PIZZA ROCK

“If you learned today that you would live to be a hundred years old but you’d have to eat Casey’s breakfast pizza every morning until you died, how would you feel about that?”

            “Are you shitting me, J, what kind of hypothetical is that? I mean, first of all, rephrase: You’d get to eat Casey’s breakfast pizza every day. I’d be stoked.”

            “So, what, do calories not count in this new universe of yours, J? Because that sounds pretty sweet. Otherwise I don’t know how eating this stuff leads to living long. I assumed I was shortening my life. Not that I’m complaining.”

            It was just the three of us that afternoon, as it had been all summer, riding bikes to the corner store off Old Highway 2. Kate’s big brother worked there and he’d bake us a pizza even if it was no longer morning and he wasn’t supposed to be making breakfast. A real standup guy.

            Mikey was back to hanging out with us by then. He’d been the town hero since the last day of school on account of him using his favorite wrestling move to knock down Brian Norris in the seconds after that weirdo shot poor Mrs. Cryer during third period and in the seconds before he shot some more of us. Mikey spent the week after that riding bikes with the kids whose parents could afford houses in the new subdivision and entertaining offers from prospective girlfriends. But he quickly tired of the hero life and resumed hanging with us.

            The newspapers called him Michael, which we still made fun of him for, but the Iowa City paper did him a solid by mentioning his love of Casey’s breakfast pizza. The company got word and said he could have free pizzas for the next year. He approached this with a zeal I’d never seen in the seven years I’d known him, since kindergarten. We were averaging almost one pizza per day; our personal best was two on June 8. Kate’s brother had to order extra supplies each week.

            Her brother wasn’t working today, so we couldn’t order what he called the Mike & Friends Special: four slices of bacon pizza for the hero, four slices of sausage for me, four slices of veggie for Kate. Today, we would have to pick just one topping, like normal, non-heroes.

            “Let’s get bacon,” Mikey said in a tone that sounded closed to debate.

            “Do you ever get tired of the bacon? Even J mixes it up sometimes.”

            “First of all, Kathryn, I don’t know what ‘even J’ means. You should be offended, man,” he told me. “Second, no, I do not. Do you ever get tired of oxygen?”

            And so it was. Bacon, scrambled eggs and two dripping cheeses over a crispy crust, eaten on the old wooden picnic table behind the store, as usual. Our faces nearly touched as we leaned forward so any grease or cheese or greasy cheese would plop down in the cardboard box rather than our shorts-covered laps. These moments had defined the first half of that summer of ‘01. What Mikey said next would define the second half.

            “Look, I’ve been meaning to tell you guys something. I think I kind of caused the shooting at school and got Mrs. Cryer hurt.”

            “You’ve been meaning to tell us?! Since wh —”

            “What the crap, Mikey?” Kate cut in. “What do you mean you kind of caused it? You stopped it. We were there.”

            “Yeah, I know, but listen. The day before, I was over here by myself and I walked into the little patch of trees back there.” He pointed to about two dozen oaks and maples behind me, which I’d hardly noticed all the times we’d been here. “I was bored and feeling crappy, you know how I get. My mom says when I feel that way I’m supposed to write down what I want, so I can work on it, try to make it happen, you know. Between the trees there’s a boulder on the ground. I took a magic marker and wrote, ‘I want to be cool’ and ‘I want to be Tiffany Sykes’ boyfriend.’ The next day, boom, that creep Brian Norris does his thing, I’m cool and Tiffany asked me out a few days later. Now, turns out, she mostly just wanted to be on TV with me, but still.”

            “Holy crap, man,” I said.

            “Mikey, c’mon, that was just a coincidence. Plus, let’s face it, you’re still not cool.” But Kate’s joke landed like a dud bottle rocket. Even she sounded distracted — thinking. “Have you written anything on it since then?”

            “Hell no. The last time I did, someone got paralyzed and someone else went to jail. Seems like I shouldn’t go near it.”

            I noticed Kate’s grey eyes behind her zebra-print glasses, looking over my shoulder and into the trees. Mikey’s eyes followed hers and my eyes followed theirs, until we were all staring at an utterly inconspicuous bunch of trees. You couldn’t even see any boulders from here.

            The grass was soggy and knee-high, so we walked our bikes to the boulder, Mikey grumbling about the possibility of garter snakes and all of us swatting mosquitos. There were so few trees that you could easily see all of them and the neighborhood on the other side when standing in the tall grass before them. There was a rock, maybe two feet tall and just as wide, partially buried in the leafy ground to our left. “Too small to be a boulder, Michael,” Kate said.

