The DLG Club Ch. 10

This is the 10th chapter of a much longer story. If you have not read the previous chapters, I strongly suggest you do so before continuing with this one. This is a long, narrative, and character-driven story. The main plot is a slow burn with plenty of spicy parts along the way. Enjoy!

PLEASE NOTE: This chapter does not contain any erotic elements. Its purpose is character development. However, it is a really good story about Mila and Lily. I strongly encourage you to read it, as it is some of my best writing. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming of smut, sluts, and butts in Chapter 11. Thanks! ~J

DLG - Chapter 10

Lily's tummy rumbles with hunger as she walks, her scuffed black engineer boots clumping softly on the sidewalk, the buckles tinkling slightly with each step. She pats the front of her black DLG shirt with a hand wearing a fingerless glove. Her silhouette stretches out behind her making the black pleated miniskirt she's wearing look long and flowy, and while they can't be seen in her shadow, the torn fishnets give her outfit the perfect finishing goth girl touch.

It's unseasonably cool this morning, with puddles still standing in the street from the thunderstorms the night before.

Her tummy rumbles again, and she whispers, "Almost there." She's on her way to Bagel Bro's, her favorite breakfast shop, and her mouth is watering and her belly is growling, anticipating her favorite: lox on an everything bagel and a giant cup of coffee.

It's her day off from Taboo, and Kim has to work. She always tries to treat herself to something nice on her day off, and today, it's breakfast. The rest of the day is hers to do with as she pleases, and she wonders what she'll get into. It seems like forever since she has been in this good of a mood, probably since before her parents left. She knows that her being in the DLG was the catalyst for this change, although being railed by Randall a couple of times hasn't hurt either. She giggles inwardly at this slightly crude thought.

She sees a grackle ruffle its iridescent feathers as it bathes in a nearby puddle. It creaks its strange, robotic, mechanical "reedle-eek!" and she smiles. "Birds", she thinks excitedly. "Maybe I'll go get my binoculars and go look at some birds today. It's been forever since I've done that, too!"

A car is stopped at a light with the windows rolled down. The guy driving looks like a total douche, but the stereo is playing one of her favorite guilty pleasure songs,

"Shake it Off". She hums along with it for a second before the light changes and the douche drives away, taking the song with him.

She's looking down at her reflection in a puddle, an accidental upskirt moment, admiring how her butt looks in these fishnets, when her eye catches something in the water: A twenty-dollar bill. Lily looks around, doesn't see anyone looking for money, shrugs, and scoops the soggy bill out of the puddle, shakes it off (Shake it off! Shake it off!), and slips it in the coin purse she has tucked in her boot.

Seriously, though, could the day get any better?

She's only about a block away from Bagel Bro's when she hears it. A whimpering cry.

"Leave me alone!"

Her brow furrows. Lily is pretty sure she recognizes this voice. When she rounds the corner of the alley, her suspicions are confirmed.

Mila, dressed in cutoff shorts, a faded pink t-shirt with some sort of graphic on the front, and dirty sneakers, is backed against the wall of the Pentagon Pharmacy about fifty feet away. Two bigger girls in heels and sun dresses are advancing on her. Lily recognizes them at once. Peyton MacAllister and Raquel Reeves, the two biggest bitches in town.

"Nice choker 'Mealworm'," Peyton says to Mila, "Give it to me. Your janitor's daughter's neck is getting it all dirty."

"No," Mila says defiantly, "It's mine. I'm... I'm not allowed to give it away."

"Well! Look who's grown a backbone!" Peyton says to Raquel in fake surprise, smiling viciously. She turns back to Mila and continues in a mockingly sweet, innocent, squeaky voice that turns to bitterness as she speaks, "But here's the thing, Mealworm, I don't remember asking if you had permission, and I definitely don't recall giving a shit. Give it to me... NOW."

"Maybe the little scum-bum wants us to take it from her," Raquel suggests. "Scum-bum" being her schoolyard nickname for the poor kids.

Peyton slips back into her sicky-sweet, baby-talk, asking wide-eyed, "Is Waquel, wight? Does the wittle baby want us to beat the shit out of her first, and then take it?"

"N-no! Please!" Mila begs, and reaches up, frantically trying to remove the DLG choker with the charms she's earned dangling from it, but her hands are trembling too badly to undo the clasp.

Lily knows these bitches well, especially Peyton, with her long, curly blonde hair, her admittedly amazing statuesque figure, and impeccable fashion sense. She and her ex-best friend Portia, terrorized the girls around town during the previous school year, but after Portia's father went to prison, she seemed to fade into the background. Peyton was then assumed to be less of a threat. But now, it looks like Peyton has taken over as the queen bee of the bullies. Raquel, the brunette, known for her similar good looks, her notoriously bad temperament being matched only by her lack of wits, is the obvious choice for Peyton's lieutenant. Lily had figured that after graduation, Peyton would calm down and grow up, but apparently she was wrong. No worries, though, Portia and Peyton have always been terrified of Lily, so she assumes this will be a cinch. Just give these two fucksticks a "boo!" and they'll scatter like scared kittens.

"What the fuck are you doing, Peyton?" Lily asks, giving her the wicked grin she's perfected over the years. She walks straight towards the trio, chin down, grinding one gloved hand into the other threateningly.

Peyton glances up and a flash of fear crosses her face upon seeing Lily, but it falls away just as quickly, only to be replaced by the same predatory smile she gave Mila.

"Oh, look, Rock, another choker. One for you, one for me," Peyton says in her light, birdlike voice.

"Ha! Hell, yeah. I'll take this one," Raquel says in a deeper, doltish growl. "You grab Li'l Bitch's," she says, laughing at her own humor.

"I'll take whichever one I want!" Peyton snaps at her, then turns back to Lily. "Nice shirt, 'Li'l Shit'. What's DLG stand for, 'Dumb Little Girl?" Peyton picks up a long, broken chunk of a wooden pallet and pats the palm of a carefully manicured hand with it menacingly, the snarl of nails at the end of the board glinting sharply in the morning sunlight.

Raquel pipes up, "Nah, it stands for 'Duh, Lily's Gay'." This joke is surprisingly witty coming from Raquel, causing both girls to laugh like trolls.

Lily's stomach drops as she realizes her miscalculation about the genuine threat Peyton poses. She shifts her eyes side to side, looking for something to help give her the upper (or lower) hand. These two have apparently shot right past the usual manipulation, intimidation, and humiliation tactics from the 'happier' Portia days, and have now settled on violence, brutality, and theft instead. This calls for a very quick reassessment and deployment of appropriate countermeasures. She's tempted to run, but that would leave Mila here all alone with these monsters.

There isn't much in the alleyway, at least not within Lily's reach, but her eyes lock on one thing she knows will deter these rich bitches with their fancy clothes and French-tipped nails. Lily's signature wicked smile returns.

She hears a soft thud and a grunt and sees that Raquel has landed a punch to Mila's stomach. Mila crumples to the ground, gasping painfully for breath.

Lily dives across the alleyway, rolls once and scoops up the pile of dog shit she spotted a moment ago. She splits the pile into two, soft, stinky handfuls. As she draws her arm back to launch her first attack, Peyton's face goes white with terror. She puts up her hands and says, "Wait! Don't! This is Versace!" and Lily pauses.

Peyton relaxes. "Oh, thank god I thought you were really going to-"

Lily, somewhat of a bully in her own right, responds in baby-talk, "Aww... Is the whittle baby scared?" adding with a head tilt and a smile, "I don't recall giving a shit." She throws the handful of feces at the pretty girl in front of her. Shitty, brown gobbets instantly speckle her chest, face and curly blonde hair. Lily is particularly proud of the piece that splatted on her right eyelid. Peyton immediately drops her weapon and begins gagging on the smell.

Lily takes the opportunity to dash past Peyton.

"... the hell?" Raquel wonders slowly.

Lily throws the other handful at a now surprised and retreating Raquel.

"No! Please! Not doo-doo!" Raquel begs, as the shitball splats against her stomach, sticking there in a patty surrounded in yellow paisley.

Lily dips down, grabs Mila's forearm in a shit-caked glove, yelling, "Come on!"

Mila, still wheezing from the stomach punch, does her best to run. By this time, Peyton has recovered from her initial shock and is running after them, her heels clacking on the asphalt, screaming obscenities. Lily whips Mila around the corner and into the back entrance of the Pentagon Pharmacy. Slamming the door shut behind her. A startled stockboy jumps out of their way as they barrel through the stockroom.

