CHAPTER 13

OR SOMETHING

Iggy went outside and picked weeds. He really did. For ten minutes, he picked weeds. Then he picked up a big rock in his front yard and looked at all the slimy, wormy things under it. That was fun. He picked up three more rocks. Gross!

Then he looked at his street. So this was what it was like while he was in school.

Quiet. Empty. Amazingly empty.

No cars drove down the street.

No people walked along the sidewalk.

It was weird. Why were there no people? Someone should be walking along the sidewalk, at least.

Iggy went down the front steps to the sidewalk and looked right. No one.

He looked left. No one.

Nothing.

Iggy lived on the most boring street in the world.

Is this what being a grown-up was going to be like?

Quiet and empty?

It was horrible!

Iggy felt like he had to do something, something fast and fun. He looked back at his house. “Don’t bug me,” his dad had said. “Go pick weeds—or something.”

Or something. That’s what he had said. So it would be okay if Iggy got on his skateboard and—

Except his skateboard was inside the house. Going inside to get the board might count as bugging Dad.

Also, Dad might tell him he had to stay in the yard.

Okay. He would do something fast and fun on his bike.

Iggy went to the spot next to the fence where his bike was kept and unlocked it. He was pretty quiet about this, because he didn’t want to bug good old Dad.

He hadn’t been on his bike in a while. It was fun! More fun than he remembered. First, he went super fast down the block and slammed on the brake at the corner. He thought he almost burned rubber. On the next block, he went faster and longer, and then he stood up when he slammed on the brake. Still, not quite.

On the next block, he mixed it up—wheelies. Fun.

He wished he had a ramp.

He turned down the next block.

Whoa! A ramp!

It wasn’t a real ramp, of course. It was a big pile of dirt, but it wasn’t really dirt; it was dirt and bark and stuff mixed together.* Iggy didn’t know why anyone would have a big pile of dirt sitting on the sidewalk in front of their house, but he did know that people put things out on the sidewalk when they wanted other people to use them. His mom, for instance, put a bucket of lemons by the sidewalk when their lemon tree went nuts. She was glad when people took them.

Iggy took a closer look at the big pile of dirt. If he kind of scraped it together it would be about three feet high, and it would be a perfect ramp. He would bike down the sidewalk, up the ramp, and go flying through the air.

Cool!

Iggy scraped the dirt together so it was as tall as it could be—maybe even higher than three feet!—and then he got back on his bike and rode to the top of the block.

He knew that the faster he rode, the farther he would fly through the air. But of course, he didn’t want to fly too far because then he might fall off his bike. He decided on almost-but-not-quite top speed. Say, eight out of ten. Yeah, he thought, that would be good. Fast but not hyperdrive.

Okay.

He looked at the pile of dirt. He got on his bike. He started downhill.