            It had rained the night before but the rock, protected by an oak leaf canopy overhead, still had Mikey’s magic marker dreams on its flat side. “There it is, like I said. Can we go now?”

            “We have to write on it first,” Kate told him, as if that were obvious. “To prove it was all a coincidence and that you didn’t hurt Mrs. Cryer. Don’t we, J?”

            I wasn’t ready for the question and hadn’t given the matter much thought up until then but Kate’s reasoning seemed sound and her face made clear she was expecting a yes. “Yeah, for sure. I have a marker in my backpack. What should we write?”

            Kate had her tongue out slightly and was biting down on it, as she always did when deep in thought. Mikey loved mocking her for it and I pretended to too, though if we’re being honest I thought it was cute. After ten seconds like that, she said, “Let’s write something positive. Something unselfish and straightforward. So it won’t turn out bad.”

            “Wait, I thought you didn’t believe the rock could do anything,” Mikey said from behind us as Kate and I crouched over the thing, marker in her hand. She ignored him and wrote, in a cursive much cleaner than Mikey’s above it, “I want my dad to get a promotion at work.” I looked over and she shrugged. “The guy deserves it.” Her dad works at the plant, some office job. My mom works there too but in a different department. About half our town works there.

            “Okay, now can we go?” Mikey said in his whiniest tone yet. We walked our bikes out of the trees and through the grass, found some pavement and pedaled to Kate’s place to watch the first half of a Cardinals-Cubs doubleheader.

* * *

            “Uh, yes sir, I understand…Yes, I agree, tragic, of course…No family as I recall, right?...Sad all the same, yes…We can sort out the rest in the morning, agreed…Thank you for letting me know, sir…Yes, you have a goodnight also…Bye.”

            From just one side of the phone call, Kate could piece together enough to turn her skin cold and her head woozy, as if the air pressure had just plummeted. She asked to be excused from the dinner table a few minutes before dessert and a few seconds before her mom suggested she listen to some music in her room for a bit while her parents talked. “That was Mr. Tuchman on the phone…” Kate could hear her dad say as she walked off in a daze.

            Mr. Tuchman was the Big Boss at her dad’s office. Below him was her dad’s immediate boss, a crotchety boozehound of a manager named Bill, whose wife had left him years ago (Kate picked up on a lot of conversations in a bungalow as small as theirs). On this day, Bill had returned from lunch with a hobbling walk and a breath of bourbon and been “shitcanned” as her dad put it (Kate personally avoided all curse words on principle). As far as the police could tell, Bill then bought a pint of Beam at the liquor store off Fehling Road and went for a ride down Old Highway 2 that ended in an unmowed ditch between the eastbound and westbound lanes. Mr. Tuchman needed her dad to take over as manager, temporarily. “Yes, sir, of course,” he said.

            In a cold sweat, Kate fell to her knees, lifted the bottom of her Cubs comforter up, and reached under the bed. She grabbed what she was looking for with wet palms, extended the antenna and leaned it outside her window. The night’s cool, pre-rain air gave her goosebumps.

            “Red and Blue, this is Green, do you read me? I repeat, Red and Blue, this is Green with an urgent transmission. Do you read me? Over.”

            She tossed the walkie-talkie on the bed and paced the off-white carpet of her bedroom as she waited. I was responding within ten seconds. Thank goodness I carry mine around with me.

            “Roger, Green. This is Blue. Everything okay over there?”

            As she pressed down on the push-to-talk button, she noticed for the first time that her hands were shaking. “No, not – not really. Did your mom say anything tonight about Bill Pollaris from the office?”

            “No, who’s that?”

            “He’s my dad’s boss. Or was. He got fired today and then died. My dad’s getting his job. Which means the rock — what we wrote happened.”

            “I tried telling you guys not to touch that thing,” Mikey said. “Uh, this is Red, by the way. Over.”

            I told Kate that this could be a coincidence, that people don’t get fired because of one mistake, right? He must have been a bad employee. Plus, we never wrote anything about someone dying, so that part wasn’t on us. I believed some of what I told her.

            “Of course we didn’t say anyone should get hurt,” she said in a whisper that sounded like she wanted to scream. “But neither did Mikey and someone did then too. The rock, or whatever’s behind all this, takes our wishes and causes pain with them. We get what we wish for but others get hurt. We can’t use it anymore.”

