That was the summer they kept playing “Don’t Fear the Reaper” over and over again, until they’d practically memorized every note. They’d first heard the song on a car radio and, even though listening to it on the radio was nothing like cranking it over Rich’s father’s excellent new stereo, they’d both known the thing was cherry from the start.

They were two recent survivors of the Seventh grade, still trying to adjust to the fact that the lazy boredom of summer had suddenly replaced the busy boredom enforced at school. Gradually, though, they were getting into a routine. They’d roll out of bed about ten-thirty, down a few mouthfuls of Captain Crunch from the box, and then one of them would call the other.

They were friends because they lived near each other and because they went to the same school and because their parents played tennis together sometimes. And they were friends because they’d always been friends. Anyway, it wasn’t like a lot of other people were interested in them. They didn’t have girlfriends or teammates or people they knew from band. They didn’t do any of that shit. They just hung around with each other like they always had.

That summer they spent most of their time at Rich’s house because they could use his father’s stereo. It was some expensive make with a Japanese name they couldn’t pronounce, and every time he turned it on, Rich would squeeze his eyelids together and scream “Bonsai!” or “Tora! Tora! Tora!” But the Japs must have known what they were doing because, as soon as Rich dropped the needle, you heard everything the song had to offer. Hell, even the silence before the song started was fucking great.

They’d lie on their backs on the deep pile rug, their hands behind their heads, just listening. They’d close their eyes and smile slightly and listen. Sometimes CJ would whisper “C’mon, baby” along with the lead singer and then laugh softly to himself.

“Shut the fuck up and let the man sing!” Rich would hiss, as though CJ had broken some kind of sacred rule.

But wasn’t that the whole point? CJ would wonder then. Wasn’t that what was so amazing about the song? Weren’t the lyrics an invitation to break the one ultimate law, the rule that told you you had to stay alive?

After all, any guy could get a chick to sleep with him. Well, mostly any guy who was old enough and not too ugly, he figured. But to talk a girl into dying with you, shit, that was a whole nother thing. What kind of balls would that take? “Baby, I’m your man.” Fucking A.

So the music would rise and fall and rise again before finally drifting away. Then Rich would catch the needle before it hit the next song and the whole impossible ride would start all over again. It was the one thing in the world that never bored them.

Once, when Rich’s parents were out, they’d turned the volume up so high they were sure all the windows in the house were going to break. Another time they’d faded it down till you had to press your ear against one of the speakers just to hear anything. They’d run the record at 45 instead of 33, and they’d spun it backwards to see if there were any hidden messages. And, in between, they’d just kept playing it over and over again and lying back and listening.

Sometimes Rich’s mom would call down from the top of the stairs into the basement where the stereo was and tell them to turn it off and go outside. Rich would jab his middle finger at the ceiling, but when the song ended he wouldn’t start it up again. He’d lift the needle, shut the system down and carefully put the record back in its sleeve. Then the two of them would look at each other and have to think of something else to do.

Just for revenge, they could drink some of the liquor Rich’s father kept behind the downstairs bar. They’d learned how to take just a little from each bottle and top it back up with water. But you could only get away with that every so often. And anyway, they usually had to pretend to be drunker than they were, giggling and weaving back and forth and leaning against each other, the way they’d seen on TV. It was ok, but nothing great.

They could do gross dares, that got pretty interesting. CJ had once chewed up and swallowed what felt like half a roll of toilet paper and been constipated for a week. He’d also eaten three toenail clippings from Rich’s left foot. But Rich was still the all-time champ because, when CJ had picked his nose and held the booger out and dared Rich to eat it, fuck if he hadn’t.

The image of it still made CJ squirm. Rich, his shingle of dark hair running down almost to his left eyebrow, had smiled wickedly as if he actually liked the idea. Of course what he really liked was the idea putting CJ in the shade as far as gross dares went. And he’d done it too; CJ couldn’t think of anything that could compete with the act of eating someone’s snot.

Rich usually came out on top that way. Whenever they got into a scuffle, for instance, he always managed to pin CJ to the ground and make him say something like “Rich is the coolest” before he would let him up again. And he shoplifted with ease, something CJ had never had the balls to even try.

