It happened on Saturday, May 5th, 2012. It was spring of our junior year of high school, making me 17 at the time. The reasons I remember that exact date will probably tell you everything you need to know about me. Not only was it national Free Comic Book Day, it was the opening weekend for the first Avengers film and I saw it for the second time (of what would eventually become six viewings) that day with my family. The showing ended at about three in the afternoon, and I went home and immediately called my friend Pete, asking him to come over and play some magic (the card game, not actual magic, who do you think I am?)

Now, before this story progresses any further, it is important to know that this was shaping up to be a pretty average Saturday for us. A little bit of magic, maybe we’d invite some more players over…until we eventually separated in the evening only to hang out via xbox live until Saturday Night Live came on…which was only ever to be followed by more xbox live.

However, as one can imagine, this didn’t end up being a normal Saturday night. As I sat there across from Pete, shuffling my green-sleeved cards in my mancave of a basement, I received a very unusual text message from our friend Anthony. Anthony was a bit of a wild card in the group. He was a genuinely crazy, fun-loving dude. “Wanna get drunk in the woods tonight?” the text read.

Here’s the part of the story where I should probably lie to you, saying Pete and I replied to Anthony with a reluctant and super-cool “sure, sounds good.” In reality, we giggled like school girls at the prospect of not only consuming alcohol, but doing so from the safety of the wilderness. “I’m gonna get drunk tonight,” I thought to myself. “I’m gonna be so fuckin’ cool.”

“Don’t be dumbasses,” my dad said as we left the house, myself equipped with a crappy sleeping bag and a backpack full of water and snacks. He had no idea where we were going.

In reality, he had totally known. Years later when I would tell him this story he would reply with “I’m not an idiot. You guys never once went camping, what makes me think you suddenly had an interest in being outside?”

Several Burger King sandwiches later, we joined Anthony and our friend Edgar at a campsite behind Edgar’s house, about half a mile from the road. Edgar was probably the best of us. He was clean cut, smart as hell, and had not so much as a detention on his record. (It is here I would like to say that I am protecting the identity, reputation, and integrity of my friends by changing their names within this story.) “So what’s the plan?” I said. It was about six o’clock and all we had was a tent, some wood and some bad intentions. Anthony laid it out clearly. “Edgar and I are gonna go pick up Jamie, then we’ll make some phone calls and get some alcohol.”

“Phone calls?” I asked.

“Yeah, phone calls.”

“To who?”

“To people.”

“What people?”

“I know people.”

“I know for a fact you don’t know people, Anthony.”

“I know, people, okay? Christ. Just don’t burn this place down while we’re gone. We’ll be back soon.”

They weren’t back soon.

Unfortunately, the next part in this story is rather dull on my end. Pete and I sat by the fire for three hours before they came back. This was long before we had smart phones and long before our discovery of blue tooth speakers. We ate all our hot dogs and almost killed each other out of boredom. The campsite offered little more than a tent with five lawn chairs and a fire pit. But, as I said, the story goes on.

Edgar and Anthony did have a plan, it surprisingly turns out. They picked up Jamie and made a call to a kid, who to protect my own life, will remain nameless in an effort to not reveal his being a secret alcohol liaison within our high school walls. How Anthony founds him remains a mystery to this day.

Long story short, this kid new a guy who could get us alcohol. Now I wasn’t there, but I can say I have heard this portion numerous amounts of times so I know pretty much how it plays out.

A man gets in the car and sits in the backseat next to Jamie. He’s thin, with a shaved head and has some very trendy tear-drop tattoos below his left eye.

“Whatchu boys need?”

“Alcohol,” said Jamie, like a small child asking Santa Clause for a Red Rider BB Gun.

“No shit. Go across the river. Just got outta the slammer in Ohio, you know how it is.”

“Ha. Yeah…” Jamie most certainly did not know how it was. I imagine he was doing his best to play it cool, as he was arguably the most apprehensive of us all about this entire situation.

So they drove to West Virginia, parked at a carry out, and handed the guy a whopping sixty dollars.

Forty-five minutes later, our felonious hero emerged with a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of vodka, and a six-pack of bud light. He claimed there was no change and had no explanation as to why the transaction took so long.

Now, as they returned to the man’s home, I was eager to get on with my drinking. I called them for about the thirtieth time and Jamie once again decided not to answer. Apparently, the kind soul next to him noticed.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s just our buddy,” said Jamie. “Won’t stop calling me, he’s waiting for this shit.”

“Oh. Well you want him dead, you got my number.”

“Oh. Yeah. Ha. Maybe. I’ll get at you!” Jamie cried, voice cracking at every third syllable.

They dropped him off at his house and drove away with quite a bit of speed.

So, it was about 9 o’clock at night by the time they finally got to the campsite, explained to me how my life had been threatened, and settled around the fire. I passed out the beers first, thinking we could ceremoniously drink a “cold one” together to commemorate the journey that would be this evening. Let it also be known that Anthony, for whatever reason, decided he wasn’t drinking. He only wanted to help us have a good time. This may seem unnatural to some, but he often took the straight-edge path and his justification was that one of us needed to be “sober enough to look after the others.” More for us, right?

We held our Bud Lights high, brown bottles glistening by firelight, and gave cheers. The cool liquid washed down our throats, settling in our stomachs as silence came over us.

“Tastes like dog shit.”

“Yup. I’m not drinking this.”

The bud lights were promptly poured out behind a tree.

