Author Matthew Heneghan

There’s something about being fourteen that makes you feel invincible and profoundly stupid — often at the same time. It’s that awkward age where you’re too old for mindless bike rides with buddies, and still too young for much of anything else.

It was the summer of ’97, and the heat was clinging to everything — the air, the trees, our skin. It was one of those warm British Columbia nights where even the mosquitoes couldn’t be bothered to bite because the sweat had already claimed every pore. Me, Drew, Ted, and Brock — we were four hormone-fueled idiots in the throes of adolescence and boredom, and that’s a concoction strong enough to burn through drywall.

One thing we were at the perfect age for — sleepovers!

My place was usually LZ Bravo; meaning that most times that’s where we’d end up. My mom never minded much… as long as I wasn’t bothering her, she didn’t care what I did. As long as it wasn’t illegal.

Which it wasn’t.

…Usually.

We pitched a tent in my backyard. Not because we were hardcore campers or had any reverence for the great outdoors. We just wanted to be away from our parents, close to the stars, and far enough from responsibility to press pause on the world and its teenaged chaos.

In the height of the afternoon, we found ourselves walking beneath the searing sun. A subtle hiss baked off the pavement and walking anywhere felt like a scene from an old western. But back then, back when we were fourteen, we could handle almost anything. Except maybe chores and boredom.

Like most times, we ended up at the wharf. The one thing our little town was famous for — it was less a structure and more a living relic of our abode. Reaching with curved wooden planks out onto the stillness of Shuswap Lake. This was the place for any rabble to be. Whether it was smoking cigarettes beneath a canopy of stars, ordering ice-cream from the little stand at the end, or, if you had access to enough funds, rent a houseboat and meander the contours of the lake like fingertips would navigate a lover’s thigh.

About half-way through our slushies and somewhere between debates about whether Amanda’s thong was a figment of our desperate imaginations or a true punishing eighth-grade miracle, we started talking about what we were going to do that evening. Each of us lobbying an idea that was shot down by someone else in the group as if this was a boardroom meeting and we were trying to decide the fate of the company. But then, Brock — the least likely of us to have a good idea — chimed in with a brilliant one.

Eggs! Mass quantities of them.

Now conversing like Navy Seals prone to random erections, we started discussing specifics:

“We’ll need a place to stash em”.

“There’s a bush by my place. No one ever walks back there; we can hide em there”. My words slid through a shit-eating grin.

“Awesome. We also need dark clothes — you know, to blend into the dark and shit”. Brock with another banger.

“I have tons of hoodies. I got you boys.” I confirmed.

Each of us playing quarterback at some time or another during the planning phase, we clapped hands and broke the huddle.

Before the sleepover began, we jogged — summer swelter be damned — down to the corner store. The guy behind the counter didn’t ask questions. Four teens, sweaty, out of breath, counting coins between us buying four dozen eggs on a blistering evening? This was the 90s. Nobody gave a shit unless you were smoking near the milk cooler or swiping fistfuls of the ten-cent candies.

After procuring our poultry arsenal, we stashed them in a bush beside my house — a plastic bag filled with carton upon carton, hidden like the shame of what we were about to do. None of us felt shame though. Not yet…

Midnight struck. We became chickens of the apocalypse. Donned in black and each of us wearing the musk of idiocy, it was go time.

We hit houses, mailboxes, church doors — yeah, churches. Even the Lord’s house got baptized in yolk that night. We were giggling like lunatics, high on rebellion and adolescent justice.

It was during an ammo — sorry, egg check — that we heard Brock stammer through some foliage proximal to us.

“Brock… you good? What’s wrong?” No answer. Just a sick giggle.

And before giving us any warning at all, he reared back and cocked his throwing arm. Like it was the last play of the final quarter of the Super Bowl and he was going long, that guy launched an absolute piss-missile through the darkness. I caught sight of it for a second as it passed beneath the amber of a street lamp. I followed it with my eyes the best I could, but before I could process anything else, I heard a tremendous wallop. Like a calcium carbonate window shattering, Brock had thrown an egg in what was likely one of his best tosses to date, directly at a passing car!

Big mistake.

This wasn’t some soccer mom in a Corolla. No. This was a black Civic packed with teenage testosterone and tribal tattoos in the making. The driver hit the brakes like he’d just caught his girlfriend cheating. The tires screeching in pain. Doors flung open. Voices barked like rottweilers. The hunt was on.

We scattered in varying directions. Drew and I managing to stay together.

I ran. Fast. Fast enough to taste blood in my throat. Ted dove into a hedge. Drew and I scaled a fence like our gym teacher, Mr. Lawson never believed we could. But Brock? Brock vanished. After we managed to evade detection, we regrouped a little ways away from my house in a small cluster of trees at the end of a cul-de-sac.

“Holy shit”. I wheezed. Ted and Drew concurred with a wheeze of their own.

No sign of Brock. We waited. Whispered. Waited more. Figured he was gone. Either caught and sacrificed to teenage rage, or worse — laying in a ditch somewhere, his last breath a whimpering cluck.

We talked among ourselves, trying to figure out, between breaths of worry, what to do. It was suggested, albeit ephemerally, that perhaps we should tell someone. Like my mom, or one of my older siblings, but this idea melted as fast as the beads of sweat from our brows.

Just as guilt started to settle in — and just as I was crafting the speech I’d give at his funeral — Drew suggested that we go back to my place, offer some lame excuse why we had to come inside, go up to my room and plan from there. Seemed as good an idea as any. We skulked back like lanky ninjas in the dark.

I felt a pang of nervousness upon opening the door. Once my mother had learned that we were going to be in the tent for the sleepover, she was overjoyed that she would not have to hear the cackling of adolescent boys, or smell our farts each time she passed my room to get to the bathroom.

I can’t blame her now that I type this all out.

Putting the unease aside for long enough to open the door and sneak inside, the three of us made our way to my room. But when reaching the top of the stairs, I noticed my door was closed and a spear of light was spilling out from beneath the door. Confused, I reached up and turned the handle. Opened the door and push in.

Brock!

Sitting there like a ghost, shirt torn, grinning like a man who’d outrun death.

He said he’d hidden in someone’s doghouse. Said the dog liked him. We asked why the hell he’d come back to my place and informed him that we’d spent the greater part of two-panic stricken hours searching for his remains. He said that we had been gone a while in a way that only Brock could say it.

He was playing videogames, waiting for us to come back inside. The crazy thing, during our manhunt for our fallen brother, we’d circled my place at least a half-dozen times. Idiot.

That night never made the paper. No cops were called. Nobody got grounded. Hell, our parents never even knew. It just became one of those stories — the kind you tell years later over drinks, shaking your head and smiling like a fool.

We were boys once. Reckless, dumb, arrogant with youth. The world was ours, and our currency was idiocy.

And Amanda’s thong? Yeah… it was real.