward $200.

Alex and Alyssa were kissling and mumbling to each other. They kept their foreheads pressed together. The way she was smiling made me want to throw up. What's that? said Alex, his hands still on Alyssa's waist. Nothing, said Kyle, but his sister snatched it from him. Lost dog, she said. $200 reward. Oh shit, Alex said.

I've been trying to save up to get a new mixer, you feel me? Jay Sweezy's been telling everyone he's looking to buy some new beats, he said. And I'm pretty sure I've seen that dog, out on the old golf course once. That's fine. We appreciate it, Kyle said. But we aren't. He couldn't finish the sentence and just seemed to hope he'd said enough for everyone to surmise the rest. We aren't. But Alex was going to make him.

We don't need help. Alex was leaning over the box fan in the window, blowing out a bong hit. I just gotta put myself in a dog's mindset, you feel me? He said.

And all of a sudden I didn't like it either. I felt how I assume Kyle felt. Like we were quickly losing control over the rest of this day. Like this thing that had just been ours was suddenly yoinked out from under us by whoever the fuck this guy was. And it would never even for a second in a million years occur to him that he'd done it. We were walking down the train tracks. I looked back and saw this big black dog following us maybe a hundred yards back. Soon everyone else had noticed it too.

Alyssa had to remind Alex that the dog we were looking for was small. We tried coaxing it and cooing it, but it kept its distance and when I looked back a few minutes later, it was gone. In the field outside of town where the parachuters would land, they were setting up news trucks and food trucks to feed the news trucks, booths for parking attendants, and stake and rope to turn it into overflow parking once the opening ceremonies were concluded.

The parking lot was sponsored by Lakeland Credit Union. He kept slapping her ass, and the first time she grabbed his wrist and said his name in a way that sounded like she was upset, but then she turned and I could see her in profile. And the way her chin was jutting out, and she was biting her lip, and there was a timber to her smile that I realized in that moment I had never firsthand seen on a girl in my life. What the fuck was that? My mouth was dry. Jesus.

All of a sudden, each step felt like a gamble, like I could feel how fast the earth was flying through space. It seemed like a heroic feat that I was managing to remain upright all this time. Like each time I lifted my leg, it could end up being heavier than I was ready for. and my foot would fall short and I'd miscalculate my top weight and tumble over like my bones were jelly and I'd probably just keep tumbling at the speed of gravity until I hit something to make me stop.

He had long, greasy hair down to his shoulders and little red zits and a wispy little mustache and the shittiest little half-smile. Where are we going? said Kyle. As it turned out, we were going to a farm. which I eventually recognized as the spot where we used to get our pumpkins before we just started getting them out of the bin in the front of the mire. There was a Chevy truck with a bunch of people sitting around in the bed and a plywood sign leading against the tire that said, Jacuzzi.

$5. Whoever was driving revved the engine and they all cheered. I had $15. Some guy in a cut-off flannel with a real fat bottomed lip came out of a nearby barn to greet us. He shook hands with Alex like they knew each other. Then he wanted $5 for me and Kyle. Girls are free, he said. I looked at Kyle and immediately knew he was drawing the line. Sure enough, he went and sat in the driveway under the basketball hoop, fully clothed. Hey.

Five bucks, man. Now Alex was holding his hand out at me, too. He'd already paid his own way. I don't know, I said. Alyssa batted her eyes at me. What? You're not gonna come? I went for my wallet. And then Alyssa was out of her top, out of her shorts. Both girls were wearing bikinis underneath their clothes. I was wearing carpenter jeans and a Michael Vick jersey. I took off the jersey. That was a start.

That would buy me about five seconds. Everyone else was already in the back of the truck. It felt like I stood there for five minutes. It was probably not even a minute. And then I climbed up in my shoes, terrified I'd slip otherwise, tossed those off while I sat on the ledge and slid into the water in my jeans. Someone said, Woo! And Kayla said, Oh, wow.

It was a lot colder than I'd been expecting. I thought it was a jacuzzi. Someone knocked on the back window of the cab. The driver gunned it. Exhaust poured out of the tailpipe. Everyone cheered. And while everyone else was cheering, Alyssa was smiling at me. He still had his arm around her, and dark wiry hair under his armpits. The old golf course used to belong to a guy who was on the board for the local little league.

and went to jail for embezzling $50,000 over 10 years. That was right before the recession, and after that, any potential buyers ran the other way. It was a 10-minute walk from the Dupree Pumpkin Farm. After only a couple of years of sitting empty, it had already reverted into something like a Midwestern jungle, carved into the broad outline of 18 holes along the banks of the river.

We were walking down the old car path, whistling and calling the lost dog's name and going, Here, boy. It was creeping towards sunset. Alex had a pack of gas station beef jerky, and he would wave a stick of it down by his waist while he walked. like the dog was just hiding and waiting somewhere in the tall grass. I found a rusty 5-iron in a weed-choked bunker and used it as a walking stick. Kyle seemed to have lightened up slightly since we left the farm.

