“Hey, Jack! We’re makin a posse! We’ll find her!”
So public his shame. For once, he resents his own popularity. Every show of sympathy, every offer to help, cranks up his disgrace, his hatred of the girl.
“Hey, Jack! We found Scramjet!”
Jack waves dismissively: Yeah, right.
“Jack! It’s buried!”
He halts. Frost coats his heart. Would she?
It’s a couple of Gappergums, a girl and a boy, pulling up in front of him, panting. He knows they have no more sense than moss, so why is he listening?
“Behind Tantrums, Jack! Mitchell found it!” Each grabs a hand. “C’mon!”
Jack allows himself to be led. Prays: Please no. But fears.
As they head for Tantrums, Jack is barely aware of walking through Flowers, barely aware that, midmorning, it’s already trampled. Two Snotsippers and a Longspitter are waiting in line to enter Tantrums. All three are grimly tearing at faceless rag dolls, ripping them to shreds: dog bones for fitpitchers. On a bench outside the door sits a bored Big Kid, the attendant. His job is to hand out rag dolls and assist the exiting fitpitcher, who often can hardly walk at the end of his or her tantrum. Tantrums itself is a dome-shaped structure—white, rubbery, soundproof—with a plastic pipe in the top for tantrum exhaust. The color of the exhausting gas signifies tantrum category, from One (black: mild) to Five (white: achieved only once, by Robert the Fuse). At the moment it’s showing aqua: Category Three.
From behind Tantrums comes a cry: “I need help!”
They run. Mitchell, a Longspitter, is tugging a bike wheel, still half buried, and at once Jack’s heartfrost melts: it’s not Scramjet. It can’t be. It’s too big. Mitchell is grunting with effort. Jack, feeling charitable now, grabs Mitchell’s spade, pushes him aside. “You need to dig more.” A couple minutes of spadework frees the wheel. Jack lifts it, stands it on the ground. The little kids gasp, wonderwowed, reach tentatively to touch it. They’ve never seen anything like it. Neither has Jack. Half the spokes are gone. All remaining metal is a rock-hard red-brown rustcrust. All that remains of the rubber are a few black scraps. But that’s not what astounds them—it’s the size. The wheel stands higher than Jack’s head.
“Jack,” one croaks, “what is it?”
“What it looks like,” says Jack. “A bike wheel.”
“That big?”
“Yeah.” Dumb answer, but that’s all he can say, for he has no idea where it came from or what it’s doing in the ground. He’s heard of a race of giant bikes that once roamed the land, but he’s always assumed it was a fairy tale.
Suddenly he stops—that sound again. He turns. “Who whistled?” They look at him like he’s goofy. Already Mitchell is back to digging.
As Jack walks away, he hears Mitchell’s cry: “Sprocket!”
He passes Tantrums again. The Big Kid attendant is helping a sagging fitpitcher wobble off as, already, the next in line plunges inside and slams the door.
He spots the tiny terrorist, the one who calls himself Destroyer. He’s pointing his plastic clicker at a pair of little kids dumb enough to believe it’s a magic weapon. Normally Jack would sneak over behind the kid, mess with him somehow, show him up for the harmless runt he really is. But he’s got no will for it today. Everything’s been sucked out of him but the need to get his bike back.
A gang of assorted little ones comes running. “Hey, Jack!” He keeps walking, tries to ignore them. It doesn’t work. They plant themselves in front of him. “Jack! Jack!”
He blows disgust, snarls: “What?”
“Jack—is there monsters?” pipes one, pulling on his pant leg. “There is, right, Jack? Right?”
“No there ain’t!” screams another. “Tell him, Jack! There ain’t no such thing as monsters!”
Now they’re all babbling, pushing, clutching at him.
“Yes there is!”
“No there ain’t!”
“Jack! Jack!”
Over their heads he spots Dusty and LaJo. He pushes through the kids—“Whatever”—tries to move on, but they practically trip him clinging to his legs. “Jack! Tell us! Tell us!”
