Jake gave a little wave and said, “Nah.” Right answer, I thought, feeling great. But then he said something that gave me the chills: “Not today.”
Like, not today—but maybe tomorrow?
Jake
I don’t know why my sister is getting all dramatic. What’s the big deal? If somebody wants to give me cool stones, why shouldn’t I take them? What am I supposed to do, say, “Here, take ’em back. I don’t want ’em”? How stupid is that? I mean, if Bump Stubbins left an American Flyer California Zephyr engine on the doormat for her, what do you think she would do—throw it in the trash? Yeah, right.
Okay, she hates him. I get it. I don’t even blame her. But what’s he ever done to me? Am I supposed to hate everybody my sister hates? Are my sister’s enemies my enemies? Is that what being twins is all about? Lily sees all this evil stuff in Bump. I just see a clown. He’s harmless. He’s just a kid, that’s all. A guy. That’s what all three of them are, just guys out riding around. So why shouldn’t I ride with them?
Lily
I could see it coming. I could see his goo-goo eyes every time we saw the Bumpsters riding around. I figured sooner or later he would join them. Just thinking about it made me mad. Mad enough to decide that when it finally happened, I would just spit, burp, and call, “Good riddance! Who needs ya? Who cares?”
So when I saw that his bike was gone one day, I reminded myself, Who cares? I went out riding myself. Why not? I’m a big girl. I pedaled past Mom and Dad working on the handyman special. When I saw the Bumpsters riding up ahead of me I said to myself, Turn off. Go another way. But my bike didn’t listen. It just kept following them. And then they saw me, and that’s when they made their big mistake—they sped up. All my reminders went out the window. Were they serious? Did they really think they could outrace me? Me?
I took off after them. They zipped down street after street. Hills. Alleys. Parking lots. Leaning into turns like motorcycle riders. I would have caught them sooner but I couldn’t stop laughing at those four Bumpster hineys slamming from side to side. I caught them on the flat stretch of Beacon Street that runs along the tracks.
I don’t know what they expected me to do. Heck, I don’t even know what I expected. But as soon as I pulled up to their fenders I knew: I had already done it. Caught up. All I had to do now was beat them. I smoked past them like they were standing still. I was laughing and waving. Turns out I didn’t feel mad or bad at all. I felt great!
(And just to set the record straight—if a train left on the doormat came from BS, yeah, I would throw it in the trash.)
Jake
I’m happy for you. I’m glad you felt so great. But let me tell you something you don’t know, since all you want to do is tell everybody what a bad brother I am these days. When you went past us laughing and flapping your arms and shrieking, “Beatcha, Bumpsters!” I had a little grin on my face. I was kinda proud, like, Death Rays, meet my sister. You didn’t catch that, did you?
Lily
No, I sure didn’t. Must have been the littlest grin of all time. What good was it if nobody saw it? And what did you say? Huh? Death Rays, meet my sister. Did you say it out loud? Huh? Go ahead, tell the readers. Tell them how you opened your mouth and shouted it to the world and stuck up for me. Tell them how you went to war for your sister. Go ahead. Do it now. I’ll give you the next page to answer….
Jake
Lily
No answer? Didn’t think so.
So today he goes out riding with his bumpy boys again, and sure enough I run into them pedaling their bumpy butts down by the park. I’m ready to smoke them again but a funny thing happens—they don’t speed up. They just go cruising along like I’m not there.
I called, “Hey Jake! I’m going to the comic shop. Wanna come?”
He called back, “Later.”
“Where’re you going?” I called.
“Nowhere.”
I didn’t like his answers. I didn’t like the way the summer was going so far. Most of all I didn’t like being alone. So I caught up with them. I pedaled alongside. I didn’t say anything. I just stared straight ahead, minded my own business. They turned a corner, I turned a corner. Finally they turned into the parking lot of Mike Ivey’s Auto Repair. They stopped. I stopped. Nobody said anything. They just glared at me, all but Jake. He stared at the sky, the ground, everywhere but me.