            Mikey was up next: “This doesn’t seem like the right time to again point out that I told you so, so I won’t.”

            “Okay, look, let’s just sleep on it,” I suggested. “We can regroup tomorrow. I’ll ask my mom about Bill What’s-His-Face and try to get some more information. Maybe there’s a way to use the rock that doesn’t get people hurt, I don’t know. Maybe we’re just doing it wrong.”

            It rained that night; I can still remember. One of those great Midwestern downpours I’ve always loved. “Coming down in buckets,” as my dad’d say. The low rumble as it hit our roof. The greasy sheen it left on the streets. The raw earthiness. A big Midwestern downpour is something to be felt while it lasts, smelled when it’s gone and missed if you move away.

* * *

            The “incident at school,” as my parents called it, happened the day after Mikey wrote on the rock. The firing and death of Bill Pollaris were three days after Kate wrote on the rock. Would the next wish come true five days after we scribbled on it?

            “It doesn’t matter because we’re not going to write anything on it again,” Mikey said. It was the next day and we were in his basement, the three of us, trying to decide what to do next.

            “Write on what?” Mikey’s little brother, Nate, said as he was walking in.

            “Nothing, man,” Mikey told him. “Scram.” Nate rolled his eyes and headed upstairs.

            “Look,” I said, semi-whispering this time. “Let’s just go out there today. We won’t write anything – won’t even bring a marker – but I want to take a closer look, check if there’s something we’re not seeing. Something that tells us how to use it. The right way.”

            “That’s cool with me,” Kate said and I smiled. “I don’t think there is a right way but it doesn’t hurt to look. Plus, I’m getting hungry. At least come for the bacon, Mikey.”

            “Will do. But no writing.”

            “Deal.”

            “Deal.”

            The plan had been to have our pizza at the picnic table, as usual, but Kate and I were too eager to get to the rock, so instead we were standing over it, slices in hand, talking between chews. Or during them, in Mikey’s case.

            “What exactly are we looking for, J?” he asked. Looking came out as ooging.

            “I don’t know.” I’d brought my mom’s digital camera and was taking photos we could look at later. Kate was trying to figure out if the placement or the handwriting of the messages could determine when they come true. She was biting her tongue between her lips again.

            “Mikey’s first wish is at the top and it came true fastest. His second wish came true a week later and our third wish — my wish — is listed third and happened in three days. If you take out Mikey’s girlfriend wish, there’s a pattern. But we can’t, so I’m stumped.”

            “I blame Tiffany Sykes. She probably threw off the rock somehow,” Mikey said. He never told us exactly why they broke up after two days, only that it was acrimonious. “She sucks” is all he’d say when we asked. He was eloquent like that.

            “Look, timing is important, but it’s not my biggest concern,” I told them. “The problem isn’t that the messages come true a few days or a week later, it’s that bad things happen too. If we are going to use the rock, I think we have to figure out why that is and how to stop it. If we wrote ‘I want blah blah blah and for nobody to get hurt,’ do you think that would work, Kate?”

            “I don’t know. Maybe? If the rock does what we tell it, it seems like that would work. If the rock just likes hurting people or teaching us some lesson, maybe it wouldn’t work.”

            “Just a reminder,” Mikey said, “you guys promised we wouldn’t write on it today.”

            “Yes, dude, we know,” I said with aggravation, which I could feel rising inside of me. “Are you seriously not interested in figuring this thing out? Are you really that dense? Do you know what we could do – what problems we could solve — if we do this the right way?”

            “Hey, man! You don’t understand. I discovered this thing and then someone got hurt because of me! A nice lady. Go ask her what it’s like to not be able to feel her legs, to never be able to walk again, and then come back and call me dense.” His voice cracked with that last word and I re-realized how the shooting had weighed on him. “You don’t understand, J.”

            Before I could apologize, Kate suggested we all go for a ride, to get away from the rock and talk about something else. I caught up to Mikey as we were walking midway through the grass, put my hand on his shoulder and apologized. He was wiping away the last of his tears.

            Looking back, it must have been then, as the three of us were standing on bike pedals and pushing off past Casey’s, that he went to the rock. It’s the only way I can figure it. Nate must have followed us there, hid while we were leaving and walked into the trees after we left. When we stopped by the rock the next morning to further consider our options, it was there in all caps:

I WISH I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS

* * *

            “Crap, crap, crap, crap,” Kate said. My thoughts exactly.

