I SUSPECT SHE WANTED TO GO WITH ME for the same reason I wanted to go with her: curiosity. I wondered, riding slightly ahead of her, how exactly Macy Grimes did it, the whole perfect girl thing, how she fit her hips into those little terry-cloth jogging shorts, how she kept her long blonde hair from ratting, and how she emanated a true naïveté and brilliance, both of which I wanted to distort.

To her, I knew I was the other, the antithesis, a collage of misidentity and depression. I did sometimes wear a cape to Honors English; I did own plastic black horns that I wore in months other than October down the open walkways of Western Illinois University, past the gawking footballers and sorority-girl clusters. And I wasn't even given the grace of denial about it. I knew I did it for attention, for the distraction and raucousness it caused among those playing their parts so well. I wanted my own part, and then realized when I'd gone and written it, it too was its own cliché. But it had allowed me an afternoon with the ever-angelic Macy, who despite the Mickey Mouse Club demeanor, was a damn good articulator of Heathcliff's psyche in Wuthering Heights.

Panting, her white knees bobbing up and down, she caught up beside me.

"So, are you a lesbian?"

I coughed and held my cape closer. "Do you want me to be?"

"I am not a lesbian hoping you are, if that's what you mean. I guess, I just wondered, as you know others do, because you seem to have taken such a liking to Dr. Spencer, I mean, an unusual attraction. And then, of course, there's your boyish clothing and your aversion to men. Well, and the horns." She coughed then.

"Aren't you the observant one." I had developed a juvenile crush on Dr. Spencer, simply for her sheer knowledge of British Literature and her bare bones approach—no makeup, no style, only plain black skirts and dress suits and straight hair.

"I'm not really sure, Macy." I slowed my pace at the bend in the road.

"That's big of you to admit—uncertainty."

I stopped my bike in front of an abandoned warehouse. Back beyond the forests surrounding WIU, there were old train yards, wonderful places of havoc and anarchy. At least that's how I imagined them. There had been many letters to the editor and city council meetings to obliterate the remains of the remains, all to no effect. The property belonged to no one, not the university, not the city.

"This is creepy."

"I know." I let out my kickstand and peered into the dark insides of the building. It had been boarded up and re-boarded up so many times, the nails in the wood couldn't be counted. Still, vagabonds had broken in, unfastened the division and spray painted unintelligent markings all across the outside. I understood that need and ran my hand along the writing. The need to claim existence.

"I dare you to go in there." I pointed into the darkness, the opening a small window.

"Have you been in there?"

I was no liar. "No."

This seemed to make the request more attractive to Macy, who even now, hands on hips and legs curved slightly in as she stood, looked more female to me than anyone ever had.

"All right. But promise me you'll come after me if I scream."

"Promise."

I helped her up by making a foothold out of my hands. She stood on the ledge for a brief moment. She stood on the edge.

"You've got to be careful in here. There's a big hole that goes far below into a pit of trash. I'd break a leg if I fell in there. But I can walk if I jump to the left."

"What do you see? Just liquor bottles and stuff?"

Her body disappeared into the mouth of the window, too high for me to see.

I waited a while and then grew nervous. The ancient trains sagged on their rusted wheels, and the late summer evening wrapped around me.

"Macy?"

I heard her then. It sounded like she was crying. I thought about leaving. I'd heard stories of what went on out here, drug deals and sexual misdemeanors.

"He's so beautiful," she said. "He's on a bed, all in white, in the middle of the trash and filth and stench. I think it's Jesus. Come see."

I climbed up the jagged bricks jutting out from the building, trying not to scrape my knees or tear my cape. At the top, I still couldn't see her, only the gaping hole to the left of the ledge and then the darkness. I was going to leave her. I couldn't jump down there. I was afraid. Then a warm hand on the small of my back pushed me. I was falling through the hole.


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