The Danger of Being Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

jogging to catch up to Ben.  "How could you not have closed that deal?"
    "It was a delicate situation!" Ben insisted.
    "That should be the title of your autobiography," Phil told him, checking his orientation on his wristwatch.
    He angled to the left.  The three of us trudged up an incline as the trees thinned out.  Another hundred yards further along the woods ended altogether and the ground fell away into a rocky ten-foot drop.
    The first steps of a stone bridge perched at the edge of the bluff, jutting out over the gap before dropping off into the air as well.  We stood at the precipice, looking out over the southwestern branch of Prophet's Creek.  On the far side of the gulley lay the quarter-acre chunk of land that some called the Everlasting Land, and some called the Timeless Island, and others called Prophet's Point.
    Thunder muttered again.  Closer.  Like a warning.
    "Here be dragons, baby," Phil said, grinning.
    Ben glanced at him, then looked to the sheet-metal sky.  "Ethan said it's been raining in Edinburgh for six days," he said.  He coughed out a dry laugh, and waved a hand.  "I'd take that over this ungodly shit any day of the week."
    I looked down the abrupt drop-off into the channel.  The heat of the last week-and-a-half dried out the Creek, leaving little more than a shallow stream.  The remnants of the Wenro bridge stood out of the water like broken teeth, creating a jagged path across the riverbed.
    Phil checked his watch.  "Just a couple of minutes."
    "Yeah," Ben said.  He sounded distant, and I saw him staring out across that isolated chunk of land, toward an unchecked growth of creeping shrubs.  Toward the crowns of four soapstone boulders.  The Four Brothers.
    "Let's get this over with," he said.  He dropped into a crouch, then cast himself over the crag, skidding down the crumbling bank with startling dexterity.  Phil looked to me and smirked, then lowered himself down the slope as well.  I followed, and the three of us gradually clambered across the stepping stones of the bridge's carcass.
    On the far side of the stream, Phil paused, bent, picked up a handful of grit.  He looked at me as he dug the plastic sandwich bag out of his jeans pocket.  "'Coarse sand, red in color'," he quoted.  He dumped the grit into the bag, sealed it, and tucked the sample back into his jeans pocket.
    "You dragged us out here to collect sand?" Ben said.
    Phil looked to Ben, and said nothing.  Then he turned toward the island of Prophet's Point, hiking up the narrow shore toward the stretch of high grass beyond.
    Ben watched him, then said to me, "He dragged us all the way out here to collect fucking sand."
    I laughed, and started up the shore after Phil.
    Nothing grew taller than waist-high out here.  Only a collection of skeletal and contorted trees managed to survive on this island.  We ventured further from the shore, and I felt a scratchy vibration building under my brain.  My eyes itched, and my fillings ached.
    I glanced back over my shoulder to find Ben a couple of paces behind.  He shoved the heels of his hands against his eyes, blinking as he tramped through the grass.
    A moment later, Phil came to a stop at the foot of those bulky stones.  They stood in a crude semi-circle among the stunted shrubs, leaning at their own crooked angles, their surfaces pitted from all the rounds of ammunition that struck them so long ago.  Even in the flat grey light, they somehow held their own iridescent luster.
    The shortest came to just below my shoulders.  The tallest towered higher than Ben's spiked hair.  Many had attempted to measure the height of these stones, and everyone disagreed on their findings.  Ben stood to my right, panting as sweat popped across his face.
    Another cough of thunder rolled across the afternoon, and I looked up at the brushed-chrome sky.  Rain would come, and it would be hard, and it would hit sooner than later.  "You got some sand and looked at some rocks," Ben said