Scumble (2 page)

Now I could see that Mom was beginning to understand—the longer I sat trapped in the van, the more danger there was of me turning it into a unicycle. Already I could feel the itch and buzz of my savvy zinging beneath my skin. Another incident like the one with the tire, and my parents might be forced to ship me to Antarctica, where only seals and penguins would come out to watch me run the local half marathon.

Knowing there were some normal human things my Mom wouldn't stop me from doing, I started downing Gatorade like Uncle Ferris preparing to create a winter storm. By the time I spied the sign for Sundance, Wyoming, the closest spot on the map to my uncle Autry's ranch, there were four empty bottles at my feet, and I had to water the cactuses in a serious way.

“We have to stop now!” I announced.

“Yeah, I'm
dying
here,” Fedora chimed in, straining against her seat belt. “My butt's going to fall off and I'm thirsty. Ledge drank everything we had.”

“Maybe a short pit stop, Tom?” Mom suggested on a sigh, casting a glance at the empty bottles. Dad nodded, his chin a lead weight. I sighed too, relieved my plan had worked. Already, the dome light above me was rattling in its fittings.

The town was as still and silent as if the ghost of the Wild West outlaw the Sundance Kid had come back to haunt the place. My imagination was full of childhood stories of stout-hearted sheriffs in clinking spurs and masked banditos robbing stagecoaches, but the streets were deserted. Not even a tumbleweed bumbled up the sidewalk.

Dad parked in front of a boarded-up T-shirt shop with a large red sign in its window. The sign read: FORECLOSURE. I knew what the word meant—the T-shirt shop was history. A spattering of similar red signs dotted front yards and buildings like a poison ivy rash. I'd seen notices just like them back in Indiana. The bank had put one up in Big Mouth Brody's front yard last year, threatening to take his home, and making my loud friend quieter than I'd ever known him.

“Make it quick, you two.” Mom's smile was all business as she gave Fedora a handful of change for a drink. Fe and I raced out of the car, making a beeline past the doomed T-shirt shop toward Willie's Five & Dime.

It felt good to be out of the van. Even better to stretch my legs.

If I hadn't already been worried about my savvy, and if nature hadn't been screaming my name through a bullhorn, I'd have stopped dead in my tracks in front of the five-and-dime. A fully restored thing-of-beauty motorcycle stood parked at an angle next to an empty Crook County sheriff's truck. The vintage Harley Knucklehead, powder-coated in gold paint, glinted in the sun like newly unburied treasure. Treasure I could turn pronto into trash if I wasn't careful. I was still looking over my shoulder at the bike as I rushed through the swinging door after my sister, ignoring the smell of hot dogs and convenience store nacho cheese goo.

“Ouch! Hey, watch it, Cowboy!”

A couple of white-blond braids, a flash of green eyes, and a sheaf of papers clutched tightly in a girl's hand were about all I saw before I bolted down an aisle stocked with souvenirs and polished rocks, metal shelves rattling in my wake. Even as I sped toward the back of the store, I realized the mistake I'd made in my scheming. I'd traded one potential disaster for another. If my savvy went berserk inside the five-and-dime, there'd be fallen shelves, busted roller grills, drink machine fountains . . . and witnesses.

By the time I hustled back out of the washroom, Fedora was busy sorting her change, fumbling to count out money for a bottle of orange juice and a bargain-bin magnet: a lacquered jackalope with two broken-off antlers, now just a rabbit with two bumps on its noggin.

Mom's puppet-master power still had us in its grip, though Fe, chattering away like a blue jay, was clearly struggling to resist. But the man behind the counter was barely listening to my sister. He watched the other girl inside the shop instead—the one whose foot I'd trampled. As I hurried toward the counter and saw the way the girl listened with open curiosity as Fedora babbled about fireworks and butterflies and our cousin's wedding that evening, I could feel my savvy getting itchier and twitchier. Fedora was getting ball-park close to breaking family rules herself.

