The only Michigan-related thing he had known about, until very recently, was the Mackinac Bridge.

He had read about it in a book about the great bridges of history. It had been a feature of the library at his primary school, a large neutral-coloured volume with an expensive-looking jacket.

There had been only one photo of the of the bridge, an evocative shot taken at dusk at some point around the turn of the century, the broad span tapering into the peach-tinged sunset.

The sunset he was currently staring into was almost the exact same shade of pink, shifting into blue.

The Mackinac Bridge had been completed in 1957. That made it 61 years old this year. He hadn't heard of any structural problems, but it was getting old.

He had read an article that stated that two-thirds of bridges in America were overdue for replacement. He imagined the quiet creaking of thousand upon thousands of bridges, spread out across the land.

It made him anxious.

Surely Eli Goldman, bless his soul, would not lose sleep of the state of the public infrastructure of his country.

But what if he did?

***

He always tried hard to keep his stories simple. Then he inevitably started to cram more and more details in, and then they became bloated messes.

At least he'd managed to finish it this time, in longhand, in the neat cursive that had netted him a pen license a full year before his elementary school classmates. But now the notebook in which it was contained was burning a hole in his pocket.

He broke off his impromptu daydream and surveyed his immediate surroundings. It looked like a stereotypical summer camp. Wooden cabins set in forest, looking out onto a lake. Framed by the aforementioned sunset, it almost looked like a Thomas Kinkade painting.

It sounded like there was something going on in the main hall. He couldn't care less.

He wished this was one of the school camping trips back home, where everyone had to carry their own food and cook dinner on little stoves that ran on methylated spirits. People got along when they were equally wet and cold and miserable and far away from their friends.

This was too cozy. This was too easy. Too much wiggling room.

***

It had started with the long phone calls. Whenever his mother started racking up a giant phone bill, it never boded well for him, or any of his siblings.

As it transpired, a majority of these telephone conversations had been with one of her closest friends and a frequent dinner guest, over the subject of her son's supposedly great summer camp experience in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan the year before. It had changed his life. Or something like that.

When the son and his family were inevitably invited over for dinner, It was obvious that he had indeed changed, but maybe not in the way his mother had described. He was sullen where he had been talkative before, and they had barely made eye contact for the three hours they were under the same roof.

When prompted by his mother to talk about his experience, he had mumbled a few semi-coherent sentences, stood up from the dinner table, and disappeared into the bathroom.

He had left his food untouched.

Nevertheless his mum had already been won over. She had grown up in the Midwest. This was essentially a vicarious nostalgia trip for her.

***

On the first day he had been introduced to the people he was going to be spending the rest of the camp with. He had immediately picked out the ringleader, a tall girl with frizzy long brown hair and pale blue eyes, standing with a group of her friends.

Ringleader. He sounded like an old person peering voyeuristically into the world of modern adolescence.

She almost immediately noticed him. "You must be new."

Here comes trouble.  

"Yeah...I guess."

"I'm Stephanie." He had already decided that he disliked her voice. "You've got a weird accent. Are you Australian?"

"No. I'm from Zirconia."

"Where?"

"Zirconia." Someone sniggered behind her.

"I'm sorry, but that's not a real country." He wanted to wipe the smirk off her face.

"Yes, it is." He looked around the room for a globe, a world map, anything that could help her.

On the lower shelves of a bookcase, in a corner of the room, a globe. He breathed a sigh. "There. It's on the globe."

They crowded around the globe. She glanced over it. "I don't see a country called Zirconia."

"There." He pointed at an island in the Atlantic, midway between Newfoundland and Portugal, some way northwest of the Azores.

"That says New Carinthia," her stupid smirk widened. "That's not a real country either."

This was really wearing his patience thin, but he resisted the urge to lose control. "That's the name of the island." He pointed to the western coast of the island. "And there's Zirconia."

"I'm sorry. But that's not a real island."

"What do you mean? I live there."

She smiled, as if she knew something he didn't. "No, you don't. You can't. It's a paper island. It's a fake island they put on maps to catch out counterfeiters. Don't you know?" Her smirk widened even further.

Her minions were giggling behind her.

He stood his ground. "I think you're talking about paper towns. They wouldn't put something as obvious as a big island."

