The first week of August. Heat to the extreme. Summer school over. Me and Dylan talking about gearing up at Sloppy Soldiers. I hadn't talked to Adam in over seven days. It was weird, but then again, it wasn't. Dylan and I had a lot more to joke around about than we thought. By the time school was out for the last month of the tortuous summer, we were acting like we'd been friends all along. We even laughed about the mean stuff he'd done to me over the past few years. I didn't even care about it. None of it bothered me anymore.

Dylan had never been paintballing before, so I was real excited to show it to him. It's always fun to play with someone who doesn't even know how to work their gun; you always win. I hadn't been to Sloppy Soldiers in a long time, since the beginning of the summer when Adam and I had gone to let off some bad-day attitude. Adam was probably overdue for some Sloppy Soldiers action. He acted like every day was a bad day, and he was definitely full of negative attitude. But I didn't even ask him to come. I knew he'd be rude about it and say no anyway.

My mom was so happy to see me get out and do something active that she offered to drive me and Dylan. She'd never driven me and Adam when we wanted to go. Of course, we hardly ever asked her. Troy McDermott had a cooler car than my mom even though it was junky (a minivan just didn't cut it for coolness), so we always went with him. I couldn't go to Troy on my own, though. That would've been weird. Adam knew him better than I did, so I would've felt stupid going up to him and asking if he'd give me and Dylan a ride.

At first, I thought Dylan might not want a ride. Like, it would bother him because it wasn't cool or something. He was a lot more willing for my mom to drive us than I'd thought he'd be, though. I mean, he was totally excited. He liked my family, he told me more than once. I supposed that was only because he didn't really have one of his own besides his old nutty grandma. Whatever it was, it didn't matter. We got a ride to Sloppy Soldiers. However, I realized that there was one drawback to the free ride when Corey jumped out of the car behind us and my mom called, "All right, I'll pick you three up around four!"

Then I saw what they'd been trying to do. My mom and Corey had tricked me. Before I could complain, my brother swung the car door shut and mom was driving off. Dylan and I were stuck with my obnoxious brother for an entire afternoon. I didn't know if I could take it.

"Yes!" Corey cried. "This is my first time here! You've got to show me how to do it all, Cole."

"I'm not showing you anything," I muttered, leading the way toward the supply shack.

"Yeah, Corky," added Dylan. "Corky" was what he called Corey, for some reason. "He's got to be showing me everything."

Corey didn't talk back to Dylan. He didn't care if the leprechaun teased him. But he did get mad if I did. "That's not fair, Cole," he whined. "I'll tell mom if you don't help me."

"Nothing's fair," I called back to him. "So get over it." Something rattled in my brain. I'd heard those words before. I hadn't just come up with them on my own. It struck me that Adam had been the one to say that to me when I'd gotten mad about his sneak-attack. Whatever. I wasn't going to sit around and feel bad for not talking to him in practically a week. It was his fault for being so gloomy.

Dylan and I started talking as Corey continued to complain. It was weird how Dylan was. Even Adam, who I'd known forever, didn't feel comfortable teasing my little brother. Maybe that was because Adam never cared enough to bother with Corey. And Dylan—well, he was used to teasing (mainly me) so he was already pretty good at it. He wasn't mean to Corey, not really, and I have to admit I didn't mind hearing someone else come down on my brother. Still, when I thought about it, I was surprised at how casual Dylan was, acting like he was the one related to Corey.

"Now here's what you've got to focus on the most," I began to explain as we started piling on our suits. I talked quietly so Corey couldn't hear me. "Keeping hidden. You've got to stay out of sight. If you even have your foot sticking out, someone could shoot it. And your gun—well, for beginners, good defense is better than good offense. You can hit every target out there, but if you kill yourself in the process, what's the point, you know?"

"Yeah, ok." Dylan wasn't really listening to what I was saying; he was too busy trying to figure out his face mask. "We have to wear these things?" He strapped it on weirdly, with the goggles over his chin instead of his eyes.

I went over to him and adjusted his mask before pulling on mine. "Paintballs can bust your eye if they hit hard."

"Then can you help me, Cole?" cried Corey in a genuinely nervous voice. The brother in me couldn't help but make sure his mask was on tight.

Dylan shifted his weight from foot to foot and held his hands out, fingers curling like claws. "Cole, Corky—I am Darth Vader!" he said in a low voice. Then he breathed real loud like Vader would.

"Hey! I have an idea!" cried Corey kind of suddenly.

I didn't want to hear it, but he'd talked so loudly that I couldn't really avoid listening.

"I want to play on my own team. Instead of you against me and Dylan, Cole, how about me against the two of you? Come on!"

