I WAS OUT RIDING MY BIKE. NOTHING ELSE TO DO. HOW LONG can you stand to hang around your house? Even my space station was getting a little boring. Baseball? Forget it. Calvin was away at the beach. Richie away at the mountains. Peter—just—away. And Dugan doesn’t show up unless there’s at least two people.
So I decided to ride—far. I filled my canteen with water and strapped it on my bike and got an advance on my allowance to buy something at a McDonald’s.
First I swung by the park to check out the drainpipe: no raccoon. Then I headed out of town. Past the state hospital. Past the community college. I turned down a road I was never on before, and pretty soon there were no sidewalks or traffic lights. Then the gutters and drainpipes went, and most of the houses. Lots of trees though. The road got crunchier and skinny and curvy. Sometimes when a car came along I got squeezed over and whipped in the legs by stems and thorns hanging out.
Then the farms started. Fields, corn, cows, silos, fences: farm stuff. It wasn’t even noon yet, but already the road ahead was starting to shimmer, that’s how hot it was. Every once in a while I stopped to take a small swig from my canteen. I kept my eye out for a McDonald’s.
Most of the going was up and down hills, but it was on a rare level stretch where I spotted something far ahead, oozing in and out of the heat-shimmer. A bike! It disappeared around a bend. I stepped on it, and when I spotted it again it was clear of the shimmer. Sky blue bike… red butt on black seat… red shorts… floppy red hat… bare feet . . girl.
I slowed down, wasn’t sure I wanted to make contact, thought about turning around, didn’t want to do that either. Then suddenly she stopped. She was reaching into a clump of bushes. She heard me coming, looked up. It was Call-Me-Marceline McAllister.
I don’t know why, I couldn’t explain it in a million years, but I was glad—I think. I pulled up.
“You?” she said. I wasn’t sure if her tone meant disapproval or surprise.
“Who else?” I answered. I was cool.
She went back to reaching in the bush. “I wouldn’t expect to see you out here.”
“Why not?” I said. “I ride my bike all over.” She didn’t answer. “What’re you looking for?” She didn’t seem to hear me.
After a pretty long time she pulled away from the bush. “Farts,” she growled.
Wow, I thought, Marceline McAllister says Farts. “What’s the matter?” I said.
She flicked a pebble with her bare big toe. “They’re gone.”
She didn’t answer. She just took off, pumping up the hill. I didn’t know what to do. I had the weirdest feeling somewhere around my stomach, like there was a ball of string in there and it was tied to her and as she rode away she was unraveling it.
At the top of the hill she stopped and looked back. She called something, but I couldn’t make it out. So I rode all the way up to her. “What?” I said.
“Blackberries,” she said, and went zooming down the hill.
I followed.
Pretty soon we were rolling along together. Not side-by-side though—the road was too skinny for that. At first I felt a little funny riding behind a girl like some little puppy dog, but I soon got over that.
Interesting thing about McAllister: take the trombone out of her mouth and put her on a bicycle, and she jabbers away like a thousand parrots. Well, to be honest, I wasn’t exactly Silent Sam myself. We pedaled and talked, pedaled and talked. Fences, silos, cows, trees. Mile after mile. When she was doing the talking, I wasn’t always listening too well. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her bike seat and how perfectly those red shorts of hers fit onto it. Looked something like a big red valentine.
We were chugging up a hill when all of a sudden she points and hollers: “Raccoon!”
I looked just in time to see the striped tail disappear into the bushes. “Neat,” I said. “I like raccoons.”
“Really?” she said. She seemed shocked.
“Yeah. I like them a lot, as a matter of fact.”
“You mean you don’t go chasing them and throwing stones at them like all the other idiot boys?”
My brain echoed with the sound of the bottle I threw rattling in the drainpipe, the sound of the soft thud. We were still riding, but her face was turned full around, staring at me, waiting for an answer. I couldn’t speak. All the wetness in my throat went to my eyes.
“Yeah, right,” she finally sneered, and snapped her head around and pulled away.
I went after her. “Marcy. Marceline. What’s the matter? Wha’d I do?”
She glared around again. “You tell me.”