Behind them, Lily can hear Raquel's enraged, disgusted voice roar from outside, "We're gonna beat the shit out of you!"

Lily hits the swinging door leading to the showroom floor, leaving a foul-smelling brown handprint behind. The bell above the door jingles happily as they enter.

Now inside the pharmacy, they are surrounded by bright fluorescent lights, soft music from the speakers above, quiet sounds of pill bottles being filled and pleasantries being exchanged between customers and employees.

Meanwhile, Lily uses her and Mila's small sizes to their advantage. They slip a couple of aisles over to cosmetics and crouch down, shuffling towards the front of the store. Mila is finally catching her breath and almost crying. Lily shushes her, still pulling her along with her.

The sterile smell of the drug store clashes with the warm brown smell of the dog shit on Lily's hands. She peeks above the display of fake eyelashes and press-on fingernails to see if they're being followed.

The bell above the stockroom door jingles again as it is thrown open by a shit covered girl in a pink and white Versace sundress. Lily ducks back down and listens, hearing fierce whispers.

Peyton: "Where the fuck did they go?"

Raquel: "Probably out the front."

The two race towards the front of the store, shoes clicking on the tile floor. The store manager tries to flag them down. "Excuse me, miss? Can I help you ladies with... ugh. What is that smell?"

Lily does a u-turn and drags Mila back toward the stock room. As the two bullies barge their way out the front door, Mila and Lily head out the back.

Once behind the store, Mila, now mostly recovered, takes over. "Come this way, she whispers frantically. "I know a place!"

Lily follows Mila through a tear in the chain-link fence behind the store that borders a vacant lot. Tall, golden weeds billow in the breeze here, and shards of broken glass crunch against the aged and cracked blacktop beneath their feet. Mila leads Lily into a place where the weeds are slightly parted and matted down. They step into a sort of "room" created by the grass. Lily can hear the wind whispering through the golden strands.

On a crumbling median of a long-ago abandoned parking lot, there is a manhole, its cover missing. Its maw stares up at them, like the throat of a leviathan. Lily can smell the cool mustiness wafting up from below. She doesn't want to go down there, but that seems to be Mila's intention.

"We're gonna find you bitches!" Peyton's voice drifts over to them from behind the pharmacy. "We're gonna make you eat these fucking turds!"

"Come on," Mila says, "Follow me," and heads down the old, dry-rotted rungs into the darkness below.

Lily looks worried. "Mila, where are you taking us?"

Mila looks up as she descends. "It's where I used to go when I was a kid. Come on. It's safe, I promise.

Lily looks at her shit-covered gloves and takes them off, tossing them into the weeds. She does her best to wipe the remaining brown smears away using the surrounding vegetation. She takes one last look around the sunlit world and wonders what the hell happened to her perfect morning, then follows Mila down into the shadows.

It is cool down here, is the first thing that Lily thinks. A good twenty degrees cooler than up on the surface. As Lily's eyes adjust to the dark, she can make out a large concrete pipe, much larger than she was imagining. She and Mila will only have to stoop a bit to clear the roof of the tube. They stand on a series of stones that have been placed at the bottom of the ladder. They protrude from the filthy, shallow water like tiny islands covered in fuzzy green moss. Lily peers into the water and thinks she sees something move, but wonders if it isn't just a trick of the light from above combined with her own reflection.

"This way," Mila says softly, her voice echoing down the tunnel.

They each take out their cell phones and activate the flashlights. The lights cast eerie beams through the stale, humid air. As they travel slowly down the pipe, Lily notices a small stream of sickly looking water running down the center. When she looks closely, she sees strands of a reddish brown algae wriggling in the stream, staining the surrounding concrete with what appears to be dried blood. From the ceiling hang roots from the bushes and trees above, which have punctured the ceiling over the years, looking for water, but finding only the damp, musty air.

Mila says, shining her light around, "I haven't been down here in a long time. I hope everything is still intact."

"Intact?" Lily asks.

"You'll see," Mila assures her. "This whole area above used to be a place called Boxwood Mall, or at least that's what my Daddy says."

They make their way for what seems like forever. Other passageways intersect the one they are in, inviting Lily into their mysterious depths, but Mila stays on course, guiding them to some unknown destination. Every hundred yards or so, they pass another manhole entrance. Most are still covered, but a few aren't. Lily wonders if Mila has these (portals) escape routes placed all over town, like the Viet Cong in the history books she's read. They walk another ten minutes or so, turning this way and that, Lily following Mila's lead, stumbling and wobbling through the culvert while Mila seems surefooted and right at home in this shadowy underworld.

"I've never taken anyone else down here before, "Mila says excitedly. When she speaks at full volume, her voice echoes through the pipe, taking on an inhuman, almost supernatural quality, making Lily feel even more uneasy.

Every once in a while, the whole tunnel vibrates and rumbles.

"The fuck is that... at... at...?" Lily asks nervously, her question echoing.

"I think we're under Main Street right now," Mila says. "Just trucks and the city bus. Don't worry."

"How did you find this place, Mila? You came down here when you were a kid??" Lily asks, astounded that a child would wander this far into a storm drain unaided and unafraid.

Mila shrugs and just states simply, "I just... explored."

"You just explored?"

"Yeah. I wasn't always the most... outgoing girl when I was little. I played by myself a lot. I read a lot, too. Fantasy books mostly."

While this explanation does seem to jibe with what Lily is hearing, she still doesn't understand completely. "Wh-what if you got lost?"

Mila chuckles, "Lost? How could I get lost? I always marked my way with a piece of charcoal." She traces a finger along one curved concrete wall by way of example.

Lily observes that in this strange, dark passageway, in which Lily finds herself jumping at every sound, every spiderweb, or every stray beam of light, Mila seems more comfortable than she's ever been.

They walk for another ten minutes or so. Finally, Lily and Mila duck under a cluster of dried up tree roots and Lily sees in her dim flashlight beam that about fifty feet from here, the pipe they are in turns a sharp corner.

When they get closer to the "L" Mila turns to face Lily, her eyes twinkling in the dark. "Welcome to Wodash," she says, and disappears around the bend.

Lily peers nervously around the turn in the tunnel and is dumbfounded. As she enters the place, she shines her light around and sees two wooden pallets, one in front of the other, that span the width of the concrete tube. Together, they make up a small platform and floor. Resting on top of the pallets is a makeshift table made of a few cinder blocks and an old wooden door. A dilapidated wooden chair sits in front of the table, waiting for its owner to return. A small aluminum lunchbox with chipped and faded decals rests on the table. Its pink yarn handle hangs lazily to one side. A couple of cheap, glass candlesticks coated in various colors of wax sit off to one side. The platform butts up against the dead-end wall of the larger tunnel, with a smaller culvert at the bottom that feeds the small trickle of water into this one. Two narrow shafts of light shine down from the manhole cover above, and at first Lily thinks it's an auditory hallucination, but she realizes that music is in fact drifting down from above, as if traveling along the light itself. A few seconds later, Lily's eyes get wide. She recognizes the tune. It's the Musak that is pumped into the Downtown Underground. It takes on an ethereal, unearthly feel as it echoes through this chamber.

"Mila..." Lily says, feeling like she is in some sort of church, or a sacred, pagan temple. "What is this place?"

"Isn't it cool? Check it out." Mila steps up onto the pallet and it creaks under her weight. She opens the lunchbox. Lily is momentarily afraid of what might be inside. Dolls made of human hair? Taxidermied Rats? Some sort of Voodoo sigils like dried up fingers or skeletal chicken feet?

Inside the lunchbox is a collection of old, broken stick candles, crayons, and other harmless-looking items. She takes out two candle pieces, one blue, one white, and places them in the candleholders. She takes out a used mint tin and opens it to reveal a few dozen blue-tipped strike-anywhere matches. She scrapes one across the door to light it and in turn, the candles.

With the candles lit, Lily can take in the rest of their surroundings.

She gasps. Drawn in charcoal on the back wall behind the platform is a giant black pyramid topped with an all-seeing eye that has been blacked out. What appears to be a beam of dark energy is shown shining down from the eye at an angle. The image turns Lily's insides to water; she immediately wants out of this place. Her pride and the idea of trying to find her way out alone are the only things keeping her here.

She shivers, trying to shake the effects of the pyramid away, but that blacked-out eye...

She looks at the curved walls of the tunnel and sees that they are covered in writing. She inspects one of these writings and sees it's a poem about something called' Darkshine'. For some reason, a chill runs through her at the mention of this name.

She turns and almost screams. Sitting in a tiny rocking chair is a small stuffed bunny with one eyeball hanging from a string and dangling against one whiskered cheek, smiling a buck-toothed smile.

