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"Mae leaves in less than a week," says Casey.
It’s late summer. Casey and Gregg are hanging out by the table near the Trolleyside NewsStand. Gregg’s draped on the chair opposite Casey.
Gregg bolts up. "Dude! Dude. Dude dude dude!”
Casey grins. He's a couple grades behind everyone but Germ, and he mostly hangs with Mae and Gregg when they skip school or on weekends. But Casey’s taller than anyone his age, and he's got his shit together more than some adults - he’s been the first to take care of his parents, the first to get a paying job, even the first of them to have sex - so somewhere in there, he’s become the unofficial older brother.
And he likes it. It means a lot to him, hanging out with these guys. He gives his time to them as often as he can.
Gregg keeps going, “We should do something cool for her.”
"We will definitely do something cool," Casey says, rolling his skateboard back and forth with his free leg. "And I know exactly what."
“Yeah? Whatcha thinkin?”
"Tell you when she gets here.” Casey’s grin widens to shit-eating size.
Gregg kicks him under the table - “dude!” - and Casey kicks back. They have a short kick war, neither getting the upper hand. The table wobbles and nearly falls over. Casey catches it, and they collectively fall back to lounging positions.
"Cool shirt Casey," Gregg says.
“Thanks.” Casey turns a little to the side to let Gregg see it better. He had, sometime last night, drawn a white Pumpkin Head Guy logo on the back of his black sweatshirt with white permanent marker. “I'll make you one if you want."
“I'd wear it everywhere," Gregg says. And after a reflective pause: “It’s a good song, it’s got, like, energy.”
Casey sits back and nods. He got inspired to write the song after something he saw a few weeks ago: a shape, a shadow, one night, in the dark. Following him home.
He’s got an idea for a new song, too. Last night he had a dream: a hole that seemed to be made of stars that became a tear in reality itself, and as the tear grew and grew and grew, as the hole of stars swallowed Casey alive, he could hear singing, a sound that echoed and bounced off of nothing at all.
“Yo,” says Gregg. "You got real quiet there a second."
Casey snaps back to the present. "Just thinking. I've got a new one. New song. I don't have all the words for it yet."
"What's it sound like?"
Casey leans forward and starts drumming on the table.
"So far it's," he says, and starts humming. As he hums to the end of it, he thinks of words to go along, so he loops around and sings it this time: "I just wanna diiiie anywhere else, if only I could diiie anywhere else..."
Then he hums six more bars and trails off. That’s all he can remember. It’s not bad.
"Duuuuuuuude," Gregg says, sitting forward to match Casey’s posture, supportive, sincere: "do it again."
Casey lets out a gleeful laugh and pulls a Sharpie out of his pocket. He hums it out loud as he writes the chord progression down on the table, covering over older graffiti and burned-in initials. Gregg leans over and watches him do it, humming parts of it as he catches them.
Casey writes lyrics below the chords, leaving spaces where he hasn't figured out words, and leans back, satisfied, watching Gregg trace it out.
“Man. Angus could growl this really good.” Gregg taps early on in the song. "Right here, right here, change it to 'hanging out on this street, where all the new kids come to play.'"
Casey crosses his line out, writes Gregg's, then crosses the first part of that out and writes 'stuck on this dead end street' above it.
Gregg's getting excited now. "Yeah yeah yeah! And-"
"You!" comes a screech from over their heads. Casey looks up to find the Pretzel Stand Guy a few feet over their heads, leaning over the edge of his counter, waving at them, furious. "You stop with your vandalism right now!"
"We're not doing anything," Casey says, sitting back and sliding the marker up his sleeve in one smooth motion.
Gregg sits back too, following Casey’s lead, motioning surrender. "We're just sitting here."
Pretzel Stand Guy grips the counter. Casey can’t tell if he really saw them or just suspects them, and it’s usually just the second one, so odds are good.
"We're not doing anything," Casey says again, louder, "calm down."
Pretzel Stand Guy tries to start a glaring stand-off.
Neither Casey nor Gregg acknowledge it. Instead, Casey widens his eyes and does his best to look like he's got a wobbling halo over his head.
Pretzel Stand Guy glares a few seconds more, then pushes away from the counter and goes back to cooking perogies, occasionally throwing passive-aggressive looks their way.
Casey leans back onto the table, marker in hand, and scrawls wide letters over the lyrics: NUKE POSSUM SPRINGS.
Gregg barks laughter. "Ha. Classic." But his voice is muted.
