<

I got it. Not that I had plans to do anything. At that point the primary excitement in my life involved walking three blocks down the road to Crown Hill Cemetary with my friends, trying to scare each other.

One late summer night my friend Big Daddy B and I went to the graveyard. As the hot August sun set, we ran between the gravestones, hiding behind trees, leaping at each other and shrieking.

We stood on tip-toes, peaking into the mausoleum windows and I thought, "I have to do something to scare Big Daddy before he scares me." I lept at him, grabbing his shirt and screaming bloody murder, laughing as he launched himself backwards off the steps.

The months passed. In October I got my driver's license and a 1980 Ford Mustang with a carburator that routinely fell off, and a knack for eating alternaters. Weekends were spent cruising the strip. Big Daddy B and our other friends would pile into my tiny car and zip up and down highway 65, turning around in the McDonald's parking lot and praying that the carburator wouldn't crap out at the spot where highways 65 and 50 intersect.

Now, I know I posed this as a Halloween story, but it doesn't actually take place on Halloween. Like I said, months passed, and all was well. That is, until February.

February in small-town Missouri is a brutal time for young, restless souls. Dark and chilled, with the occasional 50-degree day to tease the senses before being plunged back into winter. For a 16-year-old and her 15-year-old cohorts, it's damn near unbearable.

One Sunday in late February, when the ground was mucky and thick from the first thaw of the year, Big Daddy B and I laid around my parents' house until, tired of our complaints of malaise and boredom, my mother sent us across town to pick up pizza for dinner.

It only took ten minutes to drive from my parents' house on the far eastern outskirts of town to the pizza joint on the far west end of town, and the route took us by our mutual friend Tate's house. Hoping that Tate might have the magic formula to ease our boredom, we stopped at his house and begged him to join us.

We were nearly home, the pizzas cooling in the hatchback of my car, when we drove past the cemetary. "Have you ever taken Tate to the cemetary," Big Daddy B asked.

"I haven't," I replied.

"We should take him to the cemetary. You know, just take a quick spin through and then go to your house."

Tate leaned forward from the backseat. "Isn't it illegal to be in a cemetary after dark?"

It was. The previous spring, rumors abounded that the kids who wore head-to-toe black and listened to The Smiths had been sacrificing animals in the cemetaries. Therefore, the local police force, which didn't have much to do in the first place, began diligent patrols of the cemetaries and The Ruins.

"Oh, we'll just be in for a minute," I said, whipping the Mustang into the nearest entrance.

Slowly, I drove to the back of the cemetary, the full moon casting the shadows of the 100-year-old oak trees across our path. The surface of the lake in the children's graveyard shimmered, cold enough to steal the breath of whoever might enter.

The street lights faded in the distance as we reached the back of the cemetary, where the thin road twisted into a worn dirt path. "We should head back. There's nothing else and the pizza's getting cold," I said as I kept driving. Instead of turning around the way we had come, I intended to curve, driving in an arc and exiting the cemetary at the end opposite of where we entered. I'd walked the cemetary so many times during daylight; I knew where the path led.

Only I wasn't on the right path. Because of the dark, and being distracted by the giggling boys in my car, I had taken a different path, one that ended.

A path that ended directly in the pile of dirt, displaced from the freshly-dug graves.

The body of the Mustang lurched forward while the wheels spun deep into the wet, gluey mud, gears grinding as I slammed the accelerator hard. I opened the door and stepped out, my feet sinking past my ankles in the spackle of mud. I lifted my right foot, and the mud issued a great slurp, sucking the white canvas Ked off my sockless foot. "We're stuck," I announced. "And I'm half-barefooted."

For the first half hour, we alternated between trying to lift and push the car out of the muck, and sitting in the car, laughing at our predicament. Really, we weren't worried. We didn't know how we were going to get out, but we took for granted that we would. The Magic Mustang Mud Removal Fairy would be arriving shortly, right?

She didn't arrive.

"We need some traction under the wheels," Big Daddy B said. "What do you have in the car that could be used for traction?"

"Well, there's the pizza boxes. Not really an option since my parents are expecting the pizzas," I explained, glossing over the fact that they were expecting the pizzas about an hour ago. "And there's a vinyl copy of the Godspell soundtrack."

When stuck in the mud with two young men from the drama department, using the Godspell soundtrack for traction simply isn't an option. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but they weren't that desperate yet.

I thought about Tim, the cross-country runner who was friends with Tate's older brother. Tim lived in the house next to the cemetary entrance we'd used. I'd been watching him since we moved in, watching as he'd jog around the curve in front of our house, leading to the expanse of cornfield-draped country road. I'd been looking for a way to meet him, but was too shy to leave my perch on the front porch and introduce myself.

"Hey Tate," I ventured. "You know Tim, right? Maybe he could help us?"

"I don't know him that well. Let's get some sticks and shove them under the back tires," he said. And with that, he and Big Daddy B went to the nearest tree and forraged.

The hours passed, and the car didn't budge. We could have walked to my parents' house. It would have taken ten minutes. But it wasn't an option.

"I think they might bury me in the chicken coop if I screw up," I said. Three hours after we lodged the car into the grave dirt, I was still convinced that perhaps my parents wouldn't know something had gone awry, so deep and strong is the ignorance of youth.

