Blurb:

Two high school boys try to survive amid death and danger in the desert, while hoping for the possibility of first love.

Shane Semereau wants to be left alone to read his books and carve his wood sculptures in the warm desert. His life is a swarm of confusion and violence, but he wants to be a force in making the world a gentle place. He grasps at those dreams. Cory Garcia is a bundle of electric energy who lashes out at everyone and everything, but loves to let his mind go in the world of dance. Amidst great danger and looming violence they find each other and unite against all that is arrayed against them at every turn.

Excerpt:

Chapter One

Sunday evening – orange groves

With a care born of fear and a caution mixed with suppressed

excitement, I parted the branches of the encircling tree. A southern

California winter night, cool, but not brutally cold. If it had been

brutally cold then the cloyingly sweet fruit around me would be

dead and the growers poorer by billions. At least that’s what the

exaggerators on the news always said.

Sunday night. Not yet ten o’clock but late to be out for a school

night. But Mom’s not home. I’ll have extra caffeine in the morning.

It’s not as if there’s a lot really great to stay awake for at school.

I gotta say, nothing about my goddamn life is normal.

Well, okay, that’s not exactly true. I go to high school. I eat food.

I take showers. I use the bathroom. I wear clothes except when I go

to bed.

Apart from that, my world is pretty wide open.

And I’m telling this story because maybe someone will listen.

I’m in the orange groves many weekend nights, most much

warmer than this, and mostly it’s quiet, and dark, and empty of all

save orange trees, and an occasional cluster of teenagers. Except

1. Listening to them. Envying them, sometimes. Begrudging

their crude friendships, rough camaraderie. Observing the trysting

grounds of teenagers from hiding.

Out here on school nights, usually it’s only me and the moon and

the stars and the trees. I prefer the silence.

The dark comforted me, and this hiding spot had always been

perfectly safe. Few headlights whooshed past on the main road

hundreds of feet away, and the glow from those distant headlights

doesn’t reach this far. Even fewer turned down the long lane that led

to this secluded spot. And this late in the evening people and their

cars rarely crept toward me.

The bunch I was watching weren’t that far away. Close enough

that I could recognize them as kids from my school.

I can hear them. If the words ‘dude’ and ‘bro’ got banned from

the language, my peers would be unable to communicate even the

simple bits of idiocy they do exchange. I’m not saying all teenagers

are dumb. I’m saying these teenagers twenty feet from me made

dumb look good.

One was the star of the football team. Tall, strong, muscular.

Well, you don’t get to be star of the football team if you’re short and

skinny and a nerd like me. The other two were acolytes of his I knew

vaguely from school. There’s two thousand kids at Cactus Central

High School. It’s not like I’d memorized everybody’s name.

The wind is blowing from them to me. I smell beer, dope, sweat.

I hear them bragging about beating up some poor kid. They use

common slurs to refer to the kid they pounded the hell out of. I

don’t recognize the name, but it’s definitely not someone from their

ethnic group. These guys and a few of their hulking friends picking

on one kid.

My school can be rough. I try to be as invisible during the day as

I am now. I’m in their ethnic group, but I’m not one of them. I’d get

the hell beat out of me too.

I hear shuffling coming toward me. I ease deeper into the darkness

provided by the tree branches.

There’s all kinds of rumors you hear about a wild variety of

dangers out in the orange groves. Mostly it’s teenage imagination

fueled by teenage anxiety and/or stoked by parental fears, or it was

just plain fear in those parents’ minds. Silly crap. That a killer lurks

among the trees. Be frightened of being hurt, killed, kidnapped. The

stuff that really does happen can be more frightening. At least to me.

And then there’s the nutty stuff and silly rumors. That the ghosts

of variously manhandled kids, usually girls or women, appear at

strangely spooky spots on particularly eerie nights. Add a little fog

and a screwy teenager’s imagination and you get zombies and living

dead and vampires. Odd how those ghost sightings occur mostly

on foggy nights. I’m not sure how much imagination it takes to see

ghosts in the fog.

