Three Summers to Burn a Bridge #

20 April 2025 #

First version completed in September 2024 as a component to my Bachelors Capstone. Currently sending out to magazines

Suspended over the reeds on an abandoned service tower, we passed around a blunt wrapped with a sticky note. The base of the tower was built on top of an upturned sewage pipe, the center a dark, round portal into the unknown. It was an arid, late-July evening; my friends and I mourned the end of summer and dreaded the start of the eighth grade.

I took a drag and choked, then passed the makeshift blunt to Edgar. He was a year older than the rest of us, with an old face that let him buy cigarettes without ID. We always told him he looked like an Indian chief, with his long black hair and his proud, strong nose.

Edgar hated that joke. “Fuck off, I’m Mexican—just Mexican.”

“Hey man, no shame. I’m a quarter Cherokee,” I said, trying to match his cool.

“No the hell you’re not. Quit acting like something you’re not.”

Beside me, Allen laughed, rolling back on his haunches. He loved when I got taken down a peg, especially when I deserved it. He was a scrawny kid with a bowl cut and wire glasses. He lived across the street, and we’d been friends forever. He was a straight edge, but he stuck around just the same.

Edgar passed the blunt to Jack Collins, my best friend. “What exactly is this?” Jack asked, holding it awkwardly between forefinger and thumb. He always looked at things with intense scrutiny. He was a real smart ass in those days and always got good grades.

“It’s weed, man. Come on,” Edgar said.

Jack took a tiny puff, and his nostrils curled up. “I don’t think I like this…”

“You barely tried it!” I was yelling, still sore from Edgar’s jab. My buddies paid me no mind. I had a temper; they were used to it.

“Got any pills? That would taste better.”

A croak escaped Allen’s throat. “My mom sneaks pills in my breakfast… they don’t taste good.”

Edgar perked up. “Do they get you high?”

“Well, no.” Allen shrugged. 

Jack took another puff, seeming to savor it for a moment before flattening his mouth and spitting off the side of the tower. “Nope. I don’t like it.”

“Whatever, man. More for us,” Edgar grabbed the blunt, finished it off and flicked the butt into the surrounding marsh.

“Only you can prevent forest fires,” Allen said, imitating Smoky the Bear. He held his fists to his ribs and rocked side to side, pushing out his lips.

My head began to churn, so I leaned against the guardrail looking into the dark hole of the tower wondering what on earth the thing was for. I rubbed at my sagging eyes and when I opened them again, I saw something beyond the barren treetops I never noticed before.

“Guys,” I I pulled myself to my feet, pointing. “Guys! Look!”

Allen adjusted his glasses. “Holy crap… what is that?”

“You guys are tripping balls,” Edgar said, flinging a dismissive hand. He was busy trying to roll another blunt—with an index card this time. He dropped it through the lattice and cursed.

Jack joined us, shielding his eyes against the oppressive sun. “A bridge? Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. My heart thumped; I had to be seeing a ghost.

“Where do you think it goes?” Allen asked.

“I don’t know!”

The bridge seemed to float in the shimmering horizon. It was emerald green and reminded me of the Bay Bridge, even though I’d later realize the Bay Bridge looked nothing like it. It didn’t seem special, but its spontaneous manifestation was uncanny. I wondered if aliens put it there.

Edgar poked above our heads. “That thing? It’s always been there.”

“Bullshit,” I muttered, and Edgar slapped the back of my skull. I didn’t care, it wasn’t every day I saw something novel. There never were mysteries in our town.

“We should go find it,” Jack said. “Tonight, let’s do it.”

“My mom said I need to be back home by nine-thirty…” Allen said, looking down at his sneakers.

Jack planted his feet. “Fuck your mom!”

“Gross!” Allen’s face twisted with horror. “Why would you even say that?”

“I don’t know…” I said, flipping open my cellphone. I had three missed calls—not good. Even worse it was almost nine and it would take forty minutes for Allen and me to get home, even if we ran for most of it. “I think I need to get back, too.”

“Pussies,” Jack proclaimed, the ultimate challenge, but both Allen and I were more afraid of our parents than Jack’s opinion.

“Maybe another time, I really need to get home.” I said, descending the rusty latter back into the damp mud below.

Jack caught the change in my tone. His face grew dim, a different anger spread across his red cheeks, not directed at me. “Okay,” he said. “Another time.”

