On Thin Ice

by Michael Northrop

  “I’m going to go to the cabinet.”

  “Knock yourself out,” she says, and I get the feeling she means it literally. What is her problem with me?

  I look back at Mr. Feig, but he’s still bent over his papers, fully focused. He could’ve mentioned I’d be sharing the room with a knife-wielding eighth-grade goth girl who hates me.

  She goes back to work and I decide to do the same. I figure I’ll be okay with Mr. Feig a few chairs away. Still better than Landrover, I tell myself, as I drop my stuff on the table and head over to the open cabinet.

  I spend some time cleaning the parts. Then I check them out one by one: turning gears, pressing levers, checking connections. There’s no major damage, nothing split or bent, no broken parts to add to my shopping list. I put the engine back together slowly and carefully. It takes a lot of concentration and memory, but it’s surprisingly straightforward too. Every piece has a place, and it’s all the exact opposite of how I took it apart. For a second I can’t find the last bolt I need to put the crankcase back on, and I panic. Then I realize it slid under the edge of the towel. I see it hiding under there like a fuzzy lump.

  Once I fasten the last bolt, I step back. Now I’m the one blinking and trying to refocus my eyes. The reassembled engine gleams up at me. There are a few little dents here and there, a few nicks in the middle, but it’s all on the surface. Everything inside is clean and in the right place—at least as near as I can tell from the book and the diagrams and the fact that the screws fit. This section of the engine should work. So why doesn’t it run? Maybe it was the gunk, maybe it’s the old spark plug. More likely …

  I look over at the carburetor. That’s the next step. It’s the fuel injection system, and there is zero chance it’s not pretty clogged up too. The guy told me the engine wasn’t working, and a gunked-up carburetor seems like an obvious suspect.

  But it’s not sturdy like the rest of the engine. The parts in that were solid enough to just pull out and clean. The carb has a lot of small, tricky pieces. In the YouTube videos some of them look about as fragile as wet paper. Taking them out and cleaning them will be like open-heart surgery. And if I mess up, even once …

  “Mr. Feig?” says Esme, sort of snapping me out of it.

  “Esme, you know I can’t help you with your model,” he says. “The contest …”

  “Yeah, I know,” she says flatly. “You’d need a sense of style for that.”

  Ouch, but it’s true. Mr. Feig almost always looks like he got dressed in the dark. I look over to see how he’ll take it. Will she get in trouble? Instead, he barks out a laugh. Esme cracks a smile and says, “Never mind. I figured it out.” I look back and forth between them. Wait, these two joke around? It surprises me, and sort of makes me wonder if I know anything about either of them.

  I look back at my stuff and see the fuel tank and hoses I detached from the engine at the start. Those are big, solid parts that even an idiot like me can handle. So I get to work on them: cleaning, reconnecting, tightening. I even use some more of the WD-40. (What? His name’s not on it.)

  Just as I reconnect the main hose, Mr. Feig stands up and begins collecting his stuff. The timing is so perfect that I wonder if he was waiting for me.

  “That’s all, folks,” he says.

  I stay on my side of the table and let Esme put her stuff away first. I have to admit her model is pretty cool: a tightly packed little city of black roofs and spires. It reminds me of something from The Lord of the Rings. But then I see the way it’s divided by one main street, the way the buildings get a little taller at the center, and I realize I’m looking at downtown Norton—or at least some futuristic version of it.

  Once she puts all her sharp angles and edges away, it’s my turn. I eye the carburetor. I need to tackle that tomorrow or I’ll run out of time. I still have to get the actual frame fixed up, reconnect the engine, and test it all. My heart is racing just thinking about it as I slide the engine onto the shelf for another night.

  As I begin to back up, I bump into something. I spin around. Esme is standing right behind me. I flinch, afraid she’s going to hit me or push me. But she’s not even looking at me. She’s looking down at the engine. Staring down at it, really. She snaps out of it when she sees me looking and leaves without another word.