He shakes them off, rudely shoves the most persistent one away. But already they’re regrouping. He points, warns: “Touch me again—” They stop in their tracks. He’s heard the question many times before and has always, according to his whim, snapped off a sharp yes or no and enjoyed the victors’ cheers and the losers’ glum dejection. But he’s in no mood to play this time, so for once he’ll give them the only honest answer there is, unsatisfying as it may be to all, which of course is, How the heck do I know?—when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there they are, the words, the real answer, coming out of his mouth: “You believe there is, there is. You believe there ain’t, there ain’t.” Jack leaves them staring stupidly at him like guppies in a fishbowl, musing as he walks away, Where did that come from?
The Amigos are heading away from him. They don’t seem to have noticed him.
“Hey!” he calls.
They keep walking.
“Amigos!”
They keep walking. It’s not like they’re miles away. He knows they hear him. What’s going on? He feels the chill coming on again.
He trots, calls: “Dusty! LaJo!”
They don’t turn till he’s practically up their backs. “Hey, Jack,” they go, acting surprised, but it’s fake, and so are the smiles.
“So?” he says. His mouth is dry. He hardly gets out the next word. “Anything?”
They trade glances. “Hey, no,” says Dusty, like, What a silly question.
Neither will meet his eyes. Something tells him, Walk away. Don’t ask. But he does. “What is it? Stop lying. What happened?”
Dusty is trying so hard he’s squeaking. “Nothing happened, Jackarooni. We’re still looking.”
Jack grabs a fistful of shirt, pulls Dusty to his toes. “What?”
LaJo says, “It’s painted.”
For a moment the world stops. “Huh?”
“Yellow.”
Dusty yells, “Shut up, you moron!”
LaJo shrugs. “He’ll find out anyway. He should hear it from us.”
The word has long since passed through his outer ear, speared the drum and inner ear; now it burrows deeper, deeper into his brain—and still makes no sense.
Yellow?
JUBILEE
OF COURSE HE WANTS TO—what kid wouldn’t want to ride Scramjet (oops, Hazel) by himself, and she’s proud that he wants to—but Albert’s little legs are way too short to reach the pedals. So she walks alongside, holding him to the saddle, while he churns his legs in the air. “C’mon, Jubilee! Faster!” The paint is still wet. By now her little brother is half yellow himself but couldn’t care less—he’s riding the most famous bike in all the world! “Faster!”
She trots. His arms are stretched to their limit to reach the handlebar. It’s getting harder to keep him safe and under control because he’s turning the front wheel this way and that, pretending he’s swooping over Great Plains chasing the wild herd. He’s been delirious ever since she gave him the paintbrush. In spite of herself she winced as he slapped yellow even on the spokes and tires, but her heart is singing to know she’s made him so happy, and there’s no way she’s going to stop him.
“Faster!”
She accelerates.
“Faster!”
She goes as fast as she dares. She’s holding one slippery yellow handlegrip now as he thrusts both hands in the air and yells at boggle-eyed watchers: “Look at me! Look at me! I’m Jack!”
AMIGOS
“DID YOU SEE IT?”
“What?”
“You know what.”
“I saw something. But the sun was in my eyes. It mighta been sun glare.”
“It wasn’t sun. It was real.”
They’re talking about the uncomfortablest moment of their lives, the moment after they told Jack they had spotted Scramjet. When LaJo told him it was ye
llow, Jack seemed confused, as if he needed a dictionary to look up the word. “Yellow?” he said. Then his face, his whole body, seemed to crumple. He slumped to the ground at their feet and began to cry. He pulled up his shirt to hide his face—and that’s when Dusty saw it too. And that’s when they walked away, left him alone.
“Say it,” says LaJo.
“Say what?” says Dusty.
“Say it.”
Dusty has had his back turned to LaJo the whole time. “Say what?”
LaJo doesn’t answer. He knows Dusty can’t stand silence. If nobody else fills it, he will.
Dusty kicks dirt, picks a weed, chews it, spits it out, slumps, sighs dramatically, throws his hands to the sky: “O-K. His tattoo.”
“His tattoo what?”
Dusty turns. His eyes are glistening. He seems to be looking for something that LaJo can’t give him. He creaks, disbelieving: “It’s … fading.”
LaJo says vacantly, “It’s almost gone.”
Dusty surrenders, sags, sighs, nods.
They share a long silence that even Dusty does not invade. At last LaJo says, “So. What do you think?”
Dusty drags his eyes skyward. He gives a LaJo-like shrug. “I don’t know.”
“I didn’t say know. I said think. What do you think?”