She rolled her eyes, like he was stupid for thinking that, or something. "Of course they would." She turned and walked away, her entourage in tow.

He put the globe back on the bookshelf.

***

That set the tone for the rest of the week. He tried to stay out of her way most of the time, staying in his cabin whenever possible, jotting away at his notebook.

The others were not particularly welcoming either. His cabinmate was a bespectacled fellow who mostly seemed to spend most of his free time in the main hall, only coming back for sleep and to organise his things. They had maybe made eye contact three times since he'd arrived. For some reason, Stephanie never seemed to bother him.

***

Right at this moment, his most pressing concern was a title. He flipped to a blank page, the last blank page.

He wrote down Lab Partners and almost instantly crossed it out. That didn't sound right. Partners In Crime? Too generic.

What about an obscure song reference absolutely nobody would get?

Major Dudes? That might work. Hold that thought. Razor Boy? Better not have drug references. Child Lost In Time? That didn't fit. What A Shame About Me? Too vague. Stardust Galaxies? That sounded like something for the sequel.

He could hear the sound of guitar drifting over from the neighbouring cabin. Stephanie was apparently quite the musician. It sounded like she was singing as well. He didn't recognise the song. Some Billboard Top 40 number. Not his thing.

He blocked out the music and visualised, as he had many times before, a late model white Mazda 6 sedan, alloys patinated with brake dust and curb rash, driving along the main road of a nondescript American small town. It worked. It fitted into the picture just fine. But was there a better option?

Mustang? That would be too cliche. The bad boy vibes were too strong. Unless it was an early-model Fox body, with Jack Telnack's clean lines, before the Taurus-inspired aero facelift ruined it. That could work.

But it was too old. And Jordan didn't seem like the kind of dude who would work on his own car. Or know what a Fox Mustang was.

Miata is always the answer.

He laughed out loud at that. No. Just no.

Citroën. Just do it. Hydropneumatic suspension and anti-dive geometry for the win.

Stop...

Come on, man. You know you want to. If it ain't Michelin-era Citroën it ain't interesting-

He mentally manhandled the rogue thought into a locker deep inside his mind and threw away the key.

Mazda 6 it was, then. Cruising down Main Street, Nowhereville, Froy Gutierrez lookalike soccer whiz at the wheel.

But would Froy look good in a Mazda? Was he at one with Zoroastrian god of light?

The door opened. Startled, he quickly shoved the notebook under the sheets.

It was Stephanie, her brunette curls poking into the doorway.

He felt his gut tighten.

"What are you writing?" She asked. Her voice was soft. There was an almost insecure edge to it.

"None of your business."

"Show me. It's okay."

"How do you even know I write? And what are you doing here?"

She entered the room and sat down on his bed next to him. She gave him an odd look, as if she was letting him in on a big secret. "Not a lot of people know this, but... I'm a writer, too."

He found himself staring into her eyes. They were translucent eggshell-blue. He had never seen a shade of blue like that. 

"Why are you telling me this?" He was still confused. "Aren't you meant to hate me?"

She brushed off the question, changing the subject. "What do you like write about?"

***

The next evening, it was full moon. There was some kind of party going on in the main hall. He could hear it from the bathroom block.

He stood in front of the sink. It was quiet, except for the distant noise of the party, the fluorescent strip flickering and humming overhead, and the buzz of the moths in orbit above.

He looked in the mirror. His dirty-blond fringe was a few millimetres off impacting his eyesight. His acne was flaring up.

He stared intently into his eyes. There were veins of yellow in the dull green. If he concentrated hard enough he swore he could see them pulsating.

He tried to drown out out the roaring in his mind.

This was what his parents referred to, simply, as it.

He knew he was different, but it had never factored into it. Back home he was surrounded by people who were also affected by it, so it didn't really matter. But now these were different people around him. Now he was a fish out of water.

Or more accurately, a wolf out of... the steppes?

He pulled the familiar yellow packet out of his pocket. He read the contents of the label, under the dim glow. He already knew them off by heart, but reading them again always helped to calm him down.

Lupinex Ultra Rapid 24. Fast-acting relief for 24 hours. Each tablet contains: Aconitine 0.5 mg, Diazepam 1.5 mg. Side effects can include vomiting, diarrhoea, sweating and shortness of breath. Dosage: 1-2 pills per month. Do not take more than 2 pills at a time, more than once a month. Store below 30 degrees Celsius.