“Stop yammering, Fe, and pay for your juice,” I muttered, shoving past my sister. “Or I'll beat you back to the van for sure.”

“Ledge, wait! No fair!” Fe hollered, dropping half her change onto the floor, her need for speed rekindled. I was already moving toward the exit, but the green-eyed girl blocked the door.

“Are you sure you don't want any of my papers this week, Willie?” the girl called out as I tried to do-si-do around her, my urgency and frustration increasing with every stonewalled step. “Mrs. Witzel was abducted by aliens after the church bake sale last Sunday and I've got the inside scoop!” The girl held her papers high, adding to my irritation as she accidentally smacked me with them.

Willie gave a negatory grunt. “You'd best be getting home, Sarah Jane,” he said. “Your daddy doesn't want you using my copy machine anymore, and I don't want any trouble.”

I reached the door just as Sarah Jane turned to leave. In seconds, my running shoes crossed laces with her green Converse low-tops, and our combined forward movement carried us outside in a Twister-game tangle of arms and legs, and a sudden frenzy of flying papers.

My bumbling stumble turned into a fast, hard fall, and I hit the sidewalk rolling—rolling like a boy-shaped bowling ball toward the motorcycle parked beside the sheriff's truck. My mouth filled with the taste of panic, sharp and metallic. I lurched to a stop, my right shoe missing the front spokes of the Knucklehead by a centimeter. I hadn't touched it, yet the machine began to teeter. To wobble. To vibrate and to shake.

As Fedora rushed out of the five-and-dime in a single-minded blur shouting, “Ha! Beat you to the car, Mister Clumsy Pants!” my pulse sounded in my ears . . . once . . . twice . . . three times. Then, watching Fe race ahead and barrel down the block, every bit of savvy energy I'd been holding in for hours and miles broke loose.

From front wheel to back, the Knucklehead exploded.

Parts and pieces slammed into the side of the sheriff's truck with heavy, thudding smacks and the clang and
skreel
of metal on metal. The bike's handlebars hit the truck, smashing the windshield with a crash before bouncing back in my direction like a boomerang. A second later, the door of the sheriff's truck fell off its hinges.

Mechanical rubble littered the pavement.

Fear thumped a hand-over-fist rhythm against my ribs.

I barely noticed as Fe reached the minivan, tossed in her helmet, then ran to join Mom and Dad in the coffee shop across the street, leaving the van's door wide open. That horrible zinging itch I'd had in the car was gone, but how was I going to hide
this
?

If the sheriff arrived now, he'd lock me up and throw away the key. If the owner of the Knucklehead found me first, I'd be ding-dong, doornail dead.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight, wishing that this whole savvy nightmare was nothing but a rotten dream. In the twenty seconds I spent down for the count, the girl named Sarah Jane gathered up her papers and took off. I knew I ought to do the same, because when I opened my eyes, my disaster was still real-life real.

Jamming down the block, I slipped in through the van's open door just as Mom and Dad exited the coffee shop—blind to everything but my sister's stupid magnet, admiring it like it wasn't even broken. Maybe they hadn't noticed that the thing was supposed to be a legendary creature, not just some bunny with a lumpy head. But as long as Mom and Dad's focus didn't turn toward the mess I'd left behind me, Fe was welcome to our parents' undivided attention.

Headed out of town, my stomach twisted into a dozen different kinds of knots. I wondered if Sarah Jane would report me to the Crook County sheriff, or tell Willie what I'd done. I pictured a red foreclosure sign stapled to my forehead; at the rate I was going,
I
would soon be history.

I
T WAS DAD WHO FIRST PLANTED the idea that my savvy might be gold-medal material, despite Mom's warnings that savvy talents are unpredictable. Dad had been building his hopes since we ran our first three-legged race; it hadn't mattered that I'd tripped us ten feet from the finish line. We had big dreams.

On the morning of my thirteenth birthday, I couldn't eat. My stomach threatened a sick, seesawing rebellion, and I didn't want to remember thirteen forever as the birthday I barfed up breakfast. My thoughts were a treadmill of hope and worry as I pictured the trophies I'd put side by side with Dad's if things turned out the way we planned.

