'You're coming to the Creek tomorrow, right?'� Jeff whispered. 'You gotta come to the Creek.'�

The classroom was in sharp, tense silence now. All eyes strained toward the clock, a thousand hawks, their wings unfurling, ready to take flight.

Mrs. Bloomingale held authoritarian sentinel over her desk, even as summer light flitted through the blinds. It was 2:40 on June 20. The silence was only punctuated by the anxious squeaking of tennis-balled chairs, the nervous murmurings of anonymous anticipants, and Matt's lilting voice.

'�Of course, of course,'� I hissed. 'Can we talk about it later?'� My mouth twisted with feigned rancor.

'Really? You're going? Really?'�

'Yes!'�

Relief washed over Jeff's face. 'Oh gosh, Matt. I thought you were going to chicken out. What would they think of me if you chickened out, didn't go to the Creek? Oh gosh. It's really not that dangerous, Matt. It's just a little game in the dark.'�

In my mind played images of dark, irresistible adventure, terrifying and yet fascinating. Cold, foreboding trees piercing like wooden stakes into the night. Streams, ditches, enemies lurking in the brush. Toads calling like war horns. An opportunity. Ascendance to a pedestal of glory and manhood. And danger.

The Creek.

The clanging of the bell cut through doubts like armored cavalry into stone-slinging aborigine. The class bolted to its feet, and I felt an unexpected surge of exhilaration. I was now a Seventh Grader. I was now a Man. And Men do not have doubts.

###

June 21, they told us, was to be a Day unlike any other. And it was.

We trampled through the forest in feral impatience, tearing through inconvenient tree limbs, splashing into patches of viscid mud, sprinting until we snagged our toes on furtive roots and toppled cursing to the ground. We came without backpacks; we came with peanut butter and fluff sandwiches in our stomachs; we came with faces purple with anticipation.

The Creek.

Jeff dragged me from bed as the crickets were tuning and the moon had yet to peek over rim of the boulevard. 'Hey! Get up! Get up!'� He kicked me in the side. His Nikes bit into me with venom.

I rolled onto the floor and gazed up. His black, greasy hair was in nest-like disarray, and his eyes shined. In the twilight his skin was dimly ophidian, scabrous and hot. 'I've got a fever, Jeff. My mom says I can't come.'�

'What? Then sneak out the window for gosh sakes! Are you chickening out on me? This is the Creek!'�

'Well,'� I said, my mind racing. 'she's gonna check on me every hour. Because she needs to, uh. For my medicine,'� I ended lamely. 'And, it's raining anyway. Will anyone show up?'�

Jeff grabbed my neck and stared as if I'd sprouted horns. 'Matt, Matt'� this is the Creek. Everyone's gotta go to the Creek. You'� you gotta'�'� He drifted off, at loss for words to describe the imperative nature of this midnight congregation. 'You just gotta.'�

How could those doubts had crept in again? This was just a game. A silly game. No! A consequential game. The Creek was a game of honor. 'What's the worst that could happen?'�

Jeff smiled affirmatively as I slipped on a pair of tennis shoes, donned a jacket over my pajama top, and thrust my legs outside the window. We skidded over the edge of the roof and landed in a tuft of grass by a creaking water pump.

And we were off.

###

Outside the grotto, rain beat down on the forest in percussive fury, the wind weaving melodies into it. Pine branches clasped their trunks to transform the forest into a ruin of jagged green columns. And everywhere, the incense of earth. Of wet, rotting wood.

Rain had quenched their torches. The grotto was shallow, little more than a niche in the stone hill by the swelling Creek, and the rain drove into it slanted and merciless. But the children were drawn there irresistibly, like salmon to their natal pool. I saw them flanking Benedict at the nucleus. Around the eight-grader stood four children, all Terracotta faces.

'Are you sure we should be here?'�

Jeff smirked darkly. 'Where else?'�

We pressed into the half-moon crowd that surrounded the grotto. Their faces were blank; any odors of perspiration had been swallowed by the rain. Half of the children were older than I, thirteen perhaps. They were lanky; sallow bags hung under their eyes, their mouths drooped slightly ajar.

