On Thin Ice

by Michael Northrop

  “Yeah, so the thing is: You can’t kill me. You need me to sell the bike to this guy. He’s, like, expecting me.”

  Dad sits back, just a little. A smile slides onto his face. “Oh, I can kill you, son,” he says. “I just can’t kill you yet.”

  I laugh, but it’s a nervous laugh.

  “Is that what happened to your face?” he says, pointing at the cuts and scrapes. “The bike?”

  “Sure,” I start, but then I change my mind. There’s been too much lying already, too much hiding the truth. This is my dad; he’s all I’ve got left. If I can’t trust him, then, well, what exactly do I have? “No. I tried to tip the tower last night. To win my bet. But I fell through the ice. And I lost anyway.” I don’t tell him about Landrover. That part doesn’t feel like it’s mine to tell.

  “Oh my God,” says Dad, sitting up again. “Oh my God …”

  “If I give you this money, you have to stop gambling,” I’m saying. “I’m serious.” But then I see his face. He is stunned, straight-up shocked.

  “Ked, you could’ve died,” he says. “Are you okay?”

  I’d kind of been trying to forget the whole thing. I never thought I’d tell anyone anyway. But now, seeing all the color drain from his face and hearing the little quiver in his voice, it finally hits me just how close I came. I was one shoelace away, one less two-liter bottle … My face probably looks like his now. I feel that little hitch in my throat, like I might cry. I need to finish talking before that happens.

  “I’m serious,” I repeat. “No more gambling.”

  He looks at me. “I could’ve killed you.”

  I don’t say anything. He’s not the one who made me go there last night.

  “I’m done,” he says. And it’s not so much the words as the way he says them. He’s looking me in the eyes. He looks serious, and I really want to believe him. But he’s made promises before and it hasn’t worked.

  “You’ve got to go back to Our Lady of the Horse Track.”

  He looks me in the eyes and nods. “And you can’t take anymore dumb chances,” he says.

  “Deal,” I say. “Should we, like, shake on it?”

  He shakes his head and finally stands up. He waves me up too.

  “Aw, Dad,” I say, pretending I don’t want to do this. But we do. We hug it out. This counts at least as much as a handshake. I feel that little hitch again. My eyes start to water right into Dad’s scratchy sweater. I think I might cry again, but this is a different kind of crying, so I go ahead and let myself.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I say.

  “I am too,” he says.

  It feels good to say. It feels good to hear. Neither one of us is pretending to be right, or even less wrong. We’re just forgiving each other and promising to do better. And what else even is there?

  “I love you, son,” I hear.

  Oh, yeah. There’s that.

  THE MAN WHO wants the bike shows up at the Royston’s parking lot first thing Sunday morning wearing a faded Red Sox cap. His name is Doug. He’s about my dad’s age, and he has a belly on him. “That it?” he says, lifting his chin toward the bike.

  I look down at the Road Rokkit, shiny and red with its new paint on the first sunny morning in a week. Does he think I have another one behind my back? “Yep.”

  He looks at it carefully, stroking his chin and just generally making a show of sizing it up. “It runs?”

  “Like Mookie Betts,” says Landrover. I think it’s pretty clever to mention a Red Sox player to this guy. He’s obviously had that cap since forever. But we’ve all got our game faces on, so I don’t acknowledge it.

  “You’re the kid from the auto parts store, right?” he says.

  Landrover nods.

  “Well, I guess you’d know, then.”

  It didn’t occur to me that Landrover would be considered some kind of expert on this. But the way he smiles now makes me think he did. He’s confident and in his element, just like at school.

  “What happened to your face?” says Doug, looking at the bruise.

  “Just naturally handsome,” says Landrover.

  I look at the bruise too, and a thought finally works its way to the surface. I should say something, to someone. This will take more thinking, but I owe him that much.

  The negotiation continues. You can just look at Doug and see that he was probably never much of an athlete, never that popular. He’s overmatched by Landrover, even at thirteen, and he seems to recognize that now. He turns back to me.

