boldlyloudcat Blog

Jamie Carter's eyes snapped open at 7:14 a.m., one minute before his Casio calculator watch would have beeped its tinny alarm. Through the Venetian blinds, summer sunlight striped across his bedroom in golden bars, illuminating the constellation of his thirteen-year-old life: Michael Jackson mid-Thriller pose, a bootleg "Save Ferris" poster his older cousin had made, and scattered across the carpet like technological confetti, a dozen Atari 2600 cartridges he'd been too excited to put away last night.

The first Saturday of summer vacation.

He pulled on yesterday's jeans and his prized Ghostbusters t-shirt—the one with the logo that glowed in the dark, though it barely worked anymore after sixty-seven washes—and crept downstairs on sock feet. His parents' bedroom door remained closed, Dad's freight-train snoring audible from the hallway. Perfect.

In the kitchen, Jamie grabbed the Cocoa Puffs box and ate straight from it, chocolate puffs crunching between his teeth as he sprawled on the shag carpet in front of the living room TV. He twisted the dial to Channel 7 just as the Transformers theme exploded from the speakers at a volume that made him dive for the knob. He glanced toward the stairs. Nothing. Crisis averted.

By the time G.I. Joe gave way to commercials—some kid screaming about the Nintendo Entertainment System that cost more than Jamie's bike—he'd polished off half the cereal box and his mind was already racing ahead to the day's possibilities.

At exactly 8:00 a.m., Jamie rolled his chrome Mongoose down the driveway, the bike's metallic finish catching the sun like a mirror. He'd saved for nine months to buy it, doing every lawn and driveway in a six-block radius. The seat was still factory-tight, the grips barely worn. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever owned.

He coasted to the corner of Maple and 8th and waited, one foot on the curb, the other on a pedal, ready to launch. Sixty seconds later, the familiar clacking sound of baseball cards in bike spokes announced the arrival of Danny "Radar" O'Reilly, whose nickname had stuck after he'd binge-watched MASH reruns for an entire week and started calling everyone "sir" and pushing his glasses up his nose exactly like the character.

"Carter," Radar said, skidding to a stop on his beat-up Schwinn. "I have seventeen quarters. You?"

"Twenty-three. Kelly said she'd bring at least—"

"Bringing at least thirty," a voice called out, and Kelly Brennan rounded the corner on her pink Huffy, the bike an embarrassing hand-me-down from a cousin that she'd tried to spray-paint black last summer before her mom stopped her. She had her Walkman clipped to her cutoff shorts, oversized headphones around her neck, and Jamie could hear the tinny sound of Huey Lewis and the News leaking from the foam speakers.

Kelly was the only girl who'd been brave enough—or crazy enough—to hang with them when they'd started this crew two summers ago. She could out-bike, out-cuss, and out-dare any of them, and Jamie had spent the last six months trying not to stare at her too obviously whenever she smiled.

"So what's the—" Radar started, but another voice cut him off.

"Wait! WAIT!"

They all turned to see Jamie's nine-year-old sister Megan pedaling furiously toward them on her too-small bike with the banana seat and streaming handlebar ribbons.

"No way," Jamie said immediately. "Absolutely not."

"Jamie Christopher Carter," Megan said, screeching to a halt and fixing him with a look she'd clearly stolen from their mother. "I know you're going to the construction site. And if you don't let me come, I'm telling Mom right now."

"How do you—"

"I heard you on the phone with Radar last night. Your voice carries."

Kelly laughed. Radar tried to hide a smile. Jamie felt his perfect day crumbling before it even started.

"Fine," he said through gritted teeth. "But you stay where I can see you, and you don't touch anything, and if you tell Mom ANY of this—"

"Pinky swear," Megan said, holding out her little finger with a grin that suggested she'd just won the lottery.

The mall was already heating up by the time they chained their bikes to the rack outside Sears. Inside, the air conditioning hit them like a cold wall, and Jamie could smell the combination of Orange Julius, soft pretzels, and new shoes that meant summer to him.

Aladdin's Castle arcade occupied the center court like a shrine to neon and noise. The moment they pushed through the entrance, Jamie felt that familiar electrical charge in his chest—the beeping and blooping of fifty games at once, the smell of carpet and quarters, and the possibility that today might be the day he finally, finally beat Dragon's Lair.

"Gauntlet first," Kelly announced, already feeding quarters into the four-player machine. "I call the Valkyrie."

They played for three games before Kelly got bored and wandered off to dominate the Karate Champ machine, where she proceeded to obliterate a high school kid who'd made the mistake of calling her "little girl." Jamie and Radar took turns on Paperboy, cursing every time a dog chased them off a lawn or a car backed out of a driveway at exactly the wrong moment.

