My smile takes on a life of its own. “Hey, Walt. I’m Mim.”
Nodding, he holds out a dewy hand. I shake it—and suddenly, space and time shift. It’s the summer before third grade. A new family has just moved in across the street. They have a boy, Ricky, about my age. We have the same bike, a kick-ass neon Schwinn—qualification enough to become fast friends. His speech is slurred and his mind slow, but he walks fast. Every step is intentional, quick-footed, as if he’s always late for something. We hang out that whole summer. And things are good. And then school starts. Ty Zarnstorff, in front of everyone on the playground, says, “Hey, Mim, if you love Ricky the Retard so much, why don’t you marry him?” Everyone laughs. I’m not sure why, but I know enough to know it’s not nice. So I punch Ty, breaking his nose and earning a one-day suspension. That night at dinner, I ask Mom what retarded means, and if Ricky is a retard. She says, “Retard is a mean word used by mean people. Ricky has what is called Down syndrome, and all it means is that he’s a little slower than most.” A few minutes later, Dad goes to the bathroom. Mom takes a bite, clears her throat. “There are worse fates than being slow-witted,” she says. “You broke that other kid’s nose, right? The one who made fun of Ricky?” I say, “Yes ma’am, I did.” “Good,” she says, taking another bite.
“Hey, hey, you okay?”
I am pulled back to reality by a kid currently stuffing the pocket of his jeans with an empty Mountain Dew bottle. Exactly the sort of thing Ricky might do.
“You do the Dew, Walt?”
He laughs a laugh for the ages, and my young heart damn near melts all over the side of the road.
“What are you doing?” he asks, shifting focus to his Rubik’s Cube.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—what. Are. You. Doing?”
I might just never stop smiling. “Well, I’m . . . taking an accidental nap under a highway overpass, I guess.”
“No,” he says, hell-bent on solving the cube. “I mean as a part of big things.”
Walt’s statement is vague at best, gibberish at worst. But here’s the thing: I understand exactly what he means.
“I’m trying to get to Cleveland,” I say. It’s not a lie, but it certainly doesn’t answer the spirit of the question. “By Labor Day, if possible.”
“Why?”
Traffic is pretty much at a standstill under this bridge. If I’m gonna do this, now’s the time. I begin sizing up drivers for the best prospective ride, by which I mean, someone who doesn’t look like an ax murderer.
“Reasons are hard, man.”
“Why?” he asks again.
I hate leaving this kid by the side of the road, but surely he has someone with him. “Walt, are you with a friend, or . . . your mom, or something?”
“No. She’s with the white pillows. In the casket.”
I turn toward him. He looks serious enough.
“Hey, look,” he says, holding up his Rubik’s Cube, now complete. “All done. Done good. Good and done.”
“Walt—where do you live?”
He throws his head back, messes up the cube, as if he doesn’t trust himself not to peek. “New Chicago,” he says. “Do you like shiny things? I have lots of shiny there. And a pool.” He looks me up and down. “You’re a pretty dirty person right now. You could use a pool. Also, there’s ham.”
I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am 100 percent intrigued.
“You wanna come with me?” asks Walt.
I push my bangs out of my eyes and slide my backpack on. Mere feet away, traffic inches along, luring me with a steady hum of engines. “I don’t think I can, buddy. I’d like to, but—”
Without a word, the kid tears up, turns, and walks away.
Watching him go, I can’t explain the why, but I know the what—I feel like a sack of shit.
A Subaru (with a plastic bubble attached to the top like a giant fanny pack) rolls to a stop in the traffic; its passenger-side window rolls down.
“You need a ride?”
Inside, a nice-looking woman checks her rearview mirror, then smiles at me. Her son, presumably, sits in the back seat, engrossed in some handheld video game.
“Traffic’s starting to move, hon,” she says. “In or out.”
I open the passenger door and hop in. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She lets her foot off the brake, and creeps slowly through the heavy traffic.
We pass a derelict white building on the right. Off-white, really. The offest white there ever was.
“You traveling for Labor Day?” she asks.
I set my JanSport between my feet. “Something like that.”
“You and everybody else.” She points through the windshield. “Long weekends, people really come out of the woodwork, you know?”
I nod politely. From the back seat, her kid grunts, mutters something about how dying is lame. I’ll assume he means a video-game death.
“So,” she says, “where’re you from?”