"The Fuck?!" Lily gasps. "Uck... uck... uck!" her voice echoes.

"Hmm? Oh! That's just Mister Whiskers!" Mila says almost by way of a friendly introduction. "He was like my only friend for a couple of years."

Lily doesn't know what to do with this knowledge or this place. It's all at once the coolest, saddest, weirdest, most terrifying place she's ever been in her life... and it's directly beneath Taboo.

"Mila, why... why did you bring me here?"

"What do you mean?" Mila asks, confused. "To get away from Peyton and Raquel."

Lily turns a full circle, trying to take it all in and keep it all out at the same time. "Yeah, sure... but why... here?"

Mila shrugs self-consciously. "I don't know, I thought... I thought you might like it. It's, like, one of my... Places."

Lily can almost hear the capital 'P' in "Places" when Mila says it. "Your... Places? You have more than one of these... sewer-dungeon things?" she asks, bewildered."

"Not exactly," Mila laughs, and her giggles echo unsettlingly. "I have three Places. This place, Wodash, is one, then there's The Kingdom, and, of course, The Bridge to Nowhere."

Lily gets another chill hearing the name, and chuckles sarcastically in spite of her fear. "Of course... the Bridge to Nowhere," Lily says, then looks at her friend, needing a real answer. "But... Mila... what IS this place?" she repeats.

"I told you, it's one of my Places," she explains as if to a child. "When I was little, when I was bored or sad or feeling lonely, I'd come here. Sometimes I'd write poems or stories, sometimes I'd read, other times I'd just sit, listen to the music drifting down, and think. I... I'd think of the stories of princes and princesses, and knights and dragons, space creatures and soldiers, just... stuff, you know? The best part is that in my stories, you never knew who was saving who, and which one was the monster," she giggles, obviously proud of herself, and continues. "Sometimes I'd make up friends for me and Mister Whiskers to play with, and then I'd make up games for us to play."

Hearing Mila talk about not knowing who the monster is alarms her. When Lily hears this last part about the made-up friends, she can't believe that there's actually someone in the world who has ever felt more alone than she did when her parents left her.

"That's cool," Lily lies, but doesn't know what else to say, and she doesn't want to hurt Mila's feelings by telling her how sad that sounds. "But... what's... 'Darkshine'?"

"Oh, uh, Darkshine? Uh... where'd you see that?"

"Uh... it's kinda written everywhere on the walls."

"Oh... yeah, I guess it is," Mila says, seeming to pull back a little. They listen to the off-kilter Musak for a moment until Mila sighs and says, "So, Darkshine is like this force I thought up. Like light but made of shadows. This place always made me feel safe, like the darkness was holding me, hugging me like a friend. That's Darkshine."

This explanation doesn't do much to quell Lily's unease, but at least this 'Darkshine' seems benevolent.

She looks at the blackened eye, shooting Darkshine out, and sees that the beam is aimed directly at the place on the platform where the chair sits. "Holding her like a friend", she thinks, then sings, "Hello Darkness, my old friend..." in a weak, shaky voice.

The darkness answers back, "Friend, friend, friend..."

Mila giggles, and again, the echo of her joy is turned on its head as it travels down the tunnel and returns.

Smiling in the gloom, Mila says, "You know, sometimes it's just an echo, and sometimes it's like it's answering you. Try it, you'll see."

Lily looks into the blackness beyond the candlelight and shivers again. "I'm not scared of you!" she shouts, only to hear her words twisted by the tunnels and bouncing back. She can't help but hear "cared for you" mixed in with the garbled Lily voices, but brushes it off as a mix of suggestion, fear, and this fucked up concrete chamber. Goosebumps still break out all over her body, betraying her attempt at logic.

After all this, she is surprised to feel herself relaxing a bit despite the strangeness of this place. "Do you mind?" she asks Mila, gesturing to the poetry on the walls.

Mila looks bashful at first, then seems to decide something internally. She responds delightedly, "By all means."

Lily finds a longer passage and reads aloud; her voice reverberates, creating that feeling of singing a song in rounds.

"In Wodash Deep"

In Wodash deep where shadows play

The Darkshine keeps the hurt away

While children laugh in sunlit halls

I find my peace in concrete walls

Here Mister Whiskers understands

The stories that I tell by candlelight

My made-up friends with gentle hands

Hold back the loneliness each night

The pyramid eye watches me

With darkness soft as mother's arms

Down here I'm who I'm meant to be

Safe from the world and all its harms

Above they point and laugh and stare

Call me names I won't repeat

But Darkshine wraps me in its care

Makes my broken heart complete

In Wodash deep I am not small

The shadows whisper "you belong"

Here in my kingdom, safe from all

The Darkshine sings its gentle song

Better to be alone down here

With friends that live inside my mind

Than face the world of children's sneers

Where lonely hearts are left behind

Cuz Darkshine keeps the hurt away

In Wodash deep where shadows play

With the word "play" repeated back to her by the black, Lily finds herself, of all things, feeling jealous. Why couldn't she have had a place like this to retreat to when she felt so alone. When her mom and dad left her and Kim, all love seemed stripped away from the world, like taking a color photograph and turning it black and white. She could've used the Darkshine then, even a Mister Whiskers with his creepy-assed dangling eyeball. Instead, she got Kim, loneliness, and pain.

Lily's tummy rumbles again, made louder in the candlelight. "Can... can we go now?" Lily asks uneasily. "I'm hungry, and I'm pretty sure those two fucksticks are gone now."

"Yeah, of course," Mila says. She blows out the candles, leaving only the two shafts of light from above and the strange, ethereal Musak.

As if reading Lily's thoughts, Mila says, "Now that you know about this place, you can come down here whenever you want. I don't mind."

Lily considers this offer, unable to decide if she'd ever be brave enough to come down here alone, but responds, "Thanks."

It's about twenty minutes later, and this unlikely pair is standing in line at Bagel Bro's, having washed their hands and made themselves look like they didn't just crawl out of a storm drain.

They get their food and sit at a table. Lily, with her giant cup of coffee and her beloved everything bagel and lox, smiles at Mila's simple poppy seed bagel with plain cream cheese and orange juice.

"You're not one for flair, are you?" Lily observes.

"What do you mean? I got poppy seeds," Mila defends her adventurous bagel choice. "Poppies are grown throughout the Middle East and Asia, you know. It's not like they came from Kentucky or whatever."

Whether or not Mila is right about the poppies, Lily now understands why Mila and Amy are so close - They're both nerds!

But then Lily considers her own nerdiness. She's definitely an anime nerd and a manga nerd. She's also showing every sign of being a burgeoning sex with Randall nerd, so who is she to judge?

"Okay," Lily replies. "Forget I said anything."

They munch on their late breakfast for a few moments. Lily peers out the window every so often to see if she spots Peyton or Raquel.

"So the Kingdom, eh? Not the Queendom? What's up with that?"

Mila looks slightly abashed. "I was a kid. I didn't think about stuff like that back then. It was mine, though... at least it felt like mine."

"So where was it? Is it still there? Is it in another tunnel?" Lily asks, genuinely curious, now.

"No, Wodash is the only subterranean Place. No, The Kingdom is in Mercer's Woods.

Lily internally cringes. Mercer's Woods is the local name for a large patch of forest on the edge of town. It's where many of the high school kids go to party after football games. In the center of the woods is a large pit that was dug decades ago and now holds hundreds of beer cans, used condoms, discarded bags of chips, and other garbage.

"Really? Mercer's Woods? Isn't that like, the place where all the meatheads go?"

Mila gets a mischievous look in her eye, ignoring this assessment. "You wanna go? I'll show you."

Even if Mercer's Woods is a "meathead sanctuary", part of Lily wants to go very badly. Something about Mila's Places has captivated her imagination. She wants to continue down this rabbit hole, to see what else has been hiding right under her nose in her own home town, but instead she says, "Sure. Whatever."

Mila looks a little downcast. That is, until Lily follows up with "Let me finish my lox first." And Mila breaks into a bright grin.

A few minutes later, they are out on the sidewalk, walking out of town towards the suburbs. Lily keeps a keen eye out for Peyton and Raquel while Mila talks enough to rival even Chelsea.

Lily listens as Mila goes on and on about the last DLG meeting, how wonderful it was to actually get to do all of the things she's read about in her books, how she wants to have Randall do some cunnilingus on her at the next workshop, because Amy said it felt really good.

This comment earned Mila a warning side-eye glare from Lily, but before she launches a full-scale verbal assault, Lily decides not to punish Mila for her own jealousies and insecurities involving Randall.

