As the car passed the farm, Franklin was happy to see his old friend again. Sure, he acknowledged the fact that it was mentally questionable to consider a corn maze an old friend – rather, it was more of his special game – but he’d never be able to shed that feeling of close attachment to its inner twists and turns or to the consuming instinct of an explorer he’d acquire inside. Lost in its depths, Franklin would start to feel as though he were actually good at something.

It was partially this wholly insignificant sense of accomplishment that kept him coming back over the years. Franklin waited desperately for October to arrive so that he would be able to find his way back to the farm and into the corn maze again. Outside he left all of his insecurities, like his pathetic inability to play sports, which he was forcibly reminded of every day during gym, or his absolute social maladroitness that inflicted him with the occasional stutter or lengthy pause while he figured out what he was trying to say.
Franklin knew that the other reason that caused him to have such an egotistically compulsive need to be able to win something was his lack of siblings. It explained a lot of his former hyperactivity and great necessity for reassurance that he was the center of attention as an only child. Never needing to share anything with anyone, he grew accustomed to getting his way, which he could keep doing by playing games, particularly those that required only one player. He reserved the corn maze as his safe haven, where he could discover its intricacies undisturbed by the world.

This year, however, happened to be Franklin’s first year of high school, and in a sort of half-hearted attempt to make friends, he asked two people to go with him. He had already made friends previously in middle school, but attending to a new school that he was unfamiliar with, he grumblingly supposed that he’d have to meet new people. Herman and Leopold seemed like nice kids, he guessed. (And their names made him snigger.)

After clambering out of the car and paying, the three acquaintances said goodbye to Franklin’s mom and Franklin carelessly ran his flat feet down to the field of corn. He stood there admiring the dying crops and inhaling the musty air. It was all beautiful. Eventually, Franklin began to have the cold sensation accompanying forgetfulness. Seconds later, he turned around to see Herman and Leopold arriving, panting. Herman violently sneezed from a dust allergy, and Leopold fell to his knees and put his hand up, indicating that he’d need a moment to compose himself. This’ll be fun, Franklin thought to himself.

He was probably being harder on the pair of them than he should have been. Chances were, Herman and Leopold weren’t the losers his cynical mind depicted them to be, but Franklin didn’t care. He would never admit it to himself, because if he chose to examine his subconscious, he knew that he’d find that he had much less going for him than did Herman or Leopold or anyone else in the world, and that was both depressing and terrifying.

Herman and Leopold finally collected themselves. They were only going to hold Franklin back. He contemptuously let his face fall into his palm.

“Yo, let’s do this,” said Herman semi-enthusiastically.

“Okay,” said Franklin, unenthusiastically.

“Do we just go in and then come out?” asked Leopold.

“NO, we don’t just go in and come out,” Franklin mimicked back. “See these?”

He held up a yellow sheet of smelly construction paper with four-by-three numbered boxes on one side and the caption “PASSPORT” on the other, and used it to gesture towards theirs.
“Those are your passports to prove you’ve done the maze right,” Franklin announced compellingly. “For if you couldn’t read,” he whispered to himself just for spite. “See how there’re twelve boxes on them? That’s ‘cause there’re twelve checkpoints that you have to get to. Each checkpoint’s marked by a mailbox with a stamp inside it. You take the stamp—”
“Oh, okay, cool,” said Herman.

“—and put it on the corresponding—”

“No, no, we get it,” insisted Herman, trying to be as friendly as possible.
“What?” said Franklin.

“We get it,” said Leopold.

“Oh,” replied Franklin, slightly offended. Franklin tried to think of something clever to say. Nothing came. The three took the uncomfortable silence as an unspoken cue to enter the maze.

Franklin trudged despondently behind the other two, regretting having invited them to his exploration grounds. Making his best effort to ignore the squish of Herman’s slippers (that he claimed were boating shoes) and of Leopold’s sneakers in the mud, he stared up at the pink October sky, where the incandescent moon already approached the farm. The sun would be setting soon. Stupid daylight savings, Franklin thought. What he hated most about the fall was the regressing presence of heat. It led him to believe that he could vanish from the face of the earth just like the warm weather, having accomplished nothing.

“Hey,” said Herman, suddenly.

Franklin wasn’t paying attention.

“Franklin!” whined Leopold.
Franklin abruptly snapped out of his spacing and looked up at his two companions.
“WHAT?” he said, irritated.
“Let’s make this easier,” proposed Herman. “Why don’t we search for the checkpoints in different directions, and when one of us finds a checkpoint, we’ll meet at the bridge over there.”
In the middle of the maze was a tall, tattered bridge overlooking the cornfield. Franklin gazed upon it fondly and remembered the time when it had sheltered him from being chased by about twenty sluggish and probably inebriated college kids who had been calling him their “White Rabbit”. He loved that bridge.
“Okay,” Franklin agreed.