They both slump in the chairs again.
"Maybe I'll get out of here,” Casey says. “Someday soon. Hop a train or something, you know? And just go."
Gregg says: "you think you're ever actually gonna do it?"
Casey knows why Gregg doesn't believe it. It's true, Casey says this all the time now. "Nah. Well. I mean. Who knows. Maybe."
“I hope you don’t,” says Gregg. “I mean. I think you should do what you want. But I hope you stick around.”
"You should write some of these songs, man," Casey says. "It's weird for me to write them all."
Gregg shakes his head hard, his eyes and mouth turning up. "Naw dude. They're good. And, like, fun to play."
Casey grins at the cascade of warmth coming from Gregg to him. Everybody needs a Gregg. Then he sits up: Mae's coming toward them. "Hey duder!" he says.
"Hey," she says, and "Hi Mae!" says Gregg
"You guys seem a little quiet today, you feeling down?" says Mae, slumping in the chair directly facing the news stand.
"We want pretzels," Gregg says, "got no cash though."
"So ... we steal one?” They look at her. “What, I need to think of everything?”
Casey looks up at Gregg. Gregg looks down at Casey.
Casey leans forward, conspiratorial, quiet, and they both lean in: spies in a cold war.
“Mae,” Casey says, soft, pointing at her but bouncing his gaze between the two of them, “I’m gonna just casually wander over to the pretzels. When I get there, you wanna tip these chairs over?” Mae nods, serious as an undertaker. Casey points at Gregg, “Gregg, tip the table when she flips the chairs?”
And that’s how Mae and Gregg distract the gaze of Pretzel Stand Guy - who predictably leans over the counter again, yelling again, glaring again - while Casey slips up right behind him and steals the biggest pretzel in eyesight -
-just as Pretzel Stand Guy catches him out of the corner of his eye. “Hey!”
All three of them bolt down the tunnel, Pretzel Stand Guy’s screams of fury mixing with their shouts of laughter, Casey kicking his skateboard and nearly losing it in the water, fumbling to grab it, Gregg recovering the pretzel from him as Mae gets hold of the board, all three of them sprinting over the broken tunnel floor, the shouts of “thieves!” growing fainter and more echoey as they go.
They eventually slow down, out of breath. Gregg hands Casey the pretzel on one side of him and Mae hands Casey his skateboard on the other. Casey tucks the skateboard under one arm and splits the pretzel three ways.
Ahead of them there’s a dead trolley, a black silhouette in the dark. Casey sits first, then Gregg, then Mae upside-down.
The pretzel is warm, chewy, tastes like salt and butter, and it’s gone way too soon. Casey sits back, watching the water go by below the trolley, the rocks beneath slick with green.
Gregg’s still chowing down, leaning over Mae. “Does it taste better upside down?”
“Don’t judge me, I can eat how I want.” There’s a pause as she struggles to swallow a bite. “My back hurts.”
Gregg barks a laugh.
“Hey Mae,” Casey says.
“What?”
“Wanna steal something cooler than a pretzel?”
Mae sits up.
"Finally," says Gregg.
They both look expectantly at Casey who, theatrically, sits between the two of them.
"When she got married last week, Beth Holstead's cousin left a box of wine behind at the community center by the Food Donkey. Really fancy wine."
"Fancy-ass wine," said Gregg.
"Haha. Ass wine," says Mae.
“It's in the basement. We probably can't get in the front door but there are windows on the side. They don't lock.” Casey can see their eyes shining and he grins. “So. I propose we steal some fancy-ass wine. It’ll be the grand start to a week of celebration. Our way of sending you off properly to Adult School.”
“Grownup School!” Gregg chimes in.
“Ohhhh God I don’t want to talk about it,” says Mae.
“Maybe we’ll end with burning down the school,” says Gregg. “The caper to top all capers.”
“Can we just steal stuff already?”
Casey sweeps up into a standing motion, still grand and theatrical.
“Crimes?" he asks.
He already knows exactly what their answers will be.
*
The community building is peeling red paint, three stories, with concrete steps and windowed doors in the front.
Casey stashes his skateboard by the front door. He leads them down the side of the building, stops by the third window along ground-level, shoves some cigarette butts aside with his foot, and easily boosts the window open.
Casey then steps back and holds the window open for Mae, who slips in easily, and Gregg, who sort of tumbles through. They’re both giggling. Gregg shushes Mae who steps on him or elbows him - - Casey can't see in the dark - and either way Gregg lets out a yelp.
