Riding out of his neighborhood and onto the main road that would take him to school, Bryan considered his morning so far. The little blue messages. The numbers. The slot in the alarm clock.
Insert coin to continue. He had heard that phrase before, though he had never actually seen it anywhere. Not until this morning. His father had told him about growing up spending his Saturdays in video game arcades, standing in front of boxes taller than him with stupid names like Dig Dug and Galaga—long before kids carried a hundred games in their hip pockets. Back when arcade-style games cost only a quarter, gas cost a dollar, and people wrote letters in something called cursive, mailed with something called stamps. Of course, none of that explained why Bryan had had to put a quarter into his alarm clock just to get out of bed this morning.
Maybe he really was just imagining things. Yesterday had been rough. He had a lot on his mind. A little hallucination wasn’t completely out of the ordinary, was it? His mother always said he had a big imagination. And his great-grandmother used to see things all the time—fairies, angels, UFOs—except according to everyone else in the family, she was completely off her rocker. Or it could be hormones. According to the “life skills” coaches that had come to their school at the start of the year, hormones messed with the brain of every kid in middle school, leading to countless psychological changes and considerably more armpit hair. Surely they could be to blame for a little morning craziness. And hadn’t he spied his very first chest hair just yesterday? And the zit on his shoulder? It was all chemical.
Bryan almost had himself convinced when a man on a bike passed him on the left, dressed in one of those form-hugging blue suits with yellow stripes and a neon-blue helmet to match. As he passed, Bryan thought he saw the biker pump his fist, as if passing a twelve-year-old kid meandering his way to school was some real accomplishment. Bryan realized he was pedaling awfully slowly, lost in thought, and quickened his pace. He didn’t want to be late for school again. Certainly not for math.
Another biker came up on Bryan’s left, moving just as quickly as the first, dressed like a cardinal in flame-red Lycra, her hair flapping behind her, her eyes masked by sunglasses. As she passed, she actually bumped Bryan a little, her legs brushing up against his, knocking him off balance. He swerved out into the road for a split second before righting himself.
“Hey, watch it!” Bryan shouted. He wasn’t prone to shouting at adults, but the woman had nearly bowled him over. He had been biking this route for weeks now and never had a problem before. In fact, he seldom ever saw any other bikers on the road at this hour, and now there were two. Bryan looked behind him.
There were so many more than two.
There were at least a dozen more bikers behind him, coming up quickly. Somehow Bryan had found himself in the middle of a high-speed race down Mount Comfort Road. He looked toward the sidewalk, thinking of just getting out of the way and letting the other bikers pass, but the sidewalk was narrow, less than half the size of the bike lane, and every other driveway held a parked car blocking the way. He could stop and let everyone pass, but he was already late.
So instead he started pedaling faster, legs churning, trying to stay ahead of the rest of the pack. He glanced behind him again. The flock of riders was gaining. They all wore helmets and sunglasses, looking eerily similar in their synthetic suits, like a posse of neon-clad, bicycle-riding CIA agents determined to hunt him down. In a matter of seconds they were on him. One passed on the left and quickly cut in front of Bryan, making him veer right into the curb, his backpack shifting, nearly causing him to topple over again. He made a quick adjustment and got back on course as two others passed him on either side, bent over their handlebars, focused only on the path ahead.
“Seriously, people!” Bryan shouted. But either they couldn’t hear him or they were ignoring him. In fact, the two that had just passed him sideswiped each other, colliding, it seemed, on purpose. Their front wheels crashed, handlebars seeming to tangle, before they finally pulled away, one of them hopping the curb and plowing into a mailbox, raising his fist in anger. Bryan considered stopping to make sure the rider was all right, when he felt something bump him from behind.
He turned to see a large man barely contained in a clingy red-and-blue suit, looking like an overweight Spider-Man, nudging Bryan’s back tire with his front. The man had a mustache that stretched beyond the perimeter of his cheeks, curling up at the ends. He was holding on to the handlebar with one hand. The other was holding a banana. An actual banana. He nosed into Bryan’s back side again, causing him to teeter.
“What the heck?” Bryan screamed at him, waving. “Go around! Go around!”
As if the idea hadn’t occurred to him, the man with the sinister-looking mustache swerved left and changed gears, accelerating past Bryan, who inched right to make room. Up ahead he could see the turnoff for the school parking lot, right next to the baseball diamond. More bikers continued to pass him on both sides, riding recklessly, leaning into one another, forcing one another off the bike path and onto the curb or out into the street. Bryan saw one of them spin out of control and go down, but he just as quickly brushed himself off and remounted. Another biker skidded in front of him, causing a spray of muddy water to kick up into Bryan’s eyes. He bent his head down to his shirtsleeve to wipe his eyes, afraid to let go of the handlebars with either hand. He blinked rapidly, clearing his vision, then looked back up.
Mustache man’s head was turned. He was smiling. In his hand he held the now-empty banana peel.
Bryan watched it fly through the air. Saw it hit the ground right in front of him. Felt a strange sensation as his front tire caught it, the bike’s handles twisting, everything sliding out from beneath him, his stomach somersaulting as he veered hard right into the school parking lot, desperately trying to keep control. The bike toppled sideways and crashed hard, it and its rider coming to a skidding halt on pavement still damp from the previous night’s rain.
Bryan cursed and looked back at the column of riders, who raced on, careening wildly down the street. He gingerly inspected his elbows and knees, the former only slightly scraped up, the latter protected by his Breeches of Enduring Stiffness. His bike helmet had protected his head. His palms had bits of loose gravel pressed into them. His bike seemed to be in one piece still, though its front wheel was twisted a full 180 degrees, and there was half a banana peel woven into its spokes.
But the scrapes on his elbows and the damage to his bike were nothing compared with the thing he was looking at.
There, in the blacktop of the parking lot, itself a web of cracks and fissures, was a perfectly rectangular slot about an inch long. And hanging above the slot, suspended in midair, were familiar blue words.
INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE.
No, Bryan thought. This wasn’t right at all. He hadn’t just imagined it this morning. Unless he was also imagining it now. But the slot in the pavement looked real enough, and the words didn’t go away no matter how many times he shook his head. Either he had more hormones than any kid in Mount Comfort Middle School or he was going insane. Or maybe his hormones were driving him insane!
Bryan groaned.
One thing he knew for sure: This day was turning out to be a disaster.