Anywhere but here.

He'd taken his third puff, and his first cautious inhale, when he heard the bumps of tires over dirt and rock.

Fox pushed through the trees on Lightning, his bike so named because Fox's father had painted lightning bolts on the bars.

His dad was cool that way.

"Hey, Turner."

"O'Dell." Gage held out the cigarette.

They both knew Fox took it only because to do otherwise made him a dweeb. So he took a quick drag, passed it back. Gage nodded to the bag tied to Lightning's handlebars. "What'd you get?"

"Little Debbies, Nutter Butters, some Tasty Kake pies. Apple and cherry."

"Righteous. I got three cans of Bud for tonight."

Fox's eyes didn't pop out of his head, but they were close. "No shit?"

"No shit. Old man was trashed. He'll never know the difference. I got something else, too. Last month'sPenthouse magazine."

"No way."

"He keeps them buried under a bunch of crap in the bathroom."

"Lemme see."

"Later. With the beer."

They both looked over as Cal dragged his bike down the rough path. "Hey, jerkwad," Fox greeted him.

"Hey, dickheads."

That said with the affection of brothers, they walked their bikes deeper into the trees, then off the narrow path.

Once the bikes were deemed secure, supplies were untied and divvied up.

"Jesus, Hawkins, what'd your mom put in here?"

"You won't complain when you're eating it." Cal's arms were already protesting the weight as he scowled at Gage. "Why don't you put your pack on, and give me a hand?"

"Because I'm carrying it." But he flipped the top on the basket and after hooting at the Tupperware, shoved a couple of the containers into his pack. "Put something in yours, O'Dell, or it'll take us all day just to get to Hester's Pool."

"Shit." Fox pulled out a thermos, wedged it in his pack. "Light enough now, Sally?"

"Screw you. I got the basket and my pack."

"I got the supplies from the market and my pack." Fox pulled his prized possession from his bike. "You carry the boom box, Turner."

Gage shrugged, took the radio. "Then I pick the tunes."

"No rap," Cal and Fox said together, but Gage only grinned as he walked and tuned until he found some Run-DMC.

With a lot of bitching and moaning, they started the hike.

The leaves, thick and green, cut the sun's glare and summer heat. Through the thick poplars and towering oaks, slices and dabs of milky blue sky peeked. They aimed for the wind of the creek while the rapper and Aero-smith urged them to walk this way.

"Gage has aPenthouse ," Fox announced. "The skin magazine, numbnut," he said at Cal's blank stare.

"Uh-uh."

"Uh-huh. Come on, Turner, break it out."

"Not until we're camped and pop the beer."

"Beer!"Instinctively, Cal sent a look over his shoulder, just in case his mother had magically appeared. "You got beer?"

"Three cans of suds," Gage confirmed, strutting. "Smokes, too."

"Is this far-out or what?" Fox gave Cal a punch in the arm. "It's the best birthday ever."

"Ever," Cal agreed, secretly terrified. Beer, cigarettes, and pictures of naked women. If his mother ever found out, he'd be grounded until he was thirty. That didn't even count the fact he'd lied. Or that he was hiking his way through Hawkins Wood to camp out at the expressly forbidden Pagan Stone.

He'd be grounded until he died of old age.

"Stop worrying." Gage shifted his pack from one arm to the other, with a wicked glint of what-the-hell in his eyes. "It's all cool."

"I'm not worried." Still, Cal jolted when a fat jay zoomed out of the trees and let out an irritated call.

CHAPTER Two

HESTER'S POOL WAS ALSO FORBIDDEN IN CAL'Sworld, which was only one of the reasons it was irresistible.

The scoop of brown water, fed by the winding Antietam Creek and hidden in the thick woods, was supposed to be haunted by some weird Pilgrim girl who'd drowned in it way back whenever.

He'd heard his mother talk about a boy who'd drowned there when she'd been a kid, which in Mom Logic was the number one reason Cal wasnever allowed to swim there. The kid's ghost was supposed to be there, too, lurking under the water, just waiting to grab another kid's ankle and drag him down to the bottom so he'd have somebody to hang out with.

Cal had swum there twice that summer, giddy with fear and excitement. And both times he'dsworn he'd felt bony fingers brush over his ankle.

A dense army of cattails trooped along the edges, and around the slippery bank grew bunches of the wild orange lilies his mother liked. Fans of ferns climbed up the rocky slope, along with brambles of wild berries, which when ripe would stain the fingers a kind of reddish purple that looked a little like blood.

The last time they'd come, he'd seen a black snake slither its way up the slope, barely stirring the ferns.

Fox let out a shout, dumped his pack. In seconds he'd dragged off his shoes, his shirt, his jeans and was sailing over the water in a cannonball without a thought for snakes or ghosts or whatever else might be under that murky brown surface.

"Come on, you pussies!" After a slick surface dive, Fox bobbed around the pool like a seal.