Placebo 5 Dudes by Lacey Mitchell

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Nelson took a pill with dinner, had a second helping of green beans in butter with his pork chops and a single scoop of ice cream for dessert. Maggie and Horace felt pleased to think that the placebo had improved his appetite.

After dinner, Nelson met Carmody for a bike ride across the hills behind their subdivision where quiet roads helped one forget the busy city less than half a mile away all around them.

"This is probably going to be our last year as just campers, going to camp," said Carmody as they pedaled along Fireflower Drive.

"Huh?" said Nelson, thinking about something else. An algebra problem had got him wondering about how to figure the distance of stars and whether the width of the Earth's orbit would be wide enough to work a quadratic equation for the answer. He thought it might work for nearer stars but for ones really far away, you would have to figure some other way to calculate the distance.

"Next year, we'll probably have to sign up as counselors, you know?"

"Counselors?" said Nelson. "You're kidding, right? We're just kids." They rode on the grassy verge of the lane, watching out for debris like tree limbs and discarded tires.

"Not this year, next year, we'll be in high school, tenth graders, you know?"

"Uh, no. Counselors tell other younger kids what to do, right? I don't want to do that."

"I think it would be neat," said Carmody. He turned onto Crestline Drive, along the ridge toward a nearby hill.

Nelson followed, he liked this route, you could see lights on either side of the ridge, houses one way, including his and Carmody's and the freeway the other, across Quail Creek. And further off, the shopping mall on the edge of the city itself. That would be a long ride on a bike, he thought, but there were shops and a suburban downtown near their school going the other way.

He thought of something else. "Why aren't we checking out the tennis club tonight?"

"Ah," said Carmody. "They let guys play on Saturdays, I don't want to watch a bunch of guys hitting balls at my girls."

"Your girls?" Nelson snickered between puffs of breath needed to make the steeper incline leading up to the hill.

They took the bike lane turn-off and pedaled up to the overlook above the city. The lights stretched for miles, in the distance they could see the line of cars waiting to make the turn onto the twisty, hilly road to the coast. That also marked the corner of Safariland, on an early summer evening, probably a lot of people were headed there to drive their cars or take a tram through the fake savannahs and jungles of the largest open-air, private zoo west of the Rockies.

The boys parked their bikes together in the little bike rack in the overlook and walked down a slight incline to sit at opposite ends of a stone bench on another little apron of concrete. Not on the bench itself, but like they had in Nelson's backyard, they sat on the back of the bench with their feet on the seat. Amazingly, a wind brought them a hint of the ocean, miles away behind a line of mountains.

They didn't say anything for some time; it didn't seem necessary to talk. The light above the mountains west of them had begun to turn red-orange with a few clouds painted pink and purple and some gaps of the greenish sky that only showed itself shortly before twilight began.

Nelson felt something but he didn't know what he was feeling. He glanced at his friend. Carmody seemed absorbed in the scene, his eyes not quite wide open, his mouth not completely closed. For some reason, Carmody stood up on the seat, taking a deep breath. And for no reason he could comprehend, Nelson looked at Carmody's crotch, conveniently at eye-level.

The bulge there disconcerted him. Nelson knew about hard-ons, he'd begun waking up with them a few months before. And Carmody talked about them a little more than Nelson felt comfortable with. But just then, he had to know, so he asked. "What the hell are you thinking that's giving you wood, dude?" He stood up on the seat, too, putting his face level with his friend's.

"Camp," said Carmody without looking around.

"Camp," repeated Nelson.

Carmody nodded. "Yeah, we'll be there in camp, it's a co-ed camp. All those girls running around in their shorts and tees and sometimes, swimsuits. I am SO glad I am going, dude!"

Nelson had not expected that, though he didn't know just what he had expected. "You're nuts," he said.

"Dude," said Carmody.

"Dude," said Nelson.

"You mean thinking about girls wearing almost nothing doesn't do something for you?"

Nelson thought about it. "Well, maybe a little, but you're nuts."

"Dude, I'm normal," Carmody said. "I've read it in all the books about ad-low-scents, add-o-less-sense, adolescence. Guys our age are supposed to think about nekkid girls almost all the time!"

"Well, I don't," said Nelson. "I think about other things, too."

Carmody rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me you've been thinking about algebra."

Nelson grinned. "Sometimes I do, and yeah, on the way up here I was wondering if they used algebra to figure out how far away stars are."

His friend stared at him. "Dude, you're the one who is crazy-coo-coo-for-froot-loops-INSANE!"

Nelson laughed. "Dude!" he said.

"Dude!" said Carmody. "Dude, sometimes I think you're gay or something!"