At Whitcomb Street, they turn left and head up the short incline to Mercer's Woods. It is getting close to noon, and Lily is looking forward to being beneath the canopy of the trees where they can get out of the hot sun.

They pass between the parallel-parked cars and cross the street. They follow a pale path of hard-packed earth that runs from the opposing sidewalk, up a short rise, and disappears into the woods. Once they enter the forest, the first of the littered beer cans can be seen lying in the leaves and thick underbrush.

"I love it here," Mila says, her face glowing with wonder. "It's almost... mystical, like Mirkwood or something.

"Ugh, seriously? I wouldn't live here even if I were a giant spider," Lily says with a snide laugh.

Mila stops and stares, her face bright with recognition. "You've read The Hobbit??"

Lily, suddenly caught being a normal human, tries to backpedal. "I... I had to do a book report on it in seventh grade," she lies. "It... you know... it was fine, better than I thought it would be. It was... whatever."

"I LOVE THE HOBBIT!!!" Mila gushes. "I mean, The Lord of the Rings is good and all, but The Hobbit is my all time FAVORITE! I can't believe you've read it too!"

Lily looks around as if someone might hear Mila's outburst. "Okay, okay, you don't have to tell the whole goddamn world, though."

Mila looks confused. "What? I don't get it. What's wrong with liking The Hobbit?"

Lily sighs, "Nothing is wrong with it, I just... I... I'm not a nerd like you and Amy."

"Oh..." Mila responds. They continue walking down the path in silence.

Lily looks around again. She doesn't see anyone listening and stops. Mila turns to face her, looking down at the ground.

"Look, you don't have to look like a whipped puppy dog. I just..." She takes another deep breath and continues. "Fine. I'm sorry, okay? Satisfied? I like The Hobbit. I liked it a shitload. I read it three fucking times, alright? I'm a fucking nerd, too. There. Are you happy now?"

Mila stares at her, her face full of hopeful joy, but Lily isn't done.

She rolls her eyes and asks pleadingly, "Can we just... not talk about it unless we're in one of our Places?"

Mila's mouth drops open.

"What?" Lily says.

"'Our Places'?" Mila asks.

Lily realizes her stumble and looks away, smiling sheepishly. "Whatever... that Wodash place was kinda cool or whatever. Is that what you wanted to hear? Now shut up!"

Mila is finally starting to get Lily's rhythms and nods excitedly. "Come on, we're not that far."

They walk past the garbage pit. It is about forty feet across and looks to be about ten or fifteen feet deep. Several burnt areas line the perimeter, scorched logs and trash litter the ground here. The trees in this area are covered in carved initials. The entire area carries three distinct scents: stale beer, burnt wood, and urine. Lily has the random thought of "Toilet-trees rhymes with toiletries."

A few moments later, Mila walks up to what appears to be an impenetrable wall of underbrush almost twenty feet high that gradually curves around a copse of trees in both directions as far as Lily can see. "This is it," she whispers reverently.

Lily doesn't get the joke. "What's here? A bunch of vines?"

Mila nods and smiles. She drops to her hands and knees, saying, "Come on, follow me," and she disappears into the thicket.

Lily sighs again, rolls her eyes and crawls into this hidden tunnel after her.

Inside, Lily is amazed. This is like a naturally formed tube of dried up vines, weeds, and dead bushes too thick for new growth to penetrate. Fingers of dried foliage claw at her clothes from time to time. Lily can't tell if they are trying to prohibit her entry, or merely wanting to greet the Queen's guest.

She can see Mila's butt wiggling up ahead as she crawls. Lily follows her. After about thirty feet, the tunnel ends and Lily stands. When she does, she looks up and sees a fifteen- or twenty-foot-tall hill. At the peak is a ramshackle hut, in front of which is an old, blue folding camping chair with one crossmember repaired with duct tape. On either side of the chair is a concrete garden ornament, one frog and one squirrel. They seem to stand at attention.

The Queen's throne, Lily thinks.

Scattered up and down the sides of the hill, she sees several old, dirty stuffed animals. They are weather-worn, sun-bleached messes. She nudges a nearby white elephant with the toe of her boot. It tumbles over, and she sees the plush underside is rainbow-splotched fur matted with mud. A few earwigs scramble over the bright surface looking for cover.

Lily looks around the area and sees that this hill is surrounded on all sides by a wall of brambles, vines, and other dense flora.

"Whaaa...?" Lily whispers. "How?"

"It's the dirt from the pit," Mila says proudly. "They had to put it somewhere. This is it." Mila explains excitedly.

Lily is again completely awestruck and jealous. Awestruck by the fact that this place even exists and jealous that not only did she not know about it, but no one else did either. No one except for Mila.

"One of my subjects," Mila says, motioning to the elephant. "Poor little guy."

Then Mila's face lights up, "Come on! I'll show you my castle!" With the excitement of a little kid, Mila crawls up the steep embankment, knocking dirt and small pebbles down as she goes.

Lily starts to follow her and stops. Running along the bottom of the hill is a line of charcoal briquets. She follows the line and sees an intersecting line running down from the peak of the hill on her left. She looks, and sure enough, there's another vertical line of coal to her right.

"A fucking pyramid," she whispers.

Lily's engineer boots aren't the best footwear for climbing, so it takes her a bit longer, but she eventually reaches the top.

Once there, Lily looks at the small hut. Originally built using milk crates, a couple of pallets, a few cinder blocks, some bricks, and an old tarp, it has fallen into complete disrepair. Mila looks a little defeated, seeing her castle in such a state. The black tarp that once covered this structure is now torn and frayed. It served as both roof and camouflage. Lily sees that it has something painted on it in silver spray paint. She doesn't have to look, she already knows what it is: The Darkshine Eye.

Mila picks through a few things, turning up jars of sticks and desiccated lightning bugs, the metal lids perforated with air holes. Coffee cans containing other small treasures like pretty rocks, a bottle cap collection, and other found objects are precious to kids. Some water-wilted paperbacks and a moldy deck of cards. Another lunchbox, this one made of black plastic, sits in the corner, guarded by a line of naked Barbie dolls, shining in a dappled patch of sunlight.

Lily looks around. The pallets are covered in crayon drawings of pyramids, eyes, what looks like a depiction of some hard-fought battle, among other childlike images. Leaning against the throne is a stick that is covered in black crayon, a large black marble is held to its tip with three small bent nails. Her scepter.

Looking at her childhood memories rotted away like so much trash almost brings Mila to tears. The return of the Queen should be a celebrated event, not one of despair.

She sits on her throne, taking the scepter in her hand. Lily is taken aback by the look on Mila's face. Determination, authority, regality, all mixed together. Mila would have been a benevolent but frightening queen.

Mila lifts her scepter and is about to make some royal proclamation when they both hear footsteps in the dead leaves below.

Both girls freeze, looking first at each other. Mila slides herself out of the camping chair and crouches down next to Lily, trying to see through the wall of brambles.

Voices drift up from below.

Raquel: "Where'd they go? They were just here."

Peyton: "I don't fucking know! You were supposed to be keeping an eye on them! I swear to god, I'm gonna break that little pink-haired bitch's nose after what she did."

Raquel: "Yeah. No shit. Me too."

Peyton: "How are we both going to break her nose, idiot?"

Raquel: "I don't know. I'll break the other shit's nose, I guess."

A slight pause and then

Raquel: "'Member when I blew Brayden Pescadori over there?"

Raquel laughs.

Raquel: "And then, 'member when Jayden and Kayden took turns on me over there. That was awesome."

Peyton(ignoring Raquel): They gotta be around here somewhere. Stay still. Maybe we'll hear 'em."

Lily and Mila look at each other. Lily thinks Mila's pink t-shirt might be bright enough to be seen, even through the dense vegetation, giving away their position. Lily mouths the words, "What do we do?"

Mila looks around, worriedly looking for something to give them the upper (or lower) hand. The shine of black plastic catches her eye. It's the lunchbox. She turns to Lily, holds up a finger, and silently glides over to the box. There is a terrible moment when it gets tangled in the torn tarp, but she manages to get it free. She brings it back over to Lily and quietly flips the latch on the front.

Again, that last second of nonsensical dread passes through Lily's mind. "Squirrel heads. It's gonna be filled with fucking squirrel heads!" she thinks a dozen times very fast, each time with growing alarm.

Mila opens the lid and, resting among a few marbles, a yo-yo, and a couple of headless Barbies (Lily wonders what crimes they committed for their queen to order their beheadings), is what she was looking for: an old slingshot. Several ball bearings roll lazily at the bottom of the black box.

