We stand, motionless, peering at each other for what seems like an eternity. A gallery of images passes through my head, remembering the day we met at the lake, spinning through all of those hours spent together over the years, trying to find the place where he first decided to die, because you don't just decide something like that overnight. The pain adds up, day in and day out, little by little, until you can't hold it in anymore. It eats away at you, turning your daily existence into a magnificent torture, and dying promises to be the easy way out. The only way.

Memories refuse to appear. There is nothing there. It's like I've been gutted of my past and there is only now. Only Hunter's eyes, blue and scary in their determination. And my own fear; fear of letting him go, fear of not succeeding at killing myself, of being left alone, to suffer for who knows how long. That would be a pathetic existence.

"You did not just say that," I mutter, at a loss of words.

"Yeah, I did," he says.

"Why?" Now that we're away from danger, or at least there is an illusion of being away from danger, suddenly, I don't want him to die, maybe don't even want to die myself, hoping to preserve some kind of normalcy between us, even while knowing it won't happen.

"We talked about this already, on the boat. Don't you remember?" His voice is tired. "What changed? You promised me. If you go, I go. Unless we decide how we do it, somebody will decide for us. Like those siren girlfriends of yours. You see what I mean?" he says.

"Yeah. You're right," I admit.

"When you jumped off the bridge—I hope you take this the right way—I was jealous. Jealous of your...how do I call it? Well, it was a brave thing to, it took serious guts."

"What? Are you out of your mind? Suicide is not about bravery." I glare.

"I know, I know. Hang on, just let me finish. What I'm saying is, it gave me the boost I needed. A kick in the ass, in a way. I thought about...taking my life for a couple of years now, since mom got cancer, and again when dad left. Anyway, I came close, but chickened out at the last minute." He falls silent.

"You never told me," I say, shocked.

"Of course I didn't. I didn't want to freak you out."

"What exactly did you do?" I ask.

"I stole a bike and rode it really fast." He grins.

"Jesus. You did? For real?"

"Yeah. It was awesome, at first. Then I was turning and I lost control. Out of the blue, the stupid back tire decided to lock up," he waves his arms showing me how far he was leaning and how fast the tires were spinning, "and I skidded for a few feet and rode into a ditch. Thank God it was simply dirt and not rocks or something. I left the bike and hiked home. It took me three hours, lots of time to think about lots of things. After this, I was too afraid to try it again." He plays with my fingers, strumming them like piano keys.

"And you were never found out? Whose bike was it?" I ask.

"I dunno. Just some bike off the street. I hotwired it."

"Figures. So you lied to me. When I asked you if you ever thought about killing yourself, you lied to me."

"Sorry." He hangs his head for a while, and then looks back up. "Does this mean, you're up for it, then?"

"I was up for it in the boat, wasn't I?" I motion with my head toward the lake. "That was suicide attempt number two for me. No, wait—three. Four? I don't even know what number it was, to be honest. I lost count. I guess I'm game. What else can we do?" I shrug my shoulders.

"Awesome," Hunter says and kisses me, as if I just agreed to go on an amusement park ride with him and not on a ride to extinction.

A wild surge of feelings spins my head and I have no room for a single breath, gulping his warm presence like a starving, caged animal that was thrown a bone for the first time in days. The echo of Hunter's burning soul envelops me, melts me, smoldering.

We part, panting, electrified.

Hunter's face is contorted in a menacing rage. He quickly swallows it and smiles. I mirror him back.

There will be no happy times, after all. There is no way for us to be together. There is no other way out. So be it.

This dare to death itself fills me with a strange excitement. It's something I finally have control over. I hope I can shriek so loudly that my voice will pass the speed of sound and I'll simply explode. Wouldn't that be something?

Hunter grins the smile of a boy who doesn't care if his newest mischief will cost him his life, because it's too exciting not to try. To exit this world as spectacularly as we can, to be seen and heard and talked about for a long time after we're gone. Now they will notice. Now they will cry. Now they will regret. Now they will hurt. But we won't care—it won't be our hurt anymore, it will be theirs to live with. We will be free of it by then, free and happy.

