T HEY’D AGREED TO MEET ON THE WEST EDGE OF town where the woods crept toward the curve of the road. The middle-class boy, the hippie kid, and the drunk’s son.

They shared the same birthday, July seventh. Cal had let out his first shocked cry in the delivery room of Washington County Hospital while his mother panted and his father wept. Fox had shoved his way into the world and into his laughing father’s waiting hands in the bedroom of the odd little farmhouse while Bob Dylan sang “Lay, Lady, Lay” on the record player, and lavender-scented candles burned. And Gage had struggled out of his terrified mother in an ambulance racing up Maryland Route 65.

Now, Gage arrived first, sliding off his bike to walk it into the trees where nobody cruising the road could spot it, or him.

Then he sat on the ground and lit his first cigarette of the afternoon. They always made him a little sick to his stomach, but the defiant act of lighting up made up for the queasiness.

He sat and smoked in the shady woods, and imagined himself on a mountain path in Colorado or in a steamy South American jungle.

Anywhere but here.

He’d taken his third puff, and his first cautious inhale, when he heard the bumps of tires over dirt and rock.

Fox pushed through the trees on Lightning, his bike so named because Fox’s father had painted lightning bolts on the bars.

His dad was cool that way.

“Hey, Turner.”

“O’Dell.” Gage held out the cigarette.

They both knew Fox took it only because to do otherwise made him a dweeb. So he took a quick drag, passed it back. Gage nodded to the bag tied to Lightning’s handlebars. “What’d you get?”

“Little Debbies, Nutter Butters, some Tasty Kake pies. Apple and cherry.”

“Righteous. I got three cans of Bud for tonight.”

Fox’s eyes didn’t pop out of his head, but they were close. “No shit?”

“No shit. Old man was trashed. He’ll never know the difference. I got something else, too. Last month’s Penthouse magazine.”