Zip (3 page)

“I’ll get my scooter,” Lyssa said to Michael. They went for a ride every day in the early evening. Michael said it was their “family time.”

“Hey, you know what? Maybe you should write about the ride in your journal for school,” Michael said.

“Um, yeah. Definitely.” Lyssa avoided looking at him as she shoved her feet into the pink sneakers. That was another big change. In two weeks, she was starting sixth grade at Kirkland School of the Arts. Back in Texas, Lyssa
had been homeschooled by her mom. This would be her first year at a
real
school with kids her own age.

For the longest time, Penn had been the only person Lyssa knew who was her exact same age—all her other friends were performers and animals in the Texas Talent Show. Penn went to school back in Austin and always had funny stories about what happened in the cafeteria and updates about what music everyone in jazz band was listening to (although
Lyssa
had been the one who first introduced Athena to Penn—not that it mattered since Athena was still missing). She’d been excited when Michael first told her she’d be heading to school at the end of August. For a week straight, Lyssa video chatted with Penn every night so she’d know exactly what to expect at school.

But then, two days ago, Lyssa got a package in the mail. Inside she found a journal and an assignment for the first day of school:
Write about your summer vacation
.

There were so many things she wanted to write about: exploring hidden caverns in the woods, spending a night at the zoo, looking for ghosts in creepy old houses. The only problem was that none those things had actually,
technically
happened to her this summer. Those were the kind of things she’d done with her mom, when a normal Tuesday night could turn into anything, from a cross-city footrace to a hunt for buried treasure. But this summer, all she’d
done was ride around the neighborhood with Michael. That could be fun, sure. But it wasn’t adventurous, the way even ordinary things became around Ana Lee.

So as the first day of school got closer, Lyssa got more and more nervous about what she’d write. Her journal sat upstairs in her room…and every single page was blank.

“Ready?” Michael adjusted his helmet and smiled at her from the sidewalk. Lyssa nodded. Zip was leaning against the side of the garage, its yellow paint gleaming in the shadows. Originally, her scooter had been painted sky blue, but when Lyssa had decided that yellow was her favorite color, she and her mom repainted it together. There were still some places where the paint had chipped and you could see the blue beneath, but Lyssa thought that was okay. It was like Zip was a very colorful Dalmatian scooter.

They rode down the same path they always took: through the neighborhood, past the park, and down the road next to Lake Washington. Even though the day was sunny and bright, it still had a damp, cold edge to it, like all the days in Kirkland, Washington. Today the waves in the lake were steel gray and still beneath the clear blue sky. Lyssa pulled to the side of the bridge and stared out over the water as she rolled. Lake Washington probably didn’t want to be in Kirkland any more than she did.

A seagull dove into the gray water, resurfacing a few feet away, and she slowed her scooter as she watched it shake the water from its wings.

Maybe, Lyssa thought, her mom was a bird now. Before…before the hospital, when Lyssa and Ana used to roller skate around the fairgrounds, she’d watched her mom spin and twist around on her skates, and a few times she swore her mom actually hovered above the ground, as though she was ready to fly off into the sky. Lyssa didn’t know anyone else who could make their body move like that. She had always been clumsy, herself. Except on Zip. On Zip, Lyssa could do anything.

She slowed to a stop and pulled the last half of one of her homemade granola bars out of the pocket of her jean shorts. As Michael rode ahead, she tossed some of the granola bar into the water for the bird. Even if Lyssa’s mom was a bird now, she wouldn’t be able to pass up homemade granola—it was her favorite.

But the seagull squawked at Lyssa, ignoring her granola crumbs and diving back under the waves again.

“Is there a problem with your scooter?” Michael asked. Lyssa looked up, startled. She hadn’t realized he’d looped behind her.

“No. I was just distracted by the bird.” She felt silly. Of course Ana wasn’t a bird. But Lyssa couldn’t help feeling
that her mom was still out there, circling closer. Sometimes, she even thought she caught glimpses of her.

