She smiled at me, and I knew I would do anything she asked. She flipped a lock of her soft brown hair behind an ear and smiled still more radiantly, more beautifully than I had imagined possible, and I knew that what she was about to ask would be, at the very least, distasteful ...

Once I traveled from the rock strewn hills of the Missouri Ozarks down into the Arkansas mountains and across to the Delta of the great Mississippi River. Our car carried us across to Memphis, to Beale Street where the music never stopped and to Elvis Presley’s estate of Graceland. It sounds strange now but we rode a bus from the center across the street to the mansion and that night we stayed in a hotel so near that we could stand on the balcony and see Graceland ...

When Gordie first said he was gonna do it, I didn't believe him. He was always like that, saying he was gonna do a thing and then not, and I guess I figured him being thirteen and a year younger than me, he wouldn't have the nerve.