Dusty tries, tries, gives up, snarls: “I don’t think nothin. Nothin. OK?” More silence. Kicking dust. Staring at separate horizons. Dusty turns, stares at LaJo. Suddenly he lifts his own shirt. He can’t stand to look. “Is it there?”
LaJo looks. “It’s there.”
Dusty blows relief, checks out his tattoo. It’s clear and sharp as always. The unblinking inky eye. The belly-button eyeball staring at all there is. A bold stare. A daring stare. “Lift your shirt,” he says to LaJo. “Let me check you.”
“I’m OK,” says LaJo.
“How do you know?”
“I checked.”
“You checked? Why?”
“I already knew about Jack. I saw him at the tracks.”
Dusty screeches. “What? You saw him? You didn’t say nothin? You didn’t tell me?”
“I wasn’t sure. Till I saw it again.”
Dusty tromps in agitated circles, faces LaJo. “So what do you think?”
LaJo takes a long time to answer. “I think something’s gonna happen.”
Dusty goes into a fit of blinking, as if blinking can erase what was said. “Something? What’s something? What’s that s’pose to mean? Something what?”
“You’re squeaking.”
Dusty kicks a stone at LaJo. He walks off as if he’s never coming back, comes back, snaps, “When?”
“When what?”
“When’s this something gonna happen? Whatever it is.”
LaJo shrugs. “I don’t know.” He lets out a long breath. “All I know is the tattoo is fading. Nobody else’s is. Not yours. Not mine. Only his. It’s fading. I don’t know what it means neither. Except something’s gonna happen.” He looks off. “Soon.”
Dusty shrieks: “Soon?”
LaJo shrugs. “It’s fading fast. So … soon. You ain’t gotta be Einstein.”
The moment has become too hot. They back off, stare emptily at little kids kicking a soccer ball around. LaJo nods beyond. “Look.”
It’s the runty hellion, the walking explosion, on his haunches, watching the ballkickers.
“That’s the kid that did it,” says Dusty.
“Did what?”
“Dumped a Newbie into Socks. Didn’t you hear it?”
“Guess not.”
“Then he went to Snuggle Stop and messed with kids in line.”
“Reg’lar maniac.”
“Let’s go mess him up.”
LaJo stares.
Neither moves.
“Snugger,” says Dusty. He grins. “Little kids love that dude.”
So do you, you big baby, LaJo thinks. You sneak over at night. You think we don’t know? You think we don’t see you jump in with little kids and do the hokey pokey?
Silence. Eyes too bright. Corked panic. “Who’s Einstein?” says Dusty.
DESTROYER
I AM THE LION. They are the zebras. They’re nervous. They keep their eyes on me even while they’re kicking the ball. They wonder which one of them I’m gonna go after, gonna eat. They blubber: “Please don’t let it be me!” The joke is, I’m staying right here, enjoying myself. Making them nervous is just as much fun as eating them. Well, almost. Well, lookie lookie, here comes the ball rolling towards me. And look—nobody’s coming after it. They’re just standing there like dopes. Look at them flinch as I stand up. They think I’m gonna take their ball. Or come after them. But I’m not. I’m just gonna turn and walk away, turn and walk away and go back to the other lions and tell them about it and we’ll all roll on our backs in the grass and laugh big roary lion laughs.
JACK
“GOT THE GRUMPIES, Jack?”
Jack unfunks slowly, finds himself straddling one end of the seesaw. How did he get to Playground? Lopez looks down from the high end, the dirty bottoms of her dangling feet a darker shade of herself. Lopez spends half her life on the low end of the seesaw, too small to push herself up, waiting for a weightier kid to take the other end, supply the power. It’s usually a futile wait. It takes a Big Kid—jumping—to reach and pull down the high empty end, and most Big Kids have no time for tots and seesaws. But not Jack. He’s always got a minute for Lopez, tickled to hear her squeals as his downpush sends her skyward.
He peers at her up the length of the gray plank. “Huh?”
“Got the grumpies, Jack?”
He nods dopily. He resents her dragging him out of oblivion. What kinda stupid question is that? he wants to say.
“Bad day, Jack?”
She’s tipped forward, leaning hard into the hand bar, both terrified and thrilled to be hanging so high, not coming down. He remembers Kiki’s trembling lip. “I guess,” he says.
