EVERYBODY KNOWS. Everybody’s a detective.
“Hey, Jack! I saw her over there!”
“Hey, Jack! Over there!”
“Hey, Jack! I saw bike tracks!”
“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?