“Just made her pee her pants a little,” Kai added.

I bit back my smile just as Scott tapped on my glass.

I rolled down the window and flicked the butt of my cigarette out onto the highway, missing him by just a hair.

He stopped, turning his eyes toward the cigarette burning its last embers and back to me, flashing his light inside.

“Here to see that picture of me again?” I teased.

But he wasn’t laughing. “License and registration, please.”

I hesitated a moment for good measure, and then reached into the console, pulling out my registration and insurance card holder, and then my license out of my wallet.

I handed him both. “I promise you, they haven’t changed since last week, Scott.”

He didn’t seem to hear me as he flashed his light on my license like he hadn’t seen it a dozen times in the past three months, and then my registration and insurance as if he didn’t already know that they don’t expire until my next birthday.

“You know how fast you were going?” he asked, studying my insurance card.

“It wasn’t fast.”

“Have you been drinking?” he inquired, unfazed.

“No.”

He paused, still looking over my material. “You on drugs?”

“Sometimes,” I replied.

Damon snorted, and Michael cleared his throat to cover up his laugh.

Scott straightened and took a step back, looking down on me. “Step out. I want to look around the truck.”

And I couldn’t stop myself. “Well, my glove compartment is locked, so is the trunk in the back, And I know my rights, so you go’n need a warrant for that,” I sang.

Everyone started laughing, Damon shaking next to me, and Kai hunching over in my rearview mirror, his head in his hands to cover it up.

I always loved that Jay-Z song. At least I was good for a few laughs.

Officer Scott looked down at me, chewing the inside of his lip like he’d just love to have a reason. This was the kind of guy who would discharge his weapon on someone, claiming the cell phone in their hand looked like a gun.

The laughter calmed down, and I turned my eyes on him again.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m an idiot.”

I bid him to come closer, softening my voice.

“I know how you see me,” I said. “Ignorant, arrogant, frivolous… I want to be good. Honestly. Goal-oriented, a hard worker, honest, righteous…” I paused. “Like Emory. Your sister, right?”

He narrowed his eyes on me, and I could see his shoulders tense.

“You know,” I continued, “it’s amazing that given the years your family has been in Thunder Bay, I don’t know her as well as I’d like.” I turned to my friends. “You hear that, guys? A girl I don’t know.”

Some laughter went off inside the truck.

I turned back to him, seeing the threat start to register.

We were starting to understand each other.

“All the hours we walk the halls together at school,” I taunted. “All the hours on that bus to away games and back. All the late nights at basketball practice and her at band practice.”

“Plenty of time to get to know someone,” Kai added. “Turner didn’t even need five minutes to get Evie Lind pregnant.”

“Some of us have better longevity,” I joked over my shoulder.

“We know you do.” Michael patted my shoulder.

Hell yes, I do.

I turned my gaze back on Scott, seeing the corners of his eyes start to crinkle in a glare.

I hooded my own. “I promise you…” I growled low, “however much you don’t like me, there is still so much more to come if you don’t…” I pulled my license and card holder out of his hand, whispering, “stop pulling me over.”

I was normally a happy boy, but his hard-on for me was fucking with my patience. He didn’t pull over Michael, Damon, or Kai constantly. He messed with me because he assumed I didn’t have a brain.

They thought that because I liked being nice, that I didn’t know how to be mean.

And believe me, I was capable.

Snatching my keys from Damon’s hand, I started the truck, cast Scott one last look, and took off, pulling back onto the road and cranking up the music as the wind blew through the cab.

“Be careful,” Michael said after a minute. “That was entertaining and all, but men like him are short-sighted. I don’t think he’s going to have the sense to stop. Watch for his next move.”

“Fuck him.” I fisted the steering wheel. “What the hell’s he going to do to me?”

No one said anything more as we pulled up the drive and through the open gates of the cemetery. My interest in Emory Scott had nothing to do with her brother, sadly. I wish it were that easy.

But I wasn’t averse to killing two birds with one stone, either. How much would he lose his mind if he couldn’t find her one night, and then found her with me?

The thought made me smile.

Winding around the avenues, I spotted cars ahead and flashlights and headed toward them, pulling up behind Bryce’s black Camaro.

We hopped out of the truck, Michael and Kai grabbing a cooler out of the back and all of us walking over the grass, past trees and hedges, and up to the rest of the team already gathered around the grave.

“Hey, man,” I greeted Simon and tipped my chin at the others.

More “heys” went off around the circle, and Michael and Kai set down the cooler, some of the team immediately digging in for a beer.

I looked down. “What the hell?”

Marker flags were stuck in the ground, lining the grass-covered gravesite, making a rectangle the width and length of a casket.

“They’re digging him up,” Bryce said, cracking a beer. “They’re actually doing it.”

I glanced over my shoulder, frowning at the newly finished, brand-new, piece of shit McClanahan tomb, complete with the arrogant columns and pompous stained-glass windows.

“He wouldn’t want this,” Damon said.

I looked back down at Edward McClanahan’s grave, the old marble headstone green with age, rain, and snow, the years of his life barely visible anymore. But we knew his age. Nineteen thirty-six to nineteen fifty-four.

Eighteen. Young, just like us.

He’d be eighteen forever.

His surviving relatives wanted his legend to die, and the notoriety of the family name with it, so they built themselves a tomb, thinking they were going to hide him behind stone walls and a gate.

“They’re not moving him anywhere,” I said.

Michael caught my eye, a knowing smile curling his lips. Pulling the cell phone out of my pocket, I turned it on and started recording, documenting our annual pilgrimage to McClanahan’s grave every year since freshman year.

Damon threw me a beer, and the rest of us cracked ours open.

“To McClanahan,” Michael called out.

“McClanahan,” everyone joined in, raising our cans in the air.

“The first Horseman,” Damon chimed in.

“Give us the season,” another said.

Michael, our team’s captain, looked around. “Offerings?” he teased.

Jeremy Owens reached behind him on the ground and whipped out a pink tulle dress with a cheap silky bodice. It looked like a ballet costume.