JACK

FEELS GOOD. Maybe better than good. Maybe even the best ever. But he doesn’t know why—and now suddenly he does. It’s movement. The sheer, raw exhilaration of movement. Movement unlike any he’s ever experienced. Not the familiar movement of his own legs, or Scramjet’s spinning wheels. It’s more. The force that seemed inside him a few minutes ago now seems to be outside him again, beneath him, a current carrying him down some unseen stream, a current that’s moving faster and faster, toward … what?

He looks back. The crowd of little kids is growing, twenty, thirty upturned faces, searching the sky, poised, mitts twitching, waiting for the ball that is not coming down.

And now here she comes again. The girl, shucking dust over the flats, aiming straight at him. He takes his cap off—at least deny her that. She circles him as she did before, cutting a rolling hoop in the dust as he continues to walk. But this time she says nothing. No squawking. No insults. Just the soft crinkle of Scramjet’s tires.

He wonders if she’s trying to provoke him, daring him to reach out, start something. He remembers when they first met, both of them Snotsippers. She crashed her trike into his, not far from the DON’T sign, knocked both of them off their seats. It was an accident—to this day he’s still sure of that—but for her it quickly became something else. As he picked himself up and stood there mooning over his dented trike, debating whether to cry or not, she climbed into the saddle, backed up, and rammed his trike again. And—as he gaped like a moronic cow—again! She was a shark. A lion. She had just gotten a taste of human blood—in particular, his blood—and now there was no stopping her.

Even at that age Jack knew he had two choices: run away bawling or strike back. He struck back. He climbed onto his trike, and the two of them had their own little demolition derby. Half of Hokey Pokey came to hoot and cheer. In the end both trikes were wrecked, left in the dust, mangled wheels retching one last turn like the final flip of a dying lizard’s tail. Jack and the girl both swaggered into the howling mob, pumping arms, claiming victory.

That was the beginning, the start of a war without a cease-fire. Oh they had their bikes and their high-noon hokey pokeys and their friends—but as much as anything, they had each other. Every morning Jack awoke knowing she was somewhere out there, ready to trade him hate for hate, mock for mock. They might appear to others to ignore each other, but in fact, Jack knew, each was always acutely aware of the other, as the wary eyes of the antelope track the jackal.

Of course, sometimes the attention they gave each other got loud and trashy:

“Outta my way, germ!”

“Donkey lips!”

“Poopnose!”

“You’re so ugly your face is jealous of your butt!”

“You smell so bad the flies won’t even land on you!”

“Watermelonhead!”

“Pimplebrain!”

“Boy!”

“Girl!”

In a way that Jack cannot articulate, he knows that she has shaped his life, given him something to grow against. Out of habit he tries to ignore her as she circles him. He turns his focus inward, for something truly remarkable seems to be happening. The seething burn she has always ignited inside him—it’s gone. He feels nothing but a kind of humming, foamy peacefulness. He wonders how long he’s been smiling. And finally he has to sneak a peek, then another, because he just can’t get enough of that flying yellow ribbon.

He walks on, and the words leap from his mouth: “Remember when we busted up our trikes?”

She’s circling behind him as he says it. He can hear her pull to a stop. He wonders if she heard him. He wonders why he said it. He keeps walking.