The same thing happened with Athena, actually. Ever since her favorite singer disappeared, Lyssa kept thinking she saw her. Once, she had followed a woman around the mall for over an hour because she thought she’d recognized Athena’s signature cowboy boots. But when Lyssa finally caught up to her, it turned out to be just a really tall man with a ponytail. Athena was still missing, months after the concert that had been her last public appearance. There were lots of rumors about what had happened to her; one of the more popular ones was that someone close to her had died, and that was the reason she’d disappeared from the spotlight so suddenly. Lyssa didn’t know if that was true, but it did make her feel even closer to Athena.

“Your scooter’s seen some better times,” Michael said, jiggling the loose handlebar. “Maybe we should think about getting you a bike.”

Lyssa bit down on her lower lip. Her real dad, Lenny, had made this scooter for her. Lyssa had never met her dad—her mom always told her it was because he was a famous musician in Austin and was much too creative to be tied to just one place. Her mom even had a scrapbook filled with all of his old concert posters. Ana had tried to throw it out after she and Michael started dating, but Lyssa
rescued it from the trash and stowed it in her sock drawer, where she knew no one would ever look for it. Lyssa thought it was cool that her dad built her a scooter before leaving on his travels. It was like he knew Lyssa would also grow up too creative to be tied to one place. She’d been riding the scooter since she was five, and her mom used to joke that the ridges on the handlebars must be permanently etched into her skin.

“I like my scooter,” Lyssa said, pushing off with her back leg. Melodius had always called her scooter
Zip
. He said he knew she was coming when he heard the zipping of those wheels. Lyssa kicked off and soared ahead of Michael on the path, her braids streaming out behind her. She hummed “Scooting Star” under her breath.

The path curved away from the water, heading into a wooded area filled with trees and bushes. Just when Lyssa thought she’d left him behind, Michael panted up next to her, his bike pedals squeaking as he raced to keep up.

“I know you like your scooter,” he said between breaths. “But it’s getting old. See how the paint is fading? And the back wheel’s all wobbly. I have an idea—what if we got you a bike as a birthday present? Your birthday’s coming up next month. Didn’t you and your mom always do something special to celebrate your birthdays?”

Lyssa’s throat seemed suddenly to shrink down to a third of its size, so she could only nod. Ana had done
something special for every single one of Lyssa’s birthdays. On her very first birthday, during a cross-country drive, they’d wound up in Utah, and Ana had brought her down to the Dead Lake to see the Spiral Jetty, a sculpture that looked like a huge snake twisting out into the middle of the water. Lyssa had heard that story so many times, seen so many pictures of red sand and sparkling rocks, that she almost remembered sitting on the jetty with her mom.

When she was five, she and her mom took an origami class and learned to make paper airplanes and swans. When she was nine, they went to visit real-life cowgirls on a ranch. Lyssa had loved it—loved the hats and the lassos, and the horses, of course. Plus, with their heeled cowboy boots, the cowgirls reminded her a little of Athena.

But Lyssa’s last birthday had been the best. That was when she and Ana had gone to see what turned out to be Athena’s last concert. Lyssa didn’t like the idea that she had to keep having birthdays. Without her mom, without Athena. She’d rather never have another birthday again just so that she could keep that one, perfect memory in her head forever.

“Well? What do you think?” Michael’s voice cut through her daydreams. Lyssa blinked, refocusing on his face. She hadn’t realized he was still talking.

“What do I think about what?” she asked.

“The bike. We could build it together.”

“Oh.” Lyssa frowned and pushed farther ahead on her scooter. This time, Michael didn’t race to keep up with her. She put her foot down, stopping the scooter to be polite.

“I know it won’t be like…like when your mom did your birthdays,” he said. “But she was special—your mom. She had this way about her. It was like she was—”

“Magic?” Lyssa cut in. Michael beamed.

“Exactly. Did I ever tell you about our first date? She showed up outside my apartment with a couch in the back of that Talent Show van she used to drive and a bag full of the best vegan tacos I’d ever eaten. We drove around for hours, talking and eating, and when we finally ran out of things to say she pulled over and we unloaded that couch. As soon as we set it on the ground and sat down, the sun started to rise.”

Michael stopped talking and stared off into the distance. “You know, it was strange. I actually thought she made the sun rise all on her own. That’s what it felt like.”

Lyssa stared down at Zip’s handlebars, not wanting to meet Michael’s eyes.