Now I was totally listening. How could he possibly want to be against me and Dylan combined? With my experience and Dylan's aggression, there was no way Corey would win. "Are you sure about that?" I asked him, trying to be nice and let him rethink his decision.

"Yeah. Positive. I've got good moves in me. I can handle it! Plus, I'm small. I can hide better than you. If I had another team member, I would probably just get in their way."

That was true. Corey would definitely get in the way. More happy than I wanted to let on, I said, "Fine. Whatever. Dylan and I will be green. You be red."

We trooped out into the trees after I'd shown Corey how to load and shoot his gun. I'd left out details about aiming because I didn't exactly want him to know how to hit us even if he did see us (which I was certain he wouldn't). Plus, I just wanted to play. I didn't want to sit around and wait any more. The rush was in me to get out into those woods and start acting like a warrior. I'm not sure if Dylan felt the same way, but I didn't care. This was my favorite thing in the world to do; it made me feel closer to something inside me, some nature or animal instinct.

Right when we got to the designated area, Corey split. He was off into the woods like a rabbit. He was pretty quick, actually, and for a minute, it worried me. Then I realized he knew nothing about aiming and hardly anything about shooting. He'd never used a paintball gun at all, so what did I have to worry about? Besides, he was all alone. Even if Dylan stunk at paintball, he was an extra person. Corey could shoot at him all he wanted. Maybe that would keep his mind off getting me. Actually, I was pretty confident that I'd have Corey on the ground the first time I spotted him in those woods. He might have been small and able to hide easily, but I was the expert among the three of us. There was no doubt in my mind that I'd show him I knew my stuff.

We were about twenty feet into the trees. They were scraggly, for as summery as the month was, and that made it harder to stay hidden. The colors of the trunks matched our suits pretty well, though, so we didn't stand out too much. I looked from side to side for Corey, but there was no finding him. He was probably lying on the ground or behind a bush. I didn't care just yet.

I backed Dylan and myself up against the thickest tree I could find, reminding him to try to keep his footsteps quiet. That wasn't too hard. All the leftover leaves that Adam and I had found problems with at the beginning of the summer had pretty much rotted into the ground by then. I motioned for Dylan to remove his mouthpiece like I had so we could talk. "Now listen," I said in a near-whisper. "Let me tell you about time locations."

"About what?" asked Dylan.

"Time locations. This whole game's about timing. Are you good with clocks?"

He raised an eyebrow in thought. "Digital ones," he admitted. "The other ones still confuse me a little."

"I thought you were smarter than you looked; that's what your story said."

"Yeah? Well, I like math. I can already do calculus. So maybe that's what it meant."

I made a face. "You can do that sort of math, but you don't know how to tell time?"

"It's like, dyslexia or something. All those numbers in a circle make my brain hurt. I don't know—who cares? I just get all digital clocks."

Real quick, I could see that he wasn't going to get the location thing. But I tried anyway, hoping to move away from the topic of clocks and actually give him a more physical description. "All right," I tried again. "Just listen. The way we communicate where enemies are is through time location. Like, I'll say, 'Gunman at twelve o-clock!' and you have to kind of know where he is so it helps you get away from him, or so you can shoot at him."

"Ok . . . but where's twelve o'clock?"

"Right in front of you. Then three o'clock is directly right, six o'clock is behind you, and nine o'clock is to your left. Now, I might say, like, 'Gunman at two o'clock!' That would mean a little to your left. Like, not all the way to three o'clock, but farther than one o'clock. Get it?"

The look on his face told me he was beyond a little confused.

Sighing, I said, "Look. It's not so hard. It's like there's a big clock lying flat on the ground and you're the hour hand."

"What about the minute hand?"

"Just ignore that one."

"The little red one that goes real fast?"

"The second hand? Ignore that too. You aren't either one of those."

"So I'm the hour hand?"

"Yeah. And—"

"Hang on!" he interrupted me. "Who's the one that's the clock? If you're yelling out a time to me, how do I know it's my two o'clock and not your two o'clock? Because you could be facing a totally different direction than me. You know, like my two o'clock is really your seven-thirty or something."

"Don't start throwing in half hours. That will confuse you too much."

"Ok. My two o'clock is your seven o'clock. How do we figure that out?"

I slumped my shoulders, getting tired of explaining it to him. "It's not that hard! You're making it too difficult. Why would I call out where the gunman is around me? I'd already know! I tell you if he's around you so you don't get shot. And you tell me if he's around me so I don't get shot."