"Then wouldn't I be thinking about naked guys? I don't, you know."

"No, you, you're queer for numbers! That's so perverted, dude!" said Carmody.

"Dude!" said Nelson.

"Dude!" said Carmody.

"Dude, if I am, it's lucky for you or you would be flunking math class," said Nelson.

"If I did, you would flunk English," said Carmody. "You don't know an adjective from a freckle on your left elbow!"

They traded "dudes" again.

"Freckle is an adjective," said Nelson, guessing.

"Dude, no, it's not!"

"You said adjectives were words that described something," Nelson complained.

"Dude, freckle is a noun, it names something," said Carmody. He digressed. "I saw a girl once, she had freckles on her tits."

"Caitlin Hill has freckles everywhere," said Nelson, mentioning a stautesque redhead in their class at school.

"No, but this girl only had them on her tits," said Carmody.

"How would you know, you didn't see her tits. Don't tell me you saw her tits, I'd know you were lying, dude."

"I saw enough of them, in her blouse, she had big ones and they had freckles. I'm telling you, dude! Big freckled titties all pushed together so they looked like the crack of her ass on her chest!"

More "dudes."

"That doesn't sound, I don't know, cute or nothing? It looked like she had an ass on her chest?" asked Nelson.

"Dude," said Carmody, "if you saw it – huh, well, if YOU saw it, you'd probably want to count the freckles." He thought about that for a second. "Actually, that would be fun, dude."

They both chuckled.

"You'd want to connect the dots," said Nelson. "See if it made a picture."

"Dude!" said Carmody. "Would I?" He laughed. "You bet I would, use a little wet-erase and lick it off!"

"Lick the ass she wears on her chest? Dude, that's sick!"

"Dude, you're sick!" said Carmody.

They fell silent for a bit, all duded out.

They watched the sky deepen in color and the clouds brighten. In early June it wouldn't get really dark until after nine o'clock, the sky show would run longer than a movie.

"I'd lick Cait Hill's ass, see if any of those freckles would come off on my tongue," said Carmody.

"Dude, you are sick," said Nelson.

"No," said Carmody. "I'm normal, you're the weird one. I bet if we asked everyone at school, nine out of ten guys would be willing to lick Cait Hill's butt, and probably one out of ten of the girls."

"Half the school?" said Nelson, looking doubtful.

"Huh?" Carmody had no idea that 90% of 50% plus 10% of 50% added up to exactly 50%. "Well, maybe not half, maybe there are more dweebs like you than I think," he said.

"Sure a lot of pervs, according to you," said Nelson.

"Dweeb!" said Carmody.

"Perv!" said Nelson.

They watched the sky some more. Two ravens chased each other around the crown of some trees lower down the hill. The smaller raven caught up to the larger and flew straight up, only to tuck its wings and fall in a spinning tumble from a hundred feet above the treetops almost to the ground before catching itself and gliding away.

"The small one is the dude," said Carmody. "He's showing off. Doing something that looks dangerous to impress his chick."

Nelson shook his head.

"No, really," said Carmody. "With birds, the chick is usually bigger if they look the same. If they look different, like ducks, then the dude is the bigger one."

"No shit?" said Nelson. "Huh?"

"No turds, no way," said Carmody. "I read it in a bird book."

"You read a lot," commented Nelson. "Dude," he added, to take the sting of the accusation off.

"With the right book," said Carmody, "I just look at the pictures." He tried to waggle his eyebrows but Nelson wasn't looking at him, anyway.

A hawk had appeared. A buzzard hawk, its red tail glowing in the light from the sunset. It glided above the freeway far below, using thermals to keep wing-flapping to a minimum.

"Watch," said Carmody. He pointed toward the ravens who had spotted the hawk, too. They spiraled up to meet it, making the rusty gate noise that identified them as ravens and not just large crows.

"That redtail is bigger than both of them together," commented Nelson.

Both boys had seen this before. The smaller raven flew at the hawk's face while the larger maneuvered to get above it. The big brown hawk ignored them. The small raven, the dude, dashed in again, even closer to the cruel hooked beak of the hawk – just as the raven chick fell out of the sky and bounced off the broad back of the bird of prey.

Disconcerted, the hawk seemed to stumble in midair, then dodged awkwardly as the raven dude again dived at the bigger bird's head. The she-raven struck at the hawk's red tail feathers and suddenly the big brown bird had had enough.

Flapping powerfully, the redtail climbed higher and soon began to outdistance the smaller birds who kept up the harassment as long as they could.

The two dudes on the hill laughed and laughed and laughed.