As summer vacation drew closer, I saw less and less of the fellows. We only met in the drugstore now, and only for a half hour or so, we had so much homework to do. Mom and Dad and Sydney wanted almost hourly reports on where I was and what I was doing; they wanted me to end the year well and then have fun, I guess. We still hadn’t found a new spot in the park to have meetings, which was irritating, but Clive was convinced that he was on to something, and if he could just have “a whole hour, with nobody else around,” we would be all set. I was nervous to see what he was cooking up.

  Finally, with groans and sighs and some sleepless nights, the school year ended and summer was on us, with a bang. No, really, the first Sunday night of the summer, a huge thunderstorm swept across the town, tossing down tree branches and in some places, entire trees. That Monday dawned sunny and very clear, and as soon as I convinced Syd I was just going to the park, I was out the door.

  She had been doing a little bit better. Definitely was going to have a scar on her head though. Stenway had called her on the day after our meeting, and a few times since, and they’d even gone out for dinner once. She wasn’t as over the moon about it as she had been at the start, though. Sydney was a lot more thoughtful, didn’t ring up her friends as much to talk about it. But, she seemed mostly happy, so I didn’t keep a close eye on her.

  “T.J.” Donny grabbed my arm and yanked me behind a shelf of Captain Marvel comics. “We’ve been up since the sun came out, at the park. We found something. Come on.” Even though I had bus fare this time, Donny led me through the alley to the backside of the park. We jumped the fence (it required very little jumping, an enormous tree limb had come down near the spot we crossed over) and instead of cutting across towards the path, Donny pulled me deeper into the woods.

  “Did they find a new spot?”

  “Yeah, for now. We found it, and then built some of it.” Donny was whacking aside vines and small bushes, hacking a little path. “Probably won’t be long until some teenagers find out about it, but we’ll use it for as long as we can. But that’s not the important part. Come on.” With a final tug, he pulled me into a small clearing. Overnight, the storm had knocked down quite a large limb, which just so happened to fall across a downed tree (a victim of some other storm.) The spot where they crossed and the angles of the two trees made a small triangle, about eight feet tall and the same across. Along the smaller open portion, I could see that the fellows had stacked and laced branches to create a kind of back. Clive sauntered up to us, streaked from head to toe in mud and dead leaves.

  “Whadd’ya think?”

  Before I could answer, there was an almighty crash behind us as another tree limb gave up the ghost and came plummeting to the ground. Clive sprinted towards it, followed by Peach and Chris Blue. They grabbed the limb and began to pull. “Come on, lend a hand.”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Donny looked at me and shrugged. We went over, grabbed on, and began to pull. Clive called out directions and we finally laid it to rest about 10 feet in front of the open part of the structure. “Just what we needed.” Clive was rubbing his hands together. “Screens us from the front side of the park. Perfect.”

  Chris Blue wiped his hands on his shirt. “Anything else we need, Clive?”

  “Did you guys find any rocks or logs or anything? I mean, I don’t have a problem sitting on the ground, but the girl might.” He looked sideways at me, but I didn’t answer.

  “Yeah, there's a couple in there that should work. Alright then, let’s get down to business.”

  But instead of turning into the shelter, like I assumed, the fellows turned and headed out of the woods, back towards the path.

  “Uhm, hey, what’s going on?”

  Clive rolled his eyes at me. “If you’d bothered to get out of bed earlier maybe you’d know.”

  I started to protest. “Hey, we never meet before nine, I did good…” I broke off as we reached the area of the gazebo. There was a crowd gathered just past it, and something seemed off. It took a minute for it to click in; the statue was gone. The one of Mr. Left. As we got closer though, I realized it wasn’t gone. At least, not exactly. We elbowed our way through the crowd of people and saw the base of the statue, the pedestal, and up to about Mr. Left’s waist. From there, it had been wrenched and mangled, probably by the enormous tree branch that now lay a few feet away. “Where’s the top?”

  Peach grinned. “Gone.”

  I looked at him, suspicious. “Do you know where it is?”

  All of the fellows shook their heads, and we drew back a little ways from the crowd, up into the gazebo. It was still standing, no damage there. Peach shook his head again. “No, we don’t know where it is. When Clive got here this morning, he came from the front of the park. At that point it was still standing. I came just behind him, maybe ten minutes, and when I got here, the branch was down, the statue was in half, and the top was missing. Crazy, right?”

  “Do you think someone standing by just came at the right time and got it?”

  Clive rolled his eyes. I don’t think he’s ever spoken to me without doing that. “There was no one around when I came through, and Peach said the same thing. Besides, even half of that thing has to weigh a couple of hundred pounds.”

  I tilted my head to one side and looked around at them. “Is it hollow?”

  Chris barked out, “Clive.” And Clive scuttled off, diving back into the crowd of people. We waited quietly. I looked around the park. Even though I would never admit it to Clive, I wished I had gotten up earlier today. And not just because of the statue. It promised to be a beautiful day, cool and sunny, everything just washed by the storm. Good for all the clean up that was going to have to happen around town.