            “This is very bad,” Mikey added, needlessly. “Have you guys ever heard of The Monkey’s Paw?” We both shook our heads.

            “After we left here yesterday, I did some research on AOL. There’s an old story about a magic monkey foot that makes wishes come true. But the first thing people do is ask for money and then a dude dies! And they only asked for like two hundred bucks! A million? My god!”

            Kate was trying to scrub the words off with her Mr. Pibb and left shirt sleeve but having about zero luck. “Maybe we can write over it,” she said.

            “I don’t know,” I told her. “Doesn’t seem like that would work. But what about – remember when we were talking about how we could tell the rock not to hurt anybody? What if we added that to the end?”

            Kate nodded her head slightly, still thinking but starting to agree, before turning to Mikey. “What do you think, big guy? I know how much you hate writing on this thing. But your brother…”

            “Yeah,” he said, running his fingers through his short brown hair. “I think J is right. Nothing to lose by trying it.”

            Kate had a Sharpie in her backpack. Her writing was neater, smaller and not in capital letters. The rock now read:

I WISH I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS and no one got hurt.

            The three of us were silent as we stared down at it. I didn’t want to face Mikey, who’d been through so much that summer. Kate’s addition was the right thing to do, I was sure of it, but her words hung heavy in the air and in our minds. Because they implied that something needed to happen or else someone would get hurt again. Probably Mikey’s eight-year-old kid brother.

            “Did you guys notice,” Kate said as we were leaving the trees, “that we’re running out of space on the rock? We could maybe get two wishes on there if we wrote small but it’s hard to do that on a rock and only one side is flat enough to write on. There’s probably only room for one more.”

            “One too many, you ask me,” Mikey mumbled under his breath.

            We left it at that. It was clear that Mikey was scared and no one could blame him. We had no idea what would happen next — whether Nate would be a millionaire, whether he’d be killed in some freak accident, whether our additional words would help. I know now how it all ends, of course, but you have to understand, we didn’t know that then.

* * *

            For four days after, nothing happened. Mikey was a nervous wreck and Kate and I weren’t much better. We tried the usuals — riding bikes, watching baseball, Game Boy — but nothing held our interest. We only ordered one pizza in those four days and threw half of it away when we realized we weren’t hungry.

            Mikey treated his brother like a pinless grenade inside their house of TNT and avoided both as often as he could. They’d discussed the rock only once, as they were preparing for bed that day we saw the million-dollar wish.

            “I know about you and the rock. You shouldn’t have done that.”

            “Why not? Do you own the rock?”

            “You’re going to get people hurt. You don’t understand.”

            “It’s not real, Mike.” Only Kate and I called him Mikey. “Where’s the million bucks? Where’s your girlfriend?”

            “You don’t understand. Just stay away.”

            It was a few days after that when something finally happened. Kate and I wanted to distract Mikey for a bit, so we pooled our jars of quarters and biked to the arcade downtown. But the arcade was temporarily closed because the arcade was just across the street from First Bank and First Bank was, at that very moment, being robbed.

            Police had the place surrounded and weren’t letting anyone past the perimeter they’d set up. Of course, about half the town was there, trying to see inside and whispering about they could or (more often) couldn’t see. Kids were running over to the commotion and among them I noticed the chubby frame and freckled complexion of Nate. He spotted Kate, who he thought was the epitome of cool, despite her being a girl, and hurried over.

            Kate was staring through binoculars she’d pulled from her backpack — the girl was prepared for anything, I’m telling you — and passing along what she saw. “Man, older than our dads…he’s standing behind a young woman…they’re behind that counter they have when you walk in…the guy is, uh, rough looking…dirty clothes, messy hair…kind of country, lots of camo…seems angry about something…woman has her hands up, trying to talk to him…looks scared.”

            “Can I see?” Nate asked, still gasping from his run. Kate shrugged her shoulders and handed over the binoculars.

            “Oh, fudge, no way!” he said after two seconds. “That’s Joe Cooley’s old man. Can’t remember his name but that’s him alright. Always knew that guy was a little nutso.” Every kid in town knew some Cooley offspring, there was a whole mess of them. They lived in a beat-up farmhouse off the highway with a truck and tractor graveyard out front.

            “Oh, no. No, no, no,” Nate said next.

