Good Luck, Fatty?!

by Maggie Bloom

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Tom on his BMX, jumping the curb into the church parking lot, where Lex Arlington’s tiger-mobile has drawn a horde of curious onlookers. The opposite side of the lot boasts a raised platform (it’s really too insubstantial to be called a stage) that’s festooned with three-hundred rainbow-colored latex balloons (eighty of which were inflated last night with sheer lung power by yours truly). This is where Harvey and Lex will kick off the Yo-Yo.

  And here they come now. “Hello, everyone,” Harvey’s normally soft voice booms through the crackly-sounding speakers. “Good morning and welcome to the first-ever Yo-Yo race, to benefit the American Lung Association.”

  The crowd around me congeals into a semi-solid mass and oozes toward the platform.

  Harvey shuffles some papers in his hands, throws Lex (who’s taken an impatient, hands-on-his-hips stance) a sideways glance and then continues, “As you can see, we’ve got a beautiful day here.” He flails an arm through the air, bashing it into the microphone and causing a screeching echo of feedback.

  Lex just grins smugly.

  In the next few moments, I lose track of Harvey’s speech (and eventually Lex’s too), because, out of nowhere, there’s a familiar (and welcome) hand clutching at mine. “Tom?” I murmur, certain it’s him before I whirl around.

  “Hi,” he says, moving his hand to my shoulder, as if he’s offering me a congratulatory pat on the back. “How’s it goin’?”

  I want to spill my guts, beg him with my heart and soul to extend our friendship, our relationship…and maybe more. But considering all he’s already done for me, that doesn’t seem fair. “Good,” I reply with a nervous smile. “You?”

  We’re both on our bikes, sort of wedged together at a forty-five degree angle (or so I’m guessing), so he couldn’t hug me if he wanted to. (But I think he wants to!) “Eh,” he says with a shrug, “it’s been kind of a…a boring week.”

  He missed me! He can’t live without me! I knew it! “Really?” I say coolly. “That stinks. Harvey’s been on my case since Wednesday about…well, this,” I say, gesturing at the craziness that has become the Yo-Yo.

  Tom rolls his eyes. “I figured.”

  In my peripheral vision, I notice Harvey and Lex hoisting one of those comical cardboard checks onto a giant easel as an official-looking dude in a business suit (the representative of the American Lung Association?) looks on with a smile.

  “You’re racing, right?” I ask, stuck for small talk, even though I know his name’s on the list (I put it there!) and he’s got a race card safety-pinned to his shirt: number forty-two.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says, cracking a grin. “And I’m gonna win.”

  Even though I know he’s joking, I can’t resist saying, “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “Well, you don’t.”

  I torture my face into a mock pout and drop my shoulders. “We’ll just see about that, won’t we?”

  Tom chuckles a little to himself, then goes quiet for a while. Finally he asks, “Are we…okay?”

  My heart swells. “Definitely,” I rush to say, not wanting him to doubt my loyalty.

  There is a big ol’ cowbell on the platform, and Lex has just begun clattering it exuberantly. As the crowd goes wild, Tom takes my hand and squeezes.

  And then we’re off.

  chapter 18

  WHEN HARVEY organized the Yo-Yo, he contemplated racing each age division separately, to simplify the compilation of race statistics (a task generously being managed by Brian Watson, CPA, an auditor for the accounting firm of Knight, Phillips and Bertrand) but instead settled on racing them simultaneously, in what are (theoretically) distinct “lanes,” like the ones used for swimming laps in a pool.

  I’m in the second lane over, with the fifteen- through twenty-year-olds, including Tom, Justin, Malcolm, Brent Flynn and his prissy girlfriend, Melissa, (plus her she-man pal, Dana), my janitor's closet fling, Noah Rice, and even Sydney Vale, the only boy in the immediate vicinity (except for Tom) who hasn’t screwed me.

  “This should be fun,” I say to Tom, trying to take the sarcastic edge off my voice as the words flow from my brain to my lips.

  He cuts his gaze left and right, surveying the sea of bicycles and riders that envelops us. “For sure.”

  I sneak a peek at the digital sports watch Orv and Denise picked up for me (without my permission, I might add) at the flea market. It reads: 9:56. This is a good idea, I tell myself. You’ve thought it through. It’s going to work.

