We found it behind our school, in the alley the four of us liked to roam late into the night, after I dared Jesper to leap into a blue dumpster. “Fine,” he said, boosting himself up, jumping in. He landed with a squishy splash. “Sometimes people find things in dumpsters.”

“We have better things to do than to jump into dumpsters,” Colby said, “where things might be found.”

And while this was true, it was also true that I had dared Jesper to do it, and a dare was a dare. Even Colby couldn’t argue with that. Last week, Antonio dared Colby to kick the burnt-brick exterior of the school gym, and he did, even though it meant he was now hobbling around on a single crutch and had a grey boot on his right foot.

“You’re going to find things alright,” Antonio said, his voice cracked apart by the puberty we were all in the middle of. “Like slime and grease and the discarded remnants of chicken wings.”

Just then, Jesper grunted and held something in the air, his skinny arms trembling.

“What the hell is that?” Antonio squeaked.

It was garish in the gaze of the streetlamp and looked heavy. “Help me,” Jesper said as he tried to balance it on the dumpster’s lip. Colby hobbled over on his single crutch and Antonio rushed past him.

“Help!” Jesper said again, and just as Antonio, Colby, and I reached the dumpster, Jesper lost grip and dropped the thing over the dumpster’s edge. I watched it tumble through the air, end over end, and as I inspected its weird sheen, its cylindrical shape, it crashed into my head with a heavy crack and sent me crumpling to the ground.

“Ouch!” I said, and heard Colby and Antonio also say, “Ouch!” because I guess it had bonked into all three of us at once. I squirmed on the ground, and when my head stopped throbbing so bad, I looked over. Light blared over Colby, highlighting his thinning blond hair as he writhed around. Antonio was motionless, splayed out on his back, limbs in all directions.

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