            “What? What is it?” Mikey yelled. “What do you see?”

            But his brother wasn’t looking through the binoculars then. He was looking away, distracted, shaking his head. “The rock,” he said. “This could be the rock! I can’t believe it. I thought there was no way. I mean, it’s just a stupid rock.”

            “What are you talking about, Nate? What does this have to do with you asking for a million dollars?”

            “Me, asking for – you thought I wrote that? I figured you were mad at me for showing someone your secret spot.”

            “Someone else?” his brother said. “Who else did you –”

            But I understood then. Nate’s face, it was the same look I’d seen on his brother when he told us about the rock and the same look I knew was on Kate’s when she told us about Bill Pollaris.

            “Joe Cooley,” I said. Nate looked at his shoes and nodded.

            Now, as you can imagine, the bungled bank robbery was big news in town and this was back before the newspaper shut down, so The Herald wrung every detail it could from the whole sad matter in the weeks that followed. Turns out, old Jim Cooley Sr. was about to lose the farm to the bank, so he decided to take from the bank instead. Didn’t bother with a mask or anything, wanted them to know it was him. Damndest thing.

            Rose Bollier was the teller that day. He handed her a note that said, “give me the money AND NOBODY GETS HURT” and put his gun on the counter. She filled his grain sack with cash from her drawer, tapped the silent alarm and handed the money over. He took a look inside, shouted, “Bullshit! There must be a million dollars in this goddamn place!” and ordered everyone out except Rose, who was instructed in no uncertain terms to find more money. She was in the process of raiding the other drawers when police arrived and Jim Cooley decided she’d make a better hostage than a teller. It stayed that way for about two hours, until Rose’s parents got on the phone with Jim, told him how sweet a person their daughter is, and asked him to release her. Old Jim had taken to her as well in their short time together, so he apologized to the young woman, let her go unharmed, and made sure she wasn’t looking back when he put his gun in his mouth and ended the thing right then and there.

* * *

            “Okay, I’ve changed my mind,” Kate said. “The rock doesn’t grant wishes. It doesn’t hurt people.”

            “What?” Mikey barked incredulously. “Did you not hear the same gunshot I heard? The Cooleys’ old man is dead. His son asked for a million dollars and someone got hurt, as always. Our message – request, whatever – is the only thing that didn’t work.”

            “Then where’s the million dollars?” Kate asked. “The Cooleys aren’t millionaires. Because it’s just a dumb rock and we’re just three kids with vivid imaginations.”

            The bank robbery had ended a couple hours before. We were on the picnic table but not hungry for a Mike & Friends Special or anything else. As you can see, Kate and Mikey were of two minds about what had happened. I thought there was a third way.

            “Guys, what if the rock works and our wish that no one gets hurt also worked? Think about it: Old man Cooley was probably drunk and depressed, would have done something like that anyway, but he let that woman go. If we had not written on the rock, she would have gotten hurt, like Mrs. Cryer or Kate’s dad’s coworker. Maybe Joe Cooley will get a cool million some other time. Or maybe his dad left him the money, buried it behind a barn or something.”

            “I’m not buying it, J,” Kate said bluntly.

            “Me neither, man,” Mikey added.

            Kate continued: “But I agree with what you said about Cooley. He would have done something like that anyway. And Bill Pollaris was a bad employee who liked to drink and drive. And Brian Norris is a weirdo who probably planned his shooting for weeks. All of these things would have happened anyway, you guys. Coincidences.”

            “And Tiffany Sykes?” I asked.

            “Okay, I admit, that one’s hard to explain,” she said with a grin.

            “Can we all agree to get rid of that thing now?” Mike asked in his usual pleading tone. “Even if it’s just a rock, no harm in burying it, right? You can’t deny that people keep dying, J. And we don’t know who Joe Cooley or my idiot brother have told. Someone could write ‘I want the world to end’ on it tomorrow!”

            Kate, still grinning, said, “I want the world to end and no one gets hurt” and then burst into laughter. I smiled and then laughed at her laughing. So did Mikey. After four days of holding our breath, waiting to see what would happen, we needed the relief of that laugh. It felt and even sounded a bit like air being pushed out of a balloon you’ve been squeezing too tight.

And for once, we all knew what had to be done.

* * *

It made sense to us then, though it may not now, that we bury the rock at night. Kate and I told our parents we were going to Mikey’s and would be back before nine. I don’t know what Mikey told his parents but they tended to not ask a lot of questions.