When the sun began to set, Franklin, Herman, and Leopold met on the bridge. While Franklin found one mailbox right next to it, Herman had also found one farther off, and Leopold had found two. Franklin was jealous of how well the other two had done in such a short time, considering that it was their first year at the corn maze. And he groaned at the idea of having to walk as far as where Herman and Leopold said their mailboxes were. He suddenly became unpleasantly conscious of how the pink sky had turned into a flaming orange one. Selfishly exhausted from being held back by his two friends, Franklin had had enough.
“Nope,” said Franklin, cranky. “Nope. I’m not walking all the way over there with you. You guys are on your own. I don’t need you . . . I DON’T NEED ANYBODY!”

He ran across the bridge, stomping across the bridge and then tripping down the steps. Herman and Leopold cackled with glee. Franklin glared back at them childishly, wickedly. They would pay. They would pay for preventing his victory.

Franklin sprinted – or, rather, made his best attempt at sprinting – through the maze as far away from the bridge as possible. He didn’t even bother to waste his time with going through the paths; he went on a violent rampage, cutting through the thickets of corn and tearing his sweater in the process. Franklin ran so quickly and so far that by the time night fell, he arrived at the alley behind the cornfield, which separated it from the pasture of another farm where cows slept under the moonlit sky. Uselessly gasping for breath, he vomited all over the ground. Franklin felt betrayed by Herman and Leopold, but most of all, he felt betrayed by his own self. He could have avoided the humiliation of losing to “amateur” navigators if he hadn’t chosen to invite those morons. Herman and Leopold had probably already reached each of the twelve checkpoints and gotten out of the maze by now. Sighing, Franklin sullenly began to wander back into the corn.

After cautiously stepping through more of the thick cornstalks, he emerged from them to unexpectedly stumble upon a mailbox. In the minimal moonlight that there was, Franklin was barely able to make out the number 1 on the front. For the sake of trying, he removed the stamp from the mailbox and firmly imprinted the first box on the folded piece of paper from his pocket. He smiled grimly to himself. As he began to walk away from checkpoint number one, Franklin’s phone began to ring. It was Herman.

“Hi,” answered Franklin.

“Franklin?” said Herman. “Where have you been, man? It’s been an hour since we last saw you. Come find us. We’re almost done.”

“What? You’re not done?” Franklin exclaimed, now optimistic again.

“No. We still need one. We’re gonna keep on looking. Hurry out if you’re not gonna finish, though.”

Franklin let out his last breath of hope. They had already gotten to eleven checkpoints.
“Which one do you still need?” he asked as though he cared.

“I already told you,” replied Herman. “One.”

Franklin stopped walking, dead in his tracks. Ever so slowly, he turned around and looked at the checkpoint at the end of the path. His stare focused on the mailbox’s post. It couldn’t be really difficult to pull the box off.

“You’re not going to find it,” whispered Franklin.

“Wha—”

He hung up on Herman and strutted down the path to the mailbox sinisterly. Placing his hands on the frozen metal, Franklin used all the strength he could muster in his beanpole arms to heave the box from post. With a final yelp, he chucked the mailbox into the waves of cornstalks as far as he possibly could. That’ll show ‘em, he told himself. If I can’t win, nobody can.

As soon as the thought passed through his mind, Franklin was sickened immediately by the harsh comprehension of the vandalism that he’d just carried out. Having committed his first misdemeanor, Franklin began to sniffle and feel sorry for himself as though he were a balky toddler who’d just been caught drawing on the wall. Feeling that it was his responsibility towards the community and more importantly, all others explorers, he dove into the depths of the corn and urgently searched for the missing checkpoint that was nowhere to be find.
What seemed to be ages of persistent digging through the spiky crops went by, and Franklin rose as empty handed as he had begun. He saw the lights of the farm glowing in the distance, and followed them down the paths of the corn maze. Herman and Leopold were waiting for him at the exit. He was unable to look them in the eye. The three of them walked back up to the farm in silence and were offered doughnuts that Franklins’ mother had brought along. Franklin solemnly accepted a doughnut and buried it into his mouth to muffle the sound of himself beginning to bawl loudly out of shame. He still felt like a toddler who’d been put in a time-out. His friends and his family and the other farm-goers stared at him in alarm, but he didn’t care. Franklin just cried and cried.