Alex's phone rang and inside of five minutes, he was gone, whisked away by his friend in a beater six-cylinder Mustang. He just had to go. After that, we just sort of naturally split up. Kyle and his sister and me and Alyssa. More drifted apart than split. We walked by one of the water hazards and I told her a story about a time that an alligator ate one of my golf balls that I'd heard some caller on a radio show tell. She said she didn't know anyone my age played golf.

The more you know, I said. The more you know. It hit me like an arrow in the chest, my own crushing, suffocating mediocrity. Everyone else is brilliant and witty in the confines of their own mind, too. It suddenly strikes me. Nobody around you can see the inside of your head. It hits me in quick succession. They don't know all the witty things you think of five minutes later. All they see is what you say, what you put out of there in the moment.

All they see is, the more you know. You spend your whole life in utter contempt of the average dumbass off the street, only to find out one day, that's you. I mean... Not really, of course. You know that isn't true, but who would believe you? Nobody who heard you talking just now, that's for sure. And they'd have every right to think so. Really, I mean, what could you even say in your own defense?

The more you know. All of a sudden, two holes over, Kayla starts squealing about something. Turns out she thinks she saw a dog somewhere in the tall grass. And from the top of the hill, Alyssa and I watched her and Kyle chasing it. Only we couldn't tell exactly what it was, but it certainly wasn't any kind of corgi I ever saw. And then, I think at the same time, we saw a half dozen more of them on the 18 green. Coyotes.

I wanted to run out in front, close the distance, and get between them and the coyotes, making myself look big, making a lot of noise, shout them away, and impress Alyssa. Then I remembered the machete. That's what I needed, and suddenly I found that I could not do without it.

My legs were locked in place. I could feel some cold, deadening things spreading across them through my veins. I remember hearing someone once say to avoid nocturnal animals if you ever saw them in the daylight. It meant they were desperate, and probably sick in the head.

It wouldn't impress Alyssa much if I were mauled by a pack of rabbit dogs. In fact, it would be mortifying. All I could do is imagine how emasculating it would be when my voice broke down from screaming while my skin was being torn apart from my bones. how feminine or strange or off-putting my pained involuntary contorting might look. I heard Alyssa say, oh shit, and this is bad.

And I knew she was standing only a few feet away from me, but it was like something I remembered from a dream. The coyotes caught their scent, and all came to attention, and soon had them circled and corralled up onto the green. But once there, thinking on his feet, Kyle grabbed the flagstick from the hole and took a full swing at the yapper which had dared to come the closest. I remembered the old golf club in my hand, but it was too late.

The rest of the pack became skittish, and within 30 seconds, Kyle managed to scatter the whole lot of them. Holy shit, said Alyssa.

In my time observing hot girls, I have noticed that there are very often so many people vying for their attention that by necessity there is created a class of non-people who they simply do not see. I don't think it's anything malicious. I don't even think they realize they're doing it. And rarely can anyone find it in their heart to begrudge them of it. Anyways, in that moment I felt myself slip down into non-existence.

like I was looking up at the sun and the sky from the bottom of a lake. When we linked back up with the others, I realized further that Kyle was now a whole new person. Holy shit, said Alyssa. That was honestly amazing. God, bring back the coyotes. I'd rather be eaten. The twerp was still acting for all the world like he couldn't care less about girls.

Lord knows he's barely even begun to flirt with puberty, and here I was, going out of my mind for the past two years, so of course, it just figures is all. She practically clung to him after that. Almost half sarcastically, but in a way that you could tell was, even deeper down, all the more genuine for it. Kayla and I didn't have much to talk about, so all I could do was watch the way Alyssa watched Kyle.

and analyze every word they said to each other, at least the ones I could hear. There was even more to analyze with the whispering that I couldn't. The laughter. They were having a barbecue for all the volunteers in the parking lot field when we passed that way again.

The sun was still freshly set, and the sky was plumb, and we blended in as best we could and moseyed to the buffet tables and filled several plates each before taking off back for the tracks, squealing and giggling for some reason even though nobody was chasing us.

I ate so much that soon I was hobbling for how heavy my stomach was, and my mouth was salivating like it does when you're about to puke. Someone mentioned something about Alex having fireworks and setting them off down at the breakers, but I didn't know where we were actually going. I didn't know if anyone did. Kayla's phone rang, a little clamshell. The blue glow of the screen lit up her face. She answered and started nodding, looking at me while she listened.

Your mom wants to know if you were trying to burn down the house She says you left the oven on and you were supposed to be home an hour ago I could tell Kyle and Alyssa were looking at me, but I couldn't tell what their faces looked like Okay i said it sounded stupid but it felt like she was waiting for me to respond it was almost my spot to turn off the tracks and head for home anyways the other three went shambling on kicking at the rocks not looking back already disappearing into the darkness

I called out and my voice sounded louder than it meant to, and asked if Kyle wanted to come over and play Xbox. We had talked earlier in the day, much earlier it felt now, about him even sleeping over. The best way to approach my mom with the proposal, etc. I heard them all stop walking, but for a few seconds he didn't say anything. Then he just said, no. Then a second and a half later, the worst part, Alyssa and Caleb both said, and laughed.