One thing CJ was better at, though, was skateboarding. They’d both gotten skateboards at about the same time, but CJ had a knack for it and was already doing tricks when Rich was still a little shaky at just riding. Rich had come along pretty well since then. But CJ could still show him a thing or two. So when Rich’s mother would kick them out of the basement, CJ would usually suggest skateboarding as a way to pass the time. Rich never exactly loved the idea. Still, most of the time he’d shrug his shoulders and say, “Yeah, what the hell.”

What made skating cool that summer, even for Rich, was the fact that they’d just discovered a bigass hill on the grounds of the town’s public golf course with a utility road running down it that no one ever used. It was a long, steep drop with a good stretch of level ground at the bottom, perfect for building up steam and then slowing back down. Plus the maintenance people always seemed to keep the road surface in perfect shape. There were no potholes to avoid, there wasn’t even a rough patch where the asphalt got thin. It was like skating on a mirror.

Rich’s board was black and he’d put a bumper sticker on it from a radio station he liked. The station’s call letters were spelled out in lightening bolts, which CJ had to admit did look pretty cool. CJ’s board was wood colored and he’d taken it into shop class in school and burned his name into the top of it with a soldering iron.

CJ usually just carried his board to the hill in one hand, but Rich liked to carry his across his shoulders with his arms up on either side, holding it in place. CJ always wondered where the hell he’d picked that up.

“Better get yourself some muscles, Big Guy, before you start trying to show them off.” Course he never said that out loud, but he thought it every time.

Sometimes CJ would show Rich something he’d been working on, sometimes they’d race each other to the bottom. Mostly, though, they’d each do whatever they felt like for a while, then rest together in the grass by the side of the road. The grass was a lot like the pile rug, CJ thought, only with ants in it.

Lying there and looking at the sky made them want to talk. They’d talk about their teachers and the other kids at school. They’d talk about which famous actresses they’d most like to do, if they ever had the chance. They’d talk about their favorite episodes of “Welcome Back, Kotter” or “Starsky and Hutch”.

There were all the different kinds of sports cars to compare, and all the different motorcycles. There were war movies and westerns they’d seen on TV or sometimes in the theater. There were dirty movies they would never get to see, but that they’d seen ads for in the back of newspapers. You could wonder endlessly about those.

One afternoon that summer they started talking about the rides at a nearby amusement park they had both been to a few times called Fun World.

“The Haunted House is pretty good,” CJ claimed, “especially when you come around that sharp corner and the skeleton comes out at you.”

“What about the bumper cars?” said Rich. “I plowed into my little brother’s car so many times he got all red and started shouting at me. Crybaby.”

They were quiet for a while.

Then Rich said, “The best thing of all, though, over there, is that awesome roller coaster. Whadda they call it, the Freedom Express?”

"They just called it that cause of the Bicentennial,” complained CJ. He and Rich had long since agreed that the Bicentennial sucked.

“Yeah, well, whatever they call it, it’s still awesome.”

CJ didn’t want to talk about the roller coaster because he’d never ridden on it. He’d never ridden on it because he was scared shitless of it. He didn’t even like being at the top of a ladder, never mind taking the plunge on the Freedom Freakin’ Express. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that to Rich. Time to change the subject.

So: “I think their carousel is just lovely,” he announced in a girlish falsetto, “with all the horsies and the pretty tunes playing.”

“Oh, God,” Rich moaned, “don’t remind me of that lameass carousel. My mom made me and the crybaby ride on that thing for like a million years so my father could take a picture of us. But he kept screwing up the shot and we had to keep going around and around till I thought I was gonna puke.”

“Blaaaaaaa” said CJ, pretending to throw up.

“Seriously, though,” Rich picked up again, “that roller coaster is something else. Like when you get to the very top and the thing slows down to a crawl and almost stops, and you just know that in about half a second you’re gonna be dropping through pure space. Shit, I love that feeling.”

“Yeah,” CJ answered, not knowing what to say. He couldn’t imagine anything worse.

Rich didn’t say anything for a second, but he turned his head and looked at CJ suspiciously. Then he sat up.

“You’re scared of it,” he announced, staring into CJ’s face, “You’re fuckin’ scared of it.”

“Fuck you, am not.”