The remainder of the activities went by in a Jack Daniels-fueled blur. I’m not sure how much time had passed, but I guarantee we drank too fast, considering we were just passing bottles around constantly. One by one, however, we fell.

A couple drinks in, Pete had stereotypically decided to “drunk text” a friend he had a crush on, something that wouldn’t end well. In his stupor, somebody tried to stop him, to which he answered, “I’ve got an iron stomach!” and proceeded to vomit all over himself. He went to bed.

Jamie, the Renaissance man himself, decided this wasn’t for him. It made him tired and we were out of food so he joined Pete in the tent.

Edgar and I looked at each other, silently vowing to finish the rest of this alcohol all on our own. We drank, we laughed, we taunted Anthony, and somehow, just somehow, we convinced him to take us to McDonalds.

Before we left, we yelled into Jamie and Pete, telling them where we were going and assuring Jamie we would get him three cheeseburgers.

The numerous cop cars in the parking lot next to McDonalds investigating a car really worried Anthony, but not me. Sitting in the drive-through in the back of his brand new 2012 Camry, Edgar in the passenger seat, I felt a calm sense of serenity over come me. I was with my best friends, I had finally done something “cool” and I actually felt like kind of a badass. “Hey Corey,” Edgar said as Anthony pulled up to the second window, reaching for our food. “Watch this.”

Time stopped. The cop cars were starting to move. The minimum wage McDonalds employee was handing the food through the window. The clouds moved to reveal a full moon, shining down directly on my friend riding shotgun. Edgar, my valiant wing man, couldn’t quite get his entire head out the window, so he proceeded to violently puke all over the interior of Anthony’s brand new car.

What happened next was nothing short of absolute anarchy. Anthony, in a move as swift as Mjolinir itself, simultaneously grabbed the food, whipped out of the lot, shoved Edgar’s face out the window and hit the highway. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…” Edgar kept crying, vomit spilling out of his mouth.

Meanwhile, I was in the backseat losing my shit. The scene that had unfolded in front of me was so chaotic, so unbelievable, that I couldn’t help but bust out in laughter for the entire ride home. It had happened, the worst of the worst. The night had fallen apart.

Anthony parked on the road closest to the campsite and stayed back to clean his car while I walked Edgar back to the tent. I promised I would return.

The walk back is easy, filled with paths and without much brush. I gave Edgar the bag of cheeseburgers to hold as I made my way through first, attempting to stay close in front of him so he wouldn’t fall down the small hill to our left.

I failed.

In the blink of an eye he was gone, sent tumbling down the muddied, dog-poop ridden hill that would forever haunt me every time I passed it. I could do nothing but watch in horror as his body tumbled to a stop at the bottom, lifeless.

I stood in shock, frozen by the fear that I had just witnessed my best friend die, and even worse, he probably smashed the cheeseburgers.

I ran down as fast as I could. “Edgar! Edgar! Are you okay?”

Miraculously, like a man possessed, he stood up before me. I don’t remember why, but his shirt was gone. Half a cheeseburger patty was plastered to his cheek and yellow mustard lined his forehead.

“I think I fell over.”

Somehow, we made it back to that god-forsaken tent. I told Edgar to take off his clothes and wipe down with some water. I approached the tent.

“Jamie?”

“What.”

“Edgar is sick. I need your help.”

“Did you get the cheeseburgers?”

“What?”

“Did. You get. The cheeseburgers?”

I hesitated. “Edgar has them.”

I shoved Edgar in the tent and returned to Anthony. He was frantically using old napkins to clean the interior of his car. “It’s useless,” he said. “I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

As we returned to the campsite, we planned to go right back to bed inside the tent. However, upon inspection, the tent was zipped tight, save for Edgar’s head poking out of a hole in the side, two piles of puke before it.

“Fuck it. We’ll sleep in my house.”

So we walked the mile back to Anthony’s house, told his mom we were “too hot in the tent,” and passed out.

I awoke the next morning alone in Anthony’s bedroom. “Okay,” I thought to myself. “I have to find everyone.” I checked my phone and saw a text from Jamie: “Got cold. Went to sleep in the shed.”

“Fucking wonderful,” I remember thinking, probably due to the fact that Anthony didn’t have a shed. But I decided to jump off that bridge when I came to it.

I began my hike back to the campsite, passing cars and Sunday Church-goers in total shame. They knew what I had done. They knew.

I passed our cars, not expecting to see what made me do a total double take. Inside one of our cars lay Pete and a naked Edgar, curled up next to each other, asleep.

I knocked on the window. The look of horror in their eyes when they opened them, only to be face to face in the back of a car is a look I will never forget.

The campsite was another story all together. Vomit, alcohol, half-eaten hot dogs…it was like a pack of animals had tragically found their way in. The real tragedy, however, was in knowing it was just a pack of bored high school kids from a small town who felt the pressure to do something “cool,” for once; to leave their respective basements and finally do what all the other kids were doing in some hope that they would find an answer to a question they didn’t even need to ask. In the end, I suppose, it was all an effort to chase that aforementioned “cool,” a word I had convinced myself was something that could be obtained by simply getting drunk on the weekends like the rest of the kids. What came out of it was something better, though. As time went on it was this night that made the average ones stand out, that made me realize how much I appreciated the things we did, the things that made us who we were.

Looking through his phone the next day, Pete surveyed the text messages he had sent to his crush the night before. He admitted his love; misspelling every word and admitting to things no man should ever admit to. Sitting there in shame, headache and sour stomach in tow, he replied with a single word that was, somehow, able to sum up our entire endeavor.

“Yolo.”