Running, running, running
, I thought.
Let my savvy make me fast, fast, fast!

“Imagine it, Ledger,” Dad said, letting the corner of the sports section dip as he gave me an encouraging thumbs-up. “By the end of today you'll be able to run halfway across Indiana in the time it takes your pal Ryan to tie his shoelaces.” Ryan had beaten me easily in the eight-hundred-meter run at school. Dad had taken me out for pizza after, but I knew he wished I'd won.

“Tom . . .” Mom gave Dad a warning look.

I pushed my scrambled eggs into shapes with my fork—cars and lightning bolts and frowning faces—destroying them again as I did my best to echo Dad's enthusiasm.

“Yeah!” I said. “Tonight I'll run around the world at the speed of light and bring us back pizza from Italy.”

“Or wontons from Mr. Lee's Panda Palace!” said Fedora.

“Not from the Panda Palace, Fe.” I rolled my eyes.

“That's right, Fedora. Mr. Lee's is just a mile from here,” Dad explained. “We're thinking bigger than that. We're thinking
savvy
-big, like your mom and your cousins. By the end of your brother's birthday, he'll be able to get us wontons from the other side of the globe!” Dad winked at me, adding, “You can bring Ryan Manning back some salt-and-pepper squid as a consolation prize.”

“Ewww, squid.” Fedora made a face, then bounced in her chair, chanting: “Noodles! Noodles! Bring me noodles!”

“Do you hear that, Ledge? When you get to China, grab some noodles for your sister.” With a grin, Dad folded his paper, ignoring the way Mom shook her head in disapproval. I wasn't sure who was more excited about my potential new savvy: Dad or Fedora. In my gut, I knew it wasn't me.

Fedora and I both remembered when our cousin Samson Beaumont turned thirteen three years before. It was impossible to forget the birthday party where our quiet shadow of a cousin vanished while blowing out his candles. Now my sister watched me like I might sprout eyeballs from my elbows or evaporate if she looked away. And when Dad and I went outside to wait for my supersonic savvy to kick in, Fedora wouldn't stay behind.

“You look ridiculous,” I told my sister as she followed us out the door. Having heard plenty of savvy-birthday stories with endings more calamitous than Samson's vanishing act, Fe had dug Dad's old football helmet out of the basement.

“Better safe than sorry!” She raised her chin, rapping her knuckles against the plastic hiding her short brown hair—hair cut just as neat and trim as mine and Dad's. Just the way Mom liked.

Helmet or no helmet, there wasn't much anyone could do to prepare for a savvy birthday aside from taking basic precautions: No big parties, no friends, no sharp objects. I was surprised Mom had let me use a fork at breakfast. Allowing Josh or Ryan or Brody to come over had never been discussed.

I hated that my buddies wouldn't see me turn awesome; I would've liked to see their faces. Each of my friends had his own gig. Ryan was magic on the sports field—any sports field—and Josh was the ladies' man. Josh had even locked lips with Misty Archuleta during a field trip to the planetarium once, after giving her a necklace with a big silver
M
on it. Everyone had known about the kiss before the bus got back to school because Big Mouth Brody spilled the beans like an All-State bean-spiller.

When we were rug rats like Fedora, I'd been best at LEGOs and Erector Sets; I'd even constructed a model of the Eiffel Tower out of toilet paper tubes that my third-grade art teacher thought was artistic genius.

“The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Ledger!” she'd said. “How beautiful!”

So much for genius.

It didn't matter: By the time my first pair of running shoes were broken in, my LEGO pieces were gathering dust and I was sitting in the back of the art room, keeping my creations to myself. I stopped daydreaming about building things and started focusing on the pavement.

Five years and six shoes sizes later, I ran around the block under the midday sun, chasing my thirteenth birthday savvy speed. Dad had made Fe Official Timekeeper, giving her a mechanical stopwatch and a whistle.