Finally the Big Bumpster spoke up. “What’re you doing?”
“What’s it look like?” I said.
“You can’t come with us.”
I sneered. “First of all, genius, I can go anywhere I want. It’s a free country. And second of all, I’m not going anywhere with you. I’m going with my brother.”
“Not now you’re not.” He was chewing licorice. His teeth were outlined in black, like a cartoon.
I foot-wheeled my bike up to his. “You gonna stop me, snow face?” Up close, I couldn’t help noticing he was bigger than he was the day I trashed him at the snow fort.
He got all smuggy. “I don’t have to stop you. He’s with us. That’s the way it is.”
“You think you can buy off my brother with a couple stones?” I said.
One of the assistant morons butted in. “He’s one of us, girlie. He’s a Death Ray.”
I laughed. “Yeah, right.”
The assistant moron shoved his face into mine. He grinned. “Ask him.” On the assistant moron’s face were more freckles than the French Creek sky has stars. I looked at Jake. I gagged out the words: “Are you a Death Ray?”
He didn’t look at me. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. I knew the answer.
They saddled up and rode. I couldn’t move. The world was suddenly tilted, like it was trying to dump me off. I guess the world didn’t know something—I don’t like to get dumped. I went after them.
When I caught up, the Bumpster snarled, “What part of we-don’t-want-you don’t you understand?”
“I don’t care if he’s ten Death Rays,” I said. “He’s my brother first. And I’m his sister. You can’t change that, moron.”
“Yeah, well, I got news for you. You’re something else too.”
“Oh really.”
“Yeah. You’re a girl.” He sneered the last word.
“That so?”
“Yeah, and this is boys only. It’s a boys-only gang and we’re going to our boys-only hideout. So until you change your sex, girlie”—he spit licorice juice on the ground—“scram.”
They took off. Their tires flung gravel on my shoes. “Jake?” I called. “Jake?”
But Jake was riding.
Jake
Did I feel bad? There’s Lily calling after me and I’m riding away. Sure I felt bad. I’m not a monster. But here’s the thing she doesn’t get: it’s no big deal. Nothing strange is going on here. Nothing evil. Nothing tragic. The only thing going on here is growing up. When guys get older they start to hang with each other. It’s, like, the herd instinct. It’s normal. No big deal. She thinks I’m the villain. I’m not the villain. I’m just a kid trying to grow up.
What does she want? Does she want me to spend my whole life with nobody but her? Oh look, there’s Jake and Lily. They’re seventy-nine years old and they still play poker and ride bikes together. They still hear each other five miles away. Still sleep in the same bedroom. You can’t tear them apart. Aren’t they adorable. Twinny-twin twins.
Personally, I think Lily is starting to lose her marbles. Maybe she’s allergic to something in the air and it’s making her goofy. When Bump reminded her she’s a girl and told her to scram and we rode away, she says she called after me, right? Called my name. That’s not the only thing she called. She called, “I’m not a girl!”
You believe it?
Lily
No I didn’t.
did i?
Jake
Yeah, you did. Tell Mom and Dad to take you to an allergy doctor. Or a shrink.
Anyway, the point is, whatever my sister thinks, we’re harmless
. We’re just four kids who call ourselves the Death Rays. The name is supposed to be funny, but of course she doesn’t get it. We don’t go around zapping people. We ride bikes and hang in our hideout. It’s nothing fancy. It’s just a cool tree. You ride down by the tracks and you walk your bikes over the tracks and into the woods between the tracks and the creek. It’s somewhere past the stone bridge, but that’s all I’m going to say. There’s this funny kind of tree—or maybe it’s a bush—whatever. The branches don’t stick up in the air but they bend and come down to the ground until the whole thing looks kind of like a big leafy umbrella. What you do is, you poke your way through the branches and—presto!—you’re inside this kind of dome-shaped natural hut. I mean, it’s just begging you to come in and hang out.
