As the trail ahead curved upward and began a zigzagged snake path up a cliff, Brad turned to Dany and shrugged his shoulders. Admittedly they hadn’t done this before. The idle chitchat gave way to contemplative quiet and heavy breathing as the boys scaled the steep face of the hillside. Most of the summer flowers had succumbed to the chill of autumn and transformed into dry, brown husks. The boys were sweating as they neared the top and frequently had to locate stable handholds to pull themselves toward the plateau. Finally, scrambling over the cliff’s ridge on their bellies, the three lay panting, out of breath but exuberant with their group victory. Dany and Brad took a seat on either side of Adam, all six legs dangling precariously over the cliff’s edge as they stared out at a gorgeous vista of forest, lakes, and rivers.

“This is what I wanted to show you guys,” Adam said, full of appreciation for the natural beauty before them. “I come up here a lot.”

“To think?” Brad asked, turning his attention to the handsome profile of their new friend.

“To watch,” Adam answered without taking his eyes off the horizon, “and to listen. If you really focus you can sense everything happening, all around you. The river rushing, the leaves falling, people searching. But from up here, I’m just an observer. I get to be detached from it all, not interrupt it.”

“You said people searching,” Brad said, picking up a stone and turning it over in his hand. “For what?”

“What we all search for generally—sex or money,” he answered with a laugh and turned his eyes to Brad’s. “But occasionally for each other.” Clasping a hand on each of their shoulders, Adam stood up and stretched. “Come on, it’s a steep trip down, and we don’t want to be making it after nightfall.”

DARKNESS HAD crept over the wooded valley by the time the threesome had made their way back to camp. A fire crackled as the guys huddled around its warmth in shorts and sweatshirts. Dany looked from Brad to Adam and was teased with the glimmer of firelight on tan legs. He found his gaze drifting up to the edge of Adam’s shorts and his mind drifting dangerously toward visions of sugarplums when a loud crack from the fire startled him. He pulled back and met Adam’s laughing eyes, which seemed to conspire along with him. Dany needed to distract himself with something, anything but the thoughts of laying Adam and Brad simultaneously. “So, Adam, know any good ghost stories?”

Brad elbowed him sharply in the ribs. “Don’t start! He kept me up with his stupid stories the last two nights.”

“I don’t know any anyway,” Adam said with a laugh, looking from one boy to the other.