Was I going crazy? There I was, practically trembling in front of this girl, like she was my mother or something, like if I said the wrong thing I’d get spanked. And the craziest thing was, I couldn’t lie to her. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. “Okay.” I shrugged. “So I threw a bottle at one once. So? Is that a crime?”
She skidded to a stop, almost making me crash into her. I was getting the same look from her that I had gotten in the vice-principal’s office: burnt toast. “What is it with you boys, anyway? Whenever you see a bird or an animal, anything alive, you have to try to kill it. Does it make you feel like a big man, huh? Is that it? Huh?”
I tried to explain, but before three words were out of my mouth she was off again. “Hell with ya,” I muttered.
I would have turned back right then, but I hadn’t passed any McDonald’s, and I figured there had to be one up ahead. So I pedaled on—slow—to give her plenty of time to get miles away.
That’s why I was surprised only a few minutes later to see her bike parked up against a fence. She was picking something from a tree. I pretended not to notice and cruised on by, but she called, “Peach?”
I U-turned and coasted over. “Nah. I’m waiting for a McDonald’s.” I reached for my canteen. “Water?”
“Okay,” she said. She took about a year wiping the mouth of the canteen with her shirttail—you might have thought I had leprosy—then she took the longest swig I ever saw. In fact, she drank it all. While I gaped in shock, she just grinned and took off, with the canteen. When I finally caught up to her a mile down the road, she was filling the canteen with water running out of a pipe.
“From the water cooler of the earth,” she said.
“It’s not polluted?”
She just laughed and leaned over and drank right from the pipe. I tried it too. It was the best water I ever had.
We saddled up and moved on. I felt more comfortable when we were riding. On a bicycle she wasn’t taller than me.
“I never went past the water pipe before,” she said, “but I think you better get a peach next orchard we come to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think there’s a McDonald’s out here.”
“Sure there is,” I told her. “There’s McDonald’s everywhere. Wait and see.”
“You wait,” she said. “I’d rather have a peach anyway.”
Shock again. “You don’t like McDonald’s?”
She snorted. “I hate McDonald’s.”
I came right out and said it: “Man, you are weird.”
She just chuckled, so I figured I’d get into a couple other areas I had been wondering about for a long time. “Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Sure.”
“Why do you want to be called Marceline?”
“It’s my name. What do you want me to be called? Oswalda?”
So much for names. “Whatever made you play the trombone, anyway?”
“Nobody made me.”
“I mean… you know…”
“My father plays it.”
I wondered if he was a natural or a step. “Don’t you feel a little funny playing that thing?” She was silent. Better change the subject. “I hate August,” I said.
“I love it,” she said.
“You do? Why?”
“Why do you hate it?”
“There’s never anybody around.”
“So? You afraid to be alone?”
“Course not. Who’s talking about being afraid? Anyway, naturally, there’s a couple people around, but not enough to get a game up. So why are you so crazy about August?”
She stuck out a bare foot and lopped the fuzz off a weed. “Oh, I don’t know.”
But I figured I knew. Marceline McAllister wasn’t popular. Figure it: (1) she insisted on being called Marceline instead of Marcy; (2) she played the trombone; (3) she was tall; (4) she hated McDonald’s. Put it this way: she wasn’t exactly the Debbie Breen type. So how many friends could she have? She liked being by herself. And August is a great month for by-yourselfers.
I asked her, “Ever think of cheerleading?”
She slowed down for me to come alongside. The look I got was part burnt toast, part confusion. “Jason,” (first time she ever said my name) “what is it with you anyway? What did you mean back there about the trombone? Why am I supposed to feel funny playing it?”
“I don’t know,” I fumbled. How do you explain it?
“You think it’s funny to play the trombone, Jason?”
“Nah, it’s great.” Before I could shut my mouth, a little snicker snuck out.
She snickered back. “Well, do you feel funny?”
“Huh? About what?”
“Killing raccoons?”
I glared right at her and yelled. “I don’t kill no raccoons!”
“Being short?”
An icicle stabbed me. I didn’t know it was that obvious. Did she know I didn’t have pubic hair too?
“Being made a fool of?” she sneered.
“Yeah? By who?”
She rolled her eyes up and sighed. “Oh, by a certain Miss Breen.”