Lily immediately has a mental image of shooting Peyton in the face with it and laughing at the red welt as they are chased through the woods.

But Mila takes two bearings and a marble, places them in the cup of the slingshot, and draws it back. Lily's face wrinkles up in confusion when Lily aims high.

She almost puts a hand up to ask a silent question when The Queen lets fly with a "Fup!"

A second and a half later, they hear a rattle in the leaves about seventy-five yards away. Lily hears one of the objects, probably the marble, bounce through the dead leaves, sounding almost like footsteps. Queen Mila immediately loads another round and repeats, ridding her Kingdom of these brigands.

Peyton: "Whazzat?"

Raquel: "It's them. It's gotta be!"

"Fup!".... another rattle.

Peyton: "Let's go!"

Lily and Mila crouch, clutching each other, listening to the bigger girls go ruffling off through the leaves. Lily wants to hear how far away they go, but just then, a mechanical rumble begins in the near distance, punctuated by a blast from a train horn.

Mila grabs Lily's shoulder and points down the slope, nodding.

Mila leans her scepter against the arm of her throne once more, places a kiss on the top of Sir Squirrel's and Sir Frog's heads, and slides down the hill like a baseball player stealing home. Lily's skirt doesn't offer her the same protection as Mila's shorts, forcing her to make a very ungraceful backward sliding crawl down the hillside. Mila is already disappearing into the bramble tunnel when Lily reaches the bottom, with the train's rumbling and the squeal of the rails covering the sound of her escape. Lily crawls in after her, the pebbles and twigs digging painfully into her knees as she tries to catch up to her friend. She sees Mila's butt wiggling in front of her again, but now there's a slingshot protruding from her back pocket.

Mila pauses at the entrance, looking around for any sign of the bullies. Not seeing them, she exits and waves Lily on.

Lily breaks through the other end, inhaling deeply like a swimmer coming out of a dive, not even aware she was holding her breath.

Mila jogs down the path, urging Lily to follow her, which she does.

They sprint through the woods together now, not speaking. At one point, they catch a glimpse of Peyton in the distance, but with the help of the thundering freight train, they get away unnoticed.

Out of breath and sweating profusely, the pair of girls burst out of the woods. The tracks are in front of them, and they can still see the red light blinking on the tail end of the train just as it passes around a bend and out of sight.

"That was close," Lily gasps.

"Yeah."

"I'd have shot her, though," Lily says with a wicked smile, and Mila just shrugs.

They stand next to the railroad cinders, catching their breaths, until Mila stands, climbs up onto the tracks, and points to where the train went.

"Bridge... to... Nowhere," she gasps.

Lily nods, throws an arm around Mila's shoulders, and they start walking.

They follow the tracks. Lily keeps a watchful eye, checking behind them every so often, making sure Peyton isn't following them, but after ten minutes or so, she finally relaxes. A breeze has picked up, and it cools the sweat on the back of her neck. Mila absently kicks at the cinders, knocking a rock or two ahead of them. The sun shines brightly on the steel rails, and their shadows are short. The scent of warm creosote drifts up from the crossties, making the day seem hotter.

After a while of quiet contemplation, Lily feels the need to speak, to share something. This has been such a thought-provoking, surprising day, she wants to make it even more memorable.

"I... I read a book once," Lily begins, unsure how to share these memories. "It was Before."

Mila glances at her. "Before?"

"You know, before... before they left." She kicks a stone of her own, and it bounces up and over the rail.

"Oh... What book was it?" Mila asks.

"I forget the name," Lily says, annoyed with herself. Of course, she knows the name. It was called "Different Seasons", so why is she not telling her? "Anyway, it was a book of short stories," she continues, "and one of them is about these kids that go down the tracks looking for a dead body. It was really good."

"Yeah," Mila says, then tilts her head, considering something, and adds, "I think I'm Gordie."

Lily looks at her, surprised, then smiles a little, "Yeah, maybe. Who does that make me? Vern?" and she giggles.

Mila, in a surprising bout of teasing, says, "Nah... you're more like Chopper. 'Sic balls!"

Lily laughs, "Whatever! I'm not a dog! If I'm Chopper, then you're Lard Ass!"

Both girls giggle.

"Anyway," Lily digresses, "this reminds me of that story. A couple of friends on an adventure down the tracks."

Mila looks at her from the corner of her eye and smiles a secretive smile.

They cross a small trestle spanning a stream that jumps and surges over rocks and through small channels and into the Moseby River. Lily looks down the steep hill to their left and notices she can see the water of the Moseby, maybe a quarter-mile away, glistening in the sun through the trees.

"I read this book once," Mila says. "It kinda... changed my life. Made me into the... weirdo I am today, I guess you could say." Mila's pain filters through this attempted humor in an obvious, telling way. "It was called 'The Bridge to Terabithia'. Where we're headed is kinda like that. I always hoped to meet a 'Jess' to bring there."

"Oh, shit! I know that one! We watched the movie of it in class when we were kids! It's such a good story!"

Mila looks at her, "I know we did. I was in your class."

Lily stops in her tracks, closes her eyes, embarrassed. "Shit, Mila... I'm so sorry. You WERE in my class. You sat behind that red head that ate his boogers... uh... Danny. Goddammit! Fuck me."

"It's okay. I... I hid from everyone back then. It was kinda my thing. It's not like I was trying to be your best friend or anything."

She pauses, looking at Lily fondly. "I always thought of you as 'the smart one, '" she says with a smile.

Lily sighs, ashamed, "Yeah, well, I guess I'm just the smart-ASS now. I'm sorry I forgot you, Mila. Really. I'm a turd."

"It's okay, seriously. And you're not a turd. We were both kids. Kids are kids. And see? You're still the smart one," Mila says, "You were smart enough to join the DLG and get help. That takes real intelligence."

Lily continues walking, and Mila joins her. They don't say anything for a few minutes.

"Are you sure you're Gordie?" Lily asks. "Because that sounded more like some Chris shit if you ask me."

Ten minutes later, they arrive at a switch in the tracks. If they continue straight, the rails are bright and shiny with solid timbers lying between them. If they follow the fork to the left, the ties are rotting, the tracks themselves are dull and rusted, and weeds have sprouted crazily between the rails. An ancient, rusty boxcar sits on the abandoned spur. It sleeps, forgotten, being slowly reclaimed by the earth. Multiple layers of graffiti cover its flanks, and the doors are rust-welded shut. A large black pyramid has been spray painted on the end facing them, the blacked out eye stares, ever vigilant.

"This way," Mila says, turning left towards the boxcar. "This is Herman, the sentry," she says, pointing to the boxcar, and giving it an affectionate pat."

The Darkshine Eye still gives Lily the creeps, even if it is supposed to offer kindness. She forces out a cheery,"Howdy, Herman!" and continues past the hulking train car.

As they follow the rusty tracks, the trees seem to close in on them from either side. Soon it's like they're walking through an evergreen canyon.

Lily is about to say something about this when she looks up and sees the treeline up ahead abruptly ends at what appears to be the edge of a wide chasm. Where the rails end, a scrap piece of plywood leans against the bufferstop, a black Eye is spray-painted on it. The grass-covered railbed continues across a massive concrete bridge, silent, secret, and seductive.

"Whoa..." Lily breathes, stopping to admire their destination.

"This is it," Mila states reverently. "The Bridge to Nowhere," and continues walking towards the old trestle.

Lily follows her as if in a trance. It's like approaching the edge of the world and being willing to step off into the nothingness beyond.

"I swear to god, Mila, if I hear an old-timey train whistle coming from the far side of this thing, I'm getting the fuck outta here."

Lily looks around and notices that on either side of the tracks, Mila has formed small pyramids out of the cinders. They are sparse at first, but grow in number as they approach the bridge until they blend into a continuous, tiny mountain range. The Milappilachians? The Milandes? The Darkspires? Lily gets another chill at this one.

Some have either fallen over or been knocked over, but the scope of them is still impressive.

"Mila, did you make all of these?"

"Mm-hm," she says, nodding," I'd build one every time I came here. It was like an offering or something, you know?"

Lily notices her "you know" and understands this level of sharing is making Mila feel a bit uncomfortable. "An offering to the Darkshine," Lily mumbles, looking at them all.

Mila is almost to the point where the tracks end when Lily asks, "Should we... I mean... Can I build one?"

Mila stops and looks back at Lily, then at all of the pyramids, and says, "I... I don't know. These are kinda... mine, you know? Like, I want you to see this stuff, but... it's kinda like my stuff, you know?"