Allen and I fled down the empty stretch of Lathrop Road between Lathrop High School and the overpass where Interstate-5 split the town in half. By the time we returned to our neighborhood, we were dragging our feet through the dirt sidewalks. We arrived at our street at nine-thirty-eight. Enough time for Allen to be within his mom’s grace period. Enough time for my dad to get drunk and angry.

On the last day of my freshman year, I got a call from Jack. His crackled voice hollered: “It’s time we find that motha-fuckin’ bridge!” he slurred his words, and I could tell he was drunk.

After junior high, Allen and I went to a charter school in Stockton. Edgar and Jack went to Lathrop High. Split up like this, we didn’t hang out like we used to, but Allen and I carpooled, his mom dropping us off, my dad picking us up. Rather, he was supposed to pick us up, he often forgot, and I’d have to call someone else. Sometimes we cooked for an extra hour or two by the silver Tacos Chapala truck across the street waiting for someone to rescue us.

As I closed my phone, I looked up at Allen, puzzled. He heard Jack’s raving and returned my glance, thin eyebrows raised over his new hipster glasses. I laughed. “I guess we’re finally going to do it.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you want to finally see where it goes?”

Allen looked down at the grass. A squeezed-out lemon wedge laid drying out in the sun. “Honestly? I don’t think I really care. I mean, it’s just a bridge.”

I bristled. “Are you kidding? You were there, you saw how that thing just apparated!”

“You guys were high.”

“Yeah, we were.”

Allen sighed. “Your dad ever going to show up?”

Rush hour traffic on Arch Road finally died down, and our ride was nowhere in sight. I collapsed onto the trunk of an emaciated, leafless beech. “My nonie is coming.”

“Your grandma? She’s what—eighty?”

“Eighty-five.”

My nonie had moved in a few months ago. My uncle brought her car up from Irvine; I figured she just didn’t want to sell it. Turned out my sweet, absent-minded grandmother still had her license—no expiration date.

“So, are you coming with us or not?” I asked, trying to at least present an option. Allen was always getting steamrolled. I was trying not to do that to him anymore.

“Tonight?”

It was hard not to take his hesitance personally. This was our quest; I didn’t want the fellowship to split up yet_._ I always wondered if I was more like Aragorn or Boromir. In hindsight, it’s easy to tell.

“You’re going off on your stupid family trip to Wisconsin tomorrow. It’s now or never.

Allen twisted his sneaker in a rare spot of mud. “Fine.”

For the next few hours, we sat silent in the dwindling shade. The taco truck packed up and left, then we both ran out of water. We would’ve gone back inside the school, but the admins locked the door and disappeared. When my grandma showed up at six-sixteen—she was lost and didn’t know how to use the GPS on her new iPhone—we scrambled into her beat up Dodge like roaches fleeing from the sound of footsteps. 

We agreed to meet under the tower, two hours before sunset. Allen and I biked most of the way, then locked up our wheels on the racks outside Lathrop High. I was afraid we’d be late, but we got there first. For a minute I thought Jack was playing us.

Up on the tower you can see the unfinished roundabout marking the end of Lathrop Road, a border between worlds. After about twenty minutes, a banged-up Camry rolled to the bend and sputtered to a stop. Jack and Edgar stumbled out of the back seat, smoke trailing after them.

Edgar wore baggy jeans and a tank top with long armholes showing his ribs. Jack wore flip-flops. Allen and I were both in hiking boots, we borrowed tents and sleeping bags from Allen’s oldest brother. I had a full CamelBak with three gallons of ice water. We shared a worried glance.

“We’re back at the tower at eight on the dot,” Allen declared once we were all kneeling over a map and compass. “My mom will fly off the handle if I make everyone late for the flight.”

“Okay, mister boy scout,” Edgar poked Allen in the forehead.

Allen slapped Edgar’s hand, wiped away the grease his finger left behind. “I might be the only one who even knows how to start a fire.”

“I can do that,” I said, trying to support Allen. “I watched a bunch of videos about this guy who looks for mushrooms in the woods.”

“You don’t have any idea what you’re doing, don’t be an idiot.” Jack said, too seriously.

“I have a bit of an idea,” I said, wounded. “Enough to get by if Allen gets hurt or something.”

“Jeez!” Allen pounded the map, kicking up a cloud of dust. “Why would you even suggest that?”

