A Few Bicycles More, page 13
Banana said, “It felt like riding a tightrope on a unicycle is what it felt like. What if we’d gotten found out? Then I’d never get my chance to go be amazing at karate, which I am doing tomorrow, and no one is arguing with me about whose turn it is next.”
Apple kicked Banana’s feet. “You can’t both say it isn’t worth it and then say you’re going next.”
“Of course I can, I just did,” said Banana.
Daff cut in. “It wasn’t like I thought it would be, but maybe you’ll have better luck than I did. It wouldn’t be fair to give up until we all get a chance.”
“Only if who goes next gets decided with rock-paper-scissors,” said Apple, jabbing her finger at Banana.
Everyone agreed. Banana won all four rounds of rock-paper-scissors without breaking a sweat.
REAP THE WHIRLWIND
“I’m good, I’m set,” Banana insisted the next afternoon when they gathered in the hallway. “I don’t need Bicycle to come with me. I mean, how hard could this be? I have natural cycling talent.”
The Fortune blinked, 69.6% of people who ask “How hard could it be?” provoke a change in their luck.
“A change for better or worse?” Bicycle asked.
Yes, one of those, the Fortune answered.
The other girls tried to convince Banana to practice riding a few more days before setting out on her lone adventure, but she was adamant that she was going right away. “Today is Sunday, and the ad on the public bulletin board at the convenience store says that Milosz Martial Arts offers free introductory karate classes on Sundays.”
“Do you know which side of the road you’re supposed to stay on?” Daff challenged her.
“The right side,” Banana said breezily. “Ride right, walk left. I heard you reciting that when Bicycle taught you the rules of the road.”
“How do you know where the martial arts place is?” Apple asked.
“I asked Bicycle’s bicycle. It printed me a map. And I borrowed one of Cookie’s sweatshirts so I can carry it.” Banana patted her hoodie sweatshirt’s pocket. “Look—I’m wearing my shin guards, my elbow pads, and my helmet. Nobody needs to worry about me. And things will be easier for you if Bicycle stays—four pretending to be five has got to be easier than three. Even I know the math for that checks out.”
Cookie’s forehead was furrowed. “I don’t like the idea of you out there alone.” She hunted around in her own pockets and pulled out a tangerine. “Take this. And”—she hunted some more—“this.” She gave Banana a box of raisins. “Can’t you convince her that she needs you?” Cookie asked Bicycle.
Bicycle was examining the twelve-sided object on the 713-B’s handlebars. The window cut into the object was dark. There was no telling what might be inside. She said to Banana, “This whatsis could be anything.” (Only Apple could remember its correct name, so the rest of them called it a “whatsis.”) “When your bike’s power comes on, this might start communicating with the international space station, or shooting rubber snakes at pedestrians, or putting out a frequency that calls an army of bats or something.”
“How did I never know bikes could be this cool? But enough talking! I’m wasting valuable karate time.” Banana got on her bike and started pedaling. “When I get back with my army of bats, you must start addressing me as Batgirl.”
Apple made a frustrated noise as they watched her go. “We can’t let her do this alone,” she said.
“We won’t,” said Bicycle. “I’ll follow her. Sisters have each other’s backs, right?” She couldn’t be annoyed with Banana. She knew what it felt like to be impatient to go and full of confidence that things wouldn’t be that hard. But she also knew that confidence would only take you so far. “I’m sorry to leave you here to pretend to be me again.”
“Just hope Mom and Dad don’t come talk to us like yesterday,” Apple said.
“I picked out their favorites from our Halloween candy and left a pile next to the computer,” said Cookie. “I thought it might keep them extra-interested in staying put.”
“Good thinking,” said Daff. She told Bicycle, “Go after Batgirl. Just in case this happened, I wrote a script on how the three of us would act like the five of us. How hard could it be to do that?”
“I’m going,” said Bicycle. “But let’s stop using the question ‘How hard could it be?’ for now.”
Banana was farther ahead than Bicycle expected her to be.
She does have natural cycling talent, the Fortune observed. She has the makings of a racer. She is fearless about her speed.
