A Tragic Kind of Wonderful by Eric Lindstrom

Author:Eric Lindstrom [Lindstrom, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2016-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

HAMSTER IS STUMBLING

HUMMINGBIRD IS PERCHED

HAMMERHEAD IS THRASHING*

HANNIGANIMAL IS DOWN

Zumi’s house is only a ten-minute ride away but I don’t feel like sitting on my bike. I also want to give the Ativan more time to kick in.

After walking a few blocks, it occurs to me that among countless trips to Zumi’s, this is only the second time I’ve gone on foot. It’s fitting because that other time was when we argued and then stopped talking.

It was also a Saturday like today. I walked because Mom had taken away my bike the night before and put it in her bedroom. That’s actually what gave me the idea of parking it routinely in the house. It never occurred to me before that it didn’t have to stay in the garage.

Mom had been secretly checking my odometer—for the same reason she’d made Nolan put it on the bike, I later learned—to make sure I was only riding to and from school and around the neighborhood. This particular Friday night she demanded to know how I’d managed to put on over forty miles that day. I was taken so much by surprise, by her knowing and by the angry fear in her voice, I told the truth. After school I had biked twenty miles up the Great Highway to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Mom completely lost it: yelling, crying. It scared me so much that I didn’t tell her the rest. How I hadn’t turned off my light the night before and was going on thirty-six hours without getting sleepy for the first time in my life. About the big fight I had with Annie right after school that day, and how afterward my heart rate shot up over a thousand and I thought my head was going to explode from panic. I had to let the energy out somehow, so I pedaled as fast as I could to the one place within reach where I have calm, happy memories of Nolan with nothing bad mixed in. When I reached the bridge my heart was pounding hard but slower. I sat against the south tower in our special spot till I calmed down some more. Then I rode back home.

I stayed up again all that Friday night, approaching fifty hours awake, and snuck out of the house the next morning to walk to Zumi’s. I’d spent that entire second sleepless night plotting how we could stay friends and I had to get to her before Annie did.

I knocked on the Shimuras’ door, oblivious to the fact that seven thirty on a Saturday morning was way too early to be here. Luckily I’d become a common presence and Zumi’s dad was already headed out; he often worked weekends on rental properties he owned. He frowned while he shuttled me to Zumi’s room, telling me to be quiet since Zumi’s mom was still asleep.

* * *

I sit on the edge of Zumi’s bed. She doesn’t wake up. I bounce. I whisper her name. Louder. I put a hand on her shoulder and rock her.

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