  I don’t get her fixation with this engine. I mean, yeah, the bikes are cool in the videos. In another life maybe I’d like to fix this one up just to keep it and ride it around the trails outside town. But I don’t understand why she seems so mad at me for having it now. The engine is lying in sections on a towel like a peeled orange. It’s a total work in progress. I guess maybe we all are, though.

  I NEED TO GET THE PARTS and fuel for the bike. That means I need to go to Landrover’s dad’s store, the only auto parts store in town. I know for a fact that Landrover works there after school sometimes. I’ve seen him. And if you think running into him during school is bad news, imagine him with no teachers around. I also need more money for this. That’s not good either. I have to do hard things now, and my plan is to get through this like a spy. No, like an assassin. All action, all forward momentum. No second thoughts.

  First, I head straight home. Head down, I motor. I do what I came to do. No, what I need to do. Then I rest, but just a little. I sit down on the couch because I was standing for most of the time I was working on the engine—and all of the way home, obviously.

  I ease my upper back into the old, body-battered cushion. Like my dad says, I take a load off. Five minutes, ten, then I’m up and out the door. Assassin!

  I head straight for the auto parts store. I proceed with caution. Spy. I look around carefully when I enter, wincing as the bell above the door gives me away. I don’t see Landrover anywhere—and he’s taller than the shelves, so I would.

  I relax a little and find the spark plug I need right away. Then I grab a plastic bottle of two-stroke engine oil. There are a few different kinds of carb cleaner. I take a small can of the cheapest. I find the big case of spray paint easily too, but it’s locked. I ask the man behind the counter. Landrover’s dad. He decides I don’t look like a graffiti artist or glue huffer. He gets out from behind the counter slowly. He’s a big man.

  I want a basic black and a classic fire-engine red to match what’s left of the bike’s original color.

  “Which brand?” he says.

  “The cheapest.”

  He gives me a sour look, and since I’m already annoying him, I ask my next question: “Do you have gaskets and diaphragms and stuff for a minibike?”

  The string of engine terms seems to snap him back into customer service mode. “I could probably order them for you if you know the make and model,” he says.

  “They don’t make these bikes anymore,” I say. I figure that’s that. It was a long shot anyway, but he keeps talking. “A lot of the engines are pretty similar. You know how many cc we’re talking?”

  And believe it or not I do: cc means cubic centimeters. Not to get too technical about it, but it’s a way to measure engine capacity. “Forty nine,” I say. I know a lot about the engine by now.

  “Let me check,” he says, disappearing into the back room as I get the rest of the things on my list. I check and double-check the prices. I do the math in my head.

  Landrover’s dad is waiting for me once I reach the register. “All I got,” he says, sliding a plastic baggie across the counter. I pick it up. There’s a layer of dust on the front. Inside is an assortment of thin black shapes, like construction paper cutouts. I read the faded label, some brand I’ve never heard of. “Gasket set for 2-stroke 43cc mini dirt bike engine. May also fit some 49cc and 47cc models.”

  May, I think, I always liked that month. “How much?”

  “I can let you have it for five bucks.” This thing has been gathering dust in his back room for years, but I’m not in a great position to negotiate.

  I take the bills out of my pocket. The same bills I just took out of the box at home. I un
fold them carefully and hand them over. I only get a few singles back. No second thoughts, I tell myself. Assassin.

  I go straight home and get the number I wrote down for the paper. Then I get my language arts notebook, where I wrote down what I want my ad to say. The paper charges by the character, so I wrote it down in the same part where I wrote my haiku poem assignment. Those have to be short too: 5-7-5.

  My ad says:

  “Vintage ROAD ROKKIT! Good condition. Runs great. $600 OBO.” Then I give my number and say, all in caps, “CALL BTW 2–5 ONLY!!!”

  It’s not a haiku. “OBO” means “Or Best Offer.” I look it over and add one thing. New paint. Nine characters. I change it to Nu paint, but I keep it. You’ve got to spend money to make money.