Dylan shook his head like he was hoping the pieces of what I'd said would somehow fit together on their own. For a split second I imagined his thoughts as if they were one big puzzle that had kind of come apart. Then he held out his hand to stop me from going on. "I'll try, Cole, but I don't know. That's some weird stuff you're talking."

We got quiet. There wasn't really anything to hear. The woods were big, and there were sections roped off every half-mile or so that told you the boundaries between areas. Somewhere not too far off there were other people shooting and hiding and running, but right there, in our part, there wasn't too much action. I wondered if Corey was actually doing any sneaking around or if he was just cowering behind some bush, waiting for us to come find him and attack. I almost laughed at that thought, but then I realized that Dylan and I were just hiding behind some trees, waiting for Corey to find us and attack.

So I turned to Dylan and whispered, "Come on. Let's try to advance a little. Get farther into the trees. Stay behind me; I know where to go."

He didn't say anything. He just followed. We must've walked for at least ten solid minutes. It was like Corey had just disappeared off the playing field. He had to be hiding pretty good. Dylan and I got bored of looking for him. Paintball was all about action, and there definitely wasn't anything going on. Something hit my mind suddenly, and I wasn't really sure why. It just did. And before I really thought about it, I said it out loud.

"I saw your parents' grave." Strangely, I'd thought about that night in the cemetery a lot more than I usually thought about anything else. Maybe that was because I'd been scared out of my mind when that blob had found me and Adam and it had printed the whole event on my brain like a black and white photograph. Like some old horror movie.

Surprisingly, Dylan didn't seem too concerned about what I'd just said. "Really? So what. I've seen it too." He glanced at me and saw that I had a question on my face. "It doesn't bother me, Cole. They've been gone for a long time. I've been with my Mop forever. Actually, I don't even remember my parents real well. It's been me, Mop, and her old dolls for as long as I can think back."

"Is she mean to you?"

"Who? My Mop? Yeah, she can be mean. It depends on what sort of brain mood she's in. If she's all there, she can be fine. If she's a little off track, she can be awful. She doesn't do anything that hurts me, but she can make me do a lot of dumb stuff. And about those dolls—she loves them. She said when she was a kid her dad used to bring one back from everywhere he went. He traveled a lot or something. Don't ask me why she wants them outside. I've tried to move them into the house so nobody sees them, but she always gets mad and puts them right back out. Who knows. She's nuts sometimes, but she's got nobody besides me. So we don't mind each other, usually."

"All my grandparents are dead," I said, trying to say something that sounded right.

"Yeah? Well there you go. I don't have parents, and you don't have grandparents. We're even. Yeah, after my mom and dad's car accident, my Mop took me in and raised me proper!" he faked wiping his eyes like he was all emotional and crying.

I elbowed him and laughed. "Shut up, already."

He choked on a made-up sob. "If only that asswipe hadn't run the light and all!"

I was still laughing, but then I caught something. "Hey, wait. Somebody ran a light and hit their car?"

Dylan got a little more serious. "Sure did. Rotten timing that my parents were there. Killed his friend too, though, so it's not like he got away without losing something."

There was something a little bitter in his voice, but before I could comment, something whizzed past Dylan's shoulder and splatted against a tree. It bled bright red down the bark. "Corey!" I hissed. We snapped our mouth pieces back into place. Then, grabbing hold of Dylan, I shoved him behind the nearest tree and leapt behind a trunk just opposite him. My little brother had better aim than I would've guessed, or else that was just a lucky shot.

Nothing happened for half a minute. I glanced anxiously at Dylan across from me, who looked more scared than excited. Wherever Corey was, he was behind us. I had the tree at my back as a shield. When my heart slowed itself down, I decided to peer around the edge of the tree. Very, very carefully, slower than a snail, I peeked around the trunk. Ha! I could totally see Corey. Half of his body was sticking out from behind a low bush. I could even see his head. He wasn't looking in my direction; he was staring off to his left. Perfect! Quietly, I lifted my gun. I had an excellent chance of nailing him right in the knee. He was going down! A paintball rolled into the barrel of my semi-auto. I had everything set, all ready and in position. My finger was on the trigger . . . pressing the trigger . . . and then a tiny green orb rocketed out of my gun and smacked Corey right where I'd aimed.

Just as my brother was crying out in defeat, I heard Dylan shout something. Turning to look at him, I noticed that a bright blue splotch of paint had exploded on his back. I didn't have time to run to him. Corey was using red paintballs. We had green. How could Dylan have been hit with blue? And I'd watched Corey the whole time! There was no way he'd shot that glob. I thought fast. Somebody else had to be in the woods. Someone who probably could now see me. Someone who was not on my side.