  Quietly I open the pouch under the Schwinn’s seat and withdraw the MP3 player and mini speakers, linking them with a stunted cord and clipping them like charms to the Mardi Gras beads dangling off my neck.

  Step one? Check.

  Somewhere ahead of us, our motorcycle-cop escorts rev up (with just about everyone in Industry here at the Yo-Yo—either racing or watching—I doubt we’ll be needing such law enforcement accompaniment, but the town clerk insisted, so…). “Be careful,” Tom tells me, the starting gun imminent. “This could get messy. Pull over if you have to.”

  I appreciate his concern, really I do, but… “I won’t,” I assure him. “Have to, I mean.”

  He snaps a nod. “Good.”

  Ker-blang! goes the signal, and then, all at once, we’re in motion.

  For the first few blocks, I keep steady pace with Tom, which isn’t really saying much, since the whopping mass of twelve-hundred cyclists is inching along like a morbidly obese snail. At the half-mile mark (Harvey roped the children of some former students into tagging a tree or telephone pole or traffic sign with a poufy blue ribbon every twenty-six-hundred and forty feet), the better riders among us start to break free.

  Hard as I try, I’m not one of these precious few standouts (but for all I know, neither is anyone from my age group, the racing lanes having dissolved into a clumsy free-for-all).

  I pump harder, faster, ticklish beads of perspiration dribbling down my back and dampening the waistband of my shorts. You’ve got this, Bobbi-Jo, I say to myself, the pep talk invigorating me. Do it for Gramp and the Royale.

  As we hit the mile mark, my energy soars, and I cautiously move away from Tom, who looks redder in the face than I think he should. “Pace yourself!” I swear he calls after me, but with all the gears shifting and tires slapping and lungs huffing and puffing (not to mention the absolute concentration required to avoid splattering myself and/or someone else on the pavement) I can’t be sure.

  And it doesn’t matter, because as soon as I leave Tom in the dust (figuratively speaking, of course), I go on an all-out tear, speeding past little kids, teenagers, old folks, and even some prime-of-lifers (those abnormally fit twenty-one-year-olds who eat as if they’ve got wooden legs and don’t pack on an ounce).

  I think about hitting the power button of the MP3 player and employing my strategy sooner rather than later, but with twenty-plus miles to go, such a move strikes me as premature. Instead, I double down, work my muscles and lungs for all they’re worth.

  Those poufy blue ribbons are great, but Harvey should’ve had the trees marked with numerical signs too (live and learn, I guess), since I lost count of the ribbons and am now unsure if we’re (by we I mean the second-tier riders, of which I count myself a member, the elite amateurs nearly out of view) coming up on two, two and a half, or three miles.

  The crowd has thinned considerably, racers now falling into distinct pockets of speed. I take a second (all the time I can spare) and evaluate my competition, chagrined at what—or, more precisely, whom—I find.

  Malcolm Gates.

  Justin White.

  Sydney Vale.

  And the jerkwads don’t even seem to be racing that hard, as if maybe—just maybe—their goal is not to take the Yo-Yo but to prevent me from making a run at it.

  “What’re you lookin’ at?” Sydney’s snarky voice spits over my shoulder.

  I ignore him, grope around my chest for the MP3 player while maneuvering the Schwinn
one-handed. I’m fingering the MP3 player’s power button when I get knocked from behind. “What the…?!” is all I get out before I’m forced to slap my palm back onto the handlebar and pull the Schwinn out of a near-fatal wobble.

  Once I straighten the bike out, I scan the crowd for Tom, who, even though he’s exhausted from coming to my rescue, would probably play the hero one last time.

  But he’s nowhere in sight, and neither is Duncan (lot of help he’d be), until…

  I squint through a peephole in the race field, all the way to the front of the pack, where my father’s bird-machine has—I now realize—zipped into a commanding lead.

  Malcolm and Justin close in on me, cackling unnervingly as if something is funny (or is about to be). I preempt them by saying, “No hard feelings, guys,”—yeah, right—“but I’ve got a boyfriend, so…”

  “Think we give a shit?” Justin says.

  “He’s a pussy,” adds Malcolm about Tom.

  Involuntarily, the words shoot out of my mouth. “He is not!”

