Ezrah as long as he had lived in Brightview had never seen the top of Deadman’s Boulder – even though Evander would scramble to the top ever since he was seven and Ezrah was three, even though ever since then Evander would sneer down at Ezrah.
“Coming up?” Ezrah would not respond.
“What are you, scared? Do you think there are…monsters up here?” Ezrah still thought there were monsters under his bed, and even though Evander didn’t think that, Ezrah would sleep much better once the monsters decided to move out.
“Monsters?” Ezrah whispered. Thinking exactly of the variety that lived under his bed.
“Oh, yes,” Evander grinned, “big scary ones.” His cruelness made Ezrah feel alone. “Are you gonna come up or are you gonna be a sissy?” Ezrah shook his head and shrank back to be alone somewhere else, every time really convinced that there were monsters up there, big scary ones.
That’s why Ezrah was immediately jealous when he found Ros at the top of Deadman’s Boulder only three weeks since she had come to Brightview. The edge of his voice cut towards her through the wind.
“What are you doing up there? You know there are monsters,” he snapped. “Big scary ones,” he added, only half convinced of it himself. Ros did not get angry at him. She was silent like she had joined the soft green moss lining this rock.
“No there’s not,” she responded after being moss for a long time. “There are sirens.” Ezrah was about to start high school and had long since stopped believing that there were monsters hiding in the jagged peaks, but he had never considered sirens, and he thought had heard something from the peak of the boulder that he could not see. “Come see,” Ros invited. Ezrah paused with his foot on a pedal-like out hang for a second he heard Evander instead of her. “Are you coming?” she asked and the moment broke like water over the boulder.
Nihilistic Porcupine 