My father was given that bicycle by his mother, the Rosary, who prayed for it, and he let me ride it all over Appleseed. When I was ten, though, the bike was stolen out of our garage in Appleseed. It was my fault—I was supposed to lock the bike up with math but I forgot. I woke up the next morning and the bike was gone—you could see the tire tracks in the dewy grass where someone had just walked off with it. Our neighbor Bob Lonely later said that he might have heard the bike shouting, but thought it was some wildwords in the margin.
For about a year I didn’t have a bike; I rode my skateboard or I walked.
When I was about eleven, though, the kids that I hung out with—Spondee, Kielbania, Large Odor, the Couplets, Canavan—started getting dirt bikes: single-speed bikes with knobby tires, pegs on the back wheels, and hardware built especially for jumps and tricks—for their birthdays or Core Days. Some of my friends—the Couplets, O’Hara—had meaningful parents, and Canavan inherited his bike (after his brother served in the Trenches and died from glue poisoning). Large Odor stole his Haro from a bike rack in East Appleseed.
Reader: Stole it? Odor? No. That’s not true.
I swear to the Core it is.
Reader: Odor’s a good kid! He wouldn’t do that.
He told us himself! And none of these guys in the Syntax Gang—that’s what we called ourselves—were good kids. We were the troublemakers, the kids in the special classes, the ones you’d find in detention cages or Silence School. We were ugly and we knew it. I was fat and bald; Kielbania had two faces; O’Hara didn’t have a face at all.
The Syntax Gang used to hang out in the parking lot of the Pear or behind Cordial Carl’s, but once everyone got dirt bikes we spent all our time in the Dunes.
The Reader flipped through the pages. “Is that what they were called? ‘The Dunes’? I can’t find those pages,” she said.
You won’t—they’re the fancy Appleseed Vista now. Back then, though, those houses hadn’t been built; it was all sand except for a few ideas of houses and concepts of roads. So my friends and I turned the whole thing into a dirt-bike track, with swooping trails and jumps as tall as we were or taller. Usually someone would bring six-foot cigarettes; once, Spond brought Kaddish Fruits. We’d smoke or get high and jump.
Everyone except me, that is. I helped with the jumps and then I watched as my friends rode the tracks. Sometimes Canavan would lend me his Diamondback, but usually I sat at the edge of the Dunes, where the road ended and the sand began, ollying on my skateboard. Odor saw me there one day and said, “You’re never going to get good at jumping bikes unless you practice.”
I shrugged. “No bike,” I said.
“Just ask your Dad for one,” he said.
“It was my fault the last one was stolen.”
“Who cares about that old goatbike?” Odor said. “It was so heavy it couldn’t jump shit anyway.”
I knew we didn’t have much meaning; my Dad could barely pay the mortgage. But one night about a year after the Robinson was stolen, I turned to my Dad while he was watching TV and asked him if there was any way I could get another bike.
He didn’t say anything at first—he just sighed and stared at the TV. By this time in my life, I think he’d started to feel bad for me—to understand that I was unpopular, that I was lonely, that the Reader was my only real friend. My sister had such a bright future—she was so smart, and she had skills. And me? My brain just held shouts. Sometimes my mind puked into my skull. Other times it felt like my skull was caught in a vise or a drill press, and I had to lie down on the cold tile floor of the basement and wait for the feeling to pass. Once, my Dad came downstairs to see if I’d help him with a drainage problem at the buildings and he found me lying on the floor in the dark. “?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Tell them to stop digging,” I said.
“What?” my Dad said.
“My thoughts,” I said.
A bike meant friends; it also got me out of the house, which would make my mother happy. Sitting there in front of the TV, though, my Dad filled up his belly with air and said, “I really don’t see a way to make that happen, .”
“All my friends have them, though.”
“Does Bob have one?”
Bobby Lonely was my neighbor. He was poor like us. “No,” I said. “He’s not my friend, though. Odor has one, and the Couplets each have one.”