“I didn’t see anybody asking you to dance, skinny.”
“Oh, yes, Jason dear, I’d love to see your space station. I’ll come tomorrow. Or maybe the day after tomorrow. If I don’t have a toothache. I get a lot of toothaches, you know.”
“How many boys are after you, Mar-cee?”
“Jason dear, why did you run away on Halloween? That tiny little Luke Skywalker was you, wasn’t it?”
“Ever see the wall in the girls locker room, Mar-cee?”
“So that’s where you hang out.”
“It says Marceline McAllister sucks trombones.”
“Boo-hoo.”
“You think you’re the greatest thing in the world.”
“Thank you.”
“Well, you’re not! You’re an asshole and everybody knows it!”
“That so?”
“Yeah, that’s so! Nobody likes you!”
“My mother does.”
“Twerp.”
“Everybody knows what you do with that trombone every night! Mar-cee!”
“Runt.”
“The fudge I gave you that time had ants in it!”
“I hope they were pissants like you.”
“Mar-cee! Mar-cee! Mar-cee! Mar-cee! Mar-cee! Mar-cee!”
“Raccoon killer.”
“I don’t kill raccoons!”
“Short immature runt raccoon killer.”
She was laughing.
“Knock it off!” I screamed. “I ain’t no raccoon killer! I love raccoons! I felt rotten ever since I threw the bottle at that one! I gave my Valentine’s candy to Esther Kufel! I teach little kids stuff! I can’t sleep right ever since Peter Kim’s little brother got killed! I’m a good kid! You hear? My stepfather says so! I’M A GOOD KID!!”
She was wheeling away, hunching over and pumping like a demon. I got into my racing form and took off after her, screaming bloody murder all the while She zipped out of sight around a sharp curve and all of a sudden I heard a scream, a crash, and a moo, and I screeched to a halt in front of the craziest scene I ever saw: she had crashed into a cow.
The front of her bike was caved in, Marceline was sprawled and whimpering on the ground, and the cow was just standing there like a dope. There was a tire mark on its side.
Marceline reached for her floppy red hat—red hat!—I grabbed her and dragged her away. “Look out!” I warned. “Maybe it’s a bull!”
She got to her feet, sneering. “That’s no bull, dumbo.” She pointed downward. “Look.”
These pink and white udders were hanging down all over. They were humongous. I felt myself blushing. “So?” I said. “Maybe bulls have them too.”
She sighed at the sky. “Oh God.”
Well, bull or cow, somehow we managed to get the animal back through the break in the fence and into the field. That’s when I noticed her arm: it was bleeding. I froze. Not because it was a bad cut, but because of the fence that cut her—it was barbed wire, and it was rusty. Lockjaw!
I tried to act casual. “Hey, uh, looks like you got a little nick there.”
She looked. By the way she said “Uh-oh” I could tell she knew about lockjaw too. “Got a hankie?” she asked me.
I did, but it was full of boogies. Anyway, that wasn’t the treatment. “You gotta suck it,” I told her.
She made a face. Then she held out her arm, right under my nose. The cut was on the inside of her arm. The skin was real white there. Don’t think, I told myself, just do it. Next thing I know I’m sucking and spitting like crazy. I’m trying to suck as hard as I can, since I figure the poison’s got a head start, but the problem is, the harder I suck the more scared I get that I’m going to suck the poison right down my own throat. So I spitted about twenty times for each suck.
Finally she goes, “Owww!” and snatches her arm away. “That’s e-nuff.”
“Gotta—get—it all—out,” I gasped.
“You were biting.”
“I was not biting. I was sucking.” My face was getting warm. (I swear, I wasn’t biting.)
We both looked down at her arm—and my face switched to hot. There it was, all around the cut, purple and red: a hickey. Just like the ones you see on The Lovers’ necks all the time.
I acted like I didn’t notice. “Yeah,” I said, “that’s enough.”
Her bike was totaled. We left it there and started walking. It was pretty grim. Nobody said much. Every once in a while I’d try something like, “Too bad about your bike,” or “The cow didn’t even have a dent.” The most she would do was grunt. Other than that the only sound was the click-click of my bike wheels.