That was the first time I really sweated in my life. Pores opened, hormones woke, and suddenly the inside of my jacket was as soaked as the outside. Old fears reappeared, swelling overripe within me. My feet wanted to run.

They did not.

'Fresh meat,'� a tall boy with red hair snickered. 'Good thing it's raining, kid.'�

'He's probably wetting his pants.'� another rejoined, as if the witticism needed clarification.
'Shut up, Alex. Who gave you permission to talk?'�

Jeff was five feet away, inspecting a rock with deep fascination. My shoulders slipped. Now I was alone. 'You're gay, Alex. Why don't you go home and hump Steven again?'� 'Impossible. Alex probably doesn't even have balls.'� 'I do so!'� 'Then pull down your pants and prove it, faggot.'�

'Quiet, everyone! Ben is gonna speak!'�

Voices dripping with malice: 'Quiet everyone! Ben is gonna speak! I like Ben! Ben has a hot ass!'� A few faces swam in red, and others lit in delight. A constant oscillation: the joy of belonging to the Pack, then the bitterness of falling from its good graces. A perpetual grasping for oneness with the rest.

I perceived this very quickly.

Benedict cuffed someone a quick, wiry swipe. 'Well. We're all here. Or at least, like, everyone that matters. Though some of you can suck it.'� Benedict's wary eyes flashed and his fingers twitched irritably. I detected in his thin, slouching figure the Navel of the Pack. He floated effortlessly above the cycle of reproach; he didn't need to grasp. His lessers instinctively fell in line.

'Well, this is the Creek, faggots. And it's time.

'Here's to you cocksucking twelve-year-olds. We're here to fucking fight. That's what we do at the Creek, if your pathetic brains haven't gotten that yet. We pair up, we separate, and then we hunt each other down.'�

A hesitant voice rose from the crowd. 'Are there any rules?'�

Malice ran like a shiver through us. I felt my mouth open. 'Gay faggot.'� 'Shut up and suckle your mommy's tit, sixth-grader.'� 'Eat my balls, fairy.'�

Benedict cut through the crowd with a low voice. 'No rules, kid. You win by hurting your enemies until they start sobbing, fall in the mud, and surrender. Not that you'll win, freshie. You'll probably be running home to mommy in an hour; I don't have any band-aids or Kleenex, kid. Those are the rules.'�

'Just stick by the Creek and don't fight fair.'�

At some instinctive signal, the crowd paired up into twos. It took me off-guard; the swarming mass buzzed over me carelessly. Something gripped my stomach.

I didn't have partner.

The Pack had divided into fifteen cells, all standing ready at attention. I frantically searched for Jeff. When I found him, he was next to a burly eight-grader with a mullet.

'Hey,'� it was the red-haired boy again. 'Don't you have any friends, kid?'�

My face burned. Heat streamed down my neck like boiling water. In that moment I all but squirmed.
'I asked you,'� he repeated. His voice was soft. 'Don't you have any friends?'�

The scene was gaining attention now. The Pack seemed to circle around me, drowning me in a sea of snickering. Jeff was chuckling behind his hand. My eyes blurred.

A large hand grabbed mine and thrust it up. 'Ben! This kid's crying. Can you get him a partner?'�

Over the laughter Benedict's voice was calm, serene. 'Why of course,'� he said. 'I don't think Simon has a partner either.'� Choking with laughter, the Pack turned to another foal. I wiped my eyes while they all looked away, and it was all over.

But I still wanted to kill someone.

Simon was skulking outside the grotto when his name was called; his cheeks bobbled up at the sound. I examined him, despairing. He would have had to walk on tiptoes to reach five feet, and layers of baby fat lined his face.

His voice squeaked. 'What?'�

'Your cock. That's what, puddles.'�

Simon's expressions shifted from confusion, to shame, and then finally to uncertainty. For a second I thought he would storm away, but instead he simple transformed into a radish.
'I don't know why you came, Simon, but here's someone within your margins. Meet you partner, puddles.'� and Simon was shoved to my side. I stared at him cadaverously.

