That video, titled simply “The Kings of Summer,” was the last one they ever made. High school came, scattering them into different crowds, different lives. The forum shut down. The camera stayed dead.
Every town has its mythologies. In the sprawling, sun-scorched suburbs of Mesa, Arizona, our mythology was not a ghost or a cryptid, but three boys and a clunky VHS camcorder. The Kings of Summer Videos
It was late July. The heat was a physical weight. Boredom had set in deep. Leo, now wielding a slightly-less-broken Hi8 camera, suggested they build a raft. That video, titled simply “The Kings of Summer,”
They didn’t speak for three days. The kingdom had fallen. The camera stayed dead
They dragged the raft to a gap in the fence, dropped it into the murky canal with a wet thump , and climbed aboard. For ten glorious minutes, they floated. Marcus used the oar to push off from concrete banks. Finn dangled his feet in the algae-green water. Leo panned the camera across the backside of strip malls, the rusted water treatment plant, a single bewildered heron.