So that’s what we do. We sit down. We talk. We tell jokes. We compare penknives. If we picked up stuff at a store, we eat: Twinkies, hoagies, sodas. The four of us. Me. Bump. A freckled kid named Nacho. And a tall skinny kid named Burke.
Really evil, huh?
When we’re not in the hideout, we’re riding around doing stuff.
Like skipping flat stones across the creek.
Like ringing doorbells and running.
Like spit-bombing cars from the Airy Street bridge.
Like picking out someone on the sidewalk downtown and walking really really close behind them until they notice us and then we run and laugh our butts off.
But mostly we go goobering.
Goobers. That’s Bump’s name for somebody that’s funny. Funny-different. Funny-weird. A laugh magnet. No—a laugh target. When he spots one he calls out, “Goober!” If Bump were a hunting dog, his nose would stick out and his tail would go straight up.
Of course, we’d been coming across goobers all our lives. We noticed them, but just barely. They maybe registered 0.2 on a scale of 1–10. They weren’t important enough to give a name to.
Bump changed all that. He hauled them onto the stage. He threw the spotlight on them. Suddenly they were 10s.
Already this summer we’ve found some real winners:
A boy goober wearing big white-framed sunglasses. Probably stole them from his mother and thought they were cool.
A girl wearing a T-shirt that said BAN BISON BURGERS.
A girl walking out of the library with a stack of books up to her chin. (We called, “It’s summer vacaaaaaa-tion!”)
An old man we see every day who’s The Slowest Person On Earth. He shuffles along with one of those four-legged aluminum walker things. Bump brought a watch one day and we timed him crossing the street. It took him twenty-eight seconds curb to curb!
A lady in a purple sweat suit who doesn’t just walk or jog down the street. Instead she skips and dances and doesn’t even notice everybody staring at her.
Not all goobers are discovered just haphazard as we ride around. Bump goes out scouting on his own. He’ll spot a goober and check its location. All he says next day is, “Follow me.” Sometimes we ride clear across town, to neighborhoods we don’t even recognize. When he stops, he doesn’t have to say anything. There’s no “Goober!” call. We just sit there leg-leaning on our bikes, waiting for it to appear.
But what happened today was different from every other goober spotting so far. First thing this morning Bump said, “Let’s go to the hideout.” He was acting funny. Quiet. Something was on his mind. He just sat on the ground chewing his black licorice. He’s always got a wad in his mouth.
When we were all seated in the hideout, nobody said anything. Until I spoke up: “What’s wrong, Bump?”
So far Bump’s face had been a blank. Now suddenly his mouth cracked into a smirk. “Wrong?” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong. It might be the rightest thing ever.”
Now he really had our attention. “What’re you talking about?” I said.
“I saw something,” he said. Now he seemed puzzled. He looked up, as if he was trying to see through the domed leafy roof of the hideout.
“What?” Nacho and Burke said together.
“Where?” I said.
Bump was shaking his head. “I…I…” He couldn’t seem to find words.
I tried to help him out. “You saw a goober?”
He laughed out loud. He wagged his head. “Goober? Goober ain’t even good enough.”
I poked him. “C’mon, Bump. What?”
He brought his eyes down from the leaves. He looked at each of us. He had a dreamy, blinky look, like he had seen a miracle. “Last night…after dinner…I was just riding….”
“Yeah? Yeah?” we said.
“I saw something…. I saw something and I…I almost rounded you guys up right then”—he stared at us—“right then. But”—he shrugged—“I didn’t. I rode home. I almost got run down by a car, I was so…so…”
“What’d you see, Bump?” said Nacho.
“You gotta tell us,” said Burke.
“That’s the thing,” said Bump. “I’m not even sure. I mean, I thought I was sure. Then I went to bed, and when I woke up this morning and the sun was shining through the window and all, I thought, Nah, couldn’t be. Musta been a mirage. A hallu—”
“Hallucination?” I helped.
