I could tell you that Abby kept her Regents Scholarship and she’ll do great at Wisconsin next year, but I don’t know if she’ll do great. That hasn’t happened yet. We text a lot. She left for Madison yesterday afternoon. She texted, here I go…
And here I am, sitting in my dorm room at Stanford. I’m eighteen years old. My roommate, T.J., a freshman linebacker from Idaho, is playing Halo on his Xbox. We’ve been in training camp for two weeks and it hurts. T.J. groans whenever he moves. It seems pretty clear that I’m going to play a lot this year, maybe be first team right from the start, play this hugely violent game because I love it (I do, Grandpa) and I’m good and I run plays half the time with the first team offense and that’s great, fine, but what I really want to tell you is this:
We have problems, okay? We’re also great. There aren’t many rules and there are one million freaking hurdles for most of us. Do you know what I mean? Hamlet’s mortal coil is real. It’s tough. We can’t run away. You are always with you. I’m always with me. We can’t run away. But we’re not written into a play, so we can choose how we act.
My grandma Berba came up for graduation. She bent me down and kissed my forehead. Grandpa Stan had early surgery on his hernia because it got bad, so he couldn’t be there. I walked into the gym holding hands with my mom, Jerri. Andrew, my little brother, followed us in, shaking hands with everybody he saw (like a long-lost hero). Gus gave the valedictorian’s speech. He played “O-o-h Child” through the P.A. system. Everybody cheered for him, and he said, “I am gone.”
After the ceremony, instead of going to the big M with our friends (we’d gone a bunch of times in late May, sat up there on the hill with them all, watching the twinkling lights of Bluffton come on), Abby sent a text to Cal, then we drove her crap Buick out to Cal’s place one last time. She promised it wasn’t for drinking. I believed her, of course. But I still felt nervous. (I still feel nervous a lot—but I’m better.) “It’s okay, man. I have a graduation present for you. That’s all,” she said.
When we got there, we found Cal standing out in front of his little schoolhouse holding the bike, an exact replica of the Schwinn my dad had ridden in college, the bike I rode while I grew from squirrel nut to mammoth jock. He’d fixed it completely. Refurbished it. He’d even repainted the cursive “Varsity” on its side.
I walked up to it, my heart pumping.
“Fully operational, kick-ass bicycle,” Cal said. “Your prom queen over there is a hell of a sweet girl.”
I turned to Abby, my mouth hanging open. “Oh shit,” I said.
“You like it?” she laughed.
“I love this bike so much,” I whispered.
“Ride it home, Felton. I’ll follow you,” she said.
“Eighty fat ones, lady friend,” Cal said.
“I’ve got fifty bucks,” Abby said.
“Good enough.”
And I was already on my dad’s bike, the good bike. What do I know about my dad? Speed. The best thing my dad and I share? Speed.
There was no thought on that bike, and in the dying light of the Bluffton June, I rushed into the wind and the weeds in the ditches blurred as I rode my dad’s Schwinn Varsity faster and faster, the pool of Abby’s headlights encompassing me, down the side of those southwestern Wisconsin bluffs, faster, the rush, so fast, I was stunned to find I’d gotten back into town so soon.
Abby pulled up next to me. “Good?” she shouted.
“You’re my sister. I love you!” I shouted back.
But that’s not the end.
We have problems, but we’re so lucky too. That’s the mortal coil. It’s the whole thing, all of it, and it’s easy to hate that mess in yourself, fight it, hate those who seem to cause it. But whoever we sit next to in school is the same and whatever jerk you read about on ESPN is the same and whoever honks their horn at you at the intersection is the same. They struggle. Do you know what I mean? They suffer too. We aren’t alone.
Dr. Green says this is my guiding principle, something I’ve known without knowing and now I need to trust it, and I agree with her. I said it to her. We can act. Maybe not fix anything. But we can make it better for those others and that makes it better for us. I see it. I’ve seen it. Good comes back around.