  I see his eyes slide to my back for the second or third time. If he asks me what happened to that, I’m going to say the same thing Landrover did. Instead, he fires out a number. “Five hundred bucks.”

  “Are you kidding?” says Landrover.

  “Do you know how many people want this bike?” I say. I begin to turn the handlebars like I’m going to walk the bike right back out of the parking lot.

  “Okay, okay, five fifty!”

  “Six,” I say. I leave off the “hundred” like they do in the movies. I imagine telling Nephi and Esme about this, and it makes me smile a little.

  Doug is watching me closely, sizing me up, and I guess that little smile looks like confidence to him because he nods once and says, “Deal.”

  Before I can hold out my hand to shake, he raises his and points the index finger toward the sky. “If it starts,” he says.

  It just started fifteen minutes ago, but I’m still nervous as he reaches down for the pull cord. The thin, patched-up crack is almost invisible under the fresh black paint, and Landrover says that sort of repair is just standard for bikes and quads. If Doug sees it, he doesn’t say.

  “You gotta pull it hard,” I say.

  “I know,” says Doug. “I’ve mowed a lawn.”

  He pulls it and it doesn’t even sputter this time. Just two quick puffs and it skips straight to vroom. I can’t help smiling. Landrover fixed the case, but I fixed the engine. It was in a bag when I got it.

  Doug revs the throttle twice—vroom vroom! He’s smiling too.

  He cuts the engine. Next thing I know, he’s counting out the money and placing it in my hand. Six crisp new hundred-dollar bills … So awesome.

  “Pleasure doing business with you boys,” he says.

  “Go Sox,” says Landrover.

  “Go Sox,” Doug and I agree.

  BACK AT HOME, I get changed for the contest. It’s in the school gym, which is all decorated for the occasion. Dad is in a good mood and he drives me there, even though it’s a short walk and finally warm out. We bump into Mr. Feig by the door. He’s kind of like the host for this. I introduce him to Dad, and then I thank him. “I appreciate you letting me be there, even though I wasn’t, you know, Building a Better Norton.”

  “To me, watching you guys sitting around and solving problems, thinking about how to make things better, that is building a better Norton,” he says. He’s in a good mood too.

  “Or how to get them running again, anyway.”

  “That too,” he says with a chuckle. “See you Monday.”

  He means in maker space, and I think about that for a second. He made space for us after school. But he barely even tried to keep us in regular maker space. Maybe he thought that was a better solution. Or maybe it was just easier and he’s really busy.

  I take one last look at Mr. Feig from under my hair as we walk away. He’s not perfect, but he’s trying. Sounds familiar.

  Dad spots some guys from the factory and before I know it they’re huddled up and talking over paper cups of coffee. I start scoping out the gym. It’s decked out in paper streamers and balloons, and the contest entries are on folding tables in the center. I see Esme first, because she’s taller and more purple. Then I spot Nephi. I can’t wait to tell them my news, but this is their moment. I see Landrover last. They’re all too busy setting up for the judges to notice me. In addition to the kids I recognize from this school, there are some others here too. There’s a little group from the Catholic
school, and at least one who’s homeschooled. It’s definitely a community-wide event.

  I’m wearing my standard public event outfit: baggy pants and a big white button-up shirt (unbuttoned) over a good T-shirt (the Green Lantern symbol, because GL can make anything).

  The bleachers are already filling up, so I look around for an open spot to sit. I see Maps sitting next to Joe. They see me, and Maps waves me over. Really? I think.

  I point to myself and mouth: “Me?”

  “Get up here!” he calls.

  I clamber up the steps and slide into their row.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” they say.

  “Aren’t you competing?” I ask Joe. “Where’s your model?”

  “I didn’t finish in time,” he says. “Lucky thing for them too.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “So why are you guys here?”

  “We’re rooting for Neff,” says Maps.

