“Nope,” Joseph said. He clasped his fingers and dropped his hands between his knees, watching the veins plump with new blood.

“A cloud was born. You know that, Joseph. I’ve told you this a thousand times. The cloud was the first child of the world. You need to listen better. I don’t want to have to say this again.”

Outside, the air was electric. Joseph bounded from the porch and raced toward the trees, pounding on the path of dirt through the browning grass, finally free. “Back by eight!” his mother’s voice trailed behind. “Yeah!” he said, and leaped over the drooping chain across the head of the access road.

He hurried through a field of yellow gorse, sucking in the sweet, bruised-peach smell, and continued to a low ridge overlooking the elbow of the nameless creek where the neighborhood boys collected most days. Black cottonwood and canoe birch arched overhead, and the white rock they called Alcatraz lurked on the opposite bank, half submerged. The smell of fresh water and rotting mud was clean and rank.

Ronnie and Tony were already there, as usual, working on their new raft. Ronnie, the pudgy, elder brother, was hammering on the frame, and Tony, the lithe, graceful blond one, was propping the raft upright. The raft was a simple construction—two sheets of plywood connected by two-by-four bracings, with hunks of Styrofoam wedged underneath for flotation. A round Plexiglas window set with caulking took up the middle of the platform so that the bottom of the creek could be visible during explorations. It was by far the most advanced watercraft they’d thus far attempted.

Ronnie and Tony were twelve and eleven years old, respectively, and the ringleaders of the neighborhood’s population of boys, the main agents of the shared torpor and sudden enthusiasms that drove the group to its mischief. To Joseph they were fascinating creatures, clean of childlike naïveté and adult sentimentality alike. They were capricious, wrathful, funny, and knowing, and Joseph admired them more than anyone he had ever met. He emulated all the attitudes and desires he could attribute to them. Painters hats, plaid shirts, canvas shoes—he had adopted them all, and he was proud of the place he had established in their pack. He was a quick study of the code of conduct, a strict system of alternating sadism and empathy, whose poles, he had found, could reverse almost any time. “Are you in pain?” they would say, and then, when pain was admitted, they would say, “Good!” It was a form of affection, the taunts flipping into easy acceptance, the jokes suddenly turning evil, and Joseph found the whole unstable system exhilarating. He stood on the ridge, hoping for an invitation to come down. Part of his ready reception, he knew, stemmed from the deference he showed to the older boys whenever possible.

“What’s up, Joe?” Tony said, not looking up.

“Not much,” Joseph said.