Casey gets on his knees, sticks his legs through and lands lightly. He slides the window shut - now at eye-level in the pitch-black basement room - and turns to Mae and Gregg. "Quiet," he murmurs.
This is the nursery-type room for when parents bring little kids along them to events - in the daylight the walls are baby blue and there are cribs in the corner and toys at the other end. It’s dim and smells like diapers and baby powder.
Casey leads them through the room and out into the hall.
Down at the end of the hall are stairs going up. Casey reaches them first and beckons his friends to follow him.
Halfway up the steps he glances back to see Mae making a big show of quietly stepping up the stairs, like a masked criminal in a movie from the 40s.
Up at the top of the steps is the front entrance. Right next to the front doors is a table with WELCOME TO OUR FAMILY banners all stacked up and leaned against it, along with streamers and table cloths. Next to the table is the door to the main office.
Casey tries the door. It’s unlocked. Excellent.
He signals to his partners in crime, gently opens the door and goes inside.
There’s light from the streetlights pouring in, showing a mahogany desk, a counter, multiple chairs to wait in … and, beside the chairs, a wooden box.
Casey touches one side of the box, Gregg the other, and with a signal, they pull it open. Inside the wooden box is a good dozen bottles of very expensive looking wine, thin-necked and pink.
Casey leans down and hands Mae two bottles, then Gregg two bottles, then grabs two for himself. He stands back up. Gregg’s holding both fists in the air, clenching the bottles, cheering silently.
Mae looks disappointed, holding her two bottles.
Casey whispers to her as Gregg sneaks back over to the office door. "Too easy?"
"Yeah. I wanted to outrun some cops and dodge some bullets. Or at least to have SOMETHING happe-"
It is, of course, that very second when an ear-shattering BRAAAAANNNNNGGGG sounds over their heads. Casey looks up, so does Mae, and Gregg freezes by the door. It takes a second BRAAAAANNNNNGGGG for it to register that they've set off an alarm.
Casey zooms toward Gregg - who's already bolting out the office door and into the hall. Casey reaches the doorframe, doesn’t see Mae beside him and swings back, she’s digging underneath the desk.
She triumphantly shoots up with a third bottle. She lifts it high into the air.
"Eff the man! Eff the WORLD!" she screams.
BRAAAAANNNNNGGGG
Casey rushes back and grabs her, nearly knocking her over in the process, and the both of them run out into the hall.
Gregg isn’t here. Casey whips back and sees he is halfway down the steps toward the nursery.
"Gregg!" he shouts down.
Gregg whirls to look back up. "What? We gotta bail dudes!"
"Not that way, it'll take too lon-" BRAAAAANNNNNGGGG "-tta go out the front! Out the front door!"
"Shit!" shouts Mae, right in Casey's ear since she’s next to him, and as Gregg turns around and starts racing back up, Casey and Mae fling themselves toward the front door. It’s one of those glass double-doors with a huge metal handle halfway up, one you can throw yourself at and have the door pop open, so they both do.
They rebound from the door BRAAAAANNNNNGGGG and stagger back a few paces. Mae drops her third bottle of wine and it shatters on the tile floor right as Gregg catches up with them, both of them managing to dodge out of the way of the sliding glass and spreading wine.
Casey frantically rattles the door - at the bottom is a large manual sliding lock. He darts down and yanks it open BRAAAAANNNNNGGGG the door shuddering as he does.
He shoots up to find Mae and Gregg staring, clutching their wine. They all look at BRAAAAANNNNNGGGG each other for a beat - then they all throw themselves at the door at once -
-Casey grabs his board as they race down the stairs, dropping one of the bottles to do it -
- and they are down the block and at the corner of the Food Donkey by the time the first cop car pulls up, red and blue lights drenching everything, interchanging with the neon yellow streetlights.
Casey keeps running, looks back and sees Gregg and Mae slowing, both wanting to stop and watch whatever the one cop climbing out of the cop car has planned. "Is that-" Mae is saying and Gregg is shouting "The cops!"
He heads back toward them and knocks lightly into them both. “Come on! To the boat castle!”
*
The rotting thing knowing colloquially as the boat castle was, once upon a time, dragged out in the woods to rot. By the time a year had elapsed, half the neighborhood kids had adopted the boat. They brought out a bunch of two by fours and built up a tower that the boat was barely able to sustain. They decorated the steering wheel and railings and belowdecks and sides with bright primary paint of octopi and starfish. They attached solar lanterns from the grocery store on the bow and stern.