"Oh," Lily says, "Okay. I get it... but..."

Mila folds her arms. "But what?"

Lily wants to be part of this world, part of Mila's fantasy realms. She can't explain this to her in so many words, but...

"Wouldn't Leslie let Jess build one?"

Mila looks at Lily, then at the pyramids. Something in her stance subtly changes. She stares straight into Lily's eyes again.

"No, she wouldn't," Mila says stoically, but something twinkles in her eyes that Lily doesn't see.

Lily is taken aback. Her hope of being included in this world seems to stream out of her and seep into the railbed below.

Mila bends and picks up a few dark rocks and says, "She'd MAKE him build one," and smiles.

Mila takes a few minutes to show Lily the "proper way" to stack the rocks, which rocks to use, and which ones aren't good enough. They are about to place the capstone on top when Mila stops and asks, "Do you have a penny?"

Lily pauses, unsure. "Maybe," she says and pulls the small coin purse from her boot. She clicks open the small, black leather purse with a Soot Sprite printed on it and digs through it with a finger. "Here you go," Lily says and hands her a penny.

"Put it under the capstone. It's the Darkshine Eye of your pyramid."

"Are... are there pennies in each of these?" Lily asks with wonder.

Mila simply nods. "They wouldn't work otherwise."

"Uh... what do you mean 'work'?"

Mila looks at her as if Lily had three eyes. "Look around you, Lily. No one else comes here. No losers drinking beer and doing it in the bushes, no rats running through the drains. It's quiet here. Perfect. And when I was little, I believed, and still do to a certain extent, that these pyramids protect this Place. I know, I sound crazy, but... you know?"

Part of Lily almost laughs, the part she's been actively working to rehabilitate. Instead, she pauses, and does look around, just like Mila said, and she sees that Mila's right. No one does come here. It's actually quite remarkable. Not a single beer can, snack bag, or even a cigarette butt can be seen here. Aside from the tracks and the bridge itself, it resembles primeval land. Maybe the pyramids do work, and maybe not, but Lily has to agree, it's odd that this Place remains virtually untouched.

"Forget it," Mila says, "I knew you wouldn't understand. It's just a bunch of kiddie stuff."

"No!" Lily insists, "I do get it. I just... it took me a second, that's all. Look, Mila, you're right. This place is untouched and... and pure. I just hadn't noticed. So... maybe it is the Darkshine and maybe not, but that's not my call to make. I'm the acolyte here, you're the priestess."

Mila looks at her, unbelieving. She makes a show of looking around. "Excuse me, ma'am. I seem to have lost my friend. Her name is Lily, she's about four-eight, pink hair, kinda rude."

Lily giggles, "Shut the fuck up! I'm being serious here!"

"Yeah," Mila says, "I know, that's what scares me," she teases. "Come on." She stands and puts out a hand to help Lily up, and she leads her out onto the Bridge to Nowhere.

The steep dropoff gives the bridge the illusion of being taller than it is. Lily's stomach drops as she steps out over what feels almost like nothingness. The Moseby's dark waters sparkle and gleam in the afternoon sun about seventy feet down. The bridge itself isn't a modern marvel, but it is ornate. The supports are buttressed, giving the spaces between the supports the look and feel of cathedral windows. And while there are no handrails of any sort, along each side of the trestle are small pulpits every hundred feet or so. A constant breeze blows across the bridge, chasing the river downstream. There is a thin, short species of grass growing on top of the old railbed, and it soughs quietly in the wind. The ground gives slightly under their feet as they walk.

Lily looks up and downstream. There are a couple of powerboats running about, one pulling a waterskier. In the distance, she can make out a couple of men fishing along the banks.

"My dad brought me here," Mila states flatly.

"Yeah?"

Mila nods. "When I was little," she pauses, letting the memories wash over her. "We had our first picnic here. He... he told me that he and his friends used to come up here when they were teenagers. The trains were still running back then. He said... he said they'd drink and smoke and party up here. When a train came, they'd hide in the little alcove things so the engineer wouldn't see them. He said they thought the engineer would shoot them with rocksalt. He said the whole bridge would shake and rumble with the weight of the train, like it had come to life."

Mila is quiet for a moment, walking, letting the breeze blow her light brown hair about her face.

"They used to dare each other to jump off into the water, but my dad never did it," she says, chagrined, "He said he was always too scared..."

A few more steps and they reach the middle of the bridge. Each pulpit here has a black pyramid drawn in charcoal, the Darkshine Eyes staring across the railbed at each other.

Mila bends down and picks up a rock from the many that live on either side of the old railbed. She walks over to the downstream alcove and throws it over the side as hard as she can. Leaning against the concrete wall, careful not to touch her shirt to the charcoal pyramid, she tracks the rock's downward journey. The dark water turns white where it hits the surface, and a half second later, a small, satisfying 'gunshhh' reaches her ears.

"I wanna do one," Lily says, picking up a rock. She hurls it over the side and watches it descend. It splashes into the water below with a happy splash. Something feels like it traveled with it. A small piece of herself, like some part of the power that makes her so... angry, went with it.

"That felt... weird," Lily admits quietly.

"I know, right?" Mila agrees. "There's something about putting something that belongs up here into that other Place down below. It's like...'sending'."

"Exactly! Sending! So... weird." She looks at Mila skeptically and asks, "Is this place really magical, or is it all in my head?"

Mila smiles back a little mysteriously. "What's the difference?"

Lily's first instinct is to say, "Fuck you, tell me," but she decides she likes not knowing better.

Mila says, "Check this out, turn around."

Lily complies.

"Now, fold your arms across your chest, look upwards, and fall back against the wall." Mila demonstrates. She folds her arms so that she's touching her shoulders, looks skyward, and falls back, gasping a little just before hitting the concrete partition.

"Why?" Lily asks.

"Just do it. You'll see."

Lily hesitantly does as Mila suggests, looking for the hidden joke, the moment for the trap to slam shut, and for Mila to start laughing. But Mila watches with benevolent excitement, not Kim's characteristic mischief. She folds her arms across her chest, looks up at a cloud, and says, "If you laugh at me, you're going over the side."

Mila chuckles. "I won't laugh, and even if I do, it's not because I'm laughing at you."

Looking at the puffy white cloud, the rest of the pulpit walls seem to vanish from her periphery, leaving just the edge of the bridge, the vertical drop, and the dark waters of the Moseby below.

She leans back.

Suddenly, her heart leaps in her chest, and she throws her arms out to catch herself before she plummets to her death.

Her back hits the wall, and she comes out of her momentary panic. She can taste the adrenaline in her mouth, acrid and metallic.

Mila stares at her, wide-eyed, "See?"

"FUCK! What the hell??"

"I know! It's scary at first," Mila says giddily. "Try it again. Let yourself go this time."

"I... I don't want to. I... don't know if I can."

"Sure, you can. The Darkshine will catch you. It's caught me every time."

Lily takes a moment, trying to calm her nerves before a second attempt at the trust fall. She backs up to the wall, crosses her arms, and finds the cloud in the sky. The breeze blows across the bridge, almost trying to push Lily over. She tries to lean back, but her 'leaner' seems temporarily out of order.

"Push me," she tells Mila.

"I can't. I'm not allowed."

Lily thinks back to the last time she was with Randall. She put the handcuffs on, looked back at him, and asked, "Please don't hurt me." His response, "I'll never hurt you, Lily", seems to come to her ears, traveling on the breeze.

She leans back.

The sky goes over blue as she tumbles backward over the side. She sees the river with its tree-lined banks turned upside down, then the bridge rightside up. She tumbles faster and faster, the water's surface approaching at a deadly speed until...

Her back gently hits the wall.

Mila stares intently.

"Whoa..." Lily whispers. "Holy shit..."

"Yeah..." Mila whispers back. "It catches you every time." And she grins brightly, having finally shared this experience with someone else.

Lily, her heart still pounding in her chest a bit, steps out of the alcove and sits on the grassy railbed. She takes her boots off and her socks. The grass feels almost like fur on the soles of her feet, like she's sitting on the back of a giant fuzzy caterpillar. Mila smiles approvingly and joins her, removing her dirty, torn-up sneakers as well.

Lily digs deep within herself in order to say, "Thanks for sharing this with me, Mila. It... it really means a lot. I really like all of your Places. Especially this one."

Mila straightens her legs out on the soft grass and leans back, her arms supporting her. She considers Lily for a moment, sensing how difficult this was for her to say this. "You know... you're welcome here anytime. They really ARE our Places now."