Another rumor was that kids lurked among the trees willing to

provide sexual favors. Wish I could run into one of those. I’d heard

that a group had caught a gay guy who had been spying on them,

and they’d tied him to the back of a bumper and dragged him until

he died. I never saw a report on it in the newspaper though or on the

Internet, so I’m not sure it’s true. A Google search revealed nothing.

A body was never found.

And then there’s the real stuff that I’ve seen. Sort of mundane, I

guess, kind of hot. This one time something happened in the middle

of the day, of all times. I’m usually not out here then, but that day

I was, and there was this guy sitting by himself in his car. He’d had

his eyes shut. At first, I’d thought he was sleeping. Then I’d seen the

glow of his phone in his left hand and his right arm moving rapidly

up and down. I’d inched as close as I could. He was a young guy, a

teenager, thin. He’d parked under the shade of a huge tree. All the

car windows had been open. From what I saw, he was good looking.

I’d wanted to watch everything, but I’d been afraid to get too

close. A few minutes later, I heard him give a soft groan, followed

seconds later by a smile of satisfaction on his face. Both of his hands

had disappeared and he’d lifted his mid-section, so I guessed he had

been pulling up his pants and underwear. Where had he wiped the

excess?

When he drove off, I was extra careful to make sure no one was

watching, hid in the deepest shadows, and for the first time out in

the orange groves, I took out my own dick. I don’t know how I had

the nerve. It took me only a few seconds to let go a load. I don’t do

that often, but it’s great when I do, being outside and in daylight. I

let my cum fall onto the ground under a tree. Whacking off outside,

and getting totally turned on by it, is that weird?

Tonight, the shuffling comes nearer. I barely dare to breathe.

Every kid in town knew about the one definite, for sure murder

in the past month, a teenager found floating in the irrigation canal.

The same canal I had to jump over to get from the fields around

the railroad tracks behind my house to these vast rows of citrus

trees and random, scattered clumps of other vegetation. No one had

recognized the dead kid. He wasn’t local. The corpse hadn’t been

torn up like it would have been if it had been dragged behind a

car. The body had never been claimed. No local kid was missing.

He might have floated for miles. Even with all their technology and

Internet hook-ups, the cops hadn’t found out who he was. Each

rumor was crazier than the last. That the killer had stuffed the dead

kid’s private parts in his mouth. That they’d cut off his hands.

None of that was true.

I’d watched him float by about an hour before he was found by a

grower. I’d been frightened and might have reported it, but if I used

my cell phone or called from home, they’d know who I was. I knew

he was dead. The body reeked and was bloated, gross, disgusting,

and definitely not breathing.

I wasn’t about to begin answering a lot of questions about what

I was doing out here and then maybe they’d begin to suspect me or

worse, arrest me and try to say I did it. My imagination can run away

with me, too. I was scared that night but drawn to the body at the

same time. I remember the eyes. Wide open. Cold, dark, and dead.

If my parents found out I come out here, there’d be hell to pay

about that.

No. There was no one lurking in the trees behind me tonight. No

one I’d heard or seen, and I’m special careful. The only live bodies

besides me were the ones I was spying on.

Now, I can hear the quarterback telling his buddies how much

he loved kicking the kid when he was down. In the pauses of his

discourse, I can hear the breathing of the one approaching me. I can

see his outline now. He’s within five feet of me.

I can see a glow of light. He’s got his stupid phone out. He’s away

from his buddies for ten seconds, and he’s taking a piss, and he’s

got his phone out. Since he’s looking at the glowing screen, the light

doesn’t shine toward me, which is good.

The soft rustle of cloth, the rasp of a zipper, liquid unleashed.

He’s pissing on the ground. The phone’s light isn’t pointed toward

his dick, which might be interesting to see.

And he doesn’t see me. They never do.

He finishes. Zips up. Gives a five second belch. I see him grab his

crotch and adjust himself. He stumbles back to the others. It’s hard

to walk on the usually crumbly ground in the orange groves. No

water in the dirt grooves for irrigation tonight.

I hear the pop of beer can tops. The flare of matches for more

cigarettes and dope. They’re getting louder as they get drunker and/

or higher. Now, they’re talking about the dead boy in the canal.

