Ballad of Renegades

The Precipice

1994

It's the time of the day when the sky shifts into its darkest state, errant sunrays giving way to the moon. Its light cascades down at the edge of a precipice, illuminating Levi and his friend lying near the edge, panting, and staring up at the starlit roof of blue above. They found themselves sprawling out on the grass after racing each other uphill.

Levi lost the race to Adam.

It was a given victory, considering that Adam's legs had about doubled in length during the years he'd been missing. Ascending hills wasn't even Levi's usual leisure pursuit, but if he only ignores the complacent snicker next to his ear he'd consider the current moment beyond pleasant.

As the competitive spirit dispersed, a moment of quietude came. Encircling them now is a serene air, amplified by the distant, tranquilizing sounds of the ocean spreading out below. A welcomed zephyr curbs the suffocating summer heat.

The precipice is a spot the boys discovered as children. Instinctually, they made it their first destination the morning following Adam's sudden return. At their arrival an illuminating realization hit them. They'd missed six years of each other, and time had left them anything but unchanged.

Blatant were the physical differences. Shouldn't have affected their friendship, but it was inexplicably confusing to see the older Adam. Elegant, rough, and ready at once. Still boyishly wiry but stronger, taller and with a handsome newfound sharpness. Adam appeared more daunting than a normal sixteen year old should have. It was hard to decide whether it was the result of his uncustomary herculean frame, or the stony experienced demeanor he'd returned from the dead with.

The way he towered over Levi was initially terrifying.

If the aspect of height was troubling, to think about eventual nonphysical dissimilarities was positively mortifying. A vast discrepancy in maturity of their psyches was possible. Drifting apart on a sea is easy, even a sea of shared childhood memories. Levi had no specific expectations from the sudden return of his old friend, but it was strange to sit there and watch Adam quietly look down at the sea below them, uncertain of what to say.

Conversations between them the first week consisted of Levi asking about his abrupt disappearance, why he'd been gone for six years, the reason for his mysterious return, and also if there was any chance of him doing it again without warning. It was uncanny how Adam would sit right beside him but still be unreachable. As if there was wall of stone between them. Levi had inquired the available sources: his own mother and Adam's brother. All they gave him was unsatisfactory mixtures of truths and lies. Lost was the hope of arriving at an answer, so he stopped investigating the matter. Speculations never ceased.

He wondered whether Adam's unexplained state of trepidation would ever fade, if the weeks consisting of blasé expressions and hard eyes soon could be considered history.

One sunny afternoon Adam destroyed their impassable brick wall with the explosive charge of a simple joke. The aftermath, Levi's laugh, seemed to clean up the mess caused by the detonation. Matters were recognizable again.

He reclaimed an important role in Levi's life.

Since Levi's only routine was no routine, Adam could not mess up his schedule but only infuse it with various electrifying spicinesses. Levi finds no time to ruminatively lie in his room looking at the small rainbows dancing on his walls to the rhythm of music on vinyl. Usual pastimes were substituted for dynamism. Vanished was the desire to spend centuries daydreaming until his reality would metamorphose into dream.

Theory and the abstract is, to Levi, more enthusing than reality itself. Somehow, Adam can be unfathomably fascinating in a nonimaginary way.

Adam is a Ferrari emptied of brake fluid with a reservoir full of gas. With ease, he manages to bring Levi with him into his captivating kinesthetic state; makes Levi exchange Plato for dashing up a hill.