Lily drops her gaze, unable to believe Mila's generosity. "Seriously?" she asks the grass.

"Anytime."

"Our... queendom?"

Mila giggles. "Sure," she says, then pauses, "But... no boys allowed, okay?"

Lily grins the grin of an eight-year-old, "Ew! No! Boys are gross!" then giggles a schoolgirl giggle, and Mila joins her.

Lily, still smiling, asks, "What about the other girls, though? The DLG girls?"

Mila looks at her Bridge to Nowhere... correction, 'their' Bridge to Nowhere, and says, "I... I don't know... maybe."

Lily accepts this for what it is. Even if Mila says they are theirs, Lily respects that in reality, these are truly Mila's Places.

She realizes that she now sees Mila in a totally different light than she did this morning, or even over the past few weeks. She notices the graphic on Mila's faded pink t-shirt for the first time. It's a cracked white print of a mockingbird pulling a pair of sunglasses down its beak and staring at the viewer. The speech bubble reads "Are you mocking me??!!"

Lily says, "I like your shirt. Did you know that mockingbirds use their mimicry and song as a defense as well as an offense? Something to do with protecting their territory or something." She looks skyward, vaguely hoping to see a mockingbird.

"You know, I've seen them chase bigger birds away to protect their families, grabbing at their tail feathers. Crows, hawks, anything. They're brave little fuckers."

Mila just smiles and nods.

A little while later, the girls are lying head-to-head on their backs in the grass, their bodies pointed in opposite directions.

"... okay, so, what's your favorite... ice cream?" Lily asks, stringing one buttercup stem through another, creating a chain of small yellow flowers.

"Probably... vanilla. It's the most versatile," Mila says.

"Most boring, you mean." Lily lightly teases.

"Well, what about you?"

"Hmmmm... maybe Moose Tracks," Lily says, licking her lips and smiling. "It's delicious and it reminds me of 'moose knuckles'," she says with a wicked laugh.

Mila doesn't get this reference, but figures it must be some vulgar Lilyism.

"What about music?" Lily asks. "Who's your favorite band?"

Mila's quiet for longer than usual, and Lily checks to make sure she didn't doze off. God knows you could fall asleep up here in this peaceful spot.

Mila peers over at Lily, shrugs, and says, "I don't know... Madonna?"

"Madonna?? Really? But... she's so... old."

Mila shrugs again, "Sorry, I guess I'm not that much into music... or at least not that kind. I like... like, movie soundtracks."

"What, like Disney musicals and shit?" Lily asks, smiling with her nose wrinkled.

Mila sighs in mild irritation, "No, like, Danny Elfman, Howard Shore, or John Williams. Those types of soundtracks. Not like 'Mary Poppins' or 'Grease'. Why? Who's your favorite?" she asks, slightly defensive.

Lily should have been prepared for this question, but Mila's quick reversal catches her off guard.

"Um... I guess... The Cure, maybe?"

"What?" Mila asks, stunned. "The Cure? And you're saying Madonna's too old? I bet Madonna listened to The Cure, too."

"Whoa! I thought you said you weren't into music!" Lily counters.

"I might not be, but I live on this planet. I know who The Cure is."

"Fine! Fine!" Lily laughs, "You got me... But let's see, I also like pop-punk and some metal. And don't tell anyone, but I also like Taylor Swift."

Mila can't help herself; she bursts out laughing. "Lily the Swiftie??"

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, fuzzball."

Mila's giggle turns to outright laughter, "... and you're a Star Wars geek too?"

"Whatever!" Lily replies, laughing a little herself, now. "Fuck you. I thought we were being all sensitive and shit. If you're gonna be all shitty about it, I won't share."

"Don't worry," Mila says, still giggling. "I'm sure you'll Shake it Off," and she gets swept away on another wave of giggles.

Lily lets Mila have her fun; she earned it. But after Mila calms down, Lily gets a little more serious.

"What's your favorite day?" she asks.

"My favorite day?" Mila asks, "Probably Saturday. Why?"

Lily chuckles, "No, not day of the week. Favorite day ever."

"Oh..." Mila says. "I don't know. Today's been pretty great." She plucks a dandelion that's gone to seed, the little fuzzy seeds waiting for a strong breeze to carry them away.

"Yeah, it has," Lily agrees, placing the buttercup crown on Mila's head.

"I guess..." Mila says, smiling at the crown and thinking hard. "I guess my twelfth birthday. It was pretty awesome." Mila's voice takes on a sort of wistful quality. "Mom was still mom, you know? She met us at High Steaks. We all had an awesome dinner. My dad had promised to take me to Wet'n'Wild the next day, and we just all had such a wonderful time." Mila's tone changes from wistful to somber. "It was... it was the last good time the three of us had together. That night, on the way home, Mom wrecked her car."

"Fuck... that's your favorite day?" Lily looks at Mila worriedly.

Mila shrugs. "Kinda... yeah. Best and worst, I guess. What's yours?"

Lily smiles. "Three-way tie for me."

"Heeey! That's not fair!" Mila protests with a smile.

"Christmas, two years ago. Kim forgot to pay the electric bill, and we had to grill out in the snow. Best goddamn steak I've ever had, by the way. Second, is probably my first night with Randall. I swear, Mila, the man just... gets me!"

"And the third?" Mila asks after Lily pauses for a moment.

"Today," Lily says. "Today has been fucking phenomenal."

Mila stares wide-eyed. "Really?"

"Really. Truly fucking awesome," Lily says, turning over on her stomach. She rests her chin on the tops of her hands and stares at her friend. "Thanks, Mila."

Mila doesn't know how to respond, so she says, "Make a wish!" and blows the dandelion puff. When she's done, only two seeds remain, and Mila looks over at Lily as if this means something significant. "They're gonna come true! Look! Two! One for me and one for you!"

Lily smiles sadly at her new friend. Mila seems like such a lovely person. She can't figure out why such a wonderful, intelligent, imaginative girl would grow up so... lonely.

"Mila," she asks. "What made you do it? Why build the Places? Why didn't you just try to be my friend all those years ago? I bet we'd have been close."

Mila looks away, and shrugs. "I don't know."

Lily waits for a better answer, but when none comes, she prods. "Mila?"

"Look! A bald eagle!" Mila deflects.

Lily glances up. "That's an Osprey," she corrects her, and stares back at Mila expectantly.

"I don't know, alright?!" Mila shouts.

Lily blinks, surprised by the outburst. "Sorry, Mila, I just..."

"No... I'm sorry. It's okay. It's just... that's an O. L. subject."

"O...?" Lily begins to ask, sitting up.

"Off limits," Mila clarifies.

Lily's eyebrows raised at her candor about being secretive. The small paradox makes her brain hurt a little.

After the day's series of emotional revelations, Lily can't seem to let this go. She asks a little playfully, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Mila looks at her and just says, "Pfft..."

Lily plucks some grass from the bridge beside her and lets the breeze take it away from her. She's about to joke "Well this got awkward", when Mila speaks.

"When me and my dad came up here," she begins, "He told me about how he never jumped." She pauses, and sits up. She looks at the charcoal pyramids on either side of them. "He said... he said his friends all said he was nothing but a scared little kid... and I guess that's all I ever was. I was just too scared. Too scared to make friends, too scared to... to let anyone in." Mila looks defiantly up at Lily, who has now sat up to face her friend.

"But he's NOT. My Daddy's not a scared little kid. Not anymore anyway. No..."

She looks down at the grass, she drops the dandelion and the two seeds break away.

"I am... I'm the scared kid. I always have been. That's why I have these Places. I'm just... just a coward," she says, her voice breaking. Her face flushes, her chin quivers, and she turns to face Lily.

Lily has no idea what to do. Mila is breaking down in front of her, and she is completely lost. She has time to think, "What would Eve do?" before Mila grabs her, like a child seeking comfort from her mother, and sobs into Lily's shoulder.

Lily wraps her arms around her and pats her back. "There, there, Mila," Lily says mechanically, "it'll be okay. Just... stop crying, alright?"

Mila sobs, "Thank you for saving me! I'm sorry I didn't fight back! I didn't know what to do! I'M THE SCARED LITTLE KID, NOT HIM!! NOT MY DADDY!! IT'S ME!!!"

Lily is in a full-on panic now, not knowing how to handle this at all. When Eve does it, it seems so natural, so... unforced. So genuine. Do I tell her everything is okay, that she's right for being a coward, that she's perfect just the way she is? That's when it occurs to her; Eve never sugar-coated things, not really. She just told the truth in a sort of gentle Eve-ish way. She decides to give this approach her best shot.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Lily says. "YOU saved ME!"