I picked my lowest, gruffest voice and prayed it didn't sound stupid. 'Can he fight good?'�

'Not really. But it's very entertaining.'�

He fought very badly, I learned later. Simon had been the youngest in his class, barely twelve when his Velcro sneakers touched the tiles of the Junior High. By October that year, the seventh grade had discerned, incontrovertibly, that Simon was a total faggot.

'Why do you call him puddles?'�

'Besides the crying? He wets the bed. Or so his best friend says,'� a dark smile crept onto Benedict's face. 'In any case, he'll probably trip over himself and distract the enemy. Enjoy.'�
By the time I'd absorbed this, the Pack had dispersed and we were the only ones left at the Grotto.

###

The rain pelted my eyes like pebbles as I charged into the gully. Blood was shooting through my veins, and jagged roots, disinterred by the storm, clawed viciously at my chest.

The boy lifted his head a second too late. I bulled into him, launching with furious impetus and pinning him into the watery mud. His arms swung at my back as I raised my fist to strike, but to no avail. My punch shattered the cartilage of his nose, sending blood streaming down his chin.
I was only vaguely aware of my own screaming.

A heavy mass jolted into my back. Rapacious shrieks clobbered my ears, and suddenly there were fingernails burrowing into my skin. I swore. My consciousness melted and everything fused together, and the three of us wrangled feverishly in the slimy earth. All around us, the guttural war drums of pounding rain.

Eventually I battered one into submission, and then, rolling over, I pincered my hands around the other's neck. My thumbs found a soft patch between his jugulars, and I pushed with all my might.

When it was all over I hefted him to the side and rose, shaking, to my feet. Oozing mud was already coagulating over my arms, and my breath trembled in exhaustion and unimaginable triumph. I lifted my hands to touch the heavens and bellowed, victory pulsing over me like warm bathwater. It was a blinding ecstasy.

The two boys slinked away, one cradling his left arm, the other pressuring the flowing blood on his face. They might be going home, or to the Grotto, or to Hell for all I cared. They were inferior; they were weaklings, undeserving of the Pack.

I found Simon huddled under a rock, the rain petering out. 'A fat lot of help you are, faggot,'� I tugged him out of the rock and placed him on his feet. He wobbled precariously for a moment, then collapsed again. I laughed until my side burned.

'Get to your feet, puddles,'� When he finally did so, we headed back towards the creek, climbing over logs and following rambling paths with forking tongues. At least I did. He kept tripping over his feet and thudding sloppily over the dirt. 'So are you retarded or what?'�

His face was covered with mud. 'I'm not retarded!'�

'Then just a blubbering diaper baby?'� Before he could deny the flush on his face told it all. I nearly collapsed laughing. 'Does you mommy change you for bed, puddles? Does she give you a paci so you won't whimper all night long?'�

He stared at me stupidly.

'You're disgusting, you know that?'� I grinned. The sublimity of the reciprocation enveloped me. 'I bet your balls are the size of peanuts. I bet you're a sped. I bet that, in all your life, you've never had a single friend. Tell me that a thing I say isn't true'�

Simon blinked and denied nothing. I smiled broadly as his eyes watered. 'Look at the poor baby. Aw, how sad, no one loves you. Deal with it, you faggot.'� I farmed his tears, coaxing them up and reaping them, exultant.

'You're the most disgusting kid I've ever met, Simon.'�

A scream ripped through the canopy. I cocked my head; it was coming from a forest valley away from the Creek. I cracked my knuckles. 'The Men are fighting over there, Simon. Stay here and finish bawling. If you can, of course.'�

'No,'� Simon's jaw trembled. The resuming rain had washed the mud from his face; it was plaster white. His voice broke. 'No. I'm coming. I'll show you. I can fight.'�

I didn't laugh. My side hurt too much. 'When have you fought anyone?'�

'Shut up! I've fought someone! I took my backpack and swung it in his face, and he bled, but I hit him again, and again, and again, and I kicked him in the side, and I didn't stop. They suspended me for weeks but I beat him until they tore me away! I fought him hard!'� His sobbing resumed more intensely than before. 'I'll show you. I'll show you.'� His nose contorted, sending the fat on his cheeks bubbling up.

