Thomas and Niko in the City of Trees by Kid Boise

He stays really still like that for a few more seconds, then stands and walks away. I peer through the netting and see him crouched in the dirt, staring back at me. I went to bed sort of drunk and I'm having trouble falling asleep, but I manage to fade in and out for a few hours.Īt some point in the middle of the night, I hear Thomas get up, unzip the front of the tent and crawl outside. He lays his sleeping bag down on the opposite side from me. At first, Thomas tries sleeping alone out under the stars, but twenty minutes later, he joins us inside the tent. It's rated for up to six, so there's plenty of room. Thomas never uses my full name unless he means it. One settles on the tan sleeve of his letterman's jacket and he brushes it off.įor a second, he's looking at me, too. Tiny red embers flick up into the night like fireflies. His face is distorted slightly through the heat and the smoke. The guys are going on about some baseball game that Thomas doesn't seem interested in. I hear them laughing under the back door of Markham's car. Lexie and Madison go with Chloe and the girl from Borah to mix more drinks.

'I said no gifts,' says Markham, laughing. 'A gift for the man of the hour,' Thomas says, presenting the skull to Markham. He hugs the skull to his puffed chest, stands over the fire and says, 'I am the king.' Garrett slumps back in his chair. Garrett goes after him, and I hear some muffled sounds of shouting and shoes scraping in the dirt fifty feet away. He says, 'Don't even get me started on that.' He's slurring up a storm. Lexie's voice grazes my ear as it passes: 'You're appropriating.' He's making some kind of tribal-sounding noise that he picked up from god knows where. He lifts it up over his head and dances around. After relieving himself, Garrett returns with a powder-white cow skull that he's holding at the jaw.

Just tuning in to the antics going on around this campfire seems to do the trick. Sometimes when I get extra high like this, I have the sense that I could fall fairly deep down the rabbit hole if I wasn't the type to rein it in at the last minute.

Thomas and Niko in the City of Trees by Kid Boise