Odd Moments in Summer

 

            "They've won the  ride of a lifetime," Kiera said to herself, as part of the game. She loaded two small dolls into the wicker half-circle basket tied to the back of her bicycle seat.

            Although the streets bubbled with the laughter, the shouts of other children in the neighborhood, Kiera had spent the entire day in her tree fort or under the hose, depending upon her mood, but alone, entirely alone. Her mother's conviction that a child who couldn't amuse himself couldn't be amusing to anyone else had helped to develop Kiera's somewhat overactive imagination, but did little to improve her social skills with other children.

            It annoyed Kiera that other children couldn't see trees or snow for what they were: something other than trees or snow. Or that the other children didn't think the way she thought, always pretending to be free thinking individuals rather than actors under her direction. She hated the way the other girls – she was forbidden to play with boys, although she sometimes did – wanted to bask in the sun when they went swimming. They expected her to do the same. She didn't like the heat without the water, and while they turned tan, she turned orange. Why would they want to be tan? They had great pools. Who would want to roast in the heat when they could swim? Why pretend she wanted to? Because she wouldn't play along, her unnaturally tan friends stopped inviting her to swim in their pools.

            So, on sultry summer days she could lie in the grass and watch the heat rippling up from the streets, or climb into the tree fort and pretend to be Paul McCartney – her friends wanted to marry the Beatles, but she wanted to be one – or fly to Mars in her imagined spacecraft. Now, after dinner, she had played out the fort for the day. She needed excitement, a race down any hill she could find. This idea occurred after a game where the dolls were her audience, so she decided to take them with her. It was foolish, but she did it as part of the game. Once around the block would do for the dolls. They were getting to ride in the limo with the rock star.

            Of course, on her way around the block she had to pass Helen Broderick and Joan Rafferty, two on-again, off-again friends, both with pools presently off limits, both waiting, she thought, for a chance to ridicule her about something. She passed as quickly as she could, which wasn't fast, considering she traveled uphill. Too slow for them to miss seeing the dolls in her basket. How would she ever live it down? It was bad enough they laughed at her and called her movie star as a taunt because she had her sunglasses on, but the dolls –

            She reached her house as quickly as she could, and threw the dolls into their toy cribs in the playroom. It shouldn't work like this. She would have to ride back the way she came around the block to unravel the invisible string that determined the length of her life. (Her theory was that each person was born with a ball of invisible string. To go back the way one came allowed one to re-roll some of what was used, giving one a longer life. When the ball was completely gone, one's life ended. She wanted to out-live the girls who had been so cruel but didn’t know about the string.)

            As Kiera remounted her bike, she saw Joan pass on her bike. Joan said, "Are you taking your babies for a ride again?" To hide the disgrace she felt, and to show her contempt for Joan, she stuck her tongue out at her.

            "Joan the bone, dial tone," she said to herself in time with her pedaling as she whizzed past Helen. Helen made another remark about Kiera acting like a big shot, but Kiera swerved in time to avoid hitting her, and rode on. They simply wouldn't exist. Not Joan the clone or Helen, Helen watermelon. She'd show them all. She was the best bike-trick kid on the block, she thought, as she rested her feet over her handlebars. Losers, all of you. Big fat losers. Brown as a clown, and hair like straw. Who needs you and your swimming pools?  I can make up my own friends.

            She rode up one hill and down another, first one way, then back the way she came. She stopped once again at home to clothespin baseball cards against the wheels of her bike so that it would sound like a motorcycle. The other kids had already done it, and now she would, too.

            She rode up and around until she reached the top of the big hill on Park Avenue. She'd race down it. No, she decided, she'd turn at the first street and do the hills on Summit Avenue.

            She turned, and almost immediately changed her mind. Still at whizzing-down-the-hill speed, she made a U-turn and started back to the big hill. Without stopping, pedaling to pick up speed, she started around the corner. She rode too close to the gravel and skidded down, the bike falling on top of her. She fell, face-first onto the road.

            She screamed before she felt any real pain. Joan rode by as she did. She hesitated a moment, then stopped, but didn't help Kiera up. Instead, she said she'd get Kiera's father, then left the girl alone on the road, humiliated beyond her pain.

            It took a minute before anyone came to see if she was hurt. Amy, a girl Kiera knew vaguely as one of the bigger kids, and Amy's father crossed the street to where she lay.

            "I can't get up," Kiera managed to say.

            Amy’s father picked the bike up, then helped the ten-year-old Kiera. They walked Kiera to their car. While Amy walked the bike to her house, her father drove Kiera home.

            Kiera was calm, but her cheeks, knees and hands were embedded with cinders. Her mouth dripped blood, and for a moment, Kiera thought she'd faint, but she managed not to.

            "I lost my sunglasses," she said.

            "You broke your front teeth, too," Amy's father said.

            "Oh, no," Kiera said, looking out the window, and seeing her father walking toward the approaching car, "my mother's going to kill me."