Author's note: The events related are chronological within each point of view, but the events in different points of view are presented in emotional order.
**********
Part One: 2012
Doug
"Watch this," Mikey said. "I bet you dollars to dog donuts that he back flops."
"Not taking that proposition. It's a sure thing. Look at him. I can tell."
Below us, Henry was preening as he gripped the rope. Three girls waited in line behind him. Henry flexed his arms, bent his knees, loosened and retightened his grip on the hemp. Then repeated the whole ritual, trying to pretend he wasn't glancing back at his audience using his movements as a blind.
"That's fucking delay of game, right there," I said.
Claire twisted the top off a beer. "Guys are stupid."
Mikey and I both nodded. No reply to that statement was needed or probably would be welcomed, though we were the experts on the subject matter.
"And cheap." She continued. "Bud Light. Really? Don't we all have jobs? Ten million microbreweries in western Massachusetts and we have to settle for Bud Light?"
"Thank yer gods it isn't Bud Light Lime," I said.
Mikey shook his head vigorously. "You posers are denigrating a classic American lager. Crisp and drinkable. You know they make it with orange and lemon now? Saw a stack at Cappy's. Plus, it is the best goddamn thing to drink in the parking lot after hockey. Try that with your triple-hopped IPA small batch bullshit—"
Henry had finally judged that he had squeezed as much testosterone into the situation as he could without actually appearing to be doing so, even though everyone in his audience and in the dispassionate gallery above knew he was doing so, and he jumped.
Well, he didn't actually jump as such. He pulled the thick rope taut, took one big step back, and launched himself out over the Connecticut River.
Physics being what they were, he had misjudged. Miscalculated. Put the wrong values into the equation for velocity, force, angle, you name it. He pendulumed on the rope too hard and went too far up the other side of the curve. Then he doubled down on his error by releasing the rope at the apex of his swing.
Henry shouted with glee as his body rotated around his hips. Sounded like glee, he tried really hard to make it sound like glee, but everyone watching knew it was a cry of regret and embarrassment. And in the one out of control second before he pancaked hard onto the unforgiving water smack on his exposed and already sunburnt back, of terror.
"Back flop," Mickey said. "Called it."
"Guys are stupid," Claire said.
We did not dispute her. Claire had been with us since first grade. She had watched us grow from drooling snot-nosed elementary boys into drooling snot-nosed college students.
She kicked the cooler with one bare foot. "Do men ever grow up?" She nodded down to where Henry was dog-paddling back to shore, bravely trying not to show the incredible burning pain such a sensationally-bad landing must have caused.
Mikey and I looked at each other. The answer was No, but it was a rhetorical question.
**********
Mary Kay
It's just a notebook.
Actually and specifically, it is a Composition Book. 100 sheets, 200 pages, 9 by 7ish. Mottled black and white pattern on the cover. Static on an old tube television. Carol Anne talking to the poltergeist. Wide ruled. I like wide ruled paper for some reason. My eye likes it, and my eye liking makes it easier for my hand to write in it.
Problem is, my hand won't. The damn notebook, sorry, Composition Book, is empty.
I can sit and stare at it all I want. And I do. Believe me, I do.
I have in the past had several notebooks going at once. I would just grab a spiral-bound from an old chemistry or philosophy class that had empty pages at the back. Rip out the pages in the front. Useless data. Passed the tests, don't need the memories. I had a collection of notebooks. Spiral-bound, book-bound, old journals given to me as presents at junior high birthday parties. All filled with scribbles of ideas - gems and duds.
Okay. But now I am a professional writer. I have been paid for my scribbles. That's all it takes to be in the club. So I downsized to one notebook. Easier to manage. What if I wrote down the plot for a wonderful transformative novel and lost the notebook?
So. One Composition Book. Zero plots. There is not one line written in the damn thing. It is virginal, unsullied.
Problem is partly: It is beginning to be clear that I don't know how to make ideas in notebooks into novels.
The book that I wrote, the one I am coasting on, the one that surfed some cultural wave or other into the fore of the popular media, the one I humped on talk shows and book stores and podcasts, the one that destroyed my innocent anonymity, the one I am now living off, the one that was a cosmic freebee?
Yeah, freebee. It didn't come from a laborious and studied process of plot and character development or pouring over copious notes in one of my multitude of such and distilling out the essence of a story from them. It came to me in a dream.
That's right. I had nothing to do with it. At least my waking mind had no part in it.
It was my junior year at Smith, about three days before I was flying home for summer. I wrote my communications final that morning, the campus was emptying fast. My roommate left the day before, and I stayed up until 2 am watching Tom Hanks movies. I forgot to turn my alarm off. Six in the morning and I was ripped from peaceful sleep by REO Speedwagon. I hate REO Speedwagon. As a matter of fact, I hate most of classic rock. I set my radio on this station because the hate will turn to rage which turns to wide awakeness. Seventies music is the annoying beeping of my life.
Then I realized there was no reason to be up. Sighing with remorse and relief, I rolled over and emptied my mind. Went to my happy place, which back then was sitting on a sandy beach while Percy Faith's Theme From A Summer Place played along with the wave sounds. Don't you dare judge me. It works.
Wake up when the sun is shining and you know that the world outside is well into its routine. Your body wants to get out of bed and get going. It's instinctual. But I thwarted nature. I rolled over and played in my head lush orchestral music and went back to sleep. The dreams came hard and clear in the next hour or so.
Try it. You wake up remembering fantastic adventures. You were going somewhere. You were doing something. If you are quick, you can recall the whole life you led in that brief tick.
I opened my eyes and it came back to me.
The boy.
The pig.
**********
Doug
We were playing a variation of doubles that night because we had gotten tired of regular doubles. This version, which I think we made up ourselves, was singles: one game, loser sits, winner stays. The two not on the court replace the loser in the order they had sat down.
This method let two of us at a time hang out and sneak sips of beer from the cooler.
We had all been 21 for a while, but old habits.... We were adults, but maybe public consumption was illegal. I hoped so, otherwise we were getting a forbidden thrill out of it for nothing.
Madison and I were currently riding the pine. The bench was a steel mesh, but nobody ever romanticized riding the steel mesh. Mikey was trying to run down Claire's lob.
I had the power but not the consistent accuracy. Mikey had boundless energy but inconsistent groundstrokes. Madison had a great baseline game but was hesitant at the net. Claire did not have any outstanding aspect to her game but on the other backhand she had no soft spots you could reliably exploit, which was why she stayed on the court longer than any of the rest of us. Eventually she would get tired and lose a game. It might take an hour or more for that to happen.
"Did you read it?" Madison asked.
I made a noise that might have meant no or not yet or I will get around to it or please stop asking me that question, then I said in actual words, "Can't find a copy."