I was taken aback. 'What...?'�

'He'll never do it to me again. Never. Or I'll kill him. I'll lock him in a box and smile and let him suffocate and when they find me I'll tell them I'm glad I did it. I'll take a knife and stab it in his face. He'll never do it again.'�

I left. I didn't look back to see if he followed.

The hill descended more quickly than I had guessed, steeping abruptly into a terrestrial bowl. I rushed through, half tripping down the declivity, squinting my eyes to avoid branches. Brush tore at my pants; the wind whipped at my jacket.

I was just slowing when a stone whizzed by my ear. I started sprinting. War cries were reawakening: not two, but three and four and five and six. Six? How could that be?

I burst into the clearing. The earth rose all about me, deciduous and coniferous alike clinging against the hillsides. Nothing grew at this nadir, not heather nor shrubs nor overgrown bluegrass with plumes on their tips. Nothing. Only the wettest kind of mud, the kind where the dirt saturates so much that it's nearly water.

Crisscrossed about the field were haphazard ditches, now turned into muddy streams.
A boy with hair as long as a girl's flew at me, club in hand. He blindsided me: a thousand miles away I heard a wooden thud. My chest went numb.

All over my torso flesh melted into butter; my head crumpled over it. My arms, uprooted, dangled helplessly at my side. Faraway catcalls, roars, and scuffles echoed in my ears like the jingling of bells.

A dozen years later, I bolted from the mud with fierce pain coursing through my every fiber. I shot glances wildly. Half a dozen boys were fighting a bitter melee. Stones propelling through the night air, sticks whirling like javelins. I couldn't tell who was on who's side. All faces appeared as Terracotta masks, as the shadowy war gods that men engrave in iron helms.

I think I could have stood transfixed for a thousand years but another boy was charging at me. It was Jeff.

I ducked, clenched a pebble in my palm, and flung my arm madly in his direction. A red flower bloomed over Jeff's face; he staggered back. I pounced at him and clawed at his eyes like a lynx.
Strong punches rained over me. 'Fuck you! Fuck you cuntlicker!'� Everything in my body, all the pains I should have felt before, arrived. My figure sagged and took the blows with the deadness of a punching bag. But each sent fire through my nerves.

My foot slipped on the mud.

And there I was again, the heavens so close I could reach out and touch them. I knew that, somewhere, a boy's head had been smashed against a boulder, and a foe was pummeling at my face. It did not seem particularly important. The boy was going to die.

Suddenly Jeff turned his heels and pinwheeled in the opposite direction. I saw the vague silhouettes of four others running also. They were going to converge, the spokes of a wheel collapsing in upon the Center.

In the middle was a boy'he could not have been more than eleven'with his fists up. Beneath all the mud, it looked like he wore sweat pants.

The Spokes crashed in. I saw sticks flying, smelled the blood rage. All was a chaotic clouds.
For a moment the cloud cleared, and I saw the boy. Blue and black animals over his arms; his face was a battered wreck. I think he was screaming.

The boy's hands rose above his head. But the others reconverged ndouon him, biting, scratching, tearing. Rain washed over the scene and sent small patches of blood swirling into the mud.

A sickening crunch shook the forest, and the boy's left foot twisted around, then gave way. He toppled into a widening gully.

The other boys dispersed as pigeons do at thunder.

I lay there for a time I cannot measure. The present was the future; the past was the past. All things one became multifarious. Colors meshed together; the taste of salt in my mouth sweetened until it was saccharine.

Eventually the water rose enough to made a small pond of the valley. Chunks of dirt and broken sticks floated by my face. When water gurgled into my nose I coughed and propped myself up by the elbows.

I touched my scalp tentatively. When I brought my fingers down to my eyes, they were covered in hair and pinkened water. The water was too perturbed to see my reflection; I wanted to cry anyway.

I crawled up to my knee, and then to my feet. Every joint complained; I took it like acerbic medicine. My eyes swam; all images were a kaleidoscope of undulations. I rubbed them until the world stilled.

Ten feet away, Simon lay prostrate in the puddles with blood seeping into the water around him; lumps of blood floated lazily by his shoulders.

I took a step toward him. My lips quivered, and I sunk back onto my knees, lost in the tumult of the driving rain.

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