  Malcolm starts playing sideways chicken, aiming his bike’s front tire at the Schwinn’s. “Just fuck Syd,” he tells me in a smooth, used car salesman tone, “and we’ll be even.”

  This is getting out of control. “Even?”

  “For your little cock-tease in the tree house,” Justin explains. “You owe him one.”

  So that’s their angle. “I told you, I’m not doing that anymore.”

  “The hell you ain’t,” spouts Justin.

  I glance at the shoulder of the road, which is dotted with spectators (and potential witnesses, should any of these jerkwads try to get physical with me). “Look,” I say, mad at myself over the pleading tone that has crept into my voice, “I’m sorry; I am, but…”

  My fingers wander back to the MP3 player, this time nailing the power button (to anticlimactic effect, though, since, like an idiot, I’ve got the volume set to nil).

  “Save it,” Justin says, his bike encroaching on mine. His fingers dip into his shirt pocket and then—ping!—something small and hard (a pebble?) ricochets off my cheek, just east of my helmet’s chinstrap (thank you, Harvey, for insisting I encase my noggin).

  “Ow!” I whine, letting the sting subside on its own, even though I have the urge to rub it. “Knock it off!”

  Ping! Ping-ping!

  A number of colorful, ovoid-shaped dots (Peanut M&M’S?) spin across the pavement around us. (Apparently Justin’s a pretty bad shot, which is ironic given his exalted status as Industry High QB/god.)

  The candy starts coming fast and furious (are all three jerkwads pegging me now?), but then…

  “Cut the shit,” demands a familiar voice from somewhere in the crowd.

  I calm my pedaling, let this savior—whoever he is—catch up with us.

  Malcolm and Justin (and, I assume, Sydney) slow down too. “What’s up your ass?” Malcolm says to Brent Flynn, who has just, with a clenched jaw and an irate spark in his eyes, sidled up to Justin.

  Brent shoves a palm into Justin’s cycling space. “Give ‘em here.”

  He wants the M&M’S?

  “Just do it,” says Brent, impatiently flexing and unflexing his fingers.

  I wish I could stick around for this showdown, but I’ve got a race to win (or, at this point, at least place in). So while Justin serves up some arrogant lip to Brent (with Malcolm and Sydney mesmerized in the wings), I open the throttle and bolt forward.

  And soon I’m a speed pocket of my own, an island unto myself. I fumble for the MP3 player a third (and hopefully final) time, the volume button warm with eagerness as I hold it down.

  Then whammo!: Freddie Mercury’s long-dead voice fills the air with praise for fat bottoms and the girls (like me!) who possess them.

  Tom’s mother’s tune—now my anthem for the Yo-Yo and for life—is the only track on this music player (I paid a guy Orv knows ten bucks in pennies to convert the record into a digital file), and it’s set to run forever, in an eternal loop.

  Which is exactly what it’s doing—at top volume—when a miracle occurs.

  I don’t know how I spotted him, his mangy little profile weaving from one clump of spectators to the next, seemingly intent on keeping pace with the bicycles in general (which, of course, he can’t, especially in his banged-up state) and me in particular. “Buttercup!” I call, forgetting it’s a bad idea to beckon a frail, old cat into oncoming traffic—and lots of it.

  Still in full trot, he whips his head my way and—I swear—smiles, his cute kitty mouth turned up so far at the corners it resembles the ghoulish grin of Batman’s arch-nemesis, The Joker.

  I pucker up, make an obnoxiously loud kissing sound. (Can I get any weirder? I mean, I’ve already got a dead dude’s voice jumping off my chest, touting large feminine asses.) “Here, Buttercup!” I coo, rustling my fingers to draw his eye.

  But he just keeps barreling along. (Maybe he thinks Duncan’s bird-machine is an overgrown pigeon he can take down and torture for a while before putting it out of its misery.) “Buttercup!” I shout, getting irritated. I start easing the Schwinn toward the side of the road, figuring that, at the very least, I’ll keep an eye on the puny sucker.

  Unfortunately, though, fate has other plans, because as soon as I blow by a trio of middle-schoolers (how did these kids get ahead of me?), the Schwinn’s front tire sinks into a crevice in the road, jamming the bike—and me—to an abrupt, topsy-turvy stop.