But it was Track & Field where Jamie found his moment of glory.

He'd been trying to beat the high score—set by someone with the initials "ACE" who was probably thirty years old and had nothing better to do—for three months. Today, with Radar and Megan cheering behind him, his thumbs became machines, hammering the RUN buttons with a speed that seemed to transcend human ability. The on-screen athlete flew across the finish line. The screen flashed: NEW RECORD.

"YES!" Jamie screamed, jumping up with his arms raised like he'd just won the Olympics. His right thumb was throbbing and had a blister forming, but he didn't care. He carefully entered his initials: J.C.

"That," Radar said solemnly, adjusting his glasses, "was epic."

Their victory celebration was interrupted by a shout from across the arcade. They turned to see Radar standing in front of the claw machine—the one everyone knew was rigged, the one that had eaten approximately seven thousand quarters over the past year—holding up a Rubik's Cube keychain in triumph.

"No way," Kelly said, jogging over. "No. Way."

"Miracle of the day," Radar said, grinning so wide Jamie thought his face might split. "I got it on the first try."

"That's it," Jamie declared. "This is officially the best day ever, and it's not even noon."

The 7-Eleven smelled like hot dogs, air conditioning, and possibility. They pooled their remaining change and got four Cherry Slush Puppies, the frozen drinks turning their tongues the kind of radioactive red that would horrify their mothers and delight their dentists.

They sat on the curb outside, bikes sprawled on the sidewalk, slurping their drinks and debating the important issues of 1985.

"New Coke is an abomination," Kelly said definitively. "Whoever decided to change it should be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the sun."

"Agreed," Radar said. "It tastes like someone dissolved Pepsi in battery acid."

"Who would win in a fight," Megan asked suddenly, "Marty McFly or Indiana Jones?"

This sparked a fifteen-minute debate that ended with no clear winner but a lot of wild hand gestures and spilled Slush Puppie.

"So," Jamie said, once they'd settled down. "We doing the construction site?"

"Obviously," Kelly said.

"You sure?" Radar asked. "Remember what happened to Tommy Chen? His mom grounded him for a month when he came home with that broken arm."

"Tommy Chen is an idiot who tried to jump a six-foot gap on a bike that cost thirty dollars," Kelly said. "We're not idiots."

"Debatable," Jamie muttered, earning himself a punch in the shoulder.

The construction site was a half-built housing development on the east side of town, abandoned when the developer ran out of money or interest or both. To the adults in the neighborhood, it was an eyesore and a liability. To Jamie and his friends, it was paradise.

They squeezed through the gap in the chain-link fence and suddenly they were in another world. Piles of dirt as tall as cars, concrete foundations like empty swimming pools, stacks of lumber and pipe and all the raw materials of houses that would never be built. And for BMX bikes, it was perfect.

"Last one to the dirt pile buys Slurpees next time," Kelly shouted, already pedaling.

They spent two hours creating ramps from scrap wood and plywood, taking turns launching themselves into the air. Jamie managed a pretty decent jump that probably looked cooler than it felt. Radar wiped out spectacularly, rolling in the dirt and coming up laughing, his glasses miraculously intact. Megan proved to be a surprisingly fearless rider, though Jamie's heart nearly stopped when she took a ramp that was probably too big for her.

But it was Kelly who stole the show. She hit the biggest ramp they'd built, sailed through the air with both hands off the handlebars, and landed it perfectly. For a moment, Jamie forgot to breathe. The sun was behind her, her hair was flying, and she looked like she could do anything.

"No-hander!" Radar screamed. "Did you see that? THAT WAS A NO-HANDER!"

Kelly circled back, grinning. "Saw it in Rad last month. Been practicing."

They were exploring the back section of the site, the part where the foundations were deeper and more dangerous, when Megan called out from inside a partially built structure.

"Guys! GUYS! You have to see this!"

They found her standing next to an old refrigerator someone had dumped in what would have been a basement. Jamie pulled the door open carefully, half-expecting a dead body or a raccoon.

Instead: vintage glass Coca-Cola bottles. Dozens of them.

"Jackpot," Kelly whispered.

They loaded every bottle they could carry into their backpacks and bike baskets. At five cents deposit each, they were looking at ten dollars easy.

They were riding back toward the fence when it happened. Megan, not watching where she was going, pedaled too close to the edge of a foundation pit. Her front wheel caught the lip. The bike started to tip.

Jamie didn't think. He dropped his bike and lunged, grabbing his sister's arm and yanking her backward. They both tumbled into the dirt, the bike clattering into the shallow end of the pit with a crash.

For a moment, nobody spoke. Megan's eyes were huge behind the dust on her face.

"You okay?" Jamie asked quietly.

She nodded. Then, to his complete surprise, she threw her arms around him and squeezed. "Thanks, Jamie."