Mila looks at her in surprise, and Lily continues. "Those two twat rockets were gonna try to fuck us both up, but you took us down into your weird, creepy, bunny dungeon... Wodash Place."

Mila sobs some more, and chokes out, "But that's all I do is run! That's all I ever do!"

"What? No, you didn't! You..." Lily tries to think of the right phrase. "You lead a tactical retreat. And when we were in The Kingdom, that whole misdirect thing with the slingshot? Fucking brilliant!" Lily gives her a secretive smile. "I'd have shot Peyton in her stupid fucking face and probably gotten the shit kicked out of me by that other girl, but no - you saved us TWICE!"

Mila shakes her head. "No... no, I still ran, though. I'm still a scared... little... sh... kid."

A lightbulb goes on in Lily's head, and she takes Mila by the shoulders. She looks into Mila's tear-streaked face and says, "No. Don't do that. Say it, Mila. Say what you were gonna say. Don't be scared."

"What?"

"Say it," Lily demands, grinning, "Tell me you're a 'scared little shit', you know you wanted to."

"I'm..." Mila says through her tears, "I'm a scared..." and she lets out some sound that Lily isn't sure is a sob or a laugh. "I'm a scared little... shit?"

"Yes! Goddamn right! Now say, 'I'm a FUCKING scared little shit!" Lily's eyes are ablaze.

Mila shakes her head. "No, that's the worst one," she pleads.

"Say it, bitch," Lily says tenderly. "Say it and mean it! Own it!"

Mila's voice grows firm, and she says defiantly, "I'm a fucking scared little shit!"

"FUCK YEAH YOU ARE! FUCK YEAH!"

Mila grins through her tears and wipes her eyes on her forearm. She throws a fist in the air, striking a pose she remembers from Lion Force Five and screams at the sky, "I'M A FUCKING SCARED LITTLE SHIT!!" Her self-deprecation echoes back to her sounding weak and powerless, no longer carrying the self-loathing it once did.

Mila's eyes now look electrified. She looks fully ALIVE for the first time since Lily has known her. Lily is convinced that if Mila looked like this all the time, Peyton wouldn't DARE fuck with her.

Mila is breathing hard now, almost as if she is aroused. "Your turn!" she whispers fiercely. The tears that haven't yet dried make her gaze that much brighter.

"My turn? But I'm not a scared little shit, that's you," Lily says, gently teasing.

"No. Admit something you don't want to."

"What? No! I don't do that touchy-feely crap," she says, turning away.

"No, Lily," and Mila puts a hand on Lily's shoulder, gently turning her to face her again.

"You have to. Screaming that just made me feel better about myself than I ever have.

Do it. Do it and feel like I do. It'll work, I swear to... I swear to everything.

Lily looks at Mila's eyes. Her dark brown eyes, shining with power.

"You don't get it. I don't have any hidden gems like you or Places. I can't just scream 'I'm a scared little shit' and be okay. My parents fucked me out of that when they left us. They left me an emotional dumpster fire, and my sister is a fucking psycho manipulator. Fuck them!"

"What about before that?"

"What about what?" Lily asks, annoyed.

"Before that. Before they left. How did you feel about them then?"

Lily looks away, unable to meet her fiery gaze. "The fuck does that mean?"

"You loved your parents, didn't you, Lily? Even though they left and now you're angry with them, which is totally understandable, up until that point you loved them."

"Fuck you! You don't know what the fuck you're talking about!" Lily says, jerking away from Mila's grasp.

"I loved my mom, dammit!" Mila snaps at her. "I loved her! Then she got in that wreck and now she sits there in my house like a mom-doll that says horrible things to me every FUCKING day!"

Lily looks mortally wounded by this outburst, not offended, just stripped bare.

"Now? I think... I think I might hate her," Mila whispers.

Lily looks appalled and surprised by this admission from Mila.

"You... you do?" Lily asks with a mixture of relief, misery, and joy.

Mila nods. "I do. I think I hate her. Not who she was, who she is now."

Lily nods, a single tear spilling down her cheek.

I HATE MY MOM!!" Mila screams. "Say it, say you loved them."

Lily's mind is spinning. Is this true? Did she? The past few years, all she sees when she thinks about them is a big black ball of hate. But... she checks her memories. It's like pulling up files on an old dusty computer. A grinding feeling in her mind, but... yes, there it is... a Christmas morning, unwrapping presents with hot cocoa, and yes, there's a vacation, camping and swimming and catching lizards, and there's a school play, looking out from the stage and seeing their smiling faces in the audience. A birthday, a broken arm, a snowman, a beach trip, a rock concert, getting dumped by Billy Miley, and crying to her dad about it. A whirlwind of memories, good and bad, thirteen years of successes and failures, all colliding, all blending together into one last realization.

"Shit..." she whispers, clutching her chest. "I fucking loved my parents..."

The bridge seems to move under her feet with the weight of this admission, and Lily sits down hard, her teeth clicking together. Stunned, she looks at Mila suspiciously as if Mila has just played a trick on her.

"Say it, bitch," Mila says, smiling warmly.

"Fuck you."

"Say it, bitch!" Mila demands.

"FUCK. YOU."

"NO! SAY IT NOW!"

"I!" and nothing comes out of Lily's mouth. She looks pleadingly at Mila, she doesn't want to do this, to admit it. It's too hard. She's been so angry for so long, hating them seems like the right thing to feel, but now? Is it right that they left? Of course not, but... they never even gave a reason, just... left. But before... Before?

Mila smiles and nods.

"GODDAMMIT! I FUCKING LOVED MY PARENTS!!!!"

Mila throws her hands in the air.

"I HATE MY MOM!!"

"I LOVED MY PARENTS!!"

"I HATE MY MOM!!"

"I LOVED MY PARENTS!!"

The girls grin brightly at each other, screaming into one another's faces.

All of a sudden, Mila stops screaming.

"Quick! Grab your boots!" Mila says as she picks up her own shoes.

"What? Why?"

"We're gonna jump," Mila says, dark eyes shining bright.

"Shit! We are??" Lily asks, not afraid, just confirming.

"We are!"

"Fuck... okay." Lily puts her glasses, phone, and coin purse in one boot hoping they don't fall out.

Their hearts race, and their nerves are up. Mila gets goosebumps, knowing she's doing what her father couldn't. Lily starts laughing through tears, not knowing if they'll live, but knowing if they don't, she'll die happy.

They walk to the edge of the Bridge to Nowhere, hand-in-hand, holding their shoes in the other. Seventy feet down, the dark water sparkles invitingly.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

"Darkshine, protect us," Mila mutters.

They leap.

They plummet toward the shiny, dark water, screaming as they fall.

"I'M A SCARED LITTLE SSSHIIIIT!!!"

"I LOVED MY PARREEEENNNTS!!!"

They hit the water feet first, the smack of it stinging their soles. The cool, dark water envelopes them like loving arms, and they are instantly carried downstream by the strong current. Lily breaks the surface under the bridge. Laughing giddily. A moment later, Mila pops up next to her, laughing and squealing for joy.

They make their way to the shallows. Lily places her boots on a large, half-submerged rock, and Mila does the same with her sneakers.

"I can't believe we did that!" Mila says, smiling proudly and genuinely incredulous.

"Me either," Lily says, coughing a little. "Got water up my nose! Fuck!"

"Me too," Mila says, pinching hers and blowing.

"Wanna go again?" Lily says, laughing.

"Come here," Mila says.

Lily moves a little closer. "What?"

Mila takes her face in her hands and kisses her. It's a full sweet, loving kiss. A kiss of friendship and adoration. Of thanks and of deep understanding.

Mila pulls away. "Thanks," she says, and swims the rest of the way to shore.

Once on the bank, Lily pulls her socks and glasses out of her boot and puts them back on. She shoves her feet back into her boots and stands. She and Mila wring their shirts out and try to drip dry as much as possible. They continue to trade glances and giggles as they recover, unable to fully vocalize the tremendous moment they just experienced together.

Finally, Lily says, "Nice going, chicken shit." And Mila laughs musically.

"You too, Daddy's girl," Mila teases back, and Lily giggles and throws a slo-mo punch at her.

They trudge up the muddy bank to the single lane road that runs alongside the river, and head toward town, their shoes squishing and water dripping from their hair and clothes. Lily embraces the cold, clammy feel of her clothes after such a hot, intense day. Her tummy rumbles again. With everything that's happened since breakfast, she wonders what adventures dinner might offer.