Dougie believed in fixes.
Not the kind that required therapy or adult conversations or sitting in silence until you understood yourself well enough to change. Not the kind that came with forms or waiting rooms or qualified professionals who used the word "process" as a verb.
Dougie believed in fixes that involved snacks, duct tape, and declarations. If something was broken, you patched it. If someone was sad, you made them laugh. If the world was ending — and the world was always ending, to varying degrees, and Dougie had strong opinions about appropriate responses — you built a dam out of mud and optimism.
That was Dougie's religion. It had no holy book, but it had strong doctrine.
So when Jimmy stopped showing up the way Jimmy used to show up — when the van became quieter and the river became weighted and baloney started walking around with a secret in his chest that everyone could feel even if nobody could name — Dougie did what Dougie always did.
He made a plan.
It was Thursday afternoon when he appeared at my screen door, standing on the porch like a man delivering a message of some urgency from an authority he had probably invented. He was holding a paper plate piled with cookies. He was wearing sunglasses indoors, which was a recent development.
"Doug," I said. "Why do you look like a disco preacher?"
"These are confidence glasses," he said, without a trace of irony. "I'm a new man."
"You say that every week."
"That's because I evolve," he replied, as if this were a simple biological fact requiring no further defense.
Behind him, Rick leaned against his bike with the resigned posture of someone who had already heard the plan and made his peace with it.
Dougie swept past me into the kitchen. He set the cookies on the table, turned, and looked at me with unusual seriousness.
"The kingdom is unstable," he said.
Rick leaned in the doorway. "It's Thursday, Doug."
"It is always Thursday before something terrible," Dougie replied, which was the kind of thing that sounded wrong and then sat with you.
He pointed at me. "Baloney. We can feel it."
"Feel what?"
Dougie's voice dropped. "You walking around with a secret. Jimmy walking around with a wound. The whole summer..." He gestured vaguely at the air between us. "...going wrong."
Rick's expression didn't change. But he didn't argue either.
I didn't answer.
Dougie's eyes flickered — something raw underneath the sunglasses and the cookies and the performance of a man with a plan.
"We can feel it," he said again, quieter. "Even if we can't name it."
"I told him you'd say that," Rick said.
Dougie swept past me into the kitchen with the proprietary ease of someone who had eaten here enough times to feel the square footage was partially his. Mom wasn't home. The house had that particular afternoon quiet that houses get when the person who gives them their sound is temporarily absent.
Dougie spread the cookies on the table with the ceremony of a man laying out evidence.
"Gentlemen," he announced. "We are at a critical juncture."
Rick pulled out a chair. "It's Thursday, Doug."
"It is always Thursday before something terrible," Dougie replied, which was the kind of thing that sounded wrong and then sat with you.
He reached into his backpack and produced a spiral notebook labeled, in large marker letters, with the words: PROJECT: SAVE THE KINGDOM.
He opened it on the table between us.
There were diagrams. There were flow charts connecting things that should not logically connect. There was a drawing of Jimmy wearing a crown and looking mournful, labeled "Phase Two: Brooding Knight." There was a section titled "NOTES FROM THE FIELD" that appeared to consist entirely of observations about Dougie's own feelings written in the third person.
I stared at it for a long time.
"You made a binder," I said.
"It's a strategy document," Dougie corrected.
"Since when do you have strategy documents?"
"Since the kingdom started collapsing," he said, as if this explained everything and also couldn't be argued with, because it couldn't.
He tapped the page with one finger. "Step One: Restore Jimmy's Honor."
"His what?"
"Honor," Dougie repeated, with the patience of a man explaining something fundamental. "He is experiencing emotional dishonor."
"That's not a real thing."
"It is now."
He turned a page. "Step Two: Reunite the Fellowship." Another page. "Step Three: Operation River Redemption."
My stomach tightened.
"No river operations," I said.
Dougie looked up, genuinely offended. "What do you mean no?"
"I mean we can't fix this with a river trip, Doug."
He sat back. His sunglasses slipped down his nose. He pushed them up. The confidence was still there but something underneath it had shifted — something more honest trying to get out past the performance.
"Baloney," he said quietly. "We cannot abandon the river. That's where we are."
"That's where we were," I said.
The words hung there.
Dougie went very still. Which, for Dougie, was its own kind of communication.
For a long moment nobody said anything. Rick looked at the cookies. I looked at the notebook. Dougie looked at the space between us where the summer used to feel solid.
Then Dougie straightened. Pushed the sunglasses up. Summoned himself back.
"New plan," he said.
"Doug —"
"The dam," he said.
Rick closed his eyes.
Dougie pressed on. "We build it tomorrow. Full scale. All four of us. A monument. The Last Great Summer Project."
The words landed with their old weight.
Rick opened his eyes.
I looked at Dougie — at the notebook with its diagrams and its earnest terrible hope, at the sunglasses that were his armor against the fact that things were harder than confidence could fix — and I understood something.
He wasn't talking about a dam. He was talking about showing up.
He was saying: we keep showing up. Even when the kingdom is cracking. Even when the rules have changed. Even when the river doesn't answer the way it used to. We show up, and we build something with our hands, and we stand next to each other while we do it.
That was his theology.
It was, I realized, a pretty good one.
"Is Jimmy coming?" I asked.
Dougie hesitated for exactly one second. "He has to."
Rick sighed. "Doug."
"I'm going to his house," Dougie said. He stood up. He took a cookie. He walked toward the door with the purpose of a man on a mission that has not yet been proven impossible.
He stopped at the screen door and looked back over his shoulder, sunglasses catching the late afternoon light.
"You know what your problem is, baloney?"
"What?"
"You've started acting like losing is inevitable."
I didn't answer.
Dougie nodded, as if the silence confirmed it. "Not me," he said. Softer now. Almost to himself. "Not yet."
The screen door snapped shut behind him.
Rick and I looked at each other across the table with the cookies and the strategy document between us.
"He's going to Jimmy's house," Rick said.
"I know."
"This might actually work."
"I know."
Rick took a cookie. I took a cookie.
Outside, Dougie pedaled toward Jimmy's house like a knight without armor, which was the only kind of knight he had ever known how to be.
It worked. I don't know exactly what Dougie said when Jimmy answered the door — Dougie never told me and Jimmy said he couldn't remember, which I think means it was the kind of conversation that operates below the level of words. But Jimmy showed up the next morning. He didn't say much. He got in the van. He helped build the dam. Some things can't be argued into place, but they can be shown up for. Dougie understood this before any of the rest of us.