When the little girl screamed, Mrs. Larios got up, saw where her daughter was pointing, and shrieked at Lyle. He rushed off the slippery deck, nearly falling twice, and ran to the road. A little girl’s bike with training wheels lay on the sidewalk. He swung himself onto the pink seat and pushed forward. When the woman burst out of her front door shouting, “Go look in your own weendow!” he peddled faster, his knees jerking awkwardly. He glided onto the steep main road and raced down the hill. The city lights through the trees shook with his kicking heart.
By the time the ground flattened, his head was ringing numb with cold, his inner ears aching. He was worried they might have called the police, and stopped a half block before the boulevard, where a chain-link fence looked over the slough by his apartment building. He heaved the bike into the air and it crashed into the water. He touched the railing. A handlebar and its sparkling red tassel reached above the surface. He giggled. The mood was starting in him. He had been spitting out the lithium for days. The deadening stuff was leaking out of him. Anytime that he or his sister got keyed up or excited about anything, his mom and brother called it a mental “event.” But he would let it happen this time. Anyway, he could handle it. The mood came and went throughout the day. All that most people noticed was that he was in a sharp, giddy state.
He jogged to the apartment and went in. It was chilly. It always smelled vaguely of beets and carrots, especially now with the dinner smells settled. His brother’s rubber boots stood at one end of the couch. Lyle placed them on the deck. Facing the slough below, the boots seemed to belong to some invisible man, standing there musing.
In his bedroom he removed three of his sister’s pipe bombs from under his mattress, and the thin roll of duct tape she used. He placed the pipes in the inside pocket of his jacket, where they fit snugly—the three of them somehow humorous, like joke cigars—the duct tape going into one of the jacket’s large waist pockets.
His mom yelled from her bedroom across the hall, and he walked over to check on her. She lay on her side, with her head bent toward her raised knees, mumbling. “Mom, are you asleep?” he whispered. “Mom.” Two night-lights burned. On the bedside table, the windowsill, and the small bookcase, glass angels were arranged in vigilant flocks. They flickered in the blue light, seeming to stir, as if alerted to his presence.
He went back to his room and hung his jacket in the closet, then waited unsleeping through the hours. As the wild mood rose in him, the need for rest would lessen even more in the coming days. All he wanted was to get through the school day and find his way back to the night.
The next afternoon he hurried home along the boulevard, weaving through traffic in the rain a couple of times, tracking cars over his shoulder, veering one way and the other, forcing them to brake and observe him. He skipped to the sidewalk and slowed to a walk in front of the new brick library. An enormous window gleamed back winter trees, a dark sky, and kids who stood in circles, many of them yelling, screaming, laughing. They were a few years younger than he was. He passed between them and stood on the corner watching, to see what they were about.
Some of them had seen him running in the street, holding up traffic. A green-haired boy, smaller than the rest, dashed into the road. The kid screamed at passing cars. When a car stopped, he paced in front of the bumper, gripping his head, hoarsening his voice. Then a girl with piercings in her face shot into the street and strained her voice to its limit. Soon all of the kids swarmed into traffic, bellowing at the dim, melting figures behind the rain-slashed car windows. Cars were backing up to the previous block.
As spinning lights flashed on the wet road—a police car had nosed into traffic—the kids fled on foot, skateboards, and bikes, and traffic continued. The cop drove away, pursuing none of them, as if used to the mayhem of children.
Lyle crossed to the next block, where a scooter slowed beside him. It was Martin. “Let’s go over there where it’s dry.” He pointed to the stucco building across the street, and they crossed and went under the carport shelter where Martin sat on his idling scooter, the motor hacking, exhaust gassing the air around him. The sign in the window of the building advertised a book and game store. Martin shook the rain off his baseball cap. Although Lyle was soaked through, he felt warm after running. He was glad he’d left the apartment in just a T-shirt that morning because he’d forgotten his umbrella too, and his army jacket would have gotten wet.
“Those kids are nuts,” Lyle said.
“They’re a sad bunch. Some of them are meth freaks.”
“That cop didn’t even do anything.”
“Sometimes they bust them, but mostly they just scatter them. Any single one of them could die, right now, and nobody would care. Some of those girls are barely out of seventh grade and already they’ve had fifteen guys or more. No kidding. Their mothers should be in jail. Permissive hippy women are the top killers of the Northwest. Forget serial killers.”
A shiver took Martin and his elbow jerked. He examined his arms as though waiting to see his body’s next involuntary movement. Although he was tense with something, he looked pleased, awake. Some of the roughness of the previous day had gone out of him.
“Do you have any interest in getting terribly hazy and gone?” Martin said.
Lyle was unsure what the question was.
“Tonight,” said Martin.
It was Friday. “Sure.”
“I just stole a bottle of Schnapps.” He brought out a Hostess cherry pie. “You can have some if you come out later.”
“You steal booze? Ever been caught?”
“No. But Devon has, on his first try. A few of us steal booze from the Sleeping Man—he runs the Superette, by Levi’s. An old lady saw him take it. She followed him to the café and told his dad.” He snatched a bite and chewed. “Devon’s changing his name to Devonian. Did you hear about that? Idiot.”
Lyle had mulled over Devon’s rudeness at Levi’s—after he’d apologized for laughing at his sister, after he tried to make friends. It surprised him that Martin turned out to be the friendly one.
Martin examined the teeth marks on his pie. “Devon’s birthday is next week. When I was upset last night, I was planning a little party for him and his dad. A surprise party. You know, like, how about I ruin your life? How about I twist your cerebral cortex a hundred and eighty degrees? But I see it differently now. All I want to do is right a wrong.”
“What are you planning?”
“Something entirely moral. Unlike Levi, I actually care about real morals, not about following rules. But I’m not going to talk about it till it’s dead, or threaten to do it. This time I’m going to do it, very calm, very cool. Ever been to the graveyard past the university, up on that hill? There’s a big problem up there right now.” He bowed his head. “I’m not talking about it—I forgot.”
Lyle was chilly. He needed to get running again. “I’d like to hear about it later.”
Martin threw the half-eaten pie skittering in its package across the road. His scooter was dying, and he revved it. “Ever feel like going just all-out wild?”
Lyle grinned.
“I’m not kidding, I mean full force Napoleonic,” Martin said. “Just for the hell of it. Let’s meet at the square with all the statues, at seven thirty. Two blocks down from here.”
A
