Cameron rolled the fluorescent green Ninja race bike out of the shed.
I looked on in quiet fear while statistics for motorcycle accidents ran through my brain.
He went back into the shed and returned with a plastic bag. He ruffled through it, took out a
vanity plate and matched it to a drivers’ permit card.
“So, who are you today?” I teased, though my brain was now at statistical data for fatal
motorcycle accidents.
I picked up the card while he screwed the plate to the back of the bike. “Melvin Longhorn from
New York,” I announced. “It suits you.”
Cameron chuckled and continued to get everything ready for the ride. He handed me a child-sized
black helmet. “It’s the helmet I wore when I got my first bike. It should fit your little
head.”
“Remind me again why we’re not taking the car?”
“I don’t use anything that can be traced back to me when I’m working. You never know who’s
watching. Besides,” he said with a full-toothed smile, “this is a lot more fun.”
Fun wasn’t one of the words that had been floating through my brain.
I squeezed my head into the helmet. My cheeks were compressed so much that my lips were forced
into a fish pucker. Cameron laughed and took advantage of my incapacitated state to pat on my
helmet and steal a kiss. “This is the last one for a while,” he reminded me.
I would have nodded or growled but I was afraid the heavy helmet would knock me off balance.
He climbed on the bike, and I, with extreme ineptness, got on behind him.
We zipped down the gravel driveway, leaving Meatball to eat his breakfast on the porch. I kept
my eyes shut while the flying pebbles stung my face. It wasn’t until we reached the pebble-free
road and I was still getting stung, that I realized that the pebbles were actually bugs, making
like a kamikaze against my exposed skin. I made a point of keeping tight-lipped after that.
Cameron skillfully weaved in and out of traffic. At some point he complained that he couldn’t
breathe. I was forced to relax my death grip around his torso. I even eventually opened my eyes
and watched the scenery whoosh by.
We drove on the outskirts of the city and made our way down a country road that snaked the
Callister River. The river divided the state of New York from the province of Ontario, serving
as a natural border between the United States and Canada. Although a freshwater supply trickled
down from the Canadian mountains into the river, it was, for the most part, sourced with salt
water from the Atlantic that poured in at its basin. Because of its proximity to the ocean and
its practically bottomless depths, the river was almost always congested with commercial
schooners that motored back and forth from one country shore to the next and back into the
ocean.
Little by little, the evergreens turned into cornfields and farmland. There was something
exhilarating about being exposed and open to the elements and about holding onto Cameron for
dear life. After a couple of hours, Cameron turned onto a farm road. My hips, legs, and arms
were starting to cramp up and I had to close my eyes as rows of corn hypnotically whipped past
us. When we finally came to a stop and I opened my eyes again, what I saw was not what I had
expected to see.
There, in the middle of a field, stood a slanted wooden barn … and nothing else. There were no
ten-foot-high electric fences, goons with machine guns, or man-eating dogs—just an old barn,
barely big enough to fit a tractor. And there was a lot of corn around us. My first experience
with the drug world was, so far, extremely disappointing.
When I got off the bike and tried to put my full weight on my frozen legs, I almost fell on my
face.
“Ready?” Cameron whispered anxiously. I wasn’t sure if he was checking with me or himself.
I yanked the helmet off my head—it was like sucking a strawberry through a straw—and struggled
to put the escaped hair locks back into my ponytail.
“Leave your hair down,” he commanded.
“I hate having my hair down,” I whined.
“That’s the point. It’ll force you out of your comfort zone. Make you look like you’re on
edge.”
Like most things, what he said made no sense to me. I didn’t think that now was the right time
to argue with Cameron about my follicle insecurities. I grudgingly obeyed and pulled my
flattened helmet-hair out of its comfort zone. Cameron gave me a quick once over. I thought for
sure I had spied a hidden smile in his eyes and couldn’t help but feel like I’d been duped.
With one head nod, he indicated that it was time. I watched his face expertly turn to stone. He
stepped away from me like I no longer existed. Even if I knew that this was just an act, it
still stung.
Cameron coolly walked toward the barn, and I not-so-coolly followed not-so-closely behind him.
He opened the barn door, and a shadow moved within the darkened barn. My eyes anxiously tried to
adjust to the barn’s obscurity as we stepped through the threshold.