A lot of the time I can tell which kids are sneaking out for the

first time, and those who are hardcore partiers. It’s in the amount of

noise. The first timers are all whispering and shushing each other,

more giggling, too. The teenage-old-timers, the ones who’ve been

out before, they’re loud in a furtive way. Their attitude seems to be,

we’re tough and macho but keep one eye out—nobody can stop us

from partying, but the cops could come.

Once in a while there are couples who use this for lover’s lane,

but this is mostly a party place with a little making out now and

then. The real lover’s lane is farther back in the hills, and I usually

don’t walk that far. Besides, I think those kids deserve some privacy.

Sometimes, I see condoms on the ground. Once I found a broken

cell phone, couple times underwear, guy’s and girl’s. All kinds of

intimate things, but mundane items, too: cigarette lighters, a bong,

water bottles.

I know of three different kids in several different groups that I’d

listened to who said they knew who killed the kid in the canal. I think

they’re lying or exaggerating.

Mostly they talk about sex and computer games. I’m entranced

by the sex bragging.

But now this group begins discussing leaving. Another one of

them comes toward me. It’s the quarterback. I can tell because he’s

tallest with the broadest shoulders. His footsteps stop. This time

I inch closer. Movement of cloth. No zipper. He’s wearing sweat

pants. Sound of piss hitting ground.

You want a saint, look somewhere else. You want a straight kid,

you’re out of luck. You want a teenager who doesn’t think about sex

constantly, find a dead one.

Whenever I see the quarterback, Darrel Granger, in the hall at

school, I never look him in the eyes. We have one class together. I’m

sure he doesn’t know I exist. I barely ever glance at him. Just enough

that I’ve memorized the folds in the front of his jeans. But only long

enough to not get caught staring. I guess that’s longer than ‘glancing

barely.’ I’d watch in class to see if I could observe telltale bulges as

he sat and spread his legs. Sometimes I could.

I’d give a great deal to see Darrel Granger naked. Or be in his

arms. To feel him hold me. Right now, I’d just like to get a lingering

peek at his dick.

I slip another few inches in his direction. A side step. Dirt slides.

I can almost see an extra light pinkness next to his hand.

“Who’s there?” he calls.

Stay in the shadows? Run?

The other guys come toward us. They’re maybe ten, fifteen feet

to my right.

I crash out of the tree and take off. For the first second or two,

leaves, branches, and fruit tear at and bump against my skin.

“Hey,” somebody yells.

“Get him!”

I can’t possibly outrun them. They’re bigger. But I know the

trees and the groves. I dodge and dart, my shoes slipping. I trip.

Get up. It’s frantic. They’re too close. I can’t get to the secret paths

I know so well. But it’s too dark for them to follow my footprints.

I scurry forward with care and caution. I hear them stumble and

curse. They take a wrong turn, and I draw away. I begin circling and

eventually come around to almost behind them. I stop. They keep

going forward.

I thrust my body deep under the leaves and branches of a tree.

I lean my head against the trunk. I pull in deep breaths. I quieten. I

listen. They’re coming back. I turn to start another sprint.

Car headlights come down the dirt road. I can’t run. They’ll see

me in the lights.

Trapped.

The face of the boy floating in the canal comes to me. I don’t

want to be the next statistic.

I try to melt myself into the tree. I hear their footsteps. The lights

of the new car turn off. Car doors slam. I shut my eyes.

I hear Darrel and his friends pass on either side of the tree I’m

hiding in, but their attention is on the newcomers.

After they pass, I pull in air for what feels like the first time in

hours.

The two groups meet under the old pepper trees that line the

road. I hear acrimony.

I creep to the main path through the trees. When I get there, I

run full tilt. I am pretty fast on solid ground. I leap the irrigation

canal. Home is a short run to the embankment, up it fifteen or

twenty feet, over the railroad tracks, down the other side, across the

field, over our backyard fence, and into the house. It’s a mile and

a half across the field. When I’m halfway, I look back. No one is

behind me. I slow down. Check myself for injuries but only find a

few minor scrapes from twisting and crashing through the tree when

I first started running.