Bicycle could tell from her sister’s posture that she was drinking in the delight of moving fast under her own power. She thought about her bike-racing friend Zbig, who on their trip across the country had told her, “The fastest cyclists are able to turn off the parts of their brain that know we have no wings. When we are pushing toward the finish line, we tell ourselves we can fly.”
Bicycle was glad Mom and Dad couldn’t see their two girls right now, both flying down the street.
She nearly caught up to her sister but stayed behind her and didn’t call out, not wanting to startle her. When Banana made an abrupt turn onto a dirt driveway, Bicycle followed.
This is the wrong way, the Fortune informed her. The map I printed shows the martial arts studio farther down the street.
Neither of them could go very fast on the bumpy driveway, so Bicycle decided this would be a good time to get Banana’s attention. “Hello!” she called out.
Banana twisted her head around, hit a rock, and tipped over. The shin guards and elbow pads did their job, and she was already brushing herself off by the time Bicycle caught up and asked if she was all right.
“That was my first fall of the whole ride, so I’m pretty good, I’d say,” Banana told her. “You came after me, huh?”
“Yeah. It was the sisterly thing to do,” Bicycle said. “You turned the wrong way back there, so you may want to check your map.”
“I was just doing what my bike’s whatsis told me to do,” Banana said. Bicycle saw its window was glowing with a pale purple light and showed the words TURN RIGHT in dark violet letters.
“It’s waking up, that’s great.” Bicycle chewed her bottom lip. “But if it’s giving you bad directions, that’s less great. Fortune, do you think its energy is too low or out of whack?”
We don’t make mistakes when it comes to directions. Did Banana tell it where she wanted to go?
Bicycle relayed the question, and Banana said, “All I said was I was excited to meet a real martial arts teacher. Oh my goodness, look at the cute goose. Hi, goosey!”
A big gray goose was waddling up to them, its head snaking from side to side. It seemed to be in a hurry, reminding Bicycle of the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland who was late for a very important date. It stopped reminding Bicycle of the rabbit, however, when it opened up its orange beak and hissed like a furious tea kettle.
Banana had been moving toward it. She stopped. “Whoa, goosey, we’re friendly.”
That goose may be defending its territory. Hold your bikes in front of you. We can withstand pecking that you may find painful.
“Let’s get behind our bikes!” Bicycle yelled. They did this none too soon. The goose stamped its feet, hissed louder, and then proceeded to peck the 713-B’s front wheel with manic abandon. Bicycle tried to remember if birds had teeth, because this one looked determined to rip the tire off the bike. Toothless or not, it somehow managed to make a puncture. The bike tire let out its own hiss as air started escaping. This ssss seemed to enrage the goose. It redoubled its efforts to destroy.
“What do we do now?” Banana said. The whatsis on the 713-B glowed with a new message: AT THIS TIME, A SNACK WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA.
“For us, or for the goose?” Banana asked it. “Never mind.” She pulled the tangerine out of her pocket and gave it to Bicycle, then took out the box of raisins. “I don’t know what calms the heart of vicious creatures better, so let’s try both.” Bicycle tore off a piece of the tangerine’s skin, and the tangy smell got the goose’s attention. It stopped pecking and lifted its head toward Bicycle.
“See this yummy-yum here,” she said in a singsong voice. “Much better than rubber bike tires.” She peeled off a section and tossed it behind the goose. “Go get it!”
The goose watched the tangerine slice arc through the air and plop on the ground. It turned back to the girls and squinted in a way that made Bicycle think of the actor Clint Eastwood letting someone know that this town wasn’t big enough for the both of them.
Banana ripped open the box of raisins and shook some into her hand. “How about some of nature’s candy instead?” She tossed the black nuggets in the same direction as the tangerine slice.
The goose watched the raisins hit the ground with quiet seriousness. It started swaying its neck back and forth as if it planned to hypnotize the raisins before eating them.
“Nope, no raisins for geese!” someone yelled from the house. A young man dressed in spandex exercise clothes pushed open a screen door. “Didn’t you see the sign that says PLEASE DON’T FEED THE GOOSE? He’s on a diet.”
