“Lean into it,” Amy says.  Her breath is hot on my ear.  Her boobs press against my back.  They are so big.  They are Jupiter and Saturn.  They are the biggest.  Also she is my cousin.  
     We are both on her bicycle.  She pilots and pedals and I am perched on the tip of her banana seat, not knowing where to put my hands, being hurtled to my doom.
     I take her advice and lean into it.  She bikes us past Ohio corn, through run-down Newtonsville where there are people in their yards, working on their cars, and they stand up straight and stare as we pass but do not wave, and then back out into the wild down hills and under trees.  Every bounce and rocky patch we ride over slams the edge of the seat into my nuts and they hurt like I have never known hurt in my life.  It’s like there’s an ache deep inside me.  It’s like the center of my balls have turned into heavy rocks and the pain radiates out from this granite core.  On the other hand, after about sixty seconds of pain and not knowing where my hands go (answer:  the oily bar beneath the seat), my balls go tingly and then they go numb, which actually feels kind of neat.
     I grin all the way down a particularly steep hill and I wish I was the kind of kid who yelled out loud.  At the bottom of the hill the road is surrounded by trees on all sides.  
     “This is a forest,” I say.
     “It’s just trees,” Amy laughs.
     We ride through a curve and lean away from it to keep from tipping over.  We’re on the same team.
     “You’ll like my friends,” she says.  “They’re juniors.  You’ll have junior friends.  Older friends.”
     “Will they want to be friends with a freshman?” I ask.  “I’m just some new kid.”
     “You’re mysterious,” she says.  “Mystery is the key, Berto.”  Her voice vibrates my eardrum, all the way down to my core.
     “The key to what?” I say.
     “Exactly,” says Amy.
     We ride up a little hill and into a black-topped lot.  I lean back as Amy pedals us up the incline and I feel her boobs in my back again.  Even if she is my cousin, and even if that’s weird, it’s August on a bike and there are boobs in my back, whosever they are.  So maybe I lean into them a little more than I have to.
     The lot is mostly empty.  The only things there are a little red car, and a bigger, whiter pickup truck, facing each other with the headlights off.  Two guys with beer bottles stand between them and hold their hands up in hello.  A girl reclines on the hood of the car, smoking a cigarette.  She doesn’t look up at all.
     “This is Berto,” Amy says, out of breath, “he’s my awesome cousin.”
     My butt hurts from the bike seat, like needles and pins.  I do a stupid kind of salute, not really on purpose, and try not to walk funny from my numb butt.  My balls are just gone.  I do not know what became of them.