It is now a great place to hang and smoke pot and bullshit and possibly lose your virginity. On any given night, there can often be four or five other delinquent teens here.
Casey loves it.
He’s hunting in the foliage right below the boat castle as Mae and Gregg banter on the stern, their legs dangling over the side.
“That was Aunt Mall Cop!" Mae says.
" We're fugitives now," Gregg says.
“This is wanted wine."
Casey finds what he’s after and climbs up the ladder toward them.
Gregg’s eyeing the cork in the neck of his bottle. "How do we open these things?"
"Break em,” Mae says.
Casey hands Gregg a short sharp stick, then hands Mae another one. “Like this,” he says, sitting between them, and shows them how to turn the stick into a makeshift corkscrew.
It goes about as well as he expects. Gregg splinters the top of his, then manages to push the rest of the cork all the way inside his wine bottle and starts drinking it that way.
After a few attempts, Mae just hardcore breaks the neck of her bottle on the boat railing, Casey and Gregg shielding themselves from the flying glass.
“Whoo!” Mae says, having only cut herself a little. She then declares herself the biggest badass that has ever lived. Which, maybe she is.
Casey, having done this with more than one bottle of his mom's wine, successfully pulls his out with a satisfying pop.
They salute each other and take a sip. Gregg leans on the railing, guzzling his. Mae drinks around the jagged glass, then makes a face and lies on her back and looks up through the trees.
Casey wanders toward the helm. He takes his own long, long pull. The wine is sticky and sour. Mostly vinegar. Bottom shelf wine.
"This is gross,” Mae says.
"Yeah." Gregg sounds happy.
Mae pours the rest of hers out over the edge of the boat castle. "Ugh. Why do people drink this?"
"It's fancy." Gregg sticks his pinky out as a demonstration and drinks again. "It's, like, an adult drink."
Mae tosses her bottle overboard, looks satisfied at the shattering sound on the hard ground below. She lies back down again.
"Dude. We're criminal masterminds," says Gregg. "Gotta lay low." He then throws his bottle of wine over the edge too and picks up his second bottle and another sharp stick.
Casey sits. He takes another drink and sets his bottle down. A melancholy rises in the back of his throat, out of nowhere. He's sitting apart from his friends now, he realizes. He hadn't meant to, but they're on the other side of the boat castle from him. And they feel much further away.
"Its only a matter of time before they track us down," Gregg says.
"I'm ready. We'll go out in a blaze of glory."
"Possum Springs will rue the day we were born."
"Rue, I tell you."
Casey’s parents aren’t the most healthy people to be around, emotionally or otherwise. Before Casey was ten he was taking on the role of parent to his mom. Standing up to his dad. He has no brothers or sisters or close family at all to help him, he's just got these guys, his helpless mom, his angry dad, and the paycheck from what his cousin cooks in his trailer.
The smell of it always burns Casey's lungs, and the walls of the trailer have turned a deep yellow.
Mae and Gregg are still joking. Casey realizes he hasn't been listening for a while.
Then … a long, thin wail.
He sits up, waits. Hears it again. Yes.
Through the thick woods, the thin wail of a train horn rises and rolls toward them, then past them and away toward the rest of Possum Springs. The mournful sound lingers around Casey for a heartbeat ... then fades.
In his heart, in this moment, he thinks: now. Now, right now. Or never again.
He has no idea what that means. All he knows is that he needs to see that train. And right now.
Casey leaps off the boat castle, lands unsteadily on the ground and takes off toward the tracks before there's time to think.
He hears startled shouts behind him. After about five paces he can hear them following - the quickness of Gregg's paws and the lightness of Mae's - but that haunted train horn, blowing long and distant, rolling across the hills, pulls him forward.
*
After about twenty feet or so, the trees clear out into a field. It’s beautiful here - high grass to Casey’s waist, lit by the moon and dancing fireflies. The grass slows him down but doesn't stop him.
Far at the other end of the field is the tracks, and the train is visible on a gravelled hill above the grass, cars passing by rhythmically.
Halfway through the field now, Casey can see on his right the gravel road that goes down to where his cousin lives. At the end of that road, in a small travel trailer. Everyone knows what Casey's cousin does there. Everyone knows.
He breaks into an outright sprint.