Bicycle and Banana looked around for the sign. Banana saw it first, near a chicken coop, and pointed it out to the young man. It had been pulled down into a mud puddle and had webbed footprints on it.
The goose started to run for the raisins. The young man saw him go and dashed out the door. The man got to the raisins first, standing atop them while the goose hissed at his sneakers.
“Goose Lee is having difficulty curbing his appetite,” the man said.
“Ha!” said Banana. “His name sounds like Bruce Lee, the kung fu master.”
“That’s because Goose Lee is named after the great and honorable Master Bruce, may he never be forgotten,” the man told them. “I bought this goose to help protect my flock of chickens by chasing off predators. Then I noticed he had serious kung fu skills. I studied with the Shaolin monks in China after college, so I know serious kung fu skills when I see them. Watch Goose Lee’s lightning speed.” The man arranged himself into a fighting stance, raising his fists to chest height and planting one foot back. He accidentally uncovered a few of the raisins. The goose didn’t waste a millisecond. He drove his beak into the dirt to nab the tiny treats, tossing them back into its gullet. He gulped, dipped his head, and made a rapid-fire honking sound like he was laughing at the man.
The man shook a finger. “You know it isn’t good for you to snack between meals.”
“Sir, we’re sorry we fed your goose by mistake. We’ll get out of here so I can go to Milosz Martial Arts for my free class,” said Banana.
“You want to learn martial arts? Forget that place, it’s a rip-off. What you want to do is spend some time with Goose Lee. You’ve heard of the animal fighting styles of the Shaolin monks?”
Banana shook her head.
“Fighters learn to embody aspects of the tiger, the crane, the dragon, the praying mantis, stuff like that. Goose Lee here leaves those other critters in the dust. He’s fast, sneaky, powerful, bold, and unpredictable. He can confuse his opponents with sudden cuteness. Legend has it that Bruce Lee developed Jeet Kune Do by hanging out with a flock of particularly aggressive geese in Hong Kong.”
No legend says that about Bruce Lee, the Fortune told Bicycle. Here is a patch for the 713-B’s flat tire. It produced a glue-on patch.
Bicycle told the man, “We’ll leave your driveway, I just need a few minutes to fix the tire that Goose Lee attacked.”
“Oy,” the man said. “I’ve been trying to teach him that bikes aren’t a threat. If it makes you feel any better, he attacks cars the same way. I’ve seen him flatten a semitrailer tire.”
“What’s his best move?” Banana asked as Bicycle got busy removing the 713-B’s wheel. “He doesn’t do kicks, does he?”
“Of course he does. Flying kicks. But his best move is called Reap the Whirlwind. Goose Lee! Do your whirlwind!”
Goose Lee just glared single-mindedly at the man’s feet.
“Can you distract him for a minute while I scoop up the rest of the raisins?”
Banana was game. “Here, Goose Lee!” She waved the box of raisins. “These are nicer, no dirt on them!”
The goose snapped his head around and zeroed in on the box. He took a couple of waddling steps forward.
“‘Be water, my friend’—that’s a quote from Bruce Lee himself,” Banana told him.
The goose raised its wings as far up as they could stretch and ran at Banana, beak open, flapping and hissing like he’d swallowed a hundred rattlesnakes. Banana screamed and ran away.
“That’s Reap the Whirlwind,” said the man, picking up the raisins. “Good distraction, thanks.”
The goose continued to chase Banana around the yard.
“Don’t run!” the man said. “It makes you look like prey.”
“Can’t you call him off?” Banana yelled back, continuing to sprint.
“Goose Lee has issues with authority,” the man said.
The 713-B glowed with the words SEEK SHELTER.
“Get over here!” Bicycle told Banana, who dived behind the bikes. Bicycle held the loose wheel up in front of them like a shield.
Banana asked her bike, “Can you summon that army of bats now? Or the international space station?”
YOUR LUCK IS ABOUT TO CHANGE, the 713-B’s whatsis advised.