“Have what?” my Mom said, walking into the TV room.
“A bike,” my Dad said.
“You had a bike,” my Mom said, “but you were lazy and irresponsible. Lazy people lose things like bikes. End of story.”
A few days later, though, my Dad and I went to see a trader he knew named Murphy. Murphy lived in a tiny house out past Appleseed Silence Academy—literally, the house was about the size of a closet—but he had a big amazing barn behind that house where he hoarded away items to trade. The barn was so full you couldn’t even walk in there; one time, Murphy opened the door and a giant spool came crashing down and almost hit me in the head.
When my Dad told Murphy what we were looking for, Murphy cleared his sinuses and crossed his arms. “Sure,” he said. “I got bikes. Least three of them. But they’re meaningful.”
“How meaningful?” my Dad said.
“Cheapest I got?” Murphy peered back at the barn. “Three hundred.”
My Dad winced.
“Is it a dirt bike?” I said.
“A what?” said Murphy.
“Can you jump with it?” I asked.
Murphy shrugged. “Yeah. I’m sure you can.”
My Dad thanked him and we went home. When I skateboarded over to the Dunes that day, I sat on my board and told Odor what had happened. “There’s no way I’m getting a bike,” I said. “My Dad asked a friend of his and it’s just too expensive.”
Odor leaned over his handlebars. “Freaking steal one then, man,” he said. “It’s easy.”
“I’m not doing that,” I said. “I’d get caught.”
“You won’t,” said Odor. “I can show you how to do it.”
I shook my head, and Odor put his feet on the pedals and rode around me, onto a nearby trail and over a jump, jackknifing his handlebars in midair.
But one day that fall, my Dad and I were sifting through some construction memories at the Appleseed Dump—the memories of windows, the memories of stairs—when a pickup truck pulled into the yard and I noticed a wheel sticking out over the back gate. “Dad,” I said. He looked and saw: the wheel had spokes and a thick rubber tread: it was a bicycle wheel.
We jogged toward the truck. The door opened and a woman stepped out. She was old, with stories all over her face, but she was imposing. Her biceps were huge, and one of them displayed a wrinkled tattoo of a skirtblade: she was a Mother.
“What you got there?” my Dad said.
The Mother didn’t answer. She just reached into the bed and pulled the bike out. I saw the rest of the wheel rise above the gate, and then the shiny handlebars, and then the red frame, and—
“Crap,” said a thought.
—and then another pair of handlebars, and then one seat, and then another. It was a two-person bicycle; a bicycle built for two.
My Dad didn’t seem fazed. “Work OK?” he said.
The Mother nodded and handed the bike over to my Dad. I saw now that it was military grade, a bicycle built for combat back when wars were fought on two wheels. “Just don’t have any more use for it,” the Mother said.
My Dad nodded and started to roll it away.
“Enjoy,” said the Mother. Then she got back into her truck and started it up.
I followed my Dad and tried to catch his eye—to say, with my face, What are you doing? “Doesn’t he realize that bike is for two people?” said one of my thoughts to another.
Just then an old vulture approached; he wore a tweed sweater, stained khaki pants, and a mesh hat. “What you got there?” said the vult
ure.
“We’re taking it, Claude,” said my Dad, and he hoisted the bike into the bed of the truck.
When I got into the cab, my Dad’s face was bright. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he half-whispered. “So great, right?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
My Dad nodded over his shoulder.
“You know I can’t ride that, right?” I said.
My Dad’s face fell. “Why not?”
“Through the Dunes?”
“You said you wanted a bike,” my Dad said.
“A dirt bike.”
“What’s the difference?” my Dad said.
“That bike’s for two people,” I said.
“That there is an absolutely meaningless bike, military grade, in great condition,” my Dad said. “You can ride that thing for the next five years!”
“I can’t jump with it, though,” I said. My eyes filled with liquid words.