Then they continued on. I scrambled down the side of the embankment and it shook up my stomach so bad that I had to run for the tree line and puked as soon as I got there. When it was over, I sat there for a minute on my knees hunched over in the near dark and breathing heavy and my throat on fire, but it wasn't getting any lighter, so I set out through the woods and made it home a half hour later. I avoided my mom and brushed my teeth and went right to bed.

By the time I fell asleep, I was swaddled soundly in self-pity, and when I dreamt, I dreamt a sequence of ways I might embarrass or belittle Kyle in front of Alyssa. Jeez, what was that guy supposed to do? Let the coyotes eat his sister? I felt that there had to be someone out there, some higher power, taking notes, tallying my miseries, the times I had been treated unfairly by the universe and counting up what I would one day be owed for my noble suffering.

Some girl would come along someday and it would just make her sick to hear all of the other girls who had scorned or ignored me through no fault of my own, completely looked past or ignored all of my great qualities, despite my usually clearly being the better choice. choice, the more pure of heart, the more long-suffering and deserving. Do the dung beetles on Animal Planet have to do these interminable mental drills when the female dung beetles choose the other guy's mating dance? Christ.

I woke up confused and short of breath. It was still dark out. Someone or something was tapping at my window. My room was on the second floor. I wasn't sure I wanted to see whatever might be outside, but I crawled over and peeked back the corner of the curtain. Alyssa was looking right at me, in a big cardigan. It would have been easier on my heart if it had been a vampire floating there in a cape. Hello? I opened the window a crack. What are you doing?

I need your help. Before I knew it, she was in my room. In the dark. It felt like I was stuck somewhere between waking and dreaming. Can you keep a secret? About what? I can't tell you. Not in here. Someone could be listening. I have to show you. The streets at night were almost as shocking to the system as the girl in the bedroom. We didn't really speak as I followed her toward downtown and then down to the waterfront.

It was after four and there was a gray light starting to grow in the sky behind us to the east. We descended the bluff and headed onto the beach where it was wide and the sand was white and smooth and hard packed and cool between the toes. A low, lingering fog crept in off the water. The day before this stretch had been filled with umbrellas and lounge chairs. Now it was littered with barbed wire and hunks of twisted iron and broken concrete.

I felt someone watching us. Did you hear that? I asked. I almost thought I could hear breathing. Alyssa said nothing, only turned and looked at me semi-patiently, waiting to hear whatever I was talking about. But I wasn't even sure what I had heard, and it didn't happen again. So we kept going. We walked to the end of the beach where it got rocky and turned inland. There was a bent tree at the point.

that grew almost horizontal and stuck out over the water and they called the whole spot the elbow. Around the elbow the coastline turned wilder and less manicured. We caught up with the boardwalk that ran above the dune grass and followed it for a few minutes until we came to a seemingly random little stairway back down to the beach.

The whole sky was dull and gray, and the beach and the dunes were starting to come into a hazy half-focus. She seemed to know where she was going, but then out of nowhere she stopped and turned to face me. I was looking at the ground and almost ran into her.

I'm not joking. Can you keep a secret? I nodded. You're the only person I could go to. It's my boyfriend. My stomach sank, and I started to feel sort of... Numb. Then she took my hand and it was like, wherever I thought the basement floor was, was just a trap door. And my stomach fell even farther.

like it was about to fall out of my ass. Then it sprang back up and it was in my throat and my face fell hot and I didn't even know how my legs were moving. The wind in the grass was the only sound for Miles. Her hands were cold and small and soft.

We went over a few hills, and around a few others, and somewhere in the back of my mind there was this little voice worrying I'd never be able to find the boardwalk again. The sound of the lake grew louder. There was still a few stars hanging out over the water. The sky was growing lighter by the minute. It was like walking around in an underexposed photograph. The wind picked up the closer we came to the water and wrapped her hair around the bottom of her face when she turned to look at me.

Her eyes were bluer than the water or the sky, like the only bit of color in a black and white picture. The wind sounded like a canned sound effect from an old Italian film. Like there was nothing beneath it, except a few dozen guys in slacks and pomades standing around and sitting on apple boxes, smoking cigarettes and holding their breath and waiting for someone to yell cut. What the hell is going on? Was she about to kiss me?

Was her boyfriend hiding behind that log with a camcorder? Are they pranking me? She doesn't kiss me. Or I don't kiss her. But it felt like I should have. What is that? Is that what it looks like? It sure feels like I should have. I double-timed to catch up, trudging uphill, filling my sneakers with sand and reaching out for her wrist, a fraction too eager, a half-step too soon.

