Dustin had spoken to Guillermo that afternoon. And Guillermo had spoken to Wendy and Darryl. The plan was for Guillermo to come by Dustin's at 1:00 a.m. Dustin would sneak out, and then Dustin and Guillermo would walk the two miles to Wendy's house where they would sneak in and hang out.

After his chicken stir-fry on a bed of cous-cous, Dustin retired to the couch once again and channel surfed until his mom came in to watch Murder, She Wrote. Dustin struggled up to sitting and scooted over on the couch to make room for his mom. She sat down gingerly and maintained pretty good posture. She wasn't a lounger. Roderick slept under the glass coffee table in front of the couch, wheezing placidly. Roderick wasn't a lounger either. He had two speeds: on and off.

The Murder, She Wrote was about some crooked sheriff, Pop Jensen, in a small town who had knocked off the mayor's chief adversary, Dr. Caruthers, and made it look like a drunk driving accident. Only it turned out that it was really the local florist, Gwendelyn, who did it. Gwendelyn had been Caruther's sweetheart in high school. Almost weekly, Dr. Caruthers would come in and buy orchids and tulips or sometimes two dozen long-stemmed red roses. He was brazenly smug and insouciant about his purchases too, sometimes asking, "Gwendelyn, if I were buying you flowers, what kind would you want?" She would answer, "I do so love the begonias." Caruthers would then buy begonias to take home to his wife. Seeing her former beau, albeit nearly thirty years an ex-, buying flowers for another woman at her store enraged Gwendelyn. So she snuffed him. Jessica Fletcher, with that uncanny woman's intuition of hers and bloodhound instincts, spoored Gwendelyn out and drove her to a pathetic, sobby confession. Then J.B. Fletcher motored on to another crackpot town of population 276 for her next assignment.

After the show, Dustin casually perambulates among the kitchen, living room, and bathroom, sort of like animals do, with no apparent purpose or reason. In the kitchen he sets his hands on the counter and leans toward the wall, balancing on his arms. Then he grabs a random piece of cheese from the counter and scarfs it, washing his hands afterwards. His job done there, he moseys back to the living room. He lies on his back, inches headfirst toward Roderick under the coffee table, and blows on Rodericks nose until Roderick awakens and sets upon Dustin's face. After a vigorous, jocund tongue-lashing, Dustin wrestles the marauder from his face and dumps him into his mom's lap. Marcy's still sitting on the couch, rather upright and about to go do something. Dustin abandons the affrighted Marcy to fend for herself against the ravaging furball and heads for the bathroom. He struggles to go but doesn't really have to. He returns to the living room area near the staircase and hesitates, or rather, pauses. Satisfied, he trots upstairs and gets ready for bed.

Before he turned out the light and snuggled under his airy, down comforter, Dustin set his watch alarm for 12:55. It was quiet and wouldn't wake up Roderick who generally slept on the third stair from the top, just around the corner from Dustin's room. The stairs were carpeted and beige. Roderick's stair was darker than the rest. Dustin closed his eyes and thought of Sugar Plum Fairies, which somehow reminded him of the board game Candyland, which itself inevitable led to Chutes & Ladders. Just as he drifted off, the Connect Four commercial reared terrifyingly in his subconscious, and he bolted upright in bed, panting and alarmed, with the words, "Gotcha. Where? Right there, sis, diagonally," resounding through his brain.

After that his sleep was restive and labored, but he managed to snatch a few fitful z's before his watch alarm startled him awake.

Bleep-bleep-bleep. He fiddled for the little stop button on his watch. The alarm stopped. Dustin listened. All he could hear was the rustling of tree leaves outside his window. No curious Roderick sounds. He got out of bed and rummaged quietly through his drawers for some clothes. He found his navy blue Hawaii 88 T-shirt and some musty jeans crumpled in the corner. He laced up his old tennies and peered out the window through the branches, scanning for a Guillermo of sorts.

No sight of him yet. Dustin brought a chair by the window so he could sit and watch. The moon oozed a thick yellow light that amassed on the branches and fell to the lawn in splats. Dustin saw heaps of pus-light piling on his front yard and wondered if he'd be able to make it to the street without slipping in the gunk and noseplowing into a mound of the pustulant jelly.

A shadow moved among the mounds. Guillermo squinted up toward Dustin's window. He was about fifteen minutes late. Dustin didn't notice. As Guillermo tilted his head upward, the moon illuminated his visage in yellow streaks. A silver and black Raider's cap, on backwards, blended into the night. Guillermo saw Dustin's dark form in the window, like a lurking rocking chair spinster-spectre in a haunted house.

Dustin softly lifted his window. He had oiled the squeaky points earlier with squirts of 3-in-1. It rose easily and quietly enough. Dustin stepped through the open window onto the slanted, shingled roof that led to the trellis. He moved cautiously. The shingles were old and worn and would be dislodged with any excessive footfall. Dustin didn't feel like snapping his neck, so he sat on his butt and shimmied toward the rain gutter. At the gutter, he located the trellis, reversed his position, and felt for a square in the trellis with his foot. He started down, getting charcoal splotches on his jeans and shirts as he slid against the gutter. The trellis didn't support him as well now, since he'd grown. The crosspieces bowed under his weight. Guillermo watched anxiously. Dustin caught his foot on a vine in the trellis but didn't fall. He hopped down the last two feet and turned to greet his friend.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"You ready?"