The morning after graduation, I walked into the garage. Below the beam where my dad ended himself, Andrew sat balanced on my racing bike. We’d put down the seat so it fit him okay.
“Ready?” he asked.
I climbed on the Schwinn Varsity. “You?” I asked.
“I’m not the greatest cyclist,” he said. “Don’t take off like a gorilla.”
“Try not to.” I smiled.
We pedaled down the hill and onto the main road that leads to our house. Golfers whacked balls at the country club above us. Bees hovered in the ditch on our right. Then we turned and headed into town.
We rode slowly because Andrew likes to talk. He played the remember game. “Remember when you buried yourself in leaves that one Halloween and Ken Johnson ran you over on his dirt bike?” Andrew asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Barely.”
“You got a cut on your nose,” Andrew said.
“Really?” I didn’t remember.
“Jerri said it helped your costume look more authentic.”
“What was I that year?” I asked.
“A turtle,” Andrew said. “A turtle with a bloody nose.”
It took us twenty minutes (Andrew screwing around) to get to Tommy Bode’s house near downtown. There were no cars parked out front, so I was afraid we’d missed him.
But when I knocked, he came to the door. He wore the Bakugan T-shirt he had on the first day I met him. It wasn’t so giant. He’d grown.
He looked right past me. “Hey!” he shouted. “Andrew Reinstein!” People love Andrew for some reason.
“Tommy,” I said, “We want you to try out a bike.”
“Why?” he asked.
“To see if you like it.”
“Okay,” he shrugged.
Andrew leaned and got off the bike. Tommy climbed on the thing.
It’s a pretty sweet ride, a Cannondale. But I didn’t really want two bikes at Stanford, and I wasn’t going to give up the Schwinn ever again.
Tommy teetered a little, rolled.
“Pedal the sucker,” I shouted.
He pedaled and began to pick up speed on Fourth Street. I nodded at Andrew and took off after him.
We hit a stretch of five blocks with no stop signs. Tommy pedaled hard. “I’ve never gone so fast,” Tommy shouted as I pedaled up next to him.
“You’re moving, man,” I said.
“I can go faster,” he said and really went. I had to change gears to keep up.
“You like it?” I shouted, after I pulled next to him.
“Hell yeah,” he cried.
“It’s yours.”
Tommy hit the brakes and stopped. I stopped just in front of him, turned back to look at him.
“Why are you giving me your bike?” Tommy asked, breathing hard.
“Because I want to. Plus you have to move from sidekick to superhero, so you need some kick-ass equipment.”
“Dude,” Tommy said, “I am fast on this bike.”
I smiled so hard my ears hurt. “Dude, you are stupid fast on that bike.”
“Makes sense,” Tommy said. He cocked his head toward me. He nodded and, using his deep and gravelly superhero voice, growled, “I’m with Stupid.”
He took off up Fourth Street. He totally whooped as he rode.
Acknowledgments
Thanks so much to Jim McCarthy, my great agent. To Leah Hultenschmidt, my editor, who I have called a swing doctor for books.
She said, “What does that mean?” I said, “I don’t know, exactly, but it’s a very good thing to be.”
To Sou
rcebooks generally—I love working with all of you. Thanks to my excellent mom, my genius wife, Steph, and to all those kids we hang with: Leo, Mira, Christian, and Charlie. My family is inspiring in a million ways. Thanks to librarians and teachers who keep getting books in kids’ hands.
Finally, thanks to Minnesota State, Mankato, and the Andreas Endowment for the wonderful support.
About the Author
Geoff Herbach is the author of the award-winning Stupid Fast YA series. His books have been given the 2011 Cybil Award for best YA novel, selected for the Junior Library Guild, and listed in the year’s best by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, and many state library associations. In the past, he wrote the literary novel The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg, produced radio comedy shows, and toured rock clubs telling weird stories. Geoff teaches creative writing at Minnesota State, Mankato. He lives in a log cabin with his tall wife.
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