  “Oh! Right!” I say with zero chill. “Me too.”

  And it’s true. I am rooting for Nephi, but not just for him.

  The judges go around from table to table. One of them is a college professor from Bowdoin, and one of them is an inventor “As seen on Shark Tank!” They have microphones and they ask the contestants questions about their models and how they would make “this great town even better.” (The inventor asks that question. I don’t think she’s from around here.)

  The judges reach Esme’s table. “It’s hard to see from here,” I tell the others, “but her model is really good. It’s super artistic.”

  “It’s beautiful,” the inventor says into her microphone. My head bobs up and down like it’s on a spring.

  “But who’d want to paint their whole building black?” says the professor. Jerk.

  Nephi is next. He and Esme are set up right next to each other. “This is it, boys,” says Maps. And I realize something that should have been obvious. Just because he doesn’t sit with Nephi at lunch anymore, just because I don’t see them hanging out all the time, it doesn’t mean they’re not still friends. And if that’s true of them …

  “Let’s go, Neff!” I shout, loud enough that he looks up. He sees us and smiles, but it’s a nervous smile. The judges have just reached his table. He turns on the motor and points to the gauge as the water in the tank begins to churn.

  The professor asks him a question about the motor, and when Nephi answers it easily, he ups the stakes. He asks him a complicated question about the math—or maybe it’s about measuring the electricity? Honestly, I’m not even sure—it’s that complex. But Nephi answers it, and the professor nods his approval. “Oooooh,” I hear from the crowd around us.

  “Nailed it,” says Joe.

  The three of us high-five like we had anything to do with that.

  The judges move on. The competition is tough.

  The judges reach Landrover’s table. The crowd cheers as he unfolds his model of the factory into a robot named “NorTron.” They cheer even louder when its eyes light up and it takes a few herky-jerky steps. The other two look surprised when I cheer too.

  “How would this make this great town even better?” asks the inventor.

  “It would make it cooler,” says Landrover. The crowd laughs.

  In the end, Nephi wins. We all cheer for that. I even hoot and swirl my fist in the air. The crowd around us agrees. It’s a good call by the judges.

  Afterward, we file down out of the bleachers to congratulate Nephi. Esme is already there. “You were robbed,” I say because she still looks a little mad.

  That lightens her up a little. “I think the judges were paid,” she jokes. “Were you?” She means for the bike.

  “Yep,” I say, my smile getting even wider.

  We hear some noise near us and look over. Landrover’s got a little crowd around him. He’s got the controller in his hand and is making NorTron walk across the gym floor. The bruise has faded a little now, or maybe he’s got something on there to cover it up.

  “It’s better than I thought,” admits Esme. I don’t answer. I know there’s something there that still needs fixing.

  Then Esme and I congratulate Nephi. We have to wait in line to do it, so then we bust on him for big-timing us. He is so happy that he can hardly talk, but he still manages to shoot that idea down: “I’ve always got time for the late shift.”

  It’s a little sad because the late shift is probably over now that the contest is. Nephi seems to read my mind. “Am I going to see you guys in maker space on Monday?” he says. “There will probably be room, now that this is over.”

  “If you’re lucky,” says Esme.

  They both turn to me. “If you’re not,” I say.

  They think that’s pretty funny.

  “I used up all my luck today anyway,” Nephi says, and Esme agrees.

  I USED TO THINK my whole life had been stolen, piece by piece, but I figured something out. That’s how you put a life back together too. Just little pieces, but they add up.

  I say hi to Maps at school now. It’s just super normal, like no big deal. Sometimes we even talk, if we have time. I sit with Nephi and Joe at the makers’ table at lunch, and I’m with them again in maker space. Most of the makers are working together to build a hydraulic arm that really flexes.

  Nephi, Esme, and I have our own project. We’re building a pocket bike from scratch. The hardest thing is getting enough used parts. Fortunately, I know a guy at the auto parts store.

