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That’s what I needed now, because I felt nervous and tense all over. I tucked Thrash under my arm and went downstairs to the kitchen, where I grabbed some cleaning products from under the sink, a roll of paper towels from the counter, and then stepped outside to the back porch. I’d been on the Cruiser in the rain twice within the past couple of days without wiping it down, and I knew for a fact that someone else’s grubby hands had been all over it, and the thought of that made me sick. I probably could’ve waited until later to clean it, because more rain was coming, but working on the Cruiser had a way of relaxing me, and since it was mine, I enjoyed taking care of it.

I plopped Thrash down on the lawn chair next to the beer cooler, drenched a paper towel with window cleaner, and set to work on the front wheel. I did the wheels first, because cleaning along and between every individual spoke was the kind of drag that I usually wanted to get out of the way as fast as I could, and once I’d finished them I’d do the rims, the rest of the chrome, and then the frame. That’s how mom’s new boyfriend, Craig, had taught me to clean it, and he was a mechanic, so he knew about those things. He’d also given me some pointers and an old manual on bicycle repair he’d had
lying around his shop while I’d been building the Cruiser in the spring, but I’d collected all the parts from the junkyard and put them together myself.

I couldn’t really
describe how it felt—having built my own bike from nothing, making a masterpiece out of other people’s garbage—but it didn’t take long for me to figure out what it meant. I’d actualized like a madman for a month and a half; I wasn’t tied to the same four or five crummy blocks between the trailer park and the strip mall anymore; I could wake up in the morning and get to and from school without having to worry about what kind of bullshit was waiting for me at the bus stop twice a day; I could go further from home than I’d ever been before; and no matter where I went, I kept my chin up a little, because I was traveling in style. To anybody else the Cruiser probably just looked like a totally sweet ride (which it was, easily one of the sweetest rides in town), but to me it was more than that. To me the Cruiser was like a new way of life.

It didn’t change much with the kids at school; they just gave me all these confused and jealous looks, as if seeing a kid like me on a ride like that was some kind of riddle or paradox. But I’d expected as much from them. It was different at the beach this summer, though. There the Cruiser was a conversation starter; kids would come up and ask me about it, where I got it, how much it cost, if they could try it out, and I’d tell them about how I built it myself and lie about how easy it’d been, although I restrained myself so I didn’t brag too much. When I broke it to them that nobody was allowed to ride the Cruiser except me, they usually took it pretty well and didn’t pester me too badly, and they asked me to play Frisbee or Nerf football anyway, so I generally wound up hanging out and goofing off with other kids for most of the day, which was something I never did around here.

I’d been thinking about that a lot more lately—how far out of my way I had to go to feel like a normal kid. Most of the kids I met at
the beach were tourists or day-trippers from the city, so they didn’t know anything about me or what people said I was supposed to be like, and since the beach was in a different town from the one I lived in, there was no way for them to find out. They didn’t know I had emotional problems, a past, and a bad reputation, so they didn’t treat me like I did, and they didn’t have any reason to stare or back away like I was a total nutjob either, because Thrash wasn’t there to clue them in. No, I didn’t take Thrash to the beach, but it wasn’t like I’d planned to leave him behind or anything, because I hadn’t. There just wasn’t enough room in my backpack for a big beach towel, sunscreen, a packed lunch, and him, so when I went to the beach, I went alone.

Maybe I’d gotten lucky. Maybe I’d needed a break from Thrash, too, without knowing it, just like having the Cruiser and going down the Shore had given me a break from everything else. I didn’t know and really couldn’t say. All I knew was that everything seemed different, felt different, when I was down the Shore on my own, like some weight had been lifted from my shoulders and everything kind of rolled off. In fact, I hadn’t been in an argument or a fight all summer long. Go figure.

But I wasn’t dense enough to think that it had changed me in some way, or that all of a sudden everything else would be chill and easy like that, or that it would last, because I knew it wasn’t real. Well, the Cruiser was real, but everything else wasn’t. It was only vacation, just a few hours amongst strangers where I felt like someone else, and at the end of each day, I had to come back home.

THIRTEEN

It was still hotter than a cookout in hell, but the
Cruiser was all spruced up and I figured I’d give it a quick lube while I was at it. I wheeled it around to the side of the house, under the kitchen-sink window, next to the big metal cube of the heating and cooling unit. I had to lube the Cruiser over there because WD-40 stained concrete when it dripped, and mom didn’t want the back porch to get all ruined. She said it was murder on weeds, too, and since we had a few at the base of the house on that side, she told me to do it there, kill two birds with one stone, and keep everybody happy. Yeah, sometimes it seemed that mom was too on top of things just to wait tables or tend bar and that she could do something else, but those were the cards she’d been dealt and she was only playing them. It couldn’t have been the easiest hand in the world, or the most fun, but that’s probably what made her so good at stacking the deck against me.

That got me wondering. What if mom had let me take the Cruiser down the Shore on my own this summer not as a reward for straight A’s and good behavior like she’d said, but to get me out of the
house long enough and often enough for Neecey or her to snoop around in my journal? What if they’d been doing it for months without me catching on? What if mom knew
everything
I’d written in it, too? Everything I had to say about teachers, classmates, counselors, what Thrash and I shared between ourselves, the way I’d started looking at girls in the past year, tailing Stacy down the road to full-on ass-obsession, or me hunched over myself in a closet giving the Lookout one hell of an Indian burn while I watched my sister’s best friend getting undressed through the slats like a sex offender? Jesus, that was just too goddamn humiliating to contemplate. I’d never be able to look mom in the eye again. Worse still, how would I ever be able to trust her?