We sat in the car, headlights burning, listening to the radio, still hopeful but tired. Big Daddy B sang along with Debbie Gibson (Shut up. It was 1989. You liked her, too, and you know it.) while we considered what to do next.

Abruptly, he stopped part-way through the second verse of Foolish Beat. "Oh shit," he said. "I just saw a cop." He switched off the radio. "Turn off the headlights so he won't see us!"

And with that, the pressure, exhaustion and cold finally wore me down. "I'm not turning the headlights off. If you think we're in trouble now, just think how bad it would be if we got hit by a police car! Besides, I'm cold and tired. I just want to go home."

"Hey, your uncle just died, right?" Tate said. "He's buried here, isn't he? We can tell him that we came to visit your uncle and took a wrong turn!"

"No way he'll buy that," I said, getting out of the car and waving my arms towards the glowing headlights.

As I began to walk towards the car, I summoned the tears, knowing that a good cry is a good indicator of remorse, a sign that we're not Goth kids out listening to The Cure while skinning cats. We're just normal kids, albeit slightly shoeless and muddy, who listen to Debbie Gibson and show tunes about Jesus, who took a wrong turn.

I stood in front of the glow of the headlights, tears streaming down my wind-chapped face, the near-freezing ground biting into my bare foot, arms up in surrender.

"Good evening, Miss," the officer said as he exited his car. "Did anyone ever tell you that you can't go four-wheelin' in a Mustang?"

All my stories and excuses left me and I stood there, jaw agape, as the officer laughed. "It's okay, but you need to get out of here."

"We can't. Stuck," I stammered.

"That's what I was afraid of. I wish I could tow you out, I really do. But I could get in really big trouble. Now, I know you live near here. I can give you a ride home, or you can walk. Whichever you want."

"My shoe. I only have one."

"Come on, then. I'll give you a ride. It's okay. But your friends have to stay here."

I climbed into the squad car and this time, the tears were real. They weren't summoned for effect. They were summoned from fear and shame.

"It's okay, really," the officer kept repeating.

"You don't understand," I hiccupped. "My ... dad ... is ... going ... to ... kill ... me..." I didn't mention the part about burying me in the chicken house, but I probably should have. Seeing as how the officer was making my life easier, telling him where he could find my mortal remains would have been the least I could do.

"Sweetheart, if this is the worst thing you do, your parents will be very lucky. This is nothing. Really. Will it help if I come in with you?"

"No!" I bellowed through my runny nose. "No!"

"Well, if you change your mind, I will," he said as we pulled into the long, arching driveway. He pulled to a stop by the gate, and I sat motionless.

"Maybe it will help if you come with me." Surely they won't get the shovel and start digging the hole with an officer of the law watching.

The officer stood silently on the back steps as I walked into the kitchen, his eyes never leaving my back. I took a deep breath and quickly decided how to handle the situation. I would make light, act like it was no big deal. "Hey Mom? Dad? We've got a little problem."

"Where have you been?" my mom yelled from their bedroom, where they watched television everynight.

"Well, it's funny. Um, there's a cop here."

And with that I watched in horror as my father came running from the bedroom, stocking feet sliding across the linoleum as a struggled to get his footing.

"It's okay, really," I burbled. "We - Big Daddy B, Tate and me - we decided to take a quick drive through the cemetary and my car's stuck. It's nothing. The officer said so. It's fine. We just have to get my car. And the boys."

And for the first time in my life, my father was silent. The officer said I had to ride with my father to the cemetary. Instead of the yelling and screaming I anticipated, nothing. Just silence.

Because he was trying to remember where, exactly, he left his shovel, for he had a hole to dig. In the chicken coop.

When we arrived at the scene of the crime, Big Daddy B and Tate were backed up to the tree where earlier they had scrounged for traction-bearing sticks and twigs. They stood in the spotlights of five police cars, held captive by half of the town's police force.

Eventually, my car was freed by my uncle, who happened to have a tow truck. I drove the boys home, and they both offered me safe haven, but I didn't accept, knowing that if I stayed away, it would just give my parents time to dig a deeper hole for me in the chicken coop. I drove across town alone, still wearing one shoe, in my mud-cocooned car with the bad carburator that threatened to slide off at the intersection of highways 65 and 50.

When I walked into the kitchen, following the trail of mud I'd left earlier, I didn't make any faux calm announcements of my arrival. I slipped in silently, but they knew I was back, and they called me to their bedroom.

Without word, I sat at my mother's desk, twisting a dirt-encrusted lock of my hair, hair that normally stood as high and proud as the Aquanet would allow, but now drooped under the weight of filth and misery. I waited for the punishment to rain down on me. I waited for the white dress I would never wear - because I was soiled, soiled and filthy - to be presented to me for my burial.

"We want you to know," my mother began, "that you're a great kid, and we're proud of you."

"So it's going to be really hard to stick me in that shallow grave?"

"What? No. You're grounded, that's a given. But if this is the worst thing you do, then we're really lucky."

"Oh. Good. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks," I said, the weight of the dirt easing. For the first time in hours, I inhaled a breath that didn't stink of cold, damp earth.

"But do anything else, and it's the coop for you."

And that, my friends, was the worst thing I ever did. Well, until they tore down that damned coop, anyway.