  Landrover and I aren’t friends, exactly. That was probably never going to happen. But we’re even now, and we understand each other a lot better. He’s not on my case anymore, and people have noticed. Even Haley and Becca. People kind of take their cues from a guy like that.

  He and his dad are getting help too. As far as they know, it was an anonymous tip—just what happens when you show up to a community-wide event with that kind of bruise. Anyway, his dad can afford the family therapy, and honestly, I think they can both use the anger management.

  As for my dad, he paid off Mr. K (and he put a lock on the rent box). He even went to his first meeting at Our Lady of the Horse Track. He says the coffee’s not as bad as he expected. He’s still funny. He’s still trying. He’s still my dad.

  Remember what I was saying before, how no one is just one thing? How people surprise you, like Esme and Nephi and even Landrover have surprised me? Well, I was thinking about that and I decided to take one more shot with someone important to me. “Hey, Danny,” I said. “Wait up!”

  And in a way, he did surprise me.

  He didn’t wait.

  I’m basically okay with it, though. He was honest, and I tried. I don’t know what’s going on beneath the surface with him. I just know that something is. He looked back when he was walking away, and I don’t know what he saw.

  But I know who was standing there. It wasn’t just a kid with a rare condition, because I’m more than that one thing too. I’m a maker, a builder, a guy who’s braver than he thought, and a guy who smiles more than he used to.

  If he saw my back, then that’s on him.

  That’s what I look like.

  I’m what I do.

  I’m Ked Eakins, and I live in Norton, Maine.

  On Thin Ice is a work of fiction, but it deals with many real-world issues. I’d like to take a moment to address a few of them here.

  Kyphosis is a real condition, one that really does sometimes affect kids and teens. Ked’s condition is unusual in a number of ways, including its early start and severity. His experience isn’t meant to represent anyone else’s, and his response to it is not meant to be perfect. It is just one fictional kid’s response to a rare condition manifesting itself in a rarer way.

  This book was inspired by Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Because of that, I included that same back condition that has captured the human imagination for centuries, for better or worse. This time, though, I wanted to keep the portrayal based on reality, rather than on folklore, stori
es, or movies. Everyone is going through something. Sometimes our challenges are visible, and sometimes they aren’t. We all deal with those challenges in our own way.

  Just, please, don’t steal the rent money.

  Other characters are dealing with challenges of their own: Ked’s dad has a gambling addiction. It’s a big problem, but there are some excellent resources available to help. The National Council on Problem Gambling (ncpgambling.org) runs a 24-hour, confidential helpline at 1-800-522-4700.

  And then there’s Landrover. Child abuse can happen to anyone—even a big dude like him. If you are not living in a safe situation, or if you witness abuse of a friend or family member, find an adult you trust and tell them what is happening. You can also talk to someone twenty-four hours a day at the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453).

  On a happier note, maker space plays a big role in this book. You can find some great info on starting and improving maker spaces at edutopia.org/article/maker-education-resources. And Edutopia was founded by George Lucas, the guy who created Star Wars. Ked would approve!

  And finally, no, you can’t buy a Road Rokkit. (I wish!) It’s a made-up brand based on real minibikes. It runs on the same stuff in the same way, but the bike and Ked’s repairs are streamlined and tweaked a bit here and there to fit the story without getting too technical. For example, the bike has a diaphragm carburetor and—never mind. Too technical!

  I have been working on this story off and on for six years—building and rebuilding it. That is by far the longest of any of my books. I hope you enjoyed it.

  —Michael Northrop

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at Michael Northrop’s Polaris!

  The 1830s, somewhere off the coast of Brazil

  The proud sailing ship Polaris bobbed up and down on the waves as it lay at anchor. Just across the surf sprawled the massive, teeming Amazon rain forest. Cabin boy Owen Ward stood at the ship’s rail, peering at the river mouth through a borrowed spyglass. He watched the soft flow of muddy river water emptying into the somber, salty Atlantic.