"Yeah, you are.” Rich insisted triumphantly. “You’re suck-your-thumb, pee-in-your-pants scared of a roller coaster! Ha, what a pussy. Even the crybaby’s been on the Freedom Express. He couldn’t wait till he was tall enough for it. You’re more of a little girl than the crybaby!”

“Just because I don’t like --”

“It’s not that you don’t like it,” Rich interrupted, “you’re scared of it. You think you’re gonna die or something.”

“Ah, shut the fuck up.” said CJ, trying to end it. “What difference does it make, anyway?”

“What difference does it make?” Rich repeated, as though it was the craziest question he’d ever heard. “What difference does it make whether you’re yellow or not? Yellow of a little roller coaster? Just the difference between a man and a pussy, that’s all.”

CJ thought about punching him. But then he pictured himself pinned to the ground with Rich’s face hovering over his own and saying, “Say, ‘I’m a yellow pussy’ and I’ll let you up.” So he just grabbed his board, stood up and started to walk away.

“That’s right, ‘fraidy cat,” Rich shouted after him, “run home to mommy. No big bad roller coasters for you!”

They didn’t call each other for a few days after that. But then one morning CJ’s mom called him to the phone, and when he’d picked the receiver up and said “Hello?”, he heard Rich’s voice say, “Hey, ya douche.” So everything was ok again.

The next time they went to the hill, Rich had something he wanted to show CJ, which was a switch. It wasn’t the kind of trick CJ usually picked up, it was just something Rich thought it would be cool to try.

“Check this out” Rich said, standing at the top of the hill. Then he got down with his stomach on his skateboard, pushed himself along for a few seconds with his hands and roared down the asphalt slope like a surfer caught in a tidal wave.

CJ was impressed. “Holy shit,” he said, when Rich had climbed back up to where he was standing, “that was amazing. You were really hauling ass.”

“Yeah,” Rich agreed excitedly, “you can’t believe what it feels like, either. You gotta try it. The only trick is, you have to keep you feet pointed backwards to keep them from scraping along the ground. But that’s all there is to it.”

CJ wasn’t too sure how he felt about going that speed with his face only a few inches off the ground. But he certainly wasn’t going to give Rich any new excuse for calling him a pussy.

As he got down on his board, the same way Rich had, CJ felt like his heart was trying to break through his rib cage. No going back now, though. He gave himself a few good shoves and suddenly he took off.

It was the wildest fucking thing ever. The world went by in a total blur, the noise of the wheels roared in your ears, you were high and crazy and lost and free.

“Oh, yeah!” he shouted up to Rich when he’d reached the bottom of the hill, “Oh, yeah!”

Then they tried to think of ways to make themselves go even faster. Maybe if you held your arms against your sides, or pointed them out in front of you like a diver? Maybe if you wore a helmet or went down in just a bathing suit?

“Or bareass naked,” CJ suggested jokingly.

“Don’t be gay,” said Rich.

They tried riding down again a bunch of different ways. But gradually the fresh air rushing into their faces wore them out. So they sank into the grass beside each other and just stared at the sky for a while.

“Doesn’t it feel like you’re gonna take off any second and fly?” Rich asked.

“Yeah, and not like a bird either,” CJ answered, “like the fucking SST.”

“I guess if you could get it going fast enough, if you could get the road smooth enough, and the wheels to where they were working perfectly, it could happen.”

CJ turned this over in his mind for a moment or two.

Then he said, “It would be a hell of a landing, though.”

“Yeah,” Rich had to agree. “But wouldn’t it be worth it, in a way? I mean, those few seconds where you’d totally left the ground and you were going so fast no one could catch up to you, wouldn’t that be worth it?”

“I dunno.” CJ confessed.

Then, quietly, Rich started humming to himself.

The sky was turning pale, which told them that it was getting close to five o’clock. They’d better head home.

“One more run each, though,” Rich suggested, “to see who’s the fastest?”

CJ couldn’t turn that kind of a challenge down.

Neither of them would ever be clear, exactly, about what happened next. For reasons of their own, they both always swore it was an accident. But that was the summer that CJ’s skateboard somehow got caught, at just the wrong moment, on Rich’s foot. And that was the summer that CJ, in the few seconds before he left four teeth and most of the sight in his right eye along the pavement of a utility road, found out what it felt like to fly.