“I can’t believe you risked your life for me,” said Burns.

Karl rustled in his sleeping bag. “Dude, I thought you were asleep.”

“My mind won’t calm down.”

Something about the lake bothered him. Well, aside from the whole almost dying part. Oddly, that was the easiest part to get over, like his mind was built for survival, already editing out the power of the memory, the way the cold water had engulfed him.

No, what bothered him was Karl’s reaction. The speed of it. He didn’t stop to think. Burns felt like he’d only been in the water a few seconds, just long enough to realize he was in trouble, before Karl had grabbed him.

“My knight in shining armor,” he said.

“Fuck off,” said Karl.

“But what if…what if we’d both died?”

Karl sat up. “Dude, you weren’t going to die.”

“I know you say that. But I was in that water, and it was freezing. What if you’d drowned?”

“If I’d stopped to consider the risks, you would’ve drowned,” Karl said. “Didn’t you learn anything about water safety at your big boy scout camps?”

Burns laughed. “I went to Bible camps. They’re a little different.”

“Shouldn’t they have taught you to walk on water?”

The night was clear, and the moonlight filtered in through the tent. Not enough light to see by, but just enough to note the edges of things, like Karl’s shoulder, and the angle of his jaw.

“You said you’d done that before,” Burns said.

“Done what?”

“Saved someone from drowning. At least, I thought that’s what you meant.”

“Oh, that.”

“Oh, that. Just another in your long string of heroic acts, I’m sure.”

“No, really, just the one. And I paid for it. God, I paid.”

Burns moved a little closer, feeling like a fat caterpillar in his sleeping bag. “Who was it?”

“One of my stupid friends. It’s a long story.”

“Dude, we’re camping, it’s late, I’m wide awake. Long stories are practically required.”

“Seriously, you want to hear this?”

“You dragged me out of the water today like it was nothing. Yes, I would like to hear your superhero origin story.”

“There’s nothing super about it. Just guys being idiots. When I was young, I really idolized my brother and his friends. I thought they were so cool. They were doing everything I wanted to do. They could ride bikes, start fires, carve things with pocketknives, while I was on my Big Wheel and definitely not allowed to play with knives.

“But when we reached the teens, a lot of that luster had started wearing off. I still tagged along, because I knew them better than anyone, but you know what teen boys think about 24 hours a day.”

“Um, this isn’t going to end with some kind of mass orgy, is it?”

“You wish, pervert. No, it’s exactly the opposite. The guys were making big moon-eyes at people they liked, and I just thought it was stupid and shallow. Or maybe I was just a pain-in-the-ass kid, I don’t know.

“What I do know is that echoes of the Cray/Phelps feud continued even when we were in school. The grown-ups of the family might have made peace—a pretty easy decision, since the Crays’ fortune skyrocketed with their electrical business, while the Phelps kept on with being gentleman farmers, as they called themselves, feudalists if you ask me, with their—”

“This story will go a lot better if you don’t editorialize.”

In the dimness, he saw Karl nod. “Good point. If you’d gone to our school instead of that fancy religious private school, you would know all about the feud, and how much Lucas Phelps hated Ash and Callum Cray. Man, it was bitter. But just kid stuff, you know? Banging shoulders in the halls. Mean looks. Just bullshit.

“But one day, I’m getting on my bike to head home after school, when Simon rushes up to me. Ash and Callum have Lucas. They’re taking him to the quarry.”

“Do what? They kidnapped him?”

“Technically, I guess. See, Lucas had stolen Ash’s boyfriend.”

“You mean girlfriend?”

“What?”

Burns blinked, as though that would make the darkness more clear. “Girlfriend. He stole Ash’s girlfriend.”

Karl paused. “Burns, can I ask you a personal question?”

Oh Christ no. Please don’t ask me about this topic. Just say your words got flipped around.

“Sure,” Burns said.

“How do you feel about gay people? I mean, I know religion factors into it, but you personally, do you care? Do you hate gay folks?”

Burns froze up. Dread was colder than the lake water had been. His whole life, this topic had been impossible for him to talk about. Not just as it related to him—in fact, that was easy, because he would go to his grave with the world thinking he was straight. But the pause—that crucial few seconds that straight people never took to think through their answers—was a deep and yawning chasm, at the bottom of which he could see his doom.

“Nah, I don’t hate them,” he said.

Except me. I hate me plenty.

Karl said, “I just ask because sometimes you act funny when I talk about my brother and his boyfriend.”

“Your brother, and now Lucas and Ash…is everybody you know gay?”

“I mean…I know some gay people, yes. And now I feel like shit, because I don’t think it’s right of me to out people like that, when I don’t know if they’d want me to do it.”

Burns had a million questions, none of which he could ask.

Are you gay?

Is it something you like? Are you okay with it?

What does it feel like to accept it about yourself? What does it feel like to kiss you? What does it feel like to—

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I got us off-track, you were busy telling me your story.”

“Oh! Well yeah, so Lucas had stolen Ash’s boyfriend. You have to understand, this was serious drama. Lucas had totally dropped out of our circle for a while. You know that serious look teen guys get when they’re really into someone, when it’s all they can think about.”

“Yeah, I know the look.”

I got that look for my track coach, yeah, but I was a fat asthmatic kid wheezing my way through 400 meters of sheer torture, so it was different for me. By the time I had my body under control, I was so deep in the closet I couldn’t look at anyone at all.

“I was kind of young to get what was going on,” Karl continued, “but Lucas had been ditching us for this boy he liked. And Ash wasn’t going to stand for it. So he and Callum took Lucas out to the place they knew best, the one place they wouldn’t be disturbed.”

“The quarry.”

“The quarry. Not this one, obviously, but one of the ones that was closer to town. The one we swam in every summer. Cray property, so whatever the Crays wanted to do, they could, right? Except that we all heard about it, and if there was one place we knew like the back of our fucking hands, it was the way to that quarry.

“It was the four of us—Simon, me, Rex and Pete, and we descended on those bastards. We got these handfuls of rocks—and not like smooth river stones for skipping either, these fuckers were sharp—and went after them. Just pow, pow, pow!”

“Damn! Did you hurt them?”

“Oh, we hurt them all right. They were screaming, throwing punches, trying to get us back, but they couldn’t stop us.”

“It’s like something out of that Stephen King book!”

Karl paused. “What?”

“Oh, you know…which one was it? The one with the kids.”

“Stand By Me? Dreamcatcher? The Shining? Don’t all his books have kids? But you’re making me lose track!”

“Sorry! You were pounding the Crays…?”

“And we won, which was great. I mean, I look back on it and wonder what the hell we thought we were doing, right? Someone really could have gotten hurt. Where were our parents? But we were young and full of testosterone, unstoppable in our victory. Except…”

“Except?”

“We were standing there shouting at them, feeling really proud of ourselves, but Callum wasn’t quite done. He lashed out, one more punch, and knocked Rex into the water.”

“Oh, shit.”

“It was cold out there, and he just sank. Nobody did anything. I couldn’t understand it. They were standing at the edge of the water looking down, yelling for Rex, like that was going to help him. Simon was off looking for a branch or something, but nobody was helping. So…I jumped in.”

“Karl.”

“I was a dumb kid, but I meant well, and it didn’t seem like anyone else was going to save him. The thing is, that water is deep. If I’d stopped to think about that—how it just went down and down, into blackness, and how cold it was—I wouldn’t have done it. But I was high on this endorphin rush from our victory, and I felt invulnerable. So I dove in.

“Today, the sun was working in our favor. You were easy to spot. But that day, a thunderstorm was rolling through. I could barely see anything. Rex was a good swimmer, but that punch to his chest had taken his breath away, and he was struggling when I found him.

“We came up, and the guys helped us out, and then…nothing. I woke up in the hospital. Rex was fine, just a little worse for wear, but I was smaller than he was, skin and bones, really. I took it harder. A week out of school, half-delirious with a fever, coughing, nightmares, and then when I finally got better, I discovered that I was grounded for a month.”

“But you’d saved your friend’s life.”

“Maybe I wasn’t the right person to do that, though. One of the other guys should have. They were bigger, stronger. They could’ve handled it better.”

“But they didn’t do it.”

He heard Karl lay back on the floor of the tent.

Karl said, “I don’t know, man. I don’t like reading too much into stuff like that, I’m always really suspicious when people’s traumas fit a little too neatly into their life story. But I feel like that day was when I really started wanting to save the world. I mean, you look around you, and all the people with power are either greedy or ignorant. Nuclear weapons, global warming, all that grim stuff, and who is supposed to save us?”

“Um…you?”

“No, dude! That’s the point! The people you’d expect to help, never seem to. So you’ve got to do your part.”

Burns settled back. “And just the other day you were telling me belief is more important than action.”

“What, I save your life, and you’re going to hassle me about philosophy?”

“I wish somebody could save me from my life,” said Burns.

Karl got back up on one elbow. “When are you going to really talk about this shit, man?”