And it looks more like, as I'm sliding backwards, like I'm reaching out for desperate help, like I'm about to fall off the face of a mountain, and she reflexively tries to save me. But I was already committed. I kept her hand, straightened myself, and kissed her.

She jerked back a little at first, surprised I think, but then she kissed me back. I can feel my brain melting again just talking about it, just thinking about it, sizzling like fajitas. I don't know how I stayed up right. My bones were putty. She cupped her hand on my cheek and I put one on her waist. My whole body was on fire. She smelled so sweet and my heart had no sense of rhythm anymore at all, was just pumping for its little life. Could she hear it?

How far was it to the beach showers, and would she go for that type of thing? Would they be unlocked? Her boyfriend was over the next rise, lying at the top of the beach, out of reach of the tide. He had a bit of seaweed wrapped around his left ankle. He was a shade paler and more ashen than the sand and almost seemed to glow on top of it in the first light.

A few stray strands of grass blew in the wind around him, but he did not move. Alyssa stayed at the top of the last rise and let me investigate. I didn't know what else there really was to see. The gist of it was pretty plain from where she was standing, but he was facing the tide and something in me needed to see. As I came closer, I could hear flies. I didn't smell anything except the lake.

He was wearing American flag boxers, nothing else. His skin was gray, more blue around his eyes and lips, very puffy. I wasn't even looking at him for that long, but when I looked up, Alyssa was standing right next to me.

That's not your boyfriend, I said. What are you talking about? What do you mean, what am I talking about? We spent half the day with him. He took us to his friend's truck. Alex is not my boyfriend. He's a weed dealer. His eyes were closed though not clenched. What happened? I did what I had to. Something about the way she enunciated the consonants sent a chill down my back. She spoke with the tiniest little lisp. I had never noticed till now. He couldn't have been older than 18 or 19, maybe 20.

What did I know? She shrugged off the shoulder of her sweater and I could see a splotchy patch of amber bruising. That son of a bitch, I should have said. That's what I always said in the little fantasies I let run through my head when I tried to fall asleep. Maybe even I was the one doing the killing in those, or at least, you know, the intimidation. That seems a little extreme.

I said. You weren't there. What do you want me to do? I worked up the nerve to look at her eyes again and realize they were watery. I don't know. Her voice wavered. I'm just scared. Just help me, please. Okay, I said, yeah, okay. I was finding breathing more difficult than normal. Then she put her hands on my shoulder and leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

Thanks. She spoke barely above a whisper. Her boyfriend probably could not have heard her over the din of the lake, but I could hear the saliva on her tongue. Every meeting and parting of her lips, the way the breath passed over her teeth.

I turned around in time to catch one last glimpse of her as she disappeared over the dune. A pair of gulls came squawking in off the water and landed near the body. The sun was up. I kicked my foot at the birds to get them to leave. I heard a jogger go past on the boardwalk.

First, I tried dragging him out into the water past the tide before I realized how far that was and only succeeded in getting soaked and frustrated. I was going to have to explain why I had two pairs of completely soaked jeans, but that was for later. I tucked him amidst some deadfall and a little depression hidden from the beach and boardwalk and made it home just as my mom was shuffling out of bed and into the bathroom. I snuck back into my bedroom and she never asked any questions.

At 7.10 she left for work. I watched the car off down the street and into traffic. We still had a tarp and an old garbage can from the summer we had a pool. I stuffed it in my backpack and took my skateboard for good measure. The sun was all the way up and it was full morning by the time I made it back to the beach. I left my bike on the boardwalk and found the body where I had left it, and as I had left it.

On the way back to my house, and even the ride back here, I had thought about it so much the entire time, really. Every last second, not one spared. And hard thinking, too. headache from furrowing your brow too hard, and almost right into the back of the garbage truck before the guy hanging off there shouts at you type thinking, that I think I must have wrapped the thing in so many layers of abstraction that I started thinking of it as a mannequin.

There was a train of ants crawling up the guy's nose when I found him. I tried swatting them away, and they just went onto his lips, and from there... She had never even said his name, that I could recall. Just... The boyfriend. I didn't like thinking that there was an inside to him. Mannequins didn't have insides, and now as far as nature was concerned, there was very little difference between his insides and his outsides.

Such a sacred distinction before. I bet he went his whole life and never saw the sheen of his own intestine. Something that a month ago, maybe what did I know, I'm no coroner, had a Latin name. was one little part of a system of, I don't know, 65 parts, all designed to serve one esoteric function in his gallbladder, was now just another chunk of miscellaneous gray flesh.

You spend decades obsessing over one little corner of your heart, maybe. Doctors and specialists and tens of thousands of dollars of CAT scans and the most advanced medicine science can conjure. And the second it stops ticking, it's viscera. Goop. Curious little bugs whose name probably isn't even stored there, poking around your gray matter with their antenna, crawling through the deepest, darkest folds like winding canyons. In the end...

