Favorite

The dare is to jump from the garage roof into the above-ground pool, which is twelve feet away and four feet deep and has a crack in it that Denny's dad has been meaning to patch since June.

Trace does it first because Trace always does it first. He lands wrong and comes up holding his wrist and says it's fine before anyone asks.

Denny goes second. He lands in the center, clean, and when he surfaces he pushes his hair back and looks at Trace with an expression that is not quite a smile.

"Grandma would've loved that," Denny says.

Trace gets out of the pool. He walks to the garage. He climbs the ladder again.

"What are you doing," Denny says.

Trace jumps from the peak this time. He misses the pool entirely and lands on the lawn, which is dry and hard because it's August and Denny's dad hasn't watered it either. He lies there for a moment. A dog barks somewhere on the street.

"Good?" Denny says.

"Good," Trace says.

His wrist is definitely broken.

The nest is in the soffit of the old barn and has been there since before their grandfather died, which means it has been there for eleven years and is, according to Denny, structural at this point.

The dare is to stand underneath it for sixty seconds without moving.

Trace goes first. He stands with his arms at his sides and his eyes open and his jaw set. At forty seconds a bee lands on his collarbone and walks toward his ear and he does not move. At sixty seconds he steps away and says nothing.

Denny goes. At twenty seconds his left eye twitches. At forty-five he breaks and walks fast toward the fence, not running, which they both understand is worse than running.

"That's not sixty," Trace says.

"I know that."

"You want to go again."

Denny looks at the nest. "Grandma was allergic," he says. "She told me once. Just me."

Trace picks up a stick from the ground. It is a long stick. He looks at the nest and then at the stick and then at Denny.

"Don't," Denny says.

Trace throws it.

They run. They run through the fence and across the road and into the drainage ditch on the other side and they lie in the ditch breathing hard while the bees do what bees do when you throw a stick at their home.

After a while Denny says, "You got stung."

"I know," Trace says.

"A lot."

"I know."

They lie in the ditch. The sky is very blue. Neither of them says anything about who won.

The ladder has a lock on it, which Trace removes with a bolt cutter he borrowed from his mother's boyfriend without asking. The bolt cutter goes back in the truck before they start climbing because if they fall, Trace says, he doesn't want it to be his fault they had it.

Denny says that logic doesn't make sense.

Trace says a lot of things don't make sense.

They climb. It's higher than it looks from the road, which is something people say about water towers and which is always true. At the top there's a catwalk and a railing and a view of three counties, flat and pale in the October light.

The dare is to hang from the railing by your hands for thirty seconds.

Denny goes first this time. He grips the railing, lowers himself, and hangs with his sneakers over nothing. He counts out loud. He gets to thirty and pulls himself back up and sits on the catwalk with his hands between his knees.

Trace hangs for forty-five. He does not count out loud.

When he climbs back up Denny is looking at the horizon. "She kept a photo of me in her wallet," Denny says. "Not you. Me."

Trace sits down next to him. Below them the town is very small. A grain elevator. A water tower — this water tower. A Casey's.

"I know about the photo," Trace says.

Denny looks at him.

"It was from her work ID. She kept everyone's work IDs. She had a whole stack of them in a rubber band." Trace looks at the grain elevator. "She showed me once."

Denny doesn't say anything.

"Just me," Trace says.

The wind comes across the catwalk and they sit in it for a while and then they climb down.

The train comes through at 11:40 on weeknights. They know this because Denny's cousin on his father's side — which makes him not Trace's cousin, a fact Trace has mentioned — used to time it when he was in high school as a way of impressing girls, and it worked, which neither of them fully understands.

The dare is to lie between the rails while the train passes.

They stand at the tracks in the dark. The air smells like rust and something sweet from the co-op two miles east.

"This one could kill us," Denny says.

"The others could've killed us."

"This one definitely could."

Trace looks down the tracks. "So."

Denny looks down the tracks. A long time passes. An insect makes its noise.

"She told me you were difficult," Denny says. "As a baby. She said you cried all the time and nobody could figure out why."

"That's not the same as favorite."

"I'm not saying it is."

"Then why'd you say it."

Denny doesn't answer. In the distance, a light.

They look at each other. They look at the light. They look at each other again.

They do not lie between the rails.

They stand at the edge of the gravel and watch the train go by, and the wind it makes is enormous, and they lean into it without discussing it, and when it's gone they're still standing there in the sudden quiet with their hands in their pockets.

"Okay," Trace says.

"Okay," Denny says.

They walk back to the truck.

Nobody dares anybody. That's the thing.

Denny climbs the silo because he climbs it, and Trace follows because Trace follows, and by the time they're at the top they're both breathing hard and the sun is going down in the particular way it does in November, which is not beautiful exactly but is very serious.

The silo is empty. Has been for years. You can look down into it and see nothing and then slowly see the nothing resolve into a floor a long way down.

They look into it.

"If she had a favorite," Trace says, "it was probably Aunt Carol."

Denny laughs. It's the first time either of them has laughed in any of this, and it sounds strange out here, too loud.

"Carol wasn't even blood," Denny says.

"That's why," Trace says.

They stand at the top of the silo while the light goes. Below them the farm is dark and quiet. Somewhere in the house their mothers are arguing about the estate, which has been in probate for two years and contains, so far as anyone can tell, nothing of value.

Trace's wrist aches in the cold. It healed wrong. He never had it looked at.

"You want to climb down," Denny says.

"Yeah," Trace says.

They climb down.