“Oh,” she goes with a sad sag. She mulls, then: “So it’s a bad day for me too, Jack.”
Jack is about to say Don’t you ever compare your bad day with mine when he realizes he’s misunderstood her. She’s trying to tell him she feels his pain. And indeed it shows on her little face. She’s not acting. Despite himself, he is touched.
“Thanks, Lopee,” he says, and pushes himself up, sending her—“Wheee!”—down. Useless as counterweight, she butt-bounces off the ground and shoots right back up, leaving Jack no more than a moment at the top—which is, next to Gorilla Hill, the second-highest point on Hokey Pokey. In that moment Jack sees it all: Great Plains and the rolling dustball of the wild herd, Trucks, Tantrums, The Kid, Hippodrome, the DON’T sign, Stuff, the red bluff and jungle treetops beyond and kids big and little everywhere streaking, leaping, chasing, shrieking, warring, hopscotching, foot-balling, hide-and-seeking, jumproping, hokeypoking, razzing, dazzing, runamucking, chuckleducking—all in full play now well into the sunny day that never really ends but is merely interrupted by the unwelcome arrival of night.
Jack has always loved these panoramic, top-of-the-plank snapshots of the world. It’s one of the reasons he likes to seesaw Lopez. But this time … this time, as he sinks slowly back down, he is aware that something at the top was different. The world looked exactly the same as always—the places, the kids—but this time there was a slippery sense, like an uncatchable moth, that he himself was no longer part of the picture, was on the outside looking in, that the world he was seeing was no longer his. For a scary instant he thought his end of the seesaw was going to keep on rising and catapult him clear out of Hokey Pokey.
Lopez, hanging on, hovering, surveys the world. He speaks up to her: “Not just bad.”
She turns away from the spectacular view, looks down at him, her little eyebrows pinched with concern. “Badder than bad, Jack?”
“Different,” he says. “Bad’s not the word.”
“What is the word, Jack?” Intensely curious.
&nb
sp; He looks about, as if to find the word in the dust. “I don’t know. Strange, maybe?”
She tastes it. “Strange?”
He shakes his head—“No … not …”—knows it’s hopeless. “I don’t think there is a word.”
Lopez laughs, is so into her own laughter she doesn’t notice she’s shaking the high end. “Yeah there is, Jack. There’s a word for everything. You just don’t want to say it to me ’cause you think I’m little.”
He can’t explain, even to himself, so he reaches for something solid. “She stole my bike.” It takes a moment to register. She gapes at him, speechless. He fires the other barrel. “She painted it.”
Lopez practically falls off her perch, recovers, squeals: “Painted your bike? Your bike? Scramjet?”
Jack is grimly pleased. Little as she is, Lopez is normally hard to surprise. “Yeah,” he says. “Yellow.”
Lopez is twisting in her seat, scanning, thrusting her finger now. “Jack! Jack! There it is! She’s riding it! Way over there!”
Jack pushes up, glimpses the yellow streak from the top before bouncing back to the ground.
“What are you gonna do, Jack?”
I’m gonna sit down and cry, he thinks. Nope. Already did that. I’ll go to Tantrums. I’ll make Robert the Fuse seem like a peeper. I’ll catch her … I’ll catch her and I’ll … She’ll wish she was never …
The question flies to the Mountains, echoes: What are you gonna do, Jack?
I’m gonna die, because there’s no such thing as life without my bike.
Echoes: What are you gonna do, Jack?
“Catch the train.”
That was weird. He imagines he just said Catch the train.
Lopez is laughing. “What’s funny?” he says.
“You just said ‘Catch the train,’ Jack.”
He stares at her. “I did?”
“Yeah, you did. There’s no train, Jack. Just tracks. Everybody knows that.” She giggles some more.
What’s wrong with me?
He’s woozy. The plank is getting rubbery. He hears himself laughing along, showing her he’s just being silly. But she’s stopped laughing now, she’s giving him a new look, a look he can’t read. He wants to make the look go away, wants to make Lopez happy again. He pushes off the ground, sends himself up, her down, and at the top he shouts, “Look, Lopee—no hands!” and he releases the hand bar and thrusts his hands to the sky as he bounces back down. But her shriek of delight never comes. From her high perch she’s gaping wide-eyed at him and the look is now unmistakable: it’s pure shock. She points. “Jack! Your tattoo!”