Nothing stays private. Birds picking at laser-tagged memories of your eighth birthday. Nature gets its greedy little fingers in every crevice, collects the data it needs, and reprocesses you back into the system. We think we own our bodies. We rent them. He seemed like a Brian. So I started calling him that in my head. Of course, the bugs are always there, are they not? That's what they say, right?

Bacteria in your gut deciding what you eat. No way they wouldn't make their way up into your brain too, right? Doing what? A shadow near the body moved. I turned back and the black dog from the day before was standing on top of the rise. looking down at me. Its face was calm, more knowing than curious. I pretended Brian was a mannequin and wrapped him in the tarp. By the time I got him to the boardwalk, I was pouring sweat and gasping for air. Weren't corpses supposed to be stiff?

I cursed him several times, sure it was one big joke after all, and he was still alive, digging his heels into the sand. I loaded him onto the skateboard, and as soon as I did, I heard sneakers slapping the boards coming up fast behind me. I stood up straight, and that was all I could do was stand there, out of time for anything else and stare out at the water, looking at nothing but refusing to look at anything else either, like I'd short-circuited. The guy ran past. Didn't even slow down.

I hid my bike in some tall grass beneath the boardwalk and started rolling Brian back toward my house. I was almost back to the main beach when I heard something coming toward me, rolling thunder up around the bend. I barely made it to the next set of stairs ahead of them.

A whole herd of bikers, at least a dozen, all in tight spandex and long helmets. But I miscalculated the weight distribution and Brian tipped and went crashing down the whole flight. And clipped my ankle on the way. Took me with him. At least halfway. One of the passing bikers above squealed to a stop and the lady dismounted. Are you alright? Do you need help? No, I said. But she kept coming. No! Even louder.

Her big purple sunglasses like bug eyes. No! She pulled back, a little frightened and a little offended, like I was an animal that didn't want to be petted. On the main beach there were conference center chairs on green rugs and dozens of old men in slacks and garrison caps facing a podium. There were sneakers on either side of the speaker, but I could barely hear a word he said.

The wind started to come on stronger and louder and carry his words away any time he started to make one of his points. There were a few journalists standing around with notepads and recorders, and some people with cameras, and sometimes the men would clap and they would start photographing.

There was no way past except across about 70 yards of totally exposed ground, so I doubled back and rolled him south by the water treatment plant. As we turned off onto the old Indian River Trail, a pair of B-42s came roaring in off the lake.

It took me almost a half an hour longer to reach my house than it should have, but nobody saw me. The phone was ringing when I walked in the door. It was Kyle. He wanted to go out looking for that corgi. I told him to come over. I told him to bring the machete.

When he came in the door, I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a Gatorade and staring an oscillating fan right in the face. I took him upstairs to the bathroom, where I had Brian in the tub. I thought he would say, what the fuck, and run out of the room screaming. But he just stared at it. He kind of blinked and squinted at it like he was confused. Then he did say, what the fuck. But it was a lot quieter than I had imagined. I explained the situation.

He repeated himself. I wasn't used to standing this close to him. I was almost looking down at the top of his forehead. I sat down on the toilet. Then he shook his head and said, Well... I'll do it, I said. I just needed to borrow the machete. He went downstairs and waited in the living room. I accidentally scratched the shit out of the tub, even through the tarp.

I had no way to sharpen the blade when it started to dull and the work became progressively slower. I was almost finished when Kyle came knocking on the door. Jesus Christ. I just gotta clean up, I said. Do you have the acid? He said. Not yet, I said. Not yet, he said. It's almost three. My mom would be home at 5.30. I'd been in the bathroom for nearly four hours. It didn't even feel like time was passing. I rode back to the Lowe's on his pegs, but they wouldn't sell us the acid.

We looked around for a friendlier, less conscientious, or maybe more stoned employee who would help us, but there were only three registers open. We returned to the house empty-handed.

an hour ahead of my mother. I finished dividing the body while Kyle placed the pieces into two trash bags. I dumped an old wheelbarrow out the back garage door and loaded it and held it behind us while I stood on his back pegs.

We made it out five minutes before she pulled into the driveway. We passed a cop on the way to Kyle's. I thought my heart was going to explode. I don't know what it looked like, but it couldn't have been normal. Cops must be used to everyone they look at freaking out, at least a little bit.

He headed inside first to make sure Kayla wasn't around. The coast was clear and we carried Brian down into the basement, and we scattered a bin of Christmas decorations and packed him into the storage. Kayla was upstairs and making something in the kitchen when we re-emerged. How's Alyssa? said Kyle. Kayla looked at me, then back at her brother. Why do you care? She's your friend, isn't she? You don't know how your best friend is doing?

She looked at me again, chewing a peanut butter banana sandwich. What's going on? Does my brother have a crush on Alyssa? How is her boyfriend doing? Oh, please, don't tell me you have a crush on Alex. I thought Alex wasn't her boyfriend. I thought he was just her weed dealer, I said. Kayla said, I mean, I guess. He's the closest thing to a boyfriend she has. But, I mean, I don't know. It's not like she doesn't have... She waved her hand in the air. Others, so...