“I don’t think I want a birthday present this year,” she said.

“Come on. Don’t you think it’s time for a change? It’ll be fun—I used to build bikes with my dad all the—”

“My dad already built me a
scooter
.” Lyssa’s voice sounded high and squeaky—kinda like the way Zip sounded when she pushed the wheels too hard or took a sharp corner. Maybe her scooter seemed like a piece of junk with faded paint to Michael, but that’s because he only liked things with wires and computer screens.

Michael cleared his throat. “Well, we could always do something else for your birthday. We could go out to a really nice dinner!”

Lyssa tightened her fingers around Zip’s handlebars and pushed off hard, wishing she could feel the rocky sidewalk through the thick soles of her new shoes. A dinner? She thought about what her mom had always said to her.
You’re going to have so many adventures in your life…
She wanted to believe that, but it seemed like all of her adventures had ended six months ago.

“I’ll think about it,” she said when Michael pedaled up next to her. For a second he looked like he might try to argue, so Lyssa kicked off again, rolling faster and faster down the path. She couldn’t think about her birthday. The idea that her mom wouldn’t be there made her head hurt and her chest ache.

Her mom wouldn’t be at any of her birthdays ever again.

Lyssa heard Michael calling to her, but she didn’t stop.
She saw a narrow dirt trail beaten into the woods next to her and on a whim, she veered onto it. The smell of evergreens rushed thickly past her as she bumped through the forest, tearing down the hills. She felt a rush of joy.
This
was an adventure. Maybe it wasn’t magical and fantastic, like the ones her mom could make happen. But it was fun.

The bushes and trees seemed to jump aside for her, creating a path that was all her own. Her heart was slamming in her chest. The ground beneath Lyssa grew steeper and she started to pick up speed. She didn’t even need to kick off anymore—Zip and gravity were doing all the work for her. Far in the distance she could hear Michael yelling after her, but the wind was blowing hard in her ears and she didn’t know what he was saying.

Then she saw it.

A few yards ahead of her the ground disappeared, ending in a jagged, rocky line: the edge of a cliff. Far beyond it, a great body of water twinkled, icy gray beneath the wispy cloud sky. Lyssa tightened her grip on her handlebars. Wind stung her cheeks and eyes. She was going too fast. There was no way to slow down. She was going to fall.

Zip bumped over twigs and dirt and pebbles and, when it reached the edge of the cliff, a rock caught its front wheel, causing the scooter to arch upward in midair. Lyssa
clung to the handlebars and screamed. A flock of birds in a nearby tree took to the sky, echoing her cry.

Below her was a playground. A few children looked up, mouths gaping open. As Lyssa soared through the air, a tiny blue paper airplane fluttered in front of her—it looked just like the airplanes she and her mom had made in origami class. Lyssa squinted against the sun. For a second, everything seemed to slow down. Lyssa felt like she was floating.

There were words on the airplane’s wing, written in curly, slanted handwriting.

There’s no place like home,
the writing said.

In the next second, the floating feeling vanished.

She was falling—
fast
.

L
yssa tore her eyes away from the little paper airplane. She didn’t have time to worry about what the message meant. As the playground rushed at her, she concentrated on steering her scooter toward the sandbox with every muscle in her body, every thought and wish.

But no matter how she twisted and turned in the air, she wasn’t headed for the sandbox—she was going straight for the twisty tornado slide. Her scooter’s front wheel clipped the top of the slide and she barreled down, riding the smooth metal as easily as a surfer rode a wave. A little girl on the slide let out a squeak and threw herself over its side as Lyssa came speeding toward her.

“Sorry,” Lyssa called over her shoulder. She shot out of the bottom of the slide and suddenly she was airborne again. She flew across the park, over the sandbox, and toward the sidewalk beyond it. Wind cut into her cheeks. She clenched her eyes shut, certain she was going to crash into the concrete—possibly face-first.

Lyssa grunted; the force of the impact shook her entire body. Zip’s front wheel squeaked as they both skidded to a stop. It sounded, for a moment, like the scooter was screaming. Lyssa automatically put one foot down to stop herself from going any farther and a sharp pain shot through her heel and up her leg.