 We climbed up the slope to the raised levee, from there we followed the San Joaquin River east. The river was low, the stream weak. A few years back, the levee broke and most of Lathrop flooded on the first rainy day of the season. The ground was too dry, so the water had nowhere to go save for twenty-thousand kitchen floors. They rebuilt it and now the bordering gravel paths towered over the riverbank like a canal.

Edgar and Jack fell behind, passing around a stale cigarette. Allen pointed, whispering to me about the Goldfinches and Towhees I never saw before they swooped off. I expected to hear bird songs, but it was silent aside from the drone of distant commuters on the Interstate.

I heard Edgar boasting to Jack, who listened with rapt attention. “It was crazy, dude… I was alone with this hot senior, you know the white girl from Meryl’s class? Yeah, so she takes her pants off…” I tuned out, not wanting to hear the rest. I was envious of Edgar; he was everything I wanted to be. Girls never looked twice at me. No one did. “She was fine bro, fine!”

“Hey Edgar! Got some good shit on you?”

Edgar smirked, the face of a rake. “Hell yeah, bro.”

Allen put a hand on my shoulder, concerned. I shrugged his hand away. “I want to live a little.”

His expression fell apart, as if to say: you’re living now, aren’t you? He was used to me disappointing him, I think. It made me feel bad in the moment, but Edgar’s good shit quickly took all that away.

The next thing I remember; I woke with a headache at sunrise. Jack and I were sharing a sleeping bag, half-naked. My heart skipped a beat, a sick feeling in my gut. He was still out cold so I got dressed quietly and went outside. We were in a field, the river nowhere to be seen or heard—only engines in the distance. Allen had already geared up.

“Hey,” I said for the sake of breaking the silence. “How close do you think we are?”

“I don’t know,” Allen said, not looking at me, “and I don’t care. I’m going home.”

That sick feeling again. “Going home? We’ve come so far!”

He scoffed. “We hiked for like an hour and then you guys got fucked up and left me to do all the work. I promised my mom I’d be back in time—”

“Man, fuck your mom! She’s always on your—”

Allen spun, palmed my chest, forcing me painfully on my ass. “Shut up about my mom! Just because you hate your family, doesn’t mean I have to!” Allen turned to leave, then stopped. “Drop off the tent when you get back. The dog sitter will be there.”

Without Allen, our journey became a lot more difficult. Jack stepped up, trying to help me make sense of the map and compass, but Edgar lagged smoking like a chimney. We all got tired and hungry—Allen had our food supply, and I didn’t think to ask for it before he left.

By noon, it was 105 degrees, and I was running low on water, splitting it with Jack and Edgar. We came up on a ridge and I was overwhelmed by the sweltering rays cooking my flesh. I knew I’d be peeling for weeks.

I was ready to turn back, but Edgar said: “Holy shit… guys I’m trippin’ hard.”

Jack and I covered our eyes, looked out to the horizon.

“Oh my god…” Jack said, his pink lips hanging open. “We’re not crazy.”

There it was—our emerald bridge. Still far, poking over a mile or two of treetops; but it was no longer just a couple of pixels, now it took up half the screen. We were so close.

“How do we get there?” Jack said, and I reveled in being who he looked to.

“Just go straight, I guess.”

That was a mistake. We had no clue what existed beyond the borders of our suburb. All we knew in our short lives was hot blacktop and squat, stucco buildings. As far as we were concerned, beyond the invisible borders of our town was untamed, unclaimed land: the wild west. Ignorant, we trespassed in a pepper field—trespassing and possessing a felony volume of narcotics, no less.

We trudged through freshly tilled soil, I had to lift my knees to my chest, and our pace became a crawl. We languished in the afternoon sun, sweating buckets, drenching our soiled clothes. Behind me, I heard a horrible tumult, clanging metal joined by the reek of gas.

“Hey!” an old man yelled over his paint-chipped John-Deare. “Get over here!”

“Oh shit,” I said, frozen.

Jack grabbed my arm. “Run!”

We bolted, hopping through lines of pepper seeds, kicking up silt. The old man inched closer, the roar of his tractor’s engine getting louder every second. We came upon a bridge. Not our bridge, but some concrete overpass over a thin, sunken tributary. We barreled down towards the water, catching brambles and stickers as we slid on our asses. I heard something clank and pop, then a bang!

