Larson doesn’t come over again which is kind of bittersweet. He annoys me but hanging out with someone my age was nice.
July twentieth is my birthday, I turn seventeen. My parents get me some new albums. Vinny gets me some movies that I’ve never seen. I think I’m going to wait to watch them with Benjamin since I don’t think he’s seen any of them either.
The day after my birthday is Alton’s unofficial birthday so I bake him a tiny cake made of peanut butter, applesauce, carrots and flour. It doesn’t hold its shape, but he seems thankful for it anyway. I drive out to the desert with him and throw a stick around before we go hiking. Instead of turning down the road leading to the canyon, I continue on the main road and stop by another, much larger canyon. It starts as a wash but the farther you go the taller and narrower it gets. Alton and I walk along it.
There’s lots of vegetation and in some spots there are little pools of water, a tiny stream trickles down rocks and over the gravel. Eventually, we come out of the canyon and there’s a road, I have no idea how it got there, but it is, so we walk on it. We walk for a long time, then we come to a big, open valley, and I can see gaping holes all around. Mines. I wonder what they were looking for.
Gold, probably. Or silver. These holes aren’t like the garnet mines. They’re more man-sized and don’t seem to go straight down. I don’t get the same creepy vibes from this place as I do from the garnet mines. I start to head up the side of a mountain towards one of the holes, the opening is large, but the farther in I go the shorter the roof gets and it isn’t very deep. As soon as it gets too dark to see, it ends. When I put my hand out, I can feel a wall. There’s also debris all over the ground, rocks and old wood planks.
I check out some of the other holes. One goes down at a slope. I throw rocks in it and I hear them splash when they get to the bottom. Another one has a big hole right in front of the entrance, it’s impossible to get into, but it looks like it probably goes quite a ways into the mountain.
There’s one I start to go into but I can tell it goes on for a long time. I don’t want to go in there without a flashlight and certainly not without somebody else. I’ll definitely have to bring Benjamin here.
Alton and I drive back home. I work out for a while and, by the time I’m done, it’s dark so I go to bed.
The rest of the summer is uneventful, as summer comes to an end I start to drive by Benjamin’s house whenever I’m out, usually before or after I go to the desert. One day, after what feels like months of driving past their house, there’s a car in the driveway. I park my truck and knock on the door, Benjamin answers it. He smiles so wide, then he throws his arms around me. I hug him back. When he lets go I notice a little scar under his eye. My anxiety peaks, was he beat up again?
“How was Tennessee?” I ask, keeping my cool.
“It was awesome, I was so happy to see all my old friends.” He’s smiling so much. “I wish you could meet them, Leo, I think you’d really get along with Dennis and Bart.”
I laugh, following him inside. “Nobody bothered you?”
“Nope, I took your advice, I never went anywhere alone.” My body relaxes, anxiety gone in an instant and he takes me to his room where he shows me all the pictures his dad took while they were in Tennessee. I get to see Dennis and Matthew, who look like a couple of stoners, Matthew has long hair and is wearing a tank top in most of the pictures, Dennis has a buzzcut and is usually wearing some kind of graphic t-shirt. There’s also Amy, who has very long red hair, and Bartholomew, who has dark skin and hazel eyes.
He shows me pictures of him and his friends on horses, of Amy looking like she’s having a panic attack as Kelly wraps Cooper around her neck, pictures of them playing board games with their family, a picture of Benjamin and all of his friends passed out in a living room while a movie plays on the TV, a picture of Benjamin sitting high in a tree.
I laugh at the one where he’s in the tree, throwing branches at Bartholomew. He laughs too. “It was all fun and games until I fell trying to get down,” he says. In the next picture his arm is in a cast with a bandage under his eye. I laugh harder. “Imagine if I had fallen from one of your rocks! I would die. I just got the cast off before we came back.”
“You even got a battle scar.” I say. He snickers, then looks at me funny.
“You look ripped.” He says.
I look at my arms, I’m wearing a tank top and shorts. “Yeah, I’ve been working out with my dad’s old weights.”
“Cool.” He says. “You look good.”
I feel a swell of pride and embarassment. “Thanks, kept me entertained.”
He shows me more pictures, then I go and help him set up his snakes’ tanks. “Where are your parents?” I ask.
“They went to Reno to go see some family, I didn’t feel like going.”
I nod as I put some branches and a hide in Simon’s tank. “I’m glad you stayed.”
“Me too, were you in the desert.”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s Alton?”
“I didn’t take him today, his paws are raw.”
“Poor boy.”
I put Simon in his tank, then Garfunkel. We finish making up the tanks in a comfortable silence.
“When are you taking me out to the desert again?” He asks.
“Tomorrow if you want, I found this great new place we can check out.”
“Yeah, sounds good.”
He walks me to the door as it starts to get dark. “See you tomorrow.” I say. Before I turn around and head back to my truck he wraps his arms around me.
“I missed you.” He says, really softly.
“Me too.” I say, hugging him back. When he lets go we stare at each other for a minute, another one of those intimate moments. I don’t know what makes it so personal but I feel like something is a little bit off. A little different between us. Nothing’s changed but I feel warmer when I look at him.
“Bye.” I say, stepping backwards towards my truck.
“See ya.”
As I drive home I wonder what’s different.
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