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I remember we used to say down-by-the-lake like it was a city, like it was an address I guess it was, the way all those cars would gather like crows, pick-ups and Caainst the world The s snapped their green whips at the old We built the night without thinking about it, without telling anyone it was going to happen, withoutplans Everyone knew to be there; no one was late

Get any group of high school kids together and you pretty le Scout boys rub, chips and burgers and dogs and Twix and Starburst The dra tunes, their tooth-white iPods stuffed into speaker cradles like black ht booze froht theood stuff Meat and fire and music and liquor—that’s all it’s ever been Sarah Jane started dancing up to the fla by the ne

ck,corn-colored hair brushing faces as she spun by, the smell of her expensive and hot Jessica and Ashley ran up to her and the three of the low around each other, their heads pressed together like three graces Sarah Jane poured her daddy’s cognac over Ashley’s breasts and caught the golden stuff spilling off in her sparkly pink h and sweet and that was it—everyone started dancing and howling and ju his back and keeping the beat, slapping his big thighs, throwing the gaic, like it was just ours, the sun of our world arcing from hand to hand to hand

I caught it and Coyote kissed lish class and Nick Dristol (left tackle 19) caughtThe night was so loud inand it scaredwas falling apart and coame, Bunny no less than Coyote, and boyfriend never fooled me for a minute, never could

I could hear Sarah Jane laughing and I saw Jessica kissing her and Greg Knight both, one to the other like she was counting the kisses to make it all fair She tipped up that cara but I shushed hiate hung open, no bottle ever seeh it was January the air was so war over us all, no one sorry, no one ashamed, no one chess club or physics club or cheer squad or baseball teaether inside our barricade of cars

Sarah danced up to rabbed nac to me and oh, it tasted like a pass thrown all the way to the sea, and she wrappedto me, to say: I’m better now, I’ and we have to get it while we can? I could feel her sto and insistent and hard, and as she ripped my shirt open I felt her child move inside her We broke and her breasts shone naked in the bonfire-light—rew fast and sure, shooting up out of the ground like it had an appointment with the sky, then a second and a third That saht corn, first corn All around the fire the earth was bellowing out pu blousy squash flowers, wheat and waterht of fruit The dead winter trees exploded into green, the graduating class fell into the rows of vegetables and fruit and thrashed together like wolves, like bears, like devils Fireflies turned the air into an erabbed Coyote’s hand which was a pahich was a hand and screa, and the music quivered the darkness and Sarah Jane’s baby beat at the dru to be let out into the pu to meets its daddy

All the girls screa their sto, all of the horeen and pink pulp; the squashes cracked so loud I put my hands (which were pahich were hands) over my ears, and the babies caht ball in the sky

Soht of vodka tonics and retroelse to talk about, huddle together around a table at the 10 year and get into it How Mr Bollard was never the sa hiht losses How they all dragged theain, the furious kind, and failed SATs and livers like punching bags How no one went down to the lake anye out of state and isn’t he on some team out east now? Yeah Yeah But his father lost the restaurants and now the southland has no king But the gy caved in after the rains and killed a kid But most of them could just never understand why their essays used to just be perfect and they never had hangovers and they looked a all the time and sex was so easy that year but never since, no matter how ht and drank because they didn’t ht ho just for a second it would be like it was then, when Coyote , just for acould be different And then it was the same forever, the corn stayed yellow and they stayed a bunch of white kids with scars where their cars crashed and fists struck and babies were born The lake went dry and the scoreboard went dark

Coyote leaves a hole when he goes He danced on this town til it broke That’s the trick, and everyone falls for it

But they all had kids, didn’t they? Are they re? What happened to them all?

Memory is funny—only Sarah Jane (real estate, Rotary, Wednesday night book club) can really remember her baby Everyone just re so fast, the whole pack of us, against the rural Devil gold sunset I call that a kindness (Why in You were the queen, I say That was you Only for a ood, wasn’t it, they all want to say When ere all together When ere a country, and Coyote taught us how to grow such strange things

Why did I stick around, they all want to know When he took off, why didn’t I go, too? Weren’t o of a kind? Weren’t ays conspiring?

Coyote wins the big gaet the afterparty

This is what I don’t tell them

I woke up before anyone theafter the cha everywhere like a boone off No corn, no pu I woke up because loaed over toslowly down the dirt road with nobody driving In the back, Coyote sat laughing, surrounded by kids,just like hirins, their black hair blowing back in the breeze Coyote looked atwe haven’t done before