For punctuation, she shrugged. But who is her boyfriend, boyfriend? I said. And I could feel my face starting to get hot and my voice running away from me a bit into the upper registers of my tightening throat. She squinted at me. I have no idea what you're talking about. Never mind, said Kyle, and pushed me upstairs into his bedroom. Dude, what the fuck did you do?

I was starting to feel numb, and everything in the room felt very far away. All I could say was, I don't know. And then once I started saying it, it almost started to feel like I couldn't stop until I made myself. Who is that? I don't know. Just some random guy she killed? I don't know. You saw her kill him? I shook my head. So it's just some guy? I shrugged.

Now I couldn't even say it. When Kayla knocked on the door, it scared the shit out of both of us. I'm gonna go meet Alyssa for fireworks. Do you guys wanna come?

She insisted on driving, but when we arrived there was no parking anywhere and we ended up coming back home and walking. People were already jockeying for the best spots along the bluff and the sun hadn't even set yet. We walked up and down the main drag looking for Alyssa.

Kyle was still looking for the corgi. I was watching his eyes. The sun started to set and we headed for the elbow. There was a little dirt trail like a deer path that ran through the woods out to the clearing at the point of the peninsula. We started to hear voices in the darkness, and then within a few paces the trees thinned, and the land on either side fell away, and the surf was right there by our ankles, foaming and bubbling between the white rocks.

There were four silhouettes seated across the trunk of the last tree, with their legs swinging high over the water like it was a park bench. One of them was smoking a cigarette. They all passed around a large bottle. Kayla nodded awkwardly toward them for us with her hands in her hoodie pockets and a tight-lipped little smile. Suddenly she didn't seem so much older than us, so much worldlier. One of the four said, And they all kind of snickered a bit.

Kayla? Is that you? It was Alyssa. All the way at the end of the trunk. The fireworks started, hissing up into the sky from a pontoon boat out on the lake. The horizon was still glowing peach. A round of applause went up from the bluff, the main drag, way back in Civilization. One of the guys on the tree clapped and said, Woohoo! It was three guys besides Alyssa.

The nearest had acne on his cheek and maybe a dozen spiky little black hairs on his chin. Seniors, probably. Maybe even college. Or college-aged, anyway. They were passing around a bottle of Disarono. Alyssa had swung around so that she was straddling the tree and leaned back against the crook, the forearm. She drank from the bottle, and the fireworks shimmered and refracted in the glass. Pop, sizzle, sometimes a boom.

Crackle. Come out here. Sit by me, said Alyssa. Everyone else already on the tree bench kind of ummed and awed. I don't know if there's room, said Kayla. There's not, said one of the guys, and the other snickered. Alyssa kicked one of them in the arm. Oh my god, rude, that's my friend. She was grinning. Apologize. For what?

I didn't say anything. If anyone's too fat to be out here, it's me. Let's switch, okay? I'm surprised this thing hasn't fallen into the water already with these fat asses on it. She elbowed the one nearest to her. No, really, said Kayla. It's okay. She wasn't even fat either. I mean, she wasn't Alyssa, obviously, but not fat.

If anything, she was athletic. She played goalie on the intramural floor hockey team. Sit down, you maniac, said the one guy. Someone take that bottle from her. Kyle was watching the fireworks as if no one else was even there. Did you guys hear what happened at the beach? asked the guy in the middle, the one smoking the cigarette. Nobody said anything.

It was too choppy, and one of the boats flipped over in the water, knocked one guy unconscious. He was wearing a fake plastic helmet, and it cracked in half and pinned the driver under, broke his wrist, and nearly drowned him. Had to get water pumped from his lungs. Shit, said Kayla. Isn't that so crazy, said Alyssa. People drown out there all the time, said the guy in the middle.

It was pretty funny honestly until people realized someone got hurt, said the farthest, the closest to Alyssa. Dude, nobody was laughing except us. They all laughed. The biggest, loudest firework yet was an American flag. A loud cheer went out. I looked at Alyssa. She was already looking at me. The flag was melting into its mirror image on the black lake behind her.

They were still cheering. I couldn't tell in the changing light how exactly she was looking at me. It was almost something like a smile, but not quite.

The fireworks started popping like corn in the microwave like they were shot out of a machine gun. The grand finale had to save room in the budget for the fourth in a month. Kayla's phone rang. She answered and listened to someone talk for half a minute. Then she turned the mouthpiece away from me and said, Your mom wants to know what the fuck you did to her bathroom and if you're going to be home for dinner. She turned her attention back to the phone.

Yeah, I am. Uh-huh. He's right here. Yeah, him and Kyle. Understood. Okay. Okay, I'll let him know. Okay, love you. Bye. She snapped the phone shut. It's pretty rude, she said not looking at me, that my parents' vacation keeps getting interrupted with your bullcrap, frankly. I looked at Kyle. He just shrugged.