He broke two pills out of the blister pack and swallowed them dry. They were bitter, but the aftertaste went away after a few swallows.

He took a deep breath and felt the uneasy feeling go away, as it had dozens of times before. He looked at his eyes in the mirror again. The yellow was gone.

Well, that was over and done with.

He pulled out his notebook.

He couldn't look at what he'd written. His handwriting was too neat, too legible. He wanted to be one of those people with doctors' handwriting, so having to face what he had written would be a little less daunting.

The whole thing, as far as he was concerned, needed more fleshing out. It felt like an empty shell of sass and cuteness. He hadn't even assigned a name to the town yet. Or the high school.

Just call it Stoneybrook, Connecticut. Nobody will even get the reference.

Holly did have somewhat of a Kristy Thomas streak, he had to admit.

He had just plain made up a lot of details. He had never even had pizza rolls. He'd only heard of them from the Tim and Eric commercial for Totino's. What if the agent who received his future query was some pizza fanatic who would, in lieu of an actual rejection letter, leave a rage-essay regarding the representation of Italian-American food in LGBT-themed contemporary young adult fiction? Or worse, what if some born-and-bred Neapolitan stumbled on his story?

He liked Tim and Eric. What if Eli and Jordan were more like that? What if they had long stichomythic conversations about testicle implants? What if they tried to order a dark pizza from Antonio?

What about other stuff? What if they had a spice between them that was sort of an inside joke, like cardamom but more American? Like... Sassafras?

Hang on, that was carcinogenic, wasn't it? That wouldn't work.

Hold on. Ranch dressing.

Bingo.

And he hadn't even said anything particularly specific about Jordan's soccer career yet. He should know about soccer, he'd played for almost 10 years. His dad had forced him into it. He'd only quit last summer.

He knew about this stuff, dammit. He had no excuse.

Pulling out a pen, he wrote Tim and Eric and Ranch Dressing in the margins of the notebook in the smallest print he could muster. He also wrote Real Madrid and George Best and Bruce Grobbelaar.

When he got home, he was going to type all of this up onto the laptop. And he would edit from there.

***

The rest of the camp went quickly. The little notes in the margins grew and grew. He was going to have a lot on his hands when he got home.

He and Stephanie still avoided each other in public, but in his cabin in the evenings, once the coast was clear, they would meet up and talk.

They talked mostly about writing. As it turned out, she was into the same thing he was into. She'd read all the most popular books, she'd watched all the movies, she'd watched Season 3 of Skam, she knew all the dialogue off by heart.

She really wanted to write her own. Once she was finished, she was going to publish it anonymously online. She definitely didn't want her friends finding out. No surprises there. But she hadn't the faintest clue where or how to get started.

He had reassured her that it would come to her, sooner or later.

***

The boarding call came. Flight AZ2121. Detroit Metro to Ruth Gray International. Soon he would be home. And then he could type the story up, and do all the editing he had promised himself he would do.

He had decided that the town would be called Carinbrook. Carinbrook High School. That had a nice ring to it.

He suddenly realised there was no bulge in his left pocket. In all the excitement of preparing to go home, he'd momentarily forgotten about his precious notebook. He felt his heartbeat quicken.

Calm down, he told himself. You're probably just panicking for no reason. It's probably in your backpack.

He needed to know that it was in the backpack, right now. Doing a search would probably make him a little late for boarding, but that didn't matter.

He put his hand into the compartment where it usually went. Nothing. He went through the entire backpack. Still no notebook.

When was the last time he'd seen it?

He came to the sudden realisation that he had no recollection of packing the notebook. He could remember packing everything else, but not the book.

This is the last boarding call for flight AZ2121 to Canterbury.

He had no proof, but he knew it in his bones. That two-faced-

Boarding for Flight AZ2121 to Canterbury will close in one minute. Could all remaining passengers immediately make their way to Gate D22.

He felt the dread set in, like a sledgehammer blow to the gut, the blood draining from his face.

Mr Andrew Goldmann, could you please immediately make your way to Gate D22?

Mr Andrew Goldmann, please make your way to Gate D22 as soon as possible.

Mr Andrew Goldmann?