The air around us fills with purpose and a feeling of relief. The decision has been made and suffering leaves our conversation. We're back to planning it, like it's a vacation.

"So, how exactly do you propose we do it?" I ask, keeping my doubts about my own ability to perish to myself, afraid to kill the mood.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Because I think we got ourselves a new toy." Hunter pulls me by the hand around the troll statue. We step out onto the road.

Two police motorcycles are parked on it with their lights still flashing, both keys left in the ignition. The bikes stand close to the curb and there is enough space for the traffic to avoid them. It's not a busy street. A few cars cautiously drive by slowing down but not stopping, perhaps thinking that an investigation is underway and it's none of their business.

"Too bad you can't ride. I wish I had the time to teach you. Would you mind adjusting this one for two people?" Hunter asks.

"Yeah, I suppose," I say, studying the bike in question.

It's a Harley Davidson Road King, white, with a nice big windscreen that makes it look like George Jetson's sky mobile about to take off into the future. I pat it lightly. The gas tank is still warm and the bike is perfectly fine to ride, except it has only one leather seat that curves and butts up against a shiny black rectangular trunk the size of a small suitcase. There is nowhere for me to sit, and upon closer inspection, I see that it's bolted to the metal frame underneath.

"I suppose I could sit on top?" I say, kneeling next to it to see better how it's fastened.

"Nah, you'd keep sliding and it won't be as comfortable," Hunter says from above. A car slows down and the driver, a middle-aged woman, peeks at us with interest.

I stand, looking ridiculous in this huge orange jacket that I grew to hate. "What are you looking at? Keep going," I say, and she hurriedly does, pushing on the gas and making her tires squeal.

I step behind the back to the rear tire and fix it between my legs. I roll up my sleeves and wedge my hands underneath both sides of the trunk, grabbing the pipes that hold it and pulling them apart, hard, and grunting with the effort. The metal groans and bends, but doesn't break. I blow on my hands, clasp harder and try again, applying as much force as I can. Pipes screech and heat up in my fists, then the first one yanks its bolts out of the hard-shell saddlebag on the left side, and I nearly fall together with the bike.

"Whoa!" Hunter grabs both handles.

I finish the job by tearing the remaining bolts out. Screaming, they leave large holes in the pristine white surface of its top wraparound part. Particles of dust settle on the ground. I toss the trunk aside. It rattles loudly. "Done."

"Perfect. Are you ready?" Hunter mounts the bike, beckoning me to sit behind him. I hesitate. "What's the matter?"

"Hold on," I say and run around the troll to the body of the mushroom man, hoping that I can find what I'm looking for. On his back he has a backpack. I unzip it, hold my breath so that I don't feel the stink, and reach in, pulling out various items of clothing, just like I suspected, hoping that some of it might not be soiled in any way. What I find instead is treasure, it's like I knew it might be in there.

"Oh, my God!" I shriek, unable to believe my eyes.

"Baby, we need to get out of here. What is it?"

"My hoodie!" I unfurl the clammy roll of cotton, instantly recognizing the large white letter S in the multitude of blue folds. "It's the one I lost when I jumped! It must have floated to the shore and he must have found it."

Beside myself with joy, I unzip the fisherman jacket, toss it to the ground, and pull my beloved hoodie over my head, feeling its dampness next to my skin. I rummage some more, but it's stupid to hope to find a girl's jeans or leggings in an old man's bundle of clothes. The rest of his stuff is mostly rags that might have been suitable to wear at some point in their life. So I plop on the ground, lift one leg to my mouth, then another, and tear two thick strips off the bottom of the pants I'm wearing, using my teeth. When I'm done, both cuffs hit about a foot above my ankles, making the fisherman overalls look more like wide capris.

"That's better," I say and run out.

"Looking good. Did that guy have it in his backpack?" Hunter says, feeling the sleeve.

"I know. Can you imagine?"

"Hey! Hey! Whatcha doing there? That's a police bike, get off it!" a man shouts at us from the street, walking briskly in our direction.

We exchange a look. Neither of us responds or moves.

"This is how I wanted to go, remember?" Hunter beams, but there is no laughter in his eyes. Just an empty calm. I'm drawn into his darkness, wishing for vacuum. I want him to suck me in, keep me blind, and never let me go.

"Care for a ride?" His hand doesn't shake this time. Long slender fingers. An upturned palm. And this look.

"Yes," I say and give him mine. I hop behind him and hold his waist, my bare feet hovering above the spot where passenger pegs would have been. Then I gently place them on top of the pipes that run around the perimeter of the saddlebags.

"Hey! Hey!" The man is running toward us.

"Don't move!" I shout. He stops mid-step.

There is a momentary pocket of silence underneath the morning racket of traffic, souls, and human chatter. I take a breath, two, thinking, this is it, glancing up at the watchful eye of the stone troll. I grip Hunter tighter, my fingers entwined, and notice the glowing sunrays tear at the clouds.

Hunter turns the key in the ignition, pushes the start button, and guns the throttle. The roar of the bike's engine bounces off the bridge's underbelly. An elderly woman shouts at us from the porch of her house a few yards away, either to be quiet or fashioning some other scolding, I can't tell.

I flip her the finger.

And we fly.

The ride is choppy, each speed change a jolt. I don't think Hunter ever rode a Harley before. But he quickly adjusts and, gradually, the movement becomes smooth. Heart-quickening. We're a white drop of speed, first on empty neighborhood streets, then against slow moving highway traffic, a sea of gray prone to commuting boredom. If there is a way to go in style, it's by cutting into this fabric of mundane and ripping it apart. Those who follow the rules stay inside preconceived road lanes. We cut on top of them, oblivious to honking, mean stares, and flared up indignation.

Live every minute as if it was your last. Experience a million lives in a moment against half a life in a hundred tedious years. This is my one minute of fantasy that's better than nothing.

We dart along Highway 99, across the Aurora Bridge and into downtown Seattle that busts with life while the rest of the town is still just waking. The city is swarmed with morning souls, carrying their bodies into cars, sipping their first cups of coffee, and puffing the air with delight after each gulp.

My ears hum with the constant drone of speed. I hug Hunter tighter and press my cheek against his back, expecting to crash any second. Together. Because he weaves in and out of gaps between cars like a madman, begging for it to happen.

We ride along the same route we took escaping from the sirens' meadow in Seward Park, except backward.

A cop car is leisurely patrolling early commuters. We whiz by it. I hear the cop spill his coffee, curse in surprise, and flip on the lights. Red and blue flashes in my peripheral vision. I consider flipping him the finger then decide against it because I'm too comfortable and I don't want to break my embrace. Hunter's body trembles with what must be adrenaline, he shifts into fifth gear. The bike jerks and lurches forward.

The police siren goes off from behind us.

Bweep! Bweep! Bweep!

"We've got to lose him!" I yell over the wind howl.

"I hear him!" Hunter yells back.

A few seconds later my left knee nearly scrapes the ground as we veer onto the dark swallow of the off-ramp and come off Highway 99 right by Seattle's two stadiums. By now, both of my feet burn from the scorching exhaust and the general heat coming off the bike. I grind my teeth to ignore it.

Hunter speeds up to fifty miles per hour, sixty, eighty. He runs the red light, turns left onto the road that leads to another onramp, rides up the hill, swerves along the loop, and gets onto a relatively empty Interstate 5 to the surprised looks from north-crawling traffic and honking from the cars heading south. Another cop comes ablaze from behind us. Great.

Hunter shivers violently. My hair ripples in the stink of traffic exhaust. I lean forward and yell. "What's wrong?"

"I'm freezing!" he shouts back against the tide of air. "I can't feel my fingers!" His teeth chatter, his muscles vibrate to the rhythm of his fear.

"Can't we stop and get some gloves somewhere?"

He doesn't answer, probably hyper-focused, intent on going as long as he can. That's typical Hunter; once he sets his mind to something, there is no swaying him.

"Shit," I say into his back, thinking hard. I parted rain before to stay dry, moving water particles in the air. My spine is ramrod straight, my mind focused. Think, Ailen, think! But there is nothing, no great ideas. Blankness overrides any attempt at producing an intelligent solution.

I feel Hunter's temperature drop as we fly in between road lanes, oblivious to the angry shouts and beeping, and the blaring sirens behind us.

I breathe into Hunter's sweatshirt, inhaling the lightly moist scent that reminds me of wet laundry. Its fabric balloons and ripples in the wind. Suddenly I know. One moment there is emptiness, the next is filled with certain knowledge, as if it was always there. Humidity. Water vapor in the air. Perhaps I can move little droplets of water faster and make the air warmer by speeding them up?

It's worth a try.

"Don't freak out! I'm about to scream! I want to try something!" I shout. There's no indication that he heard me.

I tilt my head at the sky and open into a guttural animal wail, a wild a cappella. It starts out soft, and then gradually grows in volume. I hike it up a pitch, higher, higher, overpowering the cacophony of traffic punctured by the blaring police sirens behind us.

Hunter's body goes tense, I rub my hands up and down his stomach to tell him it's okay, to hopefully relax him.

Reaching its highest register, my yowl explodes into a solo opening for a reckless opera, its dotted rhythm designed to match the rhythm of water atoms—three of them, one oxygen and two hydrogen—their lot connected by a chemical embrace.

Listen to me, I command it. I want you to dance for me, okay? I want you to do a hydrological dance, to turn from solid to liquid to gas. Become tasteless, odorless, colorless, and transparent. I want you to move faster, move as fast as you can and create hot steam.

They hear. The atoms. A great many of them in about a twenty feet diameter around me. They shift and scat and jitter in tune to my yelling, resonating in my ears.

Never mind the tunnel of dry air that parts the rain into pouring, rattling sheets. I can do better. I can produce a bubble of warmth. I can bind tiny basic units of water to my voice.

The air in my lungs is running out and I badly need another breath but am afraid to break the flow. I continue bellowing, losing myself in the sound.

I feel Hunter's core warm up, stop trembling, and relax. At the same time, the gush of wind against my face rises in temperature. My fingertips tingle with the buzzing heat.

"Whatever it is you're doing, it's awesome! Keep doing it!" he shouts at me.

I pause, nod into his back, take another deep breath, and launch into more wailing, turning a little sphere of climate around us almost tropical.

The traffic thins out. We keep riding fast with the cops still on our tail, but now I think I also detect a distant whoop-whoop of a helicopter. I know I need to stop my yowling and yell a command for the police officers to turn, but I'm worried about Hunter being hit by the cold air and losing his grip on the ride. It's so smooth, so thrilling, he's obviously in a zone.

Time stretches, or maybe it shrinks, I can't tell. City buildings give way to low-strung malls and houses skittered along the highway. I hear the mechanical wail of the sirens moving in closer, same with the helicopter. Hunter must hear it too because he guns the throttle, suddenly alight with panic. I keep howling to keep him warm.

Two patrol cars catch up with us, flanking our stolen police motorcycle on both sides. I can see an officer gesticulating, ordering us to slow down and pull over.

"Eat this!" Hunter shouts and guns the bike. He whizzes ahead and skids across two lanes to the right, veering onto the closest exit, a cloud of smoke dissipating behind us. The engine emits some coughing noises, stretched to its limits. The off-ramp slope is so steep that the front wheel of the bike lifts off the ground for a second and then we thump down as Hunter brakes and nearly lays the bike down in the turn. I watch in horror as my left knee scrapes the asphalt, happy that I'm wearing tough fisherman overalls and not flimsy jeans.

"Woo-hoo! We popped a wheelie!" he yells in delirious excitement. We recover from the left turn and speed across the little bridge over the highway. Both cops whiz by underneath, too late to react, but sure to turn around at the first opportunity. We make it to a suburban road, roll off its asphalt, and slip into the bushes, dirt, and torn grass splattering upward and over the bike. Both of its wheels grind into the mud and stop turning. Hunter kills the engine.

At the same time, I break my wail. The warm pocket of air slowly disintegrates. We both hop off at the same time and Hunter drops the bike on its side. We're in the pocket of green that hugs one of the intersection corners, cookie-cutter houses spread evenly along both roads.

"Are you okay?" I immediately ask, pulling leaves out of my hair.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," Hunter answers, not looking at me, thinking.

"Wait, where exactly are we?" I ask.

"I think somewhere in the glorious suburbia of Puyallup."

"And why did we stop here?"

"We're almost out of gas." Hunter dog-shakes his head.

"Oh. That's just great," I say, surveying our surroundings through the branches of the tall bushes we're in.

"Don't worry, we'll figure something out." He's enthralled by something else at the moment, I can tell.

"What do you mean, we'll figure something out? How!"

He puts a finger across my lips to shush me. "That thing you did, with the warm air? That was awesome." His dirty face splits into a wide grin, his appearance muddy and shaken but happy, like a toddler after a bout of some particularly good mischief. He wipes his palms on his jeans and takes my hand into his left.

"It wasn't air, it was water in the air. I can move water. I can make it move so fast that it warms up. You know, make the atoms bump against each other faster?"

"Whatever, it was awesome is all I'm saying." He wipes his nose with his other hand and then wipes it on his jeans in turn, spitting on the ground.

I watch this with a typical girly revulsion and, at the same time, with a certain air of pride for his raw manliness.

"So, how are we gonna get gas? The cops will be here any minute," I say.

His face smiles but I sense that underneath the mask he's empty, as if all the life has been sucked out of him.

"Just drop the whole gas thing. Listen. I have an idea, and I fully respect your decision in this matter, okay? But, I say, drowning is overrated."

"Not like I can drown now," I mutter.

"Exactly. It's meh, too quiet," Hunter continues without missing a beat. "How about, I teach you how to fly?"

"And you would know how? Then we better do it, in like, the next minute." I glance back, listening for police. They're still on their way south, haven't turned around yet.

I look back and find Hunter staring at me intently. I hold his gaze, a bridge of understanding strung in the air, for both of us to cross only once and then disappear as if it never existed.

"You're thinking somewhere high?" I ask.

"I'm thinking, a mountain," he says triumphantly.

"Which one?"

"Rainier."

"Oh," I exhale, nodding, faintly aware of time passing and wondering how much longer we can stand here and talk before being caught. Hunter seems unfazed, studying my reaction with obvious satisfaction. He always falls into this calmness at the onset of danger, knowing exactly when to rest and when to run. I decide to trust his intuition.

The air grows thin. Sleepy suburban houses stir with life, souls tinkling on from slumber.

"And we will ride to the top of the mountain on..." I begin.

"That," Hunter finishes for me and points at the first house to the left of the intersection. "A Streetfighter. Baby, we're in luck." That explains his stopping point.

I follow his gaze to a big craftsman-style house, squatting low over a rising manicured lawn, the walls painted an unidentifiable shade of not really beige, and not really gray, but something in the middle. Its size suggests a huge family. In front of its two garage doors are parked a dark blue van and a sporty looking motorcycle. Black. How appropriate.

"What's a Streetfighter?" His excitement is lost on me.

"It's a cross between a Monster and a Superbike."

"Hunter." I throw him a stern look, pretending to understand.

"What?" He pulls on my hand. "Come on, we don't have much time."

I sigh. We trot across the street. It's quiet. I sense only a handful of souls behind closed doors, and none in the big house. We stop by the bike. It looks naked, with all kinds of pipes exposed and two long mirrors sticking out.

"Can you do your freezing thing again?" Hunter pleads.

I purse my lips.

"Please?" Without waiting for an answer, he pulls his piece of wire from his pocket, drops on his knees next to the bike, and sticks his hand inside its guts. "This is too easy."

"Fine," I say and scan the neighborhood. "We're just lucky nobody is on the street, and this is stealing," I add, but he doesn't hear me.

"Man, I always wanted to ride one," comes from below, and then something clicks and the engine roars to life.

"Quick!" Hunter mounts and I hop behind him on the miniscule passenger peg of a seat, but it's better than the flat surface of the Harley's saddlebags.

"It has passenger pegs!" I exclaim, opening them to their horizontal position.

Nobody runs out of the house, nobody stops us. Hunter backs out of the driveway and guns it, leaving a trail of blue smoke behind us, riding up the road and cresting the hill. It seems fortune is on your side when your end goal is death.