“He’s shooting at us!” Edgar wailed, running faster than I’d ever seen anyone run. “He’s fucking shooting at us!” he shoved passed me and sped ahead.

I slid, slipping on river stones underfoot. I felt a dull thud on my temple, and everything went bleary. I heard yelling, but it all seemed so far away. The stream was cool, running over my face.

“What in the hell is wrong with you boys?” The old man said, prodding me awake with an icepack. “You could have died!”

My head spun. I didn’t know where I was, but I was thankful to feel A/C. I touched the pack to my head, the cold bit my nerves. I tried to take it away, but a soft hand over mine kept it there.

“I’m so sorry, sir,” Jack said next to me. “We had no idea we were in your fields.”

“All there is out here are farms! You boys smoking the reefer?”

“No, no,” Jack said without err, he was a good liar. “Well, our friend did, I think… he’s got issues at home, his mom’s an addict. We try to be a good influence on him, you know?”

The old man grumbled. “None of my damned business. Promise me I won’t be hearing from your parents? Last thing I need is a lawsuit!”

Jack nodded. “Yes sir!”

After my junior year, my dad moved in with his new girlfriend on the outskirts of Stockton, about a mile from Franklin High. The locals called it “Oakeyville” because all the white trash lived there in the 80s. Now, it was yuppies on one side of the tracks and run-down homes and billboards written only in Spanish on the other.

For a while, my nonie and I lived alone in Lathrop across the street from Allen—though he rarely came by and eventually stopped altogether. That sucked, but I didn’t know how to fix things after our botched quest to find the emerald bridge.

Living alone with my nonie was one of the first times I remember feeling happy and safe, but it didn’t take long for the house to sell. After that, I had to finish moving to Stockton and my uncle came back to take my grandma. She almost didn’t let him.

The silver lining was I kept the Dodge—her license was revoked after she went missing for two days trying to find a bakery. At home I kept my head low, locked in my dark room. Mostly I went unbothered, but sometimes my dad pounded on my door at night, drunkenly screaming that I was just some “filthy freeloader!”

The summer between junior and senior year, I got a call from Jack. I hadn’t seen him since I moved thirty minutes away and made efforts to avoid him. He was moving in with his older sister and needed a ride—he got kicked out of school and out of his parent’s house.

Friday night I drove down to Lathrop to pick him up. His house was always messy, reeking of ammonia and dirty laundry, but the place was falling apart when I pulled in the cracked driveway. Jack hauled a massive black backpack with him, the floorboards on the porch squealing beneath his battered Vans.

“What the hell are you carrying?” I asked him as he slid into my front seat, shoving the bag in the back.

“Everything I own.” Jack had lost weight, shed all his boy chub. His face was lean, cheek bones pronounced, arms wiry and toned. He had a farmer’s tan, as if he’d been working outside all summer. “Before we go,” he said, adjusting the seat to lean back. “Let’s light up, my brother hooked me up.”

I rubbed my eyes and shook my head. I knew this would happen. “Look man, I gotta stay out of trouble. I’d really rather not.”

Jack furrowed his brow like I jsut swore off drinking water. Then he shrugged. “No worries. I’ll wait until you leave, I guess.”

We got rolling and he told me about the first three times he tried coke, how it was an acquired taste. His voice was low, exhausted. Robotic directions took us to the east side of Lathrop, to the new neighborhood built after I moved. A huge sign on the side of the road read: RIVER ISLANDS: WHERE YOU CAN FINALLY RELAX.

Jack pointed at out the window, yelled: “Dude, pull over!”

I parked on the shoulder and cut the engine. We both stepped out in complete disbelief for what we saw. “You have got to be kidding me.”

Jack laughed, put his arm around me. “Jesus Christ, is that what I think it is?”

“Yeah, it is…”

There was the emerald bridge, towering twenty feet above us at its peak. Its thresholds connected to bare grass, old connecting trails long since scoured from history. It was beautiful, must have been nearly a hundred years old. Now, it was just here—an ornament for rich people to ogle as they sipped their Sunday wine.

“All we had to do was drive up the road.”

“Yup.”

My eyes met Jack’s and I couldn’t read them. I could never read him or anyone else. I’ll never know if he saw the vestiges crumbling within me. My friends were scattered to winds, gone their own ways—for better or worse. All I knew was that our quest was done and the fellowship was broken.