* * *
We drove the cart all the routes Rick always went: up the hill to eighteen, down to five, across the rickety bridge to seven. Like Rick, and unlike any other driver I knew, when we started down a huge hill, instead of braking or letting the cart coast, my brother sped up. I grabbed the cart’s side rail because I didn’t have Rick’s arm to hold on to.
We circled a water hazard, murky with algae and pond scum. We stopped and found the biggest rock to throw in. I found a small, weird-shaped stone and put it in my pocket. A golf club pinged somewhere far off, and a white dot drifted into the blue sky. We watched the ball land in the tall ragweed surrounding the pond, and we laughed, because we knew the owner would never find it. Rick once said tall grass was where golf balls go to die.
“It’s nice not having to worry about Rick,” I said. “His stupid leg pinch.”
“We can go wherever we want,” my brother said. “That’s what’s nice.”
We got back in the cart and drove around some more. We drove all the places we could think to drive. I thought about the course map we made of all the places we explored — the one I spilled Kool-Aid on — how it took weeks to cover only a quarter of the course. If we had had the cart the whole time, we would have finished in one weekend. The whole thing seemed silly.
When we had gone everywhere else, my brother drove us to the abandoned scoreboard. The scoreboard stood to the side of where the eighteenth hole once was, back when eighteen was a par five. On one of our weekly rides, Rick explained that nobody could ever hit the ball far enough, so they moved the green and changed the hole to a four. Before that, the course was too tough, Rick said, especially for a city so short on talent.
We parked the cart behind a bush in case anyone showed up, though no one ever came out here but us. I raced my brother to the ladder, but when I looked back, he wasn’t racing at all. He was walking. He let me climb the ladder attached to the scoreboard’s back and took his time following. If you knew where to look, you could see the scoreboard from the cafeteria’s corner window. From that distance, it seemed small, a toy, a real-life thing made miniature for toddlers. But up close was different. The scoreboard towered above us, an abandoned fortress, our own secret skyscraper.
At the top there was little room to stand, just a ledge you would fall to your death from if you weren’t careful. I sidestepped across the scoreboard to the end of the other side, a spot usually reserved for my brother. I leaned over the edge, peered at the pool of dirt below.
“This is my favorite place,” I said.
My brother sat down and let his legs dangle. “That’s because you’ve never been anywhere.” He had that jerkiness in his voice again. I tried to ignore him. I looked up at the horizon and tried to find the building farthest away. All I saw were prisons.
“Neither have you,” I said. “Where have you been that I haven’t?”
“Nowhere,” he said. “I haven’t been anywhere either.” I watched him closely after he said this, but he didn’t say anything more. The wind picked up, and I hugged the scoreboard. I thought about saying something mean, to tease more information out of my brother, but when I opened my mouth, there was a cloudless thunder.
“It’s five,” my brother said.
“What happened to the music?”
“We’re too far away.”
He didn’t move. He just sat there, his back against the scoreboard, his eyes closed like he was sunbathing at the pool.
“We better get back,” I said.
“She won’t go anywhere without us,” my brother said.
“She’ll be mad.”
“Of course she will.”
“She will.”
“Look, we’re already late,” he said, opening his eyes. “We still have to return the cart, right? We can’t leave it here. So we’re already late.”
“You’re going to make us later. You’re going to get us into trouble again.”
He stood up. “Again?” he said. “Us? You were never in trouble in the first place. You should have been.” He walked over to me quickly, crossing the narrow ledge without holding on to anything, or looking down to check his footing. “You know, I’m sick of you, you little liar. You follow me around, a little lying baby, doing what I do, wanting the things I want, but you’re too afraid to go get them.”
I bent my knees to brace myself. “No I’m not.”
“You wanted to drive the cart, so I drove the cart. You wanted the gun, so I grabbed it.” He grabbed me by the shirt. He could throw me off and there would be no witnesses. No one to call my brother out in court. “You wanted to go to the pool, to learn the Gainer and all the other cool pool moves, so I went and made friends with Chris.”
“That’s not what I wanted,” I said.
“Liar,” he said, and leaned me back, dangling me over the edge. I could feel the nothingness beneath me, the empty air between me and the ground. “You better tell me what I said is true,” he said. “Or it’s a long way down.”
I tried to grab his arm. He leaned me back farther, until I was sure I’d fall.
“OK, OK,” I said. “You’re right. You’re right.”
“Say it. Say you’re a baby.”
“I’m a baby.”
“A lying baby.”
“I’m a lying baby.”
“Say I’m smarter than you.”
“You’re smarter.”
“Smarter than you’ll ever be.”
“You’re smarter than I’ll ever be.”
He grinned at me and opened his mouth in fake shock, pretending he’d lost his grip. Don’t, I said. He pulled me up to him. “Ha. You really thought I was going to drop you, didn’t you, dummy?”
He ruffled my hair, pushed my face. I punched him away. I sat down, swung my feet off the edge like I was at the pool, kicking them safely in the shallow end. I looked around until I found the cafeteria window, small, far away. I imagined someone watching what just happened from the window, my brother dangling me over the edge. It would look like something out of a movie, or one of my brother’s epic toy plots. Me, the good guy in serious trouble. My brother, the bad. The villain who only won in the worlds my brother created.
My brother peered over the edge of the scoreboard, as if the pool waited below, waiting for his best move. It occurred to me I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in the pool, in the actual water.
“What do you guys talk about?” I asked my brother.
“Who? What do you mean?”
“You and Chris. Tell me what else you guys talk about, or I’ll tell Mom what just happened. I’ll tell her and Dad about you and Chris, sneaking out to the pool — everything.”
There was a second of silence, and I felt my brother look at me. But I didn’t look at him. I already knew the faces he was making. Anger, mixed with worry and disbelief.
“You’re blackmailing me?” he said. I didn’t know what that word meant, but felt I should say yes. My brother kept his back to me, and the sun baked his shadow into the scoreboard. “Unbelievable,” he said.
He put his head down in thought, his hand on his chin, as if he were weighing the options.
“I can’t tell you,” he finally said. “I’m not supposed to.”
I pulled up the tongue of my broken-laced shoe, got up, and walked over to my brother’s side. I sat down and put my hand on his shoulder, as if to say, It’s OK. It’s me, your brother. If I were wearing a wire, this would be the part where I leaned in close and said, Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul.
“Fine,” he said. “But I can only tell you what isn’t a secret. Got it?”
I nodded and scooted closer, so the only thing in between us was the wind. OK, my brother said, here is what you can know.