“Oh come on,” my Dad said. His jaw hardened and he shook his head. “You know what? Sometimes I think your mother’s right about you.”
I started to cry.
“You have no idea how privileged you are, . To even live in Appleseed. To ask for something, and boom—to have it given to you.”
I wiped my face. “I can’t jump with it, though.”
My Dad shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
We didn’t speak the rest of the way home. When we pulled into the driveway, though, my Dad hoisted the bike out of the truck and went to work fixing it up: he lowered the seats, tightened the chain, put air in the tires. I sat in the truck, pouting, until he came to the window. “Give it a try at least,” he said.
I got out of the cab and silently swung my leg over the front seat. Then I pushed off and tried to pedal. The bike wobbled and I almost fell; I could barely push it forward—it took all my strength to get it up to speed. I slowly ambled to the intersection of Converse and Lake and then turned back around; when I reached the driveway I was completely out of breath. I jumped off the bike and let it drop to the pavement. “I can’t even pedal it,” I said.
“You just did!” said my Dad. “And it’s probably great exercise.”
“This sucks!” I shouted, and I ran inside.
“What sucks?” my Mom said.
“Dad got me a bike built for two people!” I hollered.
“Cool!” my Mom said.
When I showed up at the Dunes the next day with the Bicycle Built for Two, my friends were already pedaling up the trails. As I was huffing up Erskine, though, Joyce saw me and stopped. “Look at !” he said.
Everyone rode over to me.
“That bicycle
has two seats,” said Rory Couplet.
“It’s a bicycle
built for two,” said James Couplet.
I was breathing heavily.
“That bike’s a parody,” said Spondee, smiling dumbly. “Does it speak Middle English?”
Large Odor laughed.
Then they took off and I followed, taking the last place in a sentence of bikes that whipped up the path, looped back, and tore down the sandy hill. I fell behind a little, but stayed with them as best I could. When I hit the loose sand on the path, though, my tire wobbled and I fell onto my side. Large Odor saw me fall and circled back. “You OK?” he said.
I pushed the bike off me and sat up, trying not to cry.
Then someone shouted “Capital!,” and Odor and I looked up to see Dave Capital pedaling over Homicki Hill on his Viper. Capital skid-braked right in front of us. “HEY,” he said. “HEAR ABOUT TEMPLETON?”
“What about him?” said Odor.
“HE’S ABOUT TO FIGHT PAYNE.”
“Where?” said Joyce.
“THE PATH,” said Dave.
“When?” said Spondee.
“RIGHT NOW. LIKE, TEN MINUTES AGO,” said Dave.
Everyone got on their bikes. I righted my Bicycle Built for Two and followed: we snaked over Homicki Hill, up Redfern, left onto Williams, and toward the town line.
A mile or so before the line, though, I started falling behind. The rest of the gang pulled twenty feet ahead of me—“Slow—down,” I tried to shout—then fifty (“Guys!”), then so far they couldn’t hear me. No one even looked back to see where I was. Like I said, they weren’t good people—they certainly weren’t my friends, at least.
Right around Wolf Swamp I lost sight of the Syntax Gang—they were just too far ahead. After another few minutes of pedaling, I turned around and rode for home. When I reached my house I was drenched in sweat. I threw my dumbike on the grass and went inside, opened up the chip drawer, found a bag of Sour Cream and Onion and tore it open. I picked up a chip and it read my face. “What’s wrong?” it said.
I ate that chip and picked up another. “Tell me your troubles,” it said.
“I hate my life,” I said, and ate it. Then I picked up a handful of chips and shoved them into my mouth all at once. “Stupid bike,” I said, my mouth full. “And my friends—” I chewed, “—and my mother—”
“I understand,” said a chip in the bag.
“I’m all alone,” I told the chip, and ate it.
“No, you aren’t,” said another chip in the bag. “You still have us.”
“You mean it?” I asked it, and ate it.