What did you do to your mom's bathroom? asked Alyssa. Without the fireworks, I couldn't see much of her face at all. The cheers were dying down, the crickets were starting up, fireflies huddled in the woods and the peninsula behind us. Taco Bell, I bet, said one of the guys. They all laughed. The three of us kicked around downtown for a while after the streets had cleared, looking for the corgi.

Out at the elbow was the closest I'd get to Alyssa all night, and for a long time after. The next time I saw her, her hair was blonde. She looked different. Every loud, distant car engine I heard, I thought, that's her, in the back seat. sandwiched between a pair of perpetually half sweaty over hair gelled guys with bigger arms than me and she'll never even look at me the same way she looks at them i'll never give her whatever feeling she has right now

flying down those dark two-lane back roads past the barns and the pines, headed God knows where. I picked up my bike from where I'd left it by the boardwalk that morning, and we left downtown behind and started toward home. We started talking quieter. and soon not at all. It felt like every house we passed, the people inside were sitting up by their windows in the dark, listening to every word we said. We came to an intersection where I split off for home, and as I went, Kyle stopped.

Wait, you aren't coming back for your stuff, he said. It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about. I don't need it tonight. Can you hold on to it for me? He didn't answer right away. His sister was waiting a few steps ahead. Are you sure? It's getting late. I'm sure my mom's already pissed. You can come get it first thing in the morning.

I told him that I had a dentist appointment and would call him later in the day. In the dark, it almost looked like his jaw was trembling. He didn't say anything, but he kept looking at me. I could hear him breathing through his nose. Headlights appeared behind him. around the corner a few blocks away, an old tired engine shuttering at the stoplight. I recognized the truck as soon as it made the turn towards us. The Mexican junk man. Kyle gasped. He was looking past me.

I heard something scuffling in the leaves behind my back, snuffling. He took a step towards the side. I heard him whisper, Yes. The headlights swung over us and started roaring towards us, building a heavy, lurching momentum. Kyle's shoulders were hunched forward like a hunting animal. Stop, he cried out, and blew past me. There was a little yelp behind me, and I turned in time to see him chase a little white shape low to the ground off the sidewalk into the road.

The truck blew by. I felt the breeze. There was a short horn burst at the last second, several seconds too late. The tire screeched and the whole body surged ahead without the chasis. The junk piled high and the bed swaying dangerously, defying gravity. No, Kyle screamed. I had never heard his voice like that before. The corgi was laying on the pavement at the edge of the headlights. It wasn't moving. You son of a bitch, said Kyle.

The driver's door opened and he stepped out. He was wearing a cowboy hat and a sweaty t-shirt, faded jeans. I could see his son sitting in the passenger seat. He approached the dog and cast a glance at Kyle. Is your dog? He said. What the fuck is wrong with you? Kyle was still screaming. The man gestured at the street, palms up. You stupid Mexican. He said, don't you pay attention. You killed it. It ran out, he said. Spick, he said, taking greater to his vocal cords. White back.

He was crying. His voice physically hurt my ears. There was snot glistening over the bottom of his face. Lo siento, he said. No sé, he said. He glanced back at his son. Illegal, Kyle said. Fucking illegal. He was right in the face and practically growling through his teeth. The man looked around. He did not know what to do. He looked helplessly at Kayla, then at me.

You owe me, said Kyle. A hundred dollars or I'll call the police or I'll call immigration. The man bit his lip a bit and nodded and took out his wallet. He gave Kyle two bills. Two hundred, actually, he said. The man deflated. Por favor, señor, he said. He touched his fingers to his lips. Comida, necesitamos. They'll deport you, said Kyle, and I'll laugh. The man sighed and gave him another pair of bills. I am very sorry for your dog, sir, he said.

He got back in his truck and closed the door. He put it in drive and the struts groaned. Kyle was still staring at the money in his hands. None of us ever moved the dog out of the road.

The next morning I stayed in bed until I heard my mom leave. I rode my bike to Kyle's, but nobody answered the door. I went around to check the back door and found the garbage bags in the side yard, leaning up against a broken stroller and an old patio table with a big tube TV on it. The back door was locked and nobody answered there either, so I went into the shed and found a wagon.

I loaded the bags and attached it to the back of my bike and rode the 20 minutes out of the town to the field. The houses on either side of the road ended, and then soon after that, the road itself ended. I rode straight from the concrete onto the cracked earth. The wagon wheels jumped and jangled all over the place when they hit the rocks and weeds. I thought of the chicken thighs my mother makes every Wednesday in the crockpot. The way the meat just falls off the bone.