  The Schwinn does a barrel roll (or that’s what it looks like from my upside-down vantage point on the pavement, my kidney aching from being sucker punched by the curb) and skids out ahead of the kids I’ve just passed, causing them to scatter.

  “My gracious!” an old lady squeals as she rushes at me, her ample bosom swaying in my face.

  I want to sit up, or at least drag my gimpy legs out of the roadway to avoid having them smashed by impending traffic, but I’m so dizzy there must be tiny stars dancing around over my head.

  “Don’t move, dearie,” the lady says when she notices me trying to elbow myself off the ground. “You could be hurt.”

  Hmm, really?

  “I don’t think so,” I mutter. “Have you seen a cat? Sort of an orange-creamsicle color? His name’s Buttercup.”

  She studies my face as if, instead of the normal two eyes, a nose and a mouth, my features amount to the quadratic equation. “Come again?” she says.

  A bunch of legs and feet surround me, accompanied by a number of hushed but urgent voices. The word concussion is bandied about.

  “Buttercup the cat,” I repeat, feeling suddenly sleepy. “Is he here? Can you look?”

  But no one has to, because just as I start going out, I feel the furball’s cool, wet nose, followed by his extraordinarily ticklish whiskers, grazing my elbow.

  Then I’m toast.

  chapter 19

  I CAN’T have been out more than twenty or thirty seconds, because the same forest of unfamiliar legs is encircling me as I bloom back to alertness. “My neck hurts,” I tell no one in particular as I reach around to rub it. “Do you have any water?” (A small, lucid part of my brain recognizes these remarks as non sequiturs, but my fuzzy grey matter just shrugs.)

  “We’ve got someone coming,” a thin gentleman in polyester slacks informs me, “to take you to the medical tent for a checkup. You cracked your head pretty good there.”

  “I did?”

  The man squats down, exposing his argyle socks and hairless, cinnamon-colored shins. “Yes, siree,” he says, running a hand over my helmet, which I can somehow tell is in about the same shape as Humpty Dumpty, post-fall.

  I rest my eyes for a while, despite the fact that people keep talking to me (probably so I don’t die).

  Then I hear something peculiar.

  “Orv?” I say in a tone that, even to me, sounds dreamy. I’m sure I recognize the distinctive clomp of his work boots, with their leaden toes and stiff rubber bottoms.

  And I’m right. “Jesus, Bobbi,” he
says, hunched over me with one of those makeshift stretchers doctors use in combat zones.

  Speaking of combat zones…

  “Let me take a look,” says my mother, pressing Orv to the side. She shines a tiny flashlight in my eyes, orders me to touch one index finger to the tip of my nose, then the other. “Do you have any pain?” she inquires coolly.

  Shouldn’t she be crying? I think. Maybe even hysterically? I mean, her daughter just cheated death here.

  “Uh-uh,” I say. I try to sit up, and she lets me.

  “What about your feet?” she asks.

  “What about ‘em?”

  “Can you wiggle your toes?”

  I do.

  “Good.” She helps me stand. “Put some weight on those legs,” she says, steadying me as I take a tentative step.

  “Seems fine,” I report with a pop of my shoulders, my head achy and my heart sore over this little tumble costing me the race.

  “We won’t be needing that,” Marie tells Orv about the stretcher. “She’ll walk back with us.”

  “Ready?” Orv asks, clasping an arm around my shoulder. With the stretcher clunking along behind him like a ball and chain, the three of us part the crowd.

  And Buttercup follows.

  * * *

  Duncan took the Yo-Yo by three-eighths of a mile, eclipsing even Lex Arlington’s star (and making off with the twenty-five-hundred dollars in prize money, which, had Lex won, would have reverted to charity).

  “I’m sorry,” I tell Orv and Denise from the back of our new (to us anyway) car, the one I’m now short on dough to help pay for. “Maybe Harvey can start paying me for everything I do around The Pit. I mean, the place is pretty much famous now.”

  I give Buttercup, who’s cooperatively perched on my lap, a gentle noogie, my mashed bicycle helmet shifting out from under my foot as the car hits a pothole.

  “I told you,” Denise scolds, “we aren’t taking your money. Too bad you didn’t win something, though,” she adds with a sigh. “That would’ve been nice.”