“Yeah. I figured it couldna been real.”
“So what’re you going to do?” said Burke.
Bump took a deep breath. “I’m gonna check it out again. Today. And if it is real”—he spit out the licorice wad—“you ain’t never gonna forget tomorrow.”
Lily
Jake looks like he’s having the time of his life, and I’m not part of it. Things were great for a while, after we shared the snow-fort bruise. That got him off the we’re-different kick. But now it’s back, worse than ever.
Some of me is stunned. Shocked. Like I’ve been walloped by a two-by-four. The rest of me is sad. My heart hurts.
When he’s not riding with them or in their stupid hideout with them or on the porch with them, he’s on the phone with them. Laughing. Howling. Goober this and goober that. One night at dinner he had a volcanic eruption. It started when his fork stopped moving and his eyes got a faraway look. Then his lips flapped and a quick snort came out. A second later his whole face exploded. I swear, mashed potatoes shot out his nose. Mom didn’t even have to tell him—he left the table and we heard him laughing in the kitchen for the next five minutes.
“What’s so funny?” Dad asked me, like I must know.
I just shrugged. “Beats me.”
Jake keeps saying I don’t get it, and for once he’s absolutely right—I don’t get it. I sneaked into their famous hideout once. It’s so, like, nothing. It’s a tree. Sure, it’s like you’re under a leafy roof, but so what? What’s there to do? All I saw were some candy wrappers and whittled sticks. It smells like hoagies.
And this goober stuff they think is so hilarious. I saw them the other day, all four of them walking down the street behind some man that seemed perfectly normal to me. Real close to him, practically clipping his heels. Then he looked back and they ran off laughing. A real riot. I had to check myself into a hospital, I was laughing so hard.
So yeah—I confess—I don’t get it. But there’s something he doesn’t get too. He doesn’t get what he’s doing to me and him. To us. It’s like he’s dumping our whole past and now he’s got three brothers instead of one sister. “Do they know how you’re feeling when you’re five miles away?” I say to him. “Do they sleepwalk to the railroad station every birthday with you? Do they know you’re afraid of worms?” (He almost slugged me for that one.)
He just says I’m making a big deal out of nothing. He says I must be getting my hormones and they’re making me goofy. He says I need a shrink.
I say I’m dumped. By my own twin brother.
Jake
Whatever.
So tomorrow’s here and, like he said, Bump went to see if his hallucination from yesterday was real. The other three of us went straight to the hideout to wait for him first thing this morning. When he finally showed up, we w
ere all over him.
“Didja find out, Bump?”
“Is it real, Bump?”
“What is it?”
Today Bump was back to his own cool self. He sat on the ground. He took out a piece of black licorice and started chewing. It felt funny standing over him like that, but the rest of us were too excited to sit.
“Bump—come on,” we begged.
Bump smiled up at us. It was a face of complete satisfaction. The kind of face you get when the world lays a perfect moment on you, when everything you ever wanted in life has suddenly flopped into your lap, like I’ll probably look when I get my first cell phone.
And suddenly I knew why. “Bump,” I said, “you saw the best goober yet, didn’t you?”
Bump looked up at me but still didn’t say a word. He looked around on the ground, then held out his hand and said, “Stick.”
Nacho ducked out and came back with a stick. He handed it to Bump. Bump waved us away. We stepped back. He grinned up at us and used the stick to write a word in the dirt. They were big, blocky letters like a first grader’s. We’re not as good as teachers at reading upside down, so we all walked around Bump and stood behind him and looked down at the word. Nobody said anything except, “Oh man,” which came from Burke. We just stood there staring, as if the word was the thing itself and if we dared to breathe it might disappear.
And this was the word:
SUPERGOOBER
Lily
He says, “Twins. Twins. You’re always playing the twins card. Why don’t you get off it?”
I say, “It’s the only card I have left. You won’t even play poker with me anymore.”