"Yeah, well," he muttered, his ears burning. "Mom would kill me if I let you die. Purely self-preservation."

But he hugged her back.

They cashed in the bottles at the grocery store—$12.35 total—and decided unanimously that the rest of the day should be dedicated to the ultimate mission: investigating the haunted house on Elm Street.

Everyone knew the story. The Victorian house had sat empty for three years. Some said the owner had gone crazy and disappeared. Some said he'd died in there and nobody found him for weeks. Some said it wasn't a man at all but an old woman who'd practiced witchcraft and had left curses in every room.

None of them believed any of it. Probably.

"Ghost defense," Kelly said, pulling two cans of Silly String from her backpack when they met at the corner near the house at 4:00 p.m.

"You think Silly String stops ghosts?" Radar asked.

"You got a better idea?"

They didn't.

The house looked worse up close. Paint peeling in long strips, windows dark as closed eyes, the porch sagging like a frown. The lawn had gone wild, waist-high grass and weeds that whispered when the breeze moved through them.

"On three," Jamie said. "One... two..."

Kelly pushed past him and walked straight up to the front door. "It's not even locked," she called back, turning the knob.

Inside smelled like dust and time and old books. Their footsteps echoed on wooden floors. Furniture sat under white sheets like sleeping ghosts. The wallpaper was peeling, revealing older wallpaper beneath, and beneath that, layers and layers of the house's history.

"This is actually kind of sad," Megan whispered.

They were exploring the second floor when they heard it: a loud, mechanical MOO that made Radar scream and Jamie's heart explode out of his chest.

Kelly was laughing so hard she had to lean against the wall. On the floor in front of them was a See 'n Say, the kind where you pulled the string and it made animal sounds. It must have been jostled by their footsteps.

"Not. Funny," Radar gasped, but he was starting to laugh too.

In the master bedroom, they found the jackpot: a cardboard box full of 1970s Playboys. They all stared at it for a long moment.

"We," Radar said slowly, "saw nothing."

"Agreed," Jamie said quickly.

"Nobody speaks of this," Kelly added. "We take this secret to our graves."

They were still laughing about it when they escaped out the back door, the sky turning purple as the streetlights began to flicker on one by one.

The garage roof was Jamie's favorite place in the world. You climbed onto the recycling bin, pulled yourself up to the fence, and from there it was an easy scramble to the shingled peak. From up there, you could see the whole neighborhood: the Hendersons' pool, the water tower on the hill, and if you looked east, the lights of the high school football field.

They spread out on the sun-warm shingles with their contraband: generic store-brand soda that had gone warm and a pack of Twizzlers that were starting to get stale but nobody cared.

"Today was pretty perfect," Radar said, lying on his back and watching the contrails of a jet scratch across the darkening sky.

"Track and Field high score," Jamie said.

"Rubik's Cube keychain," Radar added.

"No-hander," Kelly said smugly.

"Not dying," Megan chimed in.

In the distance, they heard the first boom of fireworks. Someone at the high school had clearly gotten their hands on the good stuff early for the Fourth of July. The sky lit up in cascading gold and silver.

Kelly shifted beside him, and then—so casually Jamie almost thought he imagined it—she leaned her head against his shoulder. Four seconds, maybe five. Long enough for his brain to stop working entirely. Long enough for him to memorize the weight of it, the smell of her shampoo mixed with the dust and sweat of the day.

When she moved away, she didn't say anything. Neither did he. But Radar caught his eye and gave him the smallest smile.

They stayed on the roof until the stars came out proper, until the fireflies started their blinking in the yards below, until Jamie's mom shouted from the kitchen window that he'd better get inside in the next sixty seconds or tomorrow he'd be grounded.

"Same time next Saturday?" Kelly asked as they climbed down.

"Obviously," Jamie said.

Later, in his room with the box fan humming and creating artificial wind that made his Thriller poster flutter, Jamie pulled out the Polaroid Kelly had taken that afternoon. The four of them, dirt-streaked and grinning, bikes in a pile behind them, the construction site sprawling in the background. Proof the day had actually happened.

He slid it under his mattress where his mom would never find it.

From the clock radio on his nightstand, barely audible, came the opening synthesizer riff of A-ha's "Take On Me." Jamie closed his eyes and let the music wash over him, already half-dreaming of next Saturday's adventures.

In the summer of 1985, the world still ran on quarters, courage, and the promise that tomorrow could be even better. And for Jamie Carter and his crew, somewhere between the arcade's glow and the garage roof's height, they'd found something that would outlast every high score and every perfect jump: proof that childhood was a country you could visit as long as you remembered the way back.

The fan hummed. The radio played. And Jamie fell asleep smiling.