Screw that shit, I couldn’t think about it, I already had enough on my mind. I set Thrash on the heating unit, leaned the Cruiser against the wall, squatted down, and sprayed the chain in short, quick bursts. I did the handbrakes after the chain, put the cap on the WD-40, and sat on my butt under the kitchen window with my back against the wall.

Just as I started to get comfortable and clear my head, I heard the front door open and close. Fucking Neecey. I could hear her inside, going up and down the stairs, opening doors, moving through the house, and I knew what she was doing—she was making sure I wasn’t home.

Sure, we used to have good times together, look out for each other, stay up past curfew together when mom was at work, build pillow forts and tell ghost stories with flashlights under our chins or make Jiffy Pop and watch
Saturday Night Live
, drink too much soda and rock out with the stereo cranked up, or just screw around and laugh our asses off at nothing, and I’d thought we were close. Shit, I even used to look up to her, because she was pretty and popular and had so many friends and was good at school and always busy with this, that, or the other thing, but still found time for me, and made all of it look so goddamn easy. But she’d changed, and I barely knew her anymore.
She was turning into this phony, two-faced, social-climbing snitch who knew she was hot and flaunted it everywhere, even in front of her own brother. She put on airs and was hardly ever around and didn’t know what the hell was going on in my life because she never bothered to ask anymore and told on me to mom and hung out with the cool rich crowd and was too good for us now and didn’t give a rat’s shaved nut about me.

I suddenly had a feeling for Neecey that I’d never had before, one far more disturbing than anger, and if I saw her, I knew I’d do something I’d never come anywhere near doing in my life, and that was punch her dead in the face. Yeah, I was as close to the bottom as I’d ever been, but I got the feeling I could still sink a little lower. So I stayed right where I was, the way I was, trying not to move or think, only breathe, with my head down and my wrists tucked under my armpits, so she wouldn’t see me. I stayed that way even when I heard her come downstairs, into the kitchen, open the back door, step out onto the back porch, and then go back in and close the door.

The sky above was gray like a stone, and that’s exactly what I was, a cold, mute stone leaning against the side of the house, with no sense, no emotion, easy to overlook, and that’s the way I wanted it. I heard her puttering around inside, opening the refrigerator, pouring something in a glass, and then closing the door. Just knowing she was in the vicinity was making me boil over. But all I had to do was keep myself balled up tight, stay quiet, remember to breathe, and wait it out, either for Neecey to leave or go upstairs, and then I could make a break for it on the Cruiser.

If I’d had a long stick, a bandanna to tie my stuff in, and my ten-dollar bill, I could’ve hit the road right now and never looked back, “Born to Run” style, just like the Boss, or the old man. I’d ride the Cruiser as far away from here as I could, maybe go to the city and run out of money in four seconds and have to pawn my ride and fall in with junkies and dirtbags and then wind up in a gutter somewhere, with my teeth all broken and brown, half my head caved in, and a
hypodermic needle hanging out of my arm, or I’d get taken in by some pimp with rings on all his fingers, who’d dress me up in mesh T-shirts and spandex shorts and slap me around and rent me out to wealthy middle-aged degenerates, male and female alike, who’d give anything for a few minutes alone with a ripe young boy, because those were things that happened to runaways and everybody knew it because crap like that was always on TV. No, it wasn’t as appealing as Tom Sawyer laying low in a cave with that Becky chick, or moving to a cabin by a pond far off in the woods, but it’d almost be worth going through all of it to see mom and Neecey freaking out when they’d realized I was gone: worrying, crying, pulling their hair out, calling the cops, putting my picture on milk cartons, losing sleep, fearing the worst, blaming themselves for all they’d done wrong, and wishing for one last chance to apologize and make it up to me and have me come home again—which was the one thing I’d make sure they never got.

But my ten-spot was upstairs and Neecey was inside, so I couldn’t get to it, and there was no way in hell I was gonna run away from home with a stuffed frog and no backpack and empty pockets on top of it all, because that was just suicide. Besides, that money had come from my client, and I hadn’t finished the job she’d paid me to do, so if I just took off without finishing it, that’d be like stealing, which I guess I wouldn’t have minded so much if my client wasn’t also my grandma, because you’d have to be a hot runny piece of shit to steal from your own grandmother, and that’s all there was to it. But I’d never steal from her, and I’d never run out on her either, because she didn’t run out on us. No fucking way. She’d jumped right into the breach when the old man split, picked up all the slack, practically moved in, so there were still four people in the house pretty much all the time instead of just mom, Neecey, and me sitting around, scratching our heads, trying to figure out what the hell was missing from the picture.

When the old man up and split, Grandma was already retired and lived in this small apartment about half an hour away on her Social
Security checks and the pension she got from working in that factory all those years, and she was supposed to be kicking back, taking it easy, learning to knit or whatever, and enjoying her golden years. But she tossed all that aside, stayed over three or four nights in a row, and looked after us when mom was at work, because mom had to quit her night classes and take a second job tending bar to pay the bills. So grandma took care of the house and cooked and cleaned and stayed up late to talk to mom when she was down and hugged all of us a lot. She was small and stern and shrewd and full of energy and more fun than having one of those inflatable bouncy chambers in your very own bedroom. She let us stay up to watch
Fantasy Island
and always had candy in her pockets (good candy, not that poison she tried to feed us now) and made pudding or baked cookies or cupcakes from scratch and tickled us and taught us how to dance like they did in the old days before good music was invented and showed us how to cheat at cards and told us secrets and read us fairy tales or
Where the Wild Things Are
, which was my favorite then, because Max was a bad little fucker and I always respected that.