He doesn’t stop until he’s climbed up the gravel hill and is mere feet from the train, and it no longer looks beautiful but is a loud roaring mass of metal that races over thick old cables in the ground, making loud striking sounds as it crosses the gaps in the cables. He can feel the wind from it.
Then he leans over to catch his breath.
Gregg catches up to him first, then Mae, both out of breath themselves.
"Hey-" Gregg says, then Mae doesn’t slow down fast enough and runs right into Gregg.
Casey takes steps closer, watching the train, fighting the wind from it, mesmerized by the force and the weight of it, a jagged metal bullet.
"Hey!" Gregg's voice, several feet behind him. Mae says something too, "Casey?" but now Casey’s less than three feet away, pulled by the wind, deafened by the roar.
"Casey?" Mae is definitely scared, that tone in her voice.
Casey takes another step, feeling his clothes whip around him. Less than a foot now.
"Casey!" Gregg's completely alarmed now.
Casey’s inside the wind tunnel. Inches away.
He reaches for it. Something hard and metal strikes him fast, drawing a line of pain across his arm, it effing hurts-
-he reaches again, looks down the tracks at what’s coming, trying to aim and grab-
-when Mae and Gregg grab him instead.
They pull him back, one either side, and half-tumble down the gravel hill back into the field, he’s pushing them off as they hold tight, pulling him several feet away, he’s laughing as he pushes at them both and he has no idea why. Gregg’s shouting at him - "what the eff dude what the eff" - and Casey pushes for real this time and breaks free from them both, staggering back several feet, away from them and from the train both.
Gregg’s pissed. "Don't do that, why would you do that!" Mae's confused, "what even was that?"
Casey doesn’t answer. He just watches the final train car race past, leaving silence and wind in its wake.
Then Gregg grabs his shoulder and spins him around. He's still pissed.
"Dude! Do not do that, okay! I'm already losing Mae, I can't lose you too!"
Casey hears him, finally. And the madness breaks.
"I ... Sorry."
"It's okay, just - are you okay?"
He is. He thinks so. Even if he isn't: "Yeah. Yeah."
"Hey," Mae says, and they both look at her. "You're not losing me anyway. Also holy shit what was that?"
Casey registers the shock in both their faces. What the eff got into him just then? Maybe tt was just a weird moment of madness, all in his head. Maybe the fumes from the mines are getting him high.
He says, "happy going away present, Mae." There's a second of silence. Then Mae laughs.
She punches him. Casey gives it right back, and then the three of them collapse collectively onto the ground, among the dirt and field grass.
They all lay back and look up. There are still fireflies dancing all around and, way way above that, stars in a cloudless sky. Visible out here, away from the town lights.
"Ugh," says Mae.
"What?" says Gregg.
"The wine. Adults have the worst taste in things."
Gregg says, "I'm gonna miss you, Mae."
"We both are," Casey says. "We all are."
"Shut up you guys. This was epic."
"Yeah," says Gregg, "we'll tell this story forever."
"You'll tell it in college," says Casey. "To your college friends."
There's a pause as they all look up at the stars.
"You guys will still be here when I come home? Like for breaks or whatever."
"Always," Gregg says.
"Aww."
There's another pause. They're looking at him, Casey realizes. Waiting for their older brother to tell them what to do.
He loves them both so much.
"Let's go home, my dudes," Casey says.
*
Casey is home now. Mae dropped off first, then Gregg, which left Casey walking the streets of Possum Springs alone in the dark. He's made dinner, he's helped his mom get to bed, and he's checked up on his dad, who is high and passed out in a chair on the back porch.
He's lying in bed now, looking up at the wall, where he's just written, in black pen, the complete lyrics for "Die Anywhere Else." Tomorrow, he will teach it to Gregg and Angus, maybe Mae too if she shows up. But for now, Casey feels all right - not happy, not hopeful, but okay to let the events of the day go. He missed the train today, but there will be another one tomorrow. For now, he's written down how he feels, and that's enough. The words on his wall are enough.
Casey falls asleep without knowing it, and dreams in ways that aren’t really dreaming, where he can’t tell if it’s real or only in his head ... and eventually it doesn’t even matter.
In his dream, he’s falling. Forever falling into a deep dark nothing. Falling into the eternally expanding, swallowing, singing hole. The hole at the center of everything.
And when he’s gone, it’ll be like he’s never been here at all. Just some songs, a few memories and a missing poster will be all that's left. He's never going to get his wish.
But for this moment: Casey's been something, at least. And it matters.