Ryan hasn’t had to spend much time thinking about where to take Avery next, because already they are running out of cool places in Kindling. If they’re not on the river or at Aunt Caitlin’s or in the Pancake Century Diner, there are very few places worth exploring. The Kindling Café is the one that’s left, but that’s where everyone is. He wants Avery to meet his friends, but not yet. He still wants them to be alone together, with no one watching, no one even noticing. This is Ryan’s relationship to this town: He doesn’t really want to leave any marks, and he wants Kindling to leave as few marks as possible on him. He knows he’s been defined by this town. And, of course, the more he’s tried to resist definition, the more they’ve defined him. But this—this time with Avery—needs to exist outside definition. Or, at the very least, he and Avery need to get a chance to define it themselves.
So he directs Avery to Mr. Footer’s, the old relic of a miniature golf course. It’s been closed for years now, but no one’s bought the land, so it sits in its abandoned state, nearly post-apocalyptic in its decay. There’s a lock on the gates, but the gates themselves have worn away in places, making it easy to come and go. At night it’s a breeding ground for stoners and crankheads, but during the day it’s graveyard quiet.
“Where exactly are you taking me?” Avery asks. Ryan has a flash of seeing the site through his eyes, and realizes this might be a mistake. But he doesn’t want to turn back now.
He tells Avery to park in front. “When I was a kid,” he explains, “this place was the best place around. Like, if you were really good and did all your chores, Mom and Dad would take you here. You’d play all the mini golf you could, and then there’d be ice cream and video games in the hut over there after.”
Avery takes it all in. “So what happened?”
Ryan shrugs. “One day it was here, and then the next day there was a sign saying it was over. It’s sat here ever since, abandoned.”
“And do you come here often?”
“Only with special people.”
“Oh, gee. I’m so flattered,” Avery deadpans. But in a way, he is flattered. Had Ryan driven over to Marigold, Avery would have been forced to take him to a T.G.I. Friday’s or a movie. This is definitely not that.
“Let’s go,” Ryan says. They leave the car and crawl through a gap in the gate. Inside, everything is broken. Toppled windmills, fetid moats, bottles left smashed and cans left crushed.
“Want to play?” Avery asks.
Ryan looks at the torn-up greens. The holes filled with cigarette butts.
“I’m not sure that will work,” he says. “There aren’t any clubs anymore. Or golf balls.”
“So?”
“So … it’s hard to play mini golf without those things.”
“Use your imagination,” Avery says, walking to the base of the first green and putting down an invisible ball. “This is the most amazing mini-golf course ever created. For example, this hole is patrolled by live alligators. If they swallow your ball, it’s three strokes. If they swallow you, it’s five.”
Avery takes an exaggerated swing with a nonexistent club, then makes a production of watching the ball soar into the air and drop to the green. “Comeoncomeoncomeon,” he murmurs. Then he sighs. “Not a hole in one, but at least I dodged the gators. Your turn.”
Ryan walks over and puts down his own invisible ball. “I hope you don’t mind that I took the pink one,” he says.
“I don’t mind at all.”
Ryan swings at the ball. They both watch it rise and fall.
“Not bad,” Avery says.
“At least I didn’t hit a gator.”
Ryan thinks Avery will stop then, will want to leave this desolate place. But he heads right over to where his ball is and makes the putt, then steps out of the way for Ryan’s turn. Ryan follows his lead, but misses the shot. He gets the next one in.
Avery makes a gesture of gathering the golf balls, then walks to the next hole.
“Your turn,” he says. “What’s the story?”
The story Ryan tells is that this green is riddled with troughs of chocolate; if your ball falls in, it will taste better, but will also slow you down. And actually, the golf ball is no longer a ball. It’s a golf-ball-size gobstopper.
The story Ryan feels is a different matter. The story Ryan feels is the one that’s being written with each minute, this confounding and enjoyable story of the two of them finding a good time in what he now sees is a remarkably dire place. He’s always appreciated how derelict it was, but that was when he was feeling pretty derelict himself. In the past couple of years, there was some catharsis in seeing his childhood so visibly trashed, as if there was some confirmation here about what growing up should feel like.
But with Avery, a little of that old wonder returns. Ryan plays along, and it’s a relief to be playing. By the fifth hole they’re not even golfing anymore; they’re just describing all the things they don’t really see. Avery erects the Taj Mahal on hole five, and Ryan presents the world’s first antigravity mini golf on hole six. At hole seven, they start walking hand in hand, surveyors of an imaginary landscape. Instead of solemnly holding hands, they swing them back and forth, stretch out and pull back together. The sun isn’t shining, but they don’t notice. If anyone were to ask them later, they’d swear that it was.
It is not as simple as Ryan looking at Avery and feeling they’ve known each other forever. In fact, it doesn’t feel like that at all. Ryan feels like he is just getting to know Avery, and that getting to know Avery isn’t going to be like getting to know anyone else he’s ever gotten to know.
There’s a wishing well in the middle of the ninth hole. This is not imaginary—it is sitting there, largely intact from its glory days. Avery reaches into his pocket and pulls out a penny.
“No,” Ryan finds himself saying. “Don’t.”
Avery shoots him a quizzical look. “Don’t?”
“I’ve thrown pennies in that well all my life. And not a single wish has ever come true.”
As a kid he wished for money or fame or toys or friends. More recent wishes were for so many other things, all of them synonymous with love or escape.
He worries he’s ruined it now, by suddenly being serious. That’s always been his problem, his inability to live in false worlds for that long.
Avery doesn’t ask him what he wished for. He doesn’t need to.
“Here,” he says. “Maybe you didn’t do it right.”
Avery takes the penny and moves it to Ryan’s lips. Ryan holds there, not really knowing what’s happening. Then Avery leans in and kisses him, kisses him so that they are both kissing the penny. When he pulls back, the penny falls, and he catches it in his palm.
“Now make a wish,” he says.
And Ryan thinks, I want to be happy.
“Got it?” Avery asks.
Ryan nods, and Avery tosses the penny into the well. They both listen, but neither hears it land. Then Avery returns to him, comes closer again, and now they are kissing with nothing between them. Lips closed, then lips open. Hands empty, then hands entwined.
A minute or two of this, then Avery pulls back and says, “We’re only half done!”
They walk, fingers still woven together, to the tenth hole.
“It’s a cloud,” Ryan says. “The whole thing is a cloud.”
They become so caught in their discussion of golfing within clouds that they don’t hear the footsteps, don’t hear the laughter coming their way. Then the voices are too loud to ignore.
Ryan turns and sees who’s coming.
“What?” Avery asks.
And Ryan says, “Oh shit.”
Harry is crying. He is in so much pain that he’s started to cry. His legs are seizing up, and his bladder feels like it’s full of rocks, and he isn’t choosing to cry, but his eyes are crying nonetheless. He’s lost control of them. He’s lost control of everything, except for his lips. All of the control that he has left, he has to put there. Even as his body is shouting surrender. Even as his mind is telling him there is no way to last another five hours.