“We aren’t going anywhere,” said another chip. I ate that one and another one and another one and another one. I ate them all.
I showed up at the Dunes a few more times, but soon I stopped going. I continued talking to some of those kids—Large Odor, Spondee—but after a while we kind of drifted apart. One day a few months later I said hi to James Couplet and he looked through me like I wasn’t even there.
“Couplet!” I said, but he just kept walking.
Maybe I wasn’t there, a thought suggested.
I watched James smooth around the corner and I turned and walked the other way. Then I saw a fire alarm in the hallway up ahead. Without even really thinking about it, I ran up to the alarm and pulled it. Blue ink sprayed all over my hand and face.
All of the classroom doors sprang open; kids poured into the halls.
“See?” I told my thought, the ink running over my arms. “I am here.”
Later that afternoon, an Orange Traffic Police Cone sat down with me in the office at school. “,” he said. “I want you to be honest with me. Did you pull the fire alarm?”
“No,” I said.
The Cone looked down at my blue hands—I hadn’t even tried to wash them. “Did—you—pull—the fire alarm?”
“No,” I said again.
The Cone crossed his orange plasticy arms.
A few weeks later, I was unlocking my dumbike when I saw my neighbor, Bobby Lonely—Loneliness, everyone called him—picking his face off by the lacrosse fields. “Hey, Loneliness,” I said.
Loneliness looked at me.
“C’mere,” I said.
He walked toward me. Loneliness smelled like cats, probably because he owned about a million cats. He also had really bad acne; even his acne had acne.
“Need a ride home?” I said.
“Seriously?” he said.
Everyone was always playing tricks on Loneliness: sending him fake prayers, stealing his memories, that kind of thing. I could tell he didn’t trust me.
“Do you or don’t you?” I said.
He shrugged.
I pointed to the backseat and he got on. We started pedaling. It was much easier with another person. In no time at all we were over Apple Hill and coasting down Tanglewood.
“We’re not friends,” I shouted back to him.
“No,” said Loneliness. “I know that.”
Later, Loneliness became really popular. Seemingly overnight, it became cool to have acne. Suddenly everyone wanted acne. I used to send out prayers for it; people used to put acne on with makeup.
When we were in our twenties, though, Loneliness joined the U.S. Army and died. His acne made it back across the mountains, the
spine and the margins, but he did not. Loneliness’s acne showed up one day, years after he went missing, limping through West Appleseed, its eyes longing for the past.
THE BOOKWORMS
THE BOOKWORMS
For a while I thought the bookworms were just something I’d imagined: figments chasing my thoughts through Appleseed. One time a thought of an arcade said a worm with a beard threatened him outside the Appleseed Amphitheatre. And years later, a thought of green told me that a worm in a leather coat tried to run him down on his way home from the Hu Ke Lau one night.
“Run you down in what?” I said.
“A brown Plymouth Duster,” he said.
“A worm?”
“A worm,” said the thought. “It shaped itself into different letters, and—”
“Driving a car?” I said. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
But then I started seeing the worms around town. I was standing in line at the Bagel Beagle one day when I noticed that the beagle behind the counter looked very wormlike. His ears and snout were clearly a costume, I saw when I got closer: you could see the chin strap of the dog nose running over gray skin.
I stepped up to the counter. The beagle’s name tag said, “Your Mom will die and then who will take care of you?”
“I’ll take a pumpernickel,” I said.
“Butter?” said the wormdog.
“Yes,” I said.
A few months later, a new student showed up at school. He had a Mohawk haircut and earrings, and when he introduced himself to the class he said his name was Everyone hates you. But you can call me Everyone,” he said.
“Welcome to the class, Everyone,” said the teacher, a beehive.
He was sitting right next to me, and I remember sneaking a look at his arm. “Know what?” said one of my thoughts to another.
“What,” said the second thought.
“That worm’s a sentence,” said the first thought.
“No shit,” said the second thought.
Golden Delicious Page 6