"Yeah."

"Let's go."

They skirted the moon ooze and started down the street, both bending forward at the waist in good striding position. They were eager to get to Wendy's house, a scant two miles away, up some not insubstantial hills too. But they were young. And Wendy and Darryl awaited.

They walked in the middle of the street, faintly illuminated by the periodic, silvery glow of streetlights. Their shadows stretched out miles before them, down the double yellow line, as they departed one streetlight's dome of light and gazed up the road to the next. When they got to Borogrove, a more traveled street, they adopted a different tack, a stealthy approach designed to avoid any officious police men who might want to help them home. Dustin and Guillermo trekked snug to the fences and shrubs that bordered Borogrove, ducking silenty out of sight at the sound or sight of a coming car. Tucked inside a bush, they'd peer intently through tight foliage to see if the car had seen them. When the car passed to a comfortable, distant drone, they'd come out and dust off the leaves and twigs they'd unintentionally acquired. Appearances must be kept up. They were going to meet girls.

As Borogrove crested, they shunted left down Chestnut and followed Chestnut's meandering curves as it wound toward its lofty pinnacle, Wendy's house. Dustin and Guillermo were still a mile from their goal. Chestnut had much the same appearance as Lemon, only with straighter trees and nicer lawns, and it twisted. No dogs barked. The rare light sent out muffled radiance from behind heavy curtains. Dustin and Guillermo walked down the left side of the street. No reason. They didn't talk.

A two-foot stick lay on a lawn. Dustin picked it up. He whacked at some of the bushes as he passed, making a whoosh and a rustle. Guillermo shushed him. Dustin golf-swung at a fallen prickly ball, still green, on the sidewalk. He connected on the third swing and sent the prickly ball sailing high over the trimmed hedge and just under the tree branches to smack the kitchen window with a penetrating thud that echoed.

Dustin and Guillermo were off with a start, at full sprinting speed in an instant. They hurtled down the sidewalk, clothes billowing and whipping as they raced away.

Almost as quickly as they started, they stopped, hopefully safely away, to gather breath. Adrenaline coursed, and they both glanced fearfully over their shoulders to see if maybe some deranged old man in an underwear tank top and spotted boxers was coming after them with a shotgun. He wasn't. Gradually they settled down.

"You fuck. What'd you do that for?" Guillermo said, not completely unamused.

"Fuck you. I didn't mean to hit the window," Dustin laughed. "I didn't think I'd even hit the little ball thing. It was a pretty sweet shot though, huh? How I cleared the hedge from two-feet back is beyond me. It was an act of God."

"Yeah, great. Save your miracles for someone else."

Dustin and Guillermo had sprinted around two curves in their flight and were now at one of the steep parts of Chestnut. They hiked without complaint. It was about 1:50. Guillermo had told Wendy they'd be there at 2:00. They were going to be late, not that punctuality was crucial for engagements like these.

As Dustin and Guillermo climbed, the vegetation grew thicker, and the houses sat further back from the road, some completely obscured, but no security fences. Finally they turned down Wendy's driveway, both excited, but neither said it. Not that they were afraid to admit it. They just both already knew it. Besides, they'd done this kind of thing before.

They entered the front lawn by the little walkway that ran through the hedge. From the grass, they could see Wendy's window on the second floor. Her room was dark.

"Let's just stand here a second and see if she looks out. She probably has her light off so her parents don't notice," Dustin suggested.

They stood. For about three minutes.

"Screw this. They're asleep. I'm waking 'em up," Guillermo said and started foraging for pebbles. When he had collected a handful, he returned to Dustin's spot and deposited a couple in Dustin's palm.

Wendy's room was situated much like Dustin's, with a sloping roof under the window. Guillermo shot first. He landed short, just below the window. The pebble trickled down the roof below and fell into the rain gutter with a soft clang, muffled by accumulated leaves.

Dustin shot next. His pebble hit almost exactly where Dustin's had, almost inaudible against the house. Dustin turned to watch Guillermo's next throw. Rather than falling into the rain gutter, Dustin's pebble caught a dent in a shingle, leapt high into the night, and plucked Dustin right on the crest of his skull.

"Oww, Jesus," Dustin whispered forcefully and rubbed his head.

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I think my pebble hit me," Dustin surmised.

Guillermo chuckled and launched his next pebble. He hit the window. It went "ting." They followed the pebble with their eyes until it stopped, to avoid its rebound. Then they waited. Thirty seconds. Nothing.

Dustin threw. He hit high on the glass with an obese pebble. It made sort of a "pank" sound that vibrated. Not a "ting."

"Shit, dude. What the hell d'you throw?" Guillermo blurted, hushed.

"Just what you gave me, y'idiot."

The curtain in the second floor window pulled slightly aside, and Wendy's bleary-eyed face craned around to see what was going on. Her hair was disheveled, and Dustin and Guillermo could immediately tell that either 1) she had forgotten, or 2) she didn't think they would come.

After a moment the window slid open a couple inches.

"Are you guys trying to break my window or something?" Wendy joked.

"We almost had to, to wake you up, Sleeping Beauty. Serves you right for falling asleep on us," Dustin returned.

Wendy's parents' room was on the other side of the house, so they weren't too worried about waking them up.

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