Our spot looked like a little Indian village in a desert. I parked my bike and took a bag in each hand. I dropped them down into the main room and followed down the iron ladder after. From there, I tied the drawstrings around my ankles and took a couple of deep breaths. I got down on my stomach and started crawling. The darkness became total quicker than I was anticipating. I hadn't even thought to bring a flashlight. A few times I thought I heard something ahead.

scaring me so bad it momentarily wired my jaw shut, but I'm almost certain it was only an echo of some sort of my own doing. If I let myself dwell too long on the idea of rats charging out of the darkness and into my face, I would have been completely paralyzed. Rats are God knows what else. I was in... I had no way to know, maybe 50 yards, maybe 150. I had been going for 5 minutes, 15. Even my perception of time seemed to almost slip away down there in the dark when I realized my mistake.

I think this is far enough, I thought. Maybe give it a few more shimmies and it hit me. A hotel ice machine dumping directly into my stomach. I thought I might have just enough room to turn around, but only ended up almost wedging my head stuck against the concrete so far that for about ten seconds, I thought I wouldn't even be able to straighten myself out again at all. I tried pulling the bags up past me. Too tight a squeeze.

and there was more liquid in them than I remembered. The smell was unbelievable. I started kicking backwards. Several times I had to stop and close my eyes and cover my mouth from kicking up too much dust and just to rest and let my panic subside enough to continue. I was wheezing into the dirt, struggling not to inhale it. It took me at least twice as long as it had coming in.

But eventually I felt cool, fresh air, and my eyes began to discern things again, and I popped out back into the main room. I climbed up to the surface and just sat there for a few minutes, catching my breath. When I went back in, I went in pushing the bags ahead of me. The smell was... It was tough going. At times it felt like the bags were half liquid in air and there was no surface that stayed solid long enough for me to reliably advance it up the tunnel.

But I managed. And just kept going. And going. Just five more yards. Five more yards. Why not another five? And five more for safety's sake. What if some kids come down here after you five years from now? And the reason it's discovered is because you want to save yourself 30 seconds, or a few more shimmies, now. Five more yards. Why not? Another five for good measure. Something sharp scratched at my face.

I recoiled and almost screamed, but then I realized whatever they were, they weren't moving. They were plastic and cool to the touch. I picked up several and held them in my hands, ran my fingers over them, and then it clicked what they were. Plastic army men. Toy soldiers. Dozens of them. My shoulders ached and my lungs were burning. It was far enough. To this day, I have no idea how the soldiers ended up where they were.

Before I left, I gathered as many of them as I could find by feel and stood them up in formation in front of the bags. Our family had never been very religious, especially once it became just my mom and me. but I said what I could remember of our father from CCD and began backing toward the exit. Without being able to see the point of light at the end in front of me, I spent a lot of time wondering if I was even moving at all or just churning dirt.

When I finally emerged, the sun was high, almost directly overhead, and my hands were raw, and for a long time, I lay on my back in the dirt at the bottom of the main room, open to the blue sky above, and watch the redness on the inside of my eyelids. When I opened my eyes the black dog from the day before was standing on top of the concrete hut looking down at me. I never told Kyle and he never asked. That winter a new developer bought the property.

Then they erected signs, and soon there were signs of activity happening while we weren't there. One day we showed up and found our stuff scattered all over the place. The following spring, construction started. I woke every morning expecting to find the story on the front page of the newspaper, body discovered by hotel construction crew. But a year later, the Imperial Hotel opened its doors to its first guests.

One time, when it had been open for almost a month, we tried pretending like we were staying there and exploring, but security found us inside of 15 minutes. Where were our parents? What room were we staying in? Hard to say. Kyle says that there is a bar in the basement where they sell hamburgers six patties high. He says it costs $300 and the bun is dusted with gold. I never got to see it.

trembling word your voice rang like a thunderclap there's no need for a whip to crack when syllables like yours are heard it's written in our Romans first a wolf came tearing through the black fed on others in the pack, a creature with his colors turned. y fanfarronea su abracadabra. Un fulanito de nombre bendito ofrece su alma con cada palabra. Nos muestra a sus dientes el visto indecente y fanfarronea su abracadabra.

You must believe yourself. Please don't worry about me. I am happy every hour of the day. She was a beauty and you were a patsy And for your trial, a shot in the chest Clean vigilantes in ancient style They laid you to rest The ravens wore black for you that day She was pretty enough to behave that way But what will she do when she starts to grow old When her body can't launch any ships no more

When do you think that you got off? Who told you to try Lenny Bruce? You think yourself a Nabokov You're just a well-dressed alley-oop As eloquent as a bad cough Falling sick for Betty Boo So go on, little cartoon boy Find a Betty to destroy su cliente en esto indecente y fanfarronea su abracalabra Un fulanito de nombre bendito Ofrece su alma con cada palabra Nos muestra sus dientes en gesto indecente Y fanfarronea su abracadabra Without me, without fear

What I know love, what I know love Most beats pound, they draw near When they show up, will I show up Without pain, without fear What I know love, what I know love Most beats pound, they draw near When they show up, will I show up Without pain, without fear What I know love, what I know love Most beats pound, they draw near When they show up, will I show up Without pain, without fear What I know love, what I know love Most beats pound They draw near when they show up Well, I show up