The Troop

8

MAXIMILIAN KIRKWOOD and Ephraim Elliot had been friends since they were two years old—although Max wondered if that was precisely true.

They’d been around each other since they were two, anyway: Max’s mom would drop him off at Mrs. Elliot’s house every morning; she always paid her babysitting fee in cash, as the island’s underground economy dictated. Mrs. Elliot said Max and Eef were the very best of friends—sharing their blocks, drinking out of the same sippy cup—but Max didn’t remember that, same as he didn’t remember being born or cutting his first tooth. When his memories kicked in, though—click! like a light switch—Ephraim was right there.

You’d never find a stranger pair. Ephraim was a creature of pure momentum, pure chaos: 140 pounds of fast-twitch muscle fiber packed into a long, quivering frame. The air closest to Eef’s arms and shoulders seemed to shimmer, same way a hummingbird’s wings exist in a blur of motion. Max was stouter—not fat, solid—and possessed a preternatural state of calm unusual for his age; it wasn’t hard to picture him in the Lotus position on North Point beach, eyes serenely shut, totally Zen-ing out.

It shouldn’t have worked—the differences in the boys’ personalities should’ve repulsed one from the other, like trying to touch magnets of matching polarities—but the opposite held true.

On summer nights, Max and Ephraim would hike to the bluffs behind Max’s house, through the long, dry grass frosted white with the salt spray off the sea. They’d pitch a tent on the highest peak, the lights of Max’s home only a pinprick in the dark. Lying on their backs under the endless vault of sky—so much wider than in a city, where buildings hemmed in that same sky, light pollution whiting out the stars. They knew some of the constellations—Scoutmaster Tim had taught them, though only Newton bothered to earn a merit badge in astronomy. They could recognize the stars in their simplest alignments: the Big Dipper, Ursa Major and Minor.

“It doesn’t really look like a bear,” Max said one night.

“Why should it?” Ephraim said, sounding angry. “That’s humans trying to, like, organize the stars to our liking. You think the Big Guy, the Grand Creator, Buddha or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or whoever said: Oh, guess I’d better make these flaming balls of gas look exactly like a bear or a fucking spoon so those stupid goons on rock 5,079 don’t get confused?” He lip-farted. “Ohyeahriiiight,” stringing the words all together.

They talked about the stuff best friends ought to. Stupid stuff. Their favorite candy (Max: Swedish Fish, especially the rare purple ones; Eef: Cracker Jack, which Max claimed wasn’t exactly candy but Eef said was sweet enough); who had bigger boobs, Sarah Matheson or Triny Dunlop (both agreed Triny’s were technically bigger, although Ephraim held the opinion, sadly untested, that Sarah’s were softer); whether God existed (both believed in a higher power, though Eef thought churches treated their parishioners like ATMs); and who’d win in a fight: a zombie or a shark?

“A zombie,” Eef said. “Of course. It’s already dead, right? It’s not gonna be scared of… hey, what kind of shark? A sandy? A whitetip? I could win against a sandy!”

Max shook his head. “Great white. Biggest badass in the ocean.”

“Pfffffft!” Eef said. “Killer whales got it all over great whites. But anyway, I still say zombie. If it gets one bite in, it wins—the shark’s a zombie!”

“Who says sharks turn into zombies?”

“Everything turns into a zombie, Max-a-million.”

“Whatever. I say shark. You know how thick sharkskin is? I was down at the dock when a trawler came in with a dead mako. Ernie Pugg tried to cut it open on the dock—his fillet knife broke. Like trying to hack through a tire, man. Who says a zombie’s rotted old teeth won’t break, too? And anyway, what if the shark bites the zombie’s head off? A zombie can’t swim too well, its rotten-ass arms flopping around.”

Eef considered this. “Well, if it bites the zombie’s head off and swallows it, its head will be in the shark’s belly—and it’ll still be alive. Like, zombie-alive, which is really dead but whatever. So the zombie can bite the shark’s guts out from the inside.” Ephraim pumped his fist in victory. “Zombie wins! Zombie wins!”

“Ah, go to hell,” Max said, conceding.

“I been to hell,” Ephraim said, his voice pitched at a Clint Eastwood growl. “I ain’t afraid to go back.”

Sometimes their conversation meandered quite accidentally into topics of greater importance. One night both boys were in that gauzy-minded state preceding sleep when Ephraim said: