"Why are we wandering around a cemetery at night in the cold?" asked Katy.
Her brother Max responded distractedly, "I left my wallet behind one of the stones when I was here earlier."
"Why were you here earlier though?"
No answer. He hadn't answered any of the times she'd asked. Katy sort of knew that a lot of the older kids at her school went to Oakwood Cemetery to have sex, which only made the place creepier for her. At age 12, sex was not as fun-sounding as riding her ATV or playing soccer. Boys were annoying. Look at her brother: he and Alyssa had probably been here doing something she knew she could use as blackmail if she ever needed to blackmail Max.
By now, the sun had set most of the way. When Max had asked her at about 6:30 if she'd help him look for his wallet, she'd agreed...after telling him he'd have to pay her $10. Hey, time is money! She could be catching up on Drake & Josh or something that involved being inside and warm.
Max went behind an odd-looking short pillar. It really looked more like the bottom of a monument that had once been much more imposing, or had never been completed. Katy looked back toward the gates and then past Max to the treeline. She sighed. This was boring. Then she squinted, imagining the grass without any stones at all, and smiled. This would make a great soccer field if it weren't for all the grave markers.
She heard Max say, "I found it. We can go home now."
He was standing by a shorter, upstanding flat marker next to a bouquet of plastic roses waving his wallet. She shrugged and turned to head back to the gate. Then she stopped, mostly because she had almost tripped over a water spigot. It was just way too dark to be wandering around here now. She flipped her flashlight on and pointed it toward the ground in front of her, hearing Max come up next to her. He held out a ten-dollar bill, long legs carrying him.
"Got a hot date?" she called after him when he was twenty yards in front of her.
His shoulders bunched and he kept moving. He was such a goof. She followed him to the road and then down the hill toward the gate. The hours on the sign over the gate said they were supposed to be out by sundown. They were only a few minutes past, if anyone asked. No one would, though.
Max went under the sign and turned left. Where was he going? When Katy got to the sidewalk, she looked left and she could see him striding up Maple Street. Toward the high school, and the McDonald's on Main. Alyssa lived the other direction, a couple blocks east of their house.
She shook her head and headed home, flipping off her flash. The streetlights were on by now.
Brothers are the weirdest, she thought. Or maybe it was high-schoolers; even the girls seemed strange to her. As she walked down the sidewalk, she practiced dribbling an invisible soccer ball, cold but content...and $10 richer.
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