Bicycle was wondering which way their luck would be changing—for better or worse—when Goose Lee pecked their tire shield.
“Stop! Pecking! My! Bike!” Banana howled. She stood on her tiptoes and raised her hands above her head, mimicking the goose’s body language. She started flapping her arms and let out a vicious snake-swallowing hiss of her own.
The goose drew his neck back and paused. His bitey little brain contemplated Banana’s wild flap-hissings. Then he silently bowed his head and waddled away.
“Told you,” the man said. “Goose Lee can teach you all the moves you need. Hey, don’t go in there!”
The goose had gotten up on the porch and was using its beak to prod open the screen door. He managed to slither through the slim wedge of an opening, and the man bolted after him.
“Come back anytime for another self-defense lesson,” he said over his shoulder.
“Yeah, right,” said Bicycle. “Come on, we’ll fix the tire down near the road.” She and Banana got themselves and the Fortunes out of there. By the time the flat was fixed and they’d ridden to Milosz Martial Arts, the door was locked and the lights were off.
“Can’t believe I missed having a real karate class because of an attack goose,” Banana said morosely. “Should we just go home now or what?”
The 713-B’s whatsis glowed. AT THIS TIME, A SNACK WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA.
“This doesn’t just look like a Magic 8-Ball—I think it acts like one, too,” Banana said. “It has preset sayings that show up for different occasions. Let’s see if it can answer questions like your Fortune can. Can you go underwater?” she asked it.
YES, INDEED.
“Can you fold up small and fit in my pocket?”
NO, NOT AT ALL.
“Can you tell knock-knock jokes?”
AT THIS TIME, A SNACK WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA.
“So far, that is my favorite saying.”
The Fortune told them, Our inventor experimented with different methods of communication. He was likely inspired by the Mostly Silent Monks, whom he admired, to create a bike that communicates everything necessary through a few set phrases.
Banana read its screen and said, “The Mostly Silent Monks, huh? Aren’t they the folks you grew up with?”
“I grew up with the Mostly Silent Monks in Washington, D.C.,” said Bicycle, “but there are Mostly Silent Monasteries across the country. The Mostly Silent order is pretty famous, since they are great listeners.”
“I’d like to go to visit one someday. I’d like to do a lot of things someday.” Banana tilted her head to the side and contemplated the 713-B. “For now, we make the best of things. We snack.”
Banana pulled out the remaining raisins and split them with Bicycle. Bicycle started to nibble, while Banana threw her entire handful of raisins into her mouth at once. She snaked her head back and forth and imitated Goose Lee’s rapid-fire honking sound, which made her choke and cough. Bicycle pounded her on the back until she was able to swallow.
“I’m sorry things didn’t go the way you planned,” Bicycle said. She tried to think of something that might help salvage the experience. “Do you want to lead the way home? You can go as fast as you want.”
Banana’s face lit up. She asked her bike “What do you say? Do you feel the need for speed?”
The whatsis glowed. YES, INDEED.
WALK A DOG OR BIKE A CAT
Banana and Bicycle got back early. Their sisters still looked worn out, but less so than the day before.
Cookie said, “Daff’s script made things easier. It told us when to change personalities and where to point the camera. Her bike played background music.”
Apple said, “Mom and Dad poked their heads out of the door only once today. Luckily, Daff’s bike played this song—‘When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain’—that turned out to be from their wedding, so it distracted them into going back inside to smooch. They might be getting used to the idea of their offspring doing things without them. I think our plan of having these adventures and then telling them later that they went well is going to work.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say my ride went well,” Banana said. “We took a wrong turn, and I missed karate class. Although I guess I did learn one move.” She raised her arms above her head and flapped them, hissing and running at Daff, who screamed and ducked behind Apple. “That’s called Reap the Whirlwind. It’s kind of terrifying, isn’t it? Maybe it’ll be my secret weapon.”
“I thought you had a map,” Cookie said. “How did you take a wrong turn?”
Banana answered, “My bike’s whatsis glowed purple and told me to go a different way.” She frowned at the 713-B and asked it, “Why did you tell me to turn down that driveway?”