I stuffed a flashlight and gardening trowel in my backpack, along with some water bottles and Kate’s favorite gum. The ride was short, about five minutes from my house. I parked my bike at the picnic table and walked into the tall grass and then the trees, an orb of flashlight ahead of me. I was early, a few minutes ahead of the others, as I’d hoped.

We knew we couldn’t lift the rock but hoped we could roll it ten feet or so, to a patch of soft soil. I wanted to try on my own first. I pressed my Reeboks into the dark dirt and leaves, put my palms on the sides of the rock — on both sides of the scribbled wishes — and pushed until my sneakers slid and I stumbled forward. Maybe it will never move, I thought. Maybe it’s too powerful. What will you do then?

After I cleared away the leaves in a bid for better traction, I could see the flashlights of Kate and Mikey as they pedaled to the picnic table. I put my hands higher on the rock this time and leaned my left shoulder into it while I drove with my legs. It wobbled and then rolled to the right, so that the written words were facedown in the dirt. Worms and roly-polies squirmed in the space where the thing had once rested.

“Easy there, Hulk,” Kate said as she shone her light on me. “You could have waited for us, you know.”

I was tall for my age — still am, I guess — but lanky, wiry. The rock had looked moveable but then seemed to be heavier than rock. Like it’s full of something, I thought. Or maybe you’re just full of it. “Yeah, I know, but I got here a little early, wanted to get started.”

Kate, the brains behind all our operations, suggested digging the hole first, then clearing a path between the rock and the hole, and pushing it the remaining eight feet or so. Mikey and I looked at each other, shrugged in a sounds like a plan sort of way, and the three of us began digging. With the ground soft, we had a three-foot hole in ten minutes.

“Will you guys think about this thing after it’s gone and buried?” I asked. “I mean, wonder what could have been? How it might have made us rich or famous or something?” Light from the subdivision had guided our work and in that light I could see Mikey shaking his head.

“I don’t think I will, J, and I hope you don’t either,” Kate said. “I’ll remember this summer, of course, and I guess the rock will be in those memories. I feel older, y’know? Like we grew up this summer. And whether the rock is powerful or not, I think we learned that you can’t just get what you want that easily. Life doesn’t work that way, I guess.”

“Deep stuff, Kathryn,” Mikey said. “Now, can we get this cursed thing in the ground? This place is starting to creep me out.”

Mikey and I, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, pushed the rock a few feet, until it dug into the soil ahead of it, then waited for Kate to clear the mud and pushed again. This went on for five or so minutes until, covered in the dampness of Midwestern summer humidity, our hands nudged it over the edge and into its resting place. Kate offered to fill the hole while we rehydrated. When she was done, she sprinkled a handful of grass seed on top. As I’ve told you, the girl was always prepared.

* * *

I didn’t take Kate’s advice and forget about it, as you’ve probably realized by now. I still ponder, from time to time, what’s written on the flat side. I think of the unforeseen consequences, the damage I may have done, the new realities I have created.

Mikey’s in Iowa City now, has been since college. He likes it out there. We keep in touch, see each other every couple months. Everyone there calls him Mike but Kate and I still call him Mikey, or Michael if we’re being real smartasses, same as it ever was.

Nate’s still here in town, does construction. We see him at the Elks lodge from time to time. Always say hi when we do, of course.

Joe Cooley never did get a million dollars, in case you’re wondering. No, afraid not. When he was 17 he got kicked out of the high school he rarely attended, for fighting. When he was 19 he got some more ideas about fighting and a flight to Iraq. When he was 21 he got unlucky and hit an IED, lost everything below the knee. After that he got an honorable discharge, some medals, a parade in town and a painkiller prescription that killed him two years later. Joe Cooley got many things but no, not a million dollars.

It's been 14 years now since that summer I told you about. Nine years since Kate and I started dating; five years since our wedding. We’re still here, sitting on a new and improved picnic table — hard plastic, sure to last a thousand years — and eating breakfast pizza, half sausage and half veggie. But the rock is long gone, jackhammered into shards when they knocked down the trees around it and expanded the subdivision. Nate tells me they scattered the remains, made rock beds out of them near the entrance to the neighborhood. I like to imagine you could, if you really wanted to, still piece them together and read the blue marker at the bottom of the flat side:

I WANT KATE ELIZABETH SCHOLER TO LOVE ME