Fields that we zipped by before took forever to pass now. We walked and walked and walked and I couldn’t believe we still didn’t come to the water pipe. The sun fell behind the treetops. I couldn’t believe we had gone so far without seeing a McDonald’s. We stopped to pick some peaches. Pretty soon the sun looked like a giant peach perched on top of the corn.
Now I was really getting nervous. A plum-colored mist was settling into the valleys. I pictured my mother—or would it be Ham?—calling the police. Sirens. Walkie-talkie voices. Radio description… last seen on yellow ten-speed… thirteen years old… brown hair… none in pubic area or underarms… short.… Mary bawling, “He was the best brother anybody ever had!”
The moon was a white toenail clipping in the sky. The cars had their headlights on. I knew what I had to do. “Marcy—Marceline,” I said, “our parents—they’re gonna be all bent.”
She shrugged. “So?”
“So, they’ll think we’re missing persons. They’ll call the cops.”
“So?”
“So, we gotta hurry. We gotta ride.” I stopped and climbed onto my bike. I patted the bar in front of me. “Get on.”
She got on. I could hardly believe it. I guess cracking up her bike and cutting herself took the fight out of her.
The downhills were great, but the uphills—they were the killers. I threw my bike into first, and still I had to pump hard. I tried to keep the sound of my breath down. I would stop breathing for twenty or thirty seconds, but the breaths would bunch up and burst out all at once and I’d go, “Paaahh!”
Sometimes going downhill her hair would come streaming back into my face. I didn’t brush it away.
Once I said to her, “What’s a trombone weigh?” She said that was a dumb question and how should she know—but that was good enough for me. She didn’t know I was just checking to make sure her jaw wasn’t starting to lock up.
At last we came to the water pipe. “Let’s have a snort,” she said. Gratefully, I pulled over. She got off and took a drink. I did too, and when I turned around she was on my bike, on the seat.
“Oh no,” I told her. “No way. I’m driving.”
“Jason, get on.”
“Nope.”
“Jason, you drove half the way, now I’ll do the rest. It’s only fair.”
“Nope.”
“Jason, you were wobbling all over the place. Now get on.”
“I was not wobbling.”
“Jason, stop being a macho piglet! Get on!” She reached out and grabbed my ear and pulled and twisted and wouldn’t let go till I was seated on the crossbar.
“By the way,” she said, “thanks.”
“Thanks?” I screeched, untwisting my poor ear. “For what?”
“For your lip surgery on my arm,” she grinned, and we took off.
The stars had all joined the moon and it was really dark out now. At first all I could think about was what if one of the guys saw me being ridden along on my own bike—by a girl. But then I started to think about other stuff, mostly her. She was as hard to figure out as the world. She was a girl, but she could ride a bike like a boy. She loved animals, but she hated McDonald’s. She busted her gut running the mile, but she cried when she crashed into cows. She was tall, but in some ways she was little too. There was a whole mishmash of thoughts and feelings about her churning inside me, and I wasn’t sure about any of them. One thing I was sure of, though: no way could they be written down on a locker room wall.
I was thinking about these things when she pulled off the road. “Excuse me,” she said, getting off, “I have to pee.” Just like that. Off she went into the bushes, while my face did a great imitation of a red giant star.
When she came back she took a swig of water. This time she didn’t bother to wipe off the mouth of the canteen before she drank.
“Jason?” she said once we were rolling again.
“Yeah?”
“The raccoon’s not dead.”
“What about the bottle?” I said. “I heard it hit.”
“The raccoon is okay.”
I don’t know—just the way her voice sounded, just because it was her saying it—it sounded true. It felt true. “You sure?” I said.
“I’m sure.”
I kind of settled back then, relaxed. I was really enjoying the ride. The hills were flattening out and we were mostly cruising. In the distance I could see the faint glow of the town. I wished it was still five hundred miles away.
I heard a sound behind me, a soft, beautiful sound. She was humming.
I tilted my head back so that all I could see was the sky. The universe. I remembered my dream, of how Pioneer came to my bedroom window and waited for me to put something on board. Suddenly I knew what I would do. The gold figures of the man and woman from Earth—I would etch two names in the gold beneath them:
JASON MARCELINE
And we would go sailing out to the stars.
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