Secondhand Summer. Dan L. Walker

      Chapter 5

      Mom always made us get up before she went to work, so I had time to write a letter before I went to the bluff to meet my new friends. I lay on the bed with the remains of my Big Chief writing tablet and wrote “Dear Becky.”

      “I’m fine,” I wrote. “Hope you are too.” I chewed on my pencil. Then I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of milk. This was my first letter to a girl, and I was at a loss for words. What could I say that really mattered? I didn’t want to say too much and be mushy, or not say anything and have her stop being my girlfriend.

      I was losing my mental picture of Becky, and I wondered what it was that I liked about her. In my top drawer was the scented, flowered note card with Becky’s address. I dug it out and laid it on the bed to let the fading perfume work on me.

      I took a half hour to say that we had moved into an apartment and that summer was boring here just like at home. I couldn’t tell her the secrets, the mysteries that abounded in this foreign place. I was too proud to say much about how I missed climbing the alders on the bluff and building forts with my friends back home. Instead I told her to write and say hi to people and gave up. The letter went in an envelope and into the drawer with Dad’s cribbage board. Maybe I could mail it in a few days. But suddenly I didn’t want to.

      Becky and Harry Munson, all the kids that had been a part of me, were receding on the tide of my life, and I feared that soon they would be too far away to reach.

      I ran all the way to the bluff. There were birds out, and I spooked a squirrel that chattered and screamed against my right to be there. Below me at the base of the steep hill train cars moved back and forth, squealing their brakes and clanging as they met. I could just see pieces and colors through the branches and leaves, but the scene seemed dirtier and more confusing than the train sets I’d seen in people’s basements or in Western movies.

      I wandered along the bicycle trail with its humps and rolls and wished I had a bike, one with a banana seat and high handlebars.

      I heard a clatter and turned to watch a bike approaching. It was a bike like I had just been thinking about, and I knew by the sound that the owner had clipped a playing card to the frame so that it hit the spokes, imitating an engine, a dream of power. The rider was slim and dark haired. He was sleek like the bike and they moved together, lightly touching the tops of the bumps and swerving around rocks and bushes. Twice the bike left the ground but the kid turned it and landed square on the trail. He stopped. Maybe because I was in the trail, but he stopped and smiled.

      “How ya doin’?” I said in my boldest fashion.

      “Hi.”

      “Nice bike.”

      “Thanks, I just got it. You got one?” His question, I realized in a moment of wondrous clarity, was an attempt at friendship, a probing for familiarity.

      “No.”

      “I wanted a skateboard,” he said, leaning on the handlebars, “but Gram said they’re too dangerous. Sheesh!”

      “My mom said the same thing,” I lied. “Most fun things are that way.”

      “You want to try it?” He pushed the bike to me, and I saw his hands and arms were slim and delicate like a girl’s. I nearly threw him off the bike and yanked it from him. Did I want to try it? Yes, yes, yes, yes!

      “Sure,” I said. “Oh yeah, my name’s Hum—I mean Sam.” I didn’t want to chance another embarrassment about my nickname.

      “Billy.”