The drive home is hushed. Not even the usual distraction of radio or tape deck. In the back seat, I hold up the Life so the headlights from the cars behind us illuminate it. Some of the pages are torn, others curled and smudged as if the magazine’s been passed from person to person for weeks. The little square pictures are not of dads but of the dead. Twelve pages of small black-and-white photos of the 242 young men who died in Vietnam during one week last month. More than thirty dead each day. I squint at the faces, dreading the thought of finding Chris’s among them. But the light is too jumpy and fleeting, the pictures too small, the lingering hallucinations from the Windowpane too distracting.

Letting the magazine fall to my lap, I think about turning eighteen two months ago, then graduating from high school three weeks ago. Thanks to the Semi-Miraculous Transformation, I may have a body that places me in the category of mature young man, but I swear, ever since I graduated, there have been moments when I’ve felt less prepared for life than ever. Tonight was definitely one of them. Arno, Milton, and I were mere boys. Messing with a motorcycle gang? I tremble again thinking about it. Tonight was the first time in my life I truly felt the terrifying, bladder-emptying possibility of death. Those brief moments in that tunnel were both paralyzing and exhausting. Imagine being at war. Imagine having to endure that terror for months on end.

It’s not until after we’ve dropped Milton off at his house that I remember the tiny glass vial Clyde gave me. It’s about an inch long and the diameter of a pencil. I reach up and flick on the GTO’s inside light. The vial is about a third filled with white powder.

Arno sees it and beams like a little kid.

Sunday, July 13

3:47 a.m. The Windowpane’s mostly worn off, but not enough to allow for sleep. When I got home from the concert about an hour and a half ago, Chris’s latest letter was on my desk.

6/28/69

Dear Loogie,

You heard about getting into Goddard? I hope you did, man. Believe me, you DO NOT want to get sent over here, Loogs.