  I tried to place this ad online at the library, but that requires a credit card number. So now I pick up the phone and take a deep breath. An old lady answers. She’s super friendly, and I tell her what I want the ad to say. “It has to go in this week’s paper,” I add. “Online too. This week.”

  “That’s not a problem,” she says.

  Phew!

  “And how will you be paying?”

  That might be a problem. I close my eyes. “Do you take checks?”

  “Are you old enough to have checks?” Her voice is as warm as a bowl of mac and cheese but she sounds skeptical.

  “I’ll have my dad mail it.”

  She pauses. I hold my breath.

  “You seem like a very serious young man,” she says finally. “I can make an exception.”

  “Great!” I say before she can change her mind. “He’ll mail it tomorrow.”

  My dad is always mailing imaginary checks. I feel a little bad about lying, but it’s okay. By the time they realize the check isn’t there, I’ll have the money. I can just walk it down to their office.

  When Dad comes home, I act normal. I think he’s trying to do the same thing. We talk about the weather without ever quite mentioning the tower. It’s warm again today, but not too warm. Below freezing tonight, they say. All in all, he seems pleased—he likes his chances. He actually thinks his bet will pay off. I hope one of ours does.

  I SLIP INTO SCHOOL on Tuesday with my new supplies rattling around in my backpack. I stash them in my locker and all day long I feel like I’ve got a secret. I keep my distance when I pass Landrover in the hallway, but I’m smiling to myself. You didn’t beat me.

  Steering clear of him means steering clear of maker space during the day. (If going was even an option, stuffed full of his jerk friends.) I think it’s okay, though. Fingers crossed, I should have everything I need to finish the engine now, and the rest of the bike isn’t so bad. The wheels are still holding air, and they seem to roll and stop fine. The frame needs to be straightened out in a few places and repainted, but that seems pretty straightforward.

  The paper comes out Wednesday, and I figure a buyer will contact me right away—I mean, it’s a Road Rokkit. (Okay, maybe “hope” is a better word than “figure.” Okay, maybe “pray.”) But that would still mean selling it Thursday or Friday at the earliest. That’s cutting it close on the rent. And I still have to get everything put back together and running. But—and this is a BIG BUT—I’m starting to see a way that this could all work. So, yeah, I’ll steer clear of Landrover. None of this works if I’m dead.

  Of course, not being in the maker space during the day means I’m back in the caf at lunch. And that’s nothing to smile about. I radar-scan the room as I navigate my tray to that same empty table in the back corner. I got the hot lunch today—reduced price, but not free.

  At least the back corner’s a good perch to watch the action. I see a flash of purple float by: Esme. She lands at a table half-full of eighth-grade girls. Everyone’s more popular than me. But if she’s in here, then she’s not in maker space either. Just after school. Is it just Landrover’s friends taking up the spots, I wonder, or is it something else?

  I see Danny with his new crew, and Maps with a table of jock royalty—it’s like the Knights of the Round Table but for basketball. Maps saved my bacon yesterday, but he still feels so far away most of the time, like I’m looking up at him from the bottom of a lake. I walked by him this morning, and I was going to say hi. Just hi, that’s it. But he was surrounded by his super-cool friends like usual. Surrounded by guys who don’t even know I exist. So I just kept my head down and walked by.

  I move on to the weirdly powdery chocolate pudding. The truth is, when I imagine my life here how I want it to be, when I just let my mind go for it and picture myself happy and surrounded by friends, it’s not new friends. It’s those guys again: Nephi, Danny, and Maps. Maybe that’s pathetic—I don’t know.

  I do know this: When I look over at Danny and Maps, I don’t see them laughing much. Most of the time, they’re not even talking—just nodding and listening. It doesn’t prove anything. For all I know, they crack up the second I look away. But it’s weird. Back when we sat together, we used to talk and laugh all the time. We’d talk over each other and laugh until food was flying out of our mouths—then we’d laugh at that. We’d bet our Tater Tots like poker chips, Danny always the first to go all in. Nephi cautious, betting one tot at a time.

  Maybe it’s because they’re mostly the new guys in new groups. I’m sure they’ll figure it out. They’ve got time—and they’ve got friends. That’s the important thing.

