Falter Kingdom. Michael J. Seidlinger

I said something, because it was a good time to say enough without really having said anything: “You, looking up something?”

      Brad laughed. “Yeah, bro, it can’t be all porn. Got to sprinkle in stuff to keep trackers off my trail.”

      That made Steve laugh.

      That made me take another drink.

      Steve said something about how Samantha—a girl I don’t know, but a girl who both Brad and Steve seemed to have been talking about quite a bit—just got into Yale. That impressed Steve, and, for Brad, it seemed to only confirm her status as irresistible.

      They talked about how Brad will get all carpe diem and just ask her out. Doesn’t matter that she has a boyfriend. Doesn’t matter that Samantha wouldn’t go for a guy like Brad.

      They both talked the same way everyone talked—about how there wasn’t much time left.

      Either get it done, what you want to do, or you’ll never get your due.

      Then the conversation turned toward something about our plans before graduation. Steve had his. Brad had his would-be lays. Blaire would have plans too, if she were part of the conversation. I looked back at her, busy highlighting some passage from some book for some essay we both had to finish by some deadline.

      Lucky.

      At some point she’d come up, Becca.

      “You can’t waste prom on her, dude. You’ve already wasted years on her when you could have been seeing other girls.”

      I did my best to maneuver around the topic. I’m usually good about this, but see, it might have been the alcohol and how it mellows me and I say stuff I shouldn’t say or worse. By “worse,” I mean being able to say anything at all.

      And looking back, I got really drunk that afternoon.

      Drunker than I should have. Even Steve got on me about Becca. He talked about how my situation took me off the radar, how nothing good can come from being trapped like that.

      I’m not going to go into the exact words, because I can’t be sure how it was said, but being in that kind of situation is as bad as it gets. It put me on the spot. It made me the conversation rather than part of it.

      Blaire found it amusing. I know she did. I didn’t look and I didn’t hear anything, but being in this situation is what Blaire’s been putting me through since we first met. I just wanted them all to shut up, you know? I wanted it all to wash clean, having them there but on mute, so I didn’t have to try.

      The company I keep... Looking back at that afternoon, it feels like I was stuck on an island with a handful of mortal enemies. It didn’t feel at all like a chill time among friends. You get what you put in, I guess.

      I chose to stick around Brad. Blaire lingered and I did the same thing.

      Yeah, I went with them to Falter Kingdom of my own free will.

      But alcohol and competition go hand in hand, and all it took was one mention of the tunnel and Steve shut up. It was obvious that he had never run the gauntlet.

      It was a little less obvious that I hadn’t either. Every other time I’d hung out at Falter Kingdom, I’d gotten out of having to run. The trick is to wait until it becomes a possibility, the talking about running, and you encourage whoever it is who’s being pressured to run, but when he turns it on you, don’t freeze. Don’t stop and worry. Don’t say no. You pretend to think about it. If there’s beer, take a sip. By the time any pressure is given, you can ask someone who hasn’t run and have him mess up and take on the pressure. So he ends up running and you don’t. That’s how it works.

      End of lesson, or whatever.

      But yeah, I was drunk and on a short fuse. Brad was selling Steve on the whole thing, legend and all, and I downed the last of the beer in that can.

      Then I said it: “I’ll do it.”

      Instantly the conditions changed.

      “Really?” Blaire had joined us, standing at my side.

      Brad grinned. “My man!”

      Steve didn’t say anything. He wanted to run it. He wanted the respect.

      I just wanted the conversation to end. I didn’t want to hear any more about Becca.

      So they crowded around me as I took my first steps into the tunnel.

      “Ten minutes, bud, you got this,” Brad said.

      Running the gauntlet is more or less exactly how it sounds. You run into the tunnel, into the darkness, for ten whole minutes or until you reach the end. But no one’s ever reached the end. So I had to run, sprint really, for ten whole minutes. They synced up and set a timer on each of their phones. On their count—three, two, one—I ran.

      It was actually kind of easy, going through with it.

      Everything leading up made it feel impossible. I wasn’t into running it; I had nothing to really prove, which could be cause for a bigger problem.

      But I don’t know—

      I guess it had a lot to do with being fed up.

      With their voices. With their claims. With the fact that they were kind of right: it’s almost graduation and nothing’s changed.

      It’s like I needed something to prove to myself. I needed to do something that anyone who knew me would have problems believing if told in the context of some story.

      The actual running was the hard part. I felt like I couldn’t keep to a straight line. I felt like I couldn’t run fast enough. The air was thick in the tunnel, kind of a strange musk, the same kind you smell in old basements or places with stale air. The ground muddy and wet, each step had that sinking feeling that you get when you find out you spaced a test or some other important event.

      But I ran the whole ten.

      It didn’t even last that long.

      I ran with my eyes wide but they might as well have been closed. The dark was so thick it was like running in place.

      Something worth mentioning—you can’t really hear anything in the tunnel. You can’t hear your own footsteps. I ran until it felt right to stop and turn around. I didn’t hear my feet slipping in the mud. I didn’t hear my lungs gasping for air. I didn’t hear.

      If I didn’t hear my own breath, there’s no way I heard their phones.

      It probably doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?

      It’s hard to explain. Telling it right is usually tougher than you think; it’s all about using the right amount of words to get your point across. You say too little and it’s just strange; say too much and you’re not really making any sense. This is probably one of those situations. It’s just that being inside the tunnel felt like... what’s that term for when you are frozen in a chamber?

      Cryosleep?

      It’s kind of like that. But there’s a better word. Let me look it up.

      Oh, right—

      It’s like being in suspended animation. Stuck in place, but you also know that your body is moving, your thoughts racing, because I could feel the sweat dripping from my forehead.

      While inside, I could think about only one thing.

      I thought about my body breaking into pieces.

      And even now I can’t make complete sense of why.

      When I made it back to them, you can bet they were surprised.

      Brad saw me first. “Shit, bro.”

      I was drenched in sweat. Dirt caked in layers all over my body.

      Steve didn’t say anything.

      Blaire played concerned friend: