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freight trains, barges loaded with coal, clouds, and the muddy river roll by.
    To the northwest was Crystalton, though all that could be seen from our low vantage point was a handful of houses built high against the encompassing hills, the spire of the Presbyterian Church, and the white water tower that proudly proclaimed in purple block letters:
    Crystalton, Ohio
Home of the Royals
    When we emerged from the dense foliage of Hogback Hill into Riddles Run, we walked directly to the outcropping. No one said that is where we should go to talk. Instinctively, we just knew. By the time we arrived at the outcropping the sun had arced past noon, burned off the fog, and begun heating the sandstone, which was warm on the backs of my legs and felt good in spite of the temperature already hitting the low eighties. I had been unable to shake the goosebumps and chills since walking away from Petey’s body. I pressed my hands between the rock and my thighs to warm my cold fingers.
    We sat in silence for a few minutes, each of us pondering our personal situations and waiting for Adrian to take the lead. During youth, leadership is most often determined as it is in wolf packs or lion prides—by size and strength. Thus, Adrian had always been our leader, first by size, but later by intelligence and natural ability. He was simply one of those people you turned to for leadership. On that day, however, he was silent, nervous, and made no movement to tell us how we would address the dilemma. When he looked over to me, his eyes moist and rimmed in red, I realized that Adrian could not accept a leadership role in this situation because he was now dependent upon us for his survival.
    I finally slipped off the rock and said, “Okay, what’s the plan? I’ve got to get the grass cut before my mom gets home from work.” It sounded ridiculous under the circumstances, but it was no less a fact.
    â€œI’ve been thinking,” Adrian said, his tone hardly more than a whisper. “If they never found the body, how would anyone know he had been killed?” He looked around at us. “I mean, Petey rode that damn bicycle all over the place, anything could have happened to him. He could have fallen in the river or into an abandoned mine, or run away. Who knows? If they never find a body, it’ll just be a missing person, right? Who’s going to look for him? Not his parents, and not the Crystalton cops, that’s for sure.”
    â€œSomeone is going to find him eventually,” I said.
    â€œNot if we get rid of the body.”
    A wave of ice ran from my brain stem to my heels.
    Adrian continued, “Maybe tonight we camp out, and go back up and drag his body over and throw it in the fly ash pond. They’d never think to look in there.”
    There were two fly ash ponds built into the hills above Crystalton. They were decades-old craters in the earth left by strip mining companies. As a way of reducing air pollution, the electric generating plant in town pumped a slurry of fly ash captured from the smokestacks to the ponds. They were quicksand-type pits ofacid-heavy ash and water. We had found deer tracks leading into the ponds, but never coming out.
    â€œAfter a couple of months the acid will completely dissolve the body,” Adrian said. “It’ll eat away everything but the teeth, and they would never find those. The pits are bottomless.”
    Despite his distressed state of mind, it wouldn’t have surprised me if Adrian was conspiring behind the wild eyes, trying to elevate our involvement in the crisis to make us all more culpable. I wanted to help Adrian, but such a move would increase my participation in Petey’s death from that of mere witness to co-conspirator, and I was going to have to balk. “You’re just thinking out loud, right, Adrian?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s Petey, goddammit. No one would look for him.”
    â€œI can’t do that,” Deak said.