  I’m still thinking about all those things after lunch: new friends, old friends, walking by Maps this morning. And that’s when I turn the corner on my way to my locker and nearly crash into Nephi. And I guess that’s why I say what I do.

  “Hey, Neff.”

  Neff does the last thing in the world I expect him to. He stops.

  “Hey, Ked.”

  Not Freakins, not Freak. Ked. And you know how it is when someone who really knows you calls you by your name? How it has a different feel to it? Well, that. Maybe even better than normal because these days I feel like I barely even know myself, like I’m a caterpillar in a cocoon going: What the heck is even happening to me? And I want to keep the old familiar feeling going, so I keep talking.

  “How was maker space?” I say.

  Nephi looks at me for a second. I’m afraid he’s just going to say “fine” or something like that and keep walking, but he surprises me again. He steps off to the side of the busy hallway to make space to talk. I step there with him.

  “It was good. I made some progress,” he says. “Someone was using the screwdriver I needed but I just worked on something else.” Then he seems to realize something and he hesitates. “Why weren’t you there?”

  “Well,” I say, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Is it? I guess so.

  “Oh, yes?” he says as I try to shuffle my words into some kind of order.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Feig let me stay after school to work on my engine. He has the room open.”

  “Oh, yes?” he says again. It’s such a Nephi thing to say too: a formal attempt to be casual. He seems interested.

  “Yeah, it’s kind of cool. It’s like private maker space. No … distractions.”

  “Landrover’s friends are the worst,” he says, knowing what I mean. “They make it hard to concentrate.”

  “You should come by today,” I say. “After school, I mean. If you want.” This feels like spending money I don’t have too. I don’t know if I can even make this offer. I just know that I want to. So I do.

  IN THE LIBRARY DURING study hall, I rewatch a YouTube video on taking apart and cleaning a minibike carburetor. It’s not a Road Rokkit, but the carb looks pretty similar. And here’s the thing: The video is only ten minutes long. I mean, yeah, the guy is a professional mechanic, but still: This is doable.

  As soon as school ends I head straight for maker space. I head up the hill as all the little kids are heading down it. I feel like a salmon swimming past sunfish. I think I’m doing a pretty good job of it, but Esme blows by me like I’m standing sti
ll. She’s taller and purpler, and the little kids get out of her way.

  When I get to maker space, she’s already in her spot, bent over the black plastic spires of her model with the hot glue gun in one hand. She doesn’t even look up, but at least Mr. Feig gives me a smile.

  I drop my bag of supplies at the same seat as yesterday and go over to the cabinet. I get my stuff and one of the pairs of safety goggles, because carb cleaner is no joke.

  I spread everything out on the table. I replay the YouTube video in my head and put the little gasket kit and the other stuff I’m going to need in a little cluster on my right. I position the carburetor in the center of the towel. It sits there: dense, delicate, the heart of the engine. I’m pretty sure the problem with the engine is somewhere inside. I slide the goggles over my eyes, pick up the can of carb cleaner, and put my finger on the button. Here goes absolutely everything …

  “Uh, knock knock?”

  We all look over toward the half-open door. It’s Nephi. It feels good to see him. He was my friend for so long and I don’t know what we are now, exactly, but he’s here. I invited him and he came. It feels like, I don’t know, something.

  “Who’s there?” says Mr. Feig.

  “It’s me, Nephi.”

  I smile. He’s so literal.

  “I can see that,” says Mr. Feig.

  Nephi gives him a look, like: Then why did you ask?

  Mr. Feig doesn’t even ask Nephi why he came or who told him about it, which is a major relief. He just says, “Welcome aboard,” like this is a cruise ship or something.

  “All right,” says Nephi as he walks into the room and straight over to the cabinet.

  I’m about to get back to work when I hear: “Ked, could you help me with this?” It’s Nephi. He’s crouched down, peering into one of the lower shelves of the cabinet. “It’s caught on something, and I don’t want to break it.”