The Orphan (16 page)

‘Adam,’ Tommy says, in a solemn voice. ‘You know he’s going to ghost your bike, right? He’ll fucking do it. He’s an animal.’

Adam can only nod, confused, playing along. He senses he is missing something here, but he doesn’t want to admit it now and look like a fool. And, anyway, who is he to tell Darren Lynwood how to ride a bike? If he tells Darren to stop now, he will look like a pussy and they will never let him ride with them again.

‘Look, look at him go,’ Ryan says, pointing.

They all turn to watch as Darren pedals the Huffy hard down the long slope of the main trail, into a four-foot dip that shoots him a good three feet high on the other side, sailing him another fifteen feet across the track before the balding cheap blue tires touch down. He pedals hard again, then makes a sharp left turn and climbs another hill, six or eight feet tall, and Adam thinks he’s going to soar out of the top and disappear over the other side.

Instead, Darren reaches the top and plants one foot, as if he were riding a bowl or a half-pipe, and kicks the bike up in a tabletop while keeping the tip of his right toe on the ground. The Huffy swings horizontal and holds itself outside of gravity for a moment before swooping back down under Darren’s legs with effortless grace.

‘Are you gonna ghost it?’ Ryan hollers across the field as Darren speeds back toward them.

Darren shrugs, looks at Adam.

Adam is thrilled to see Darren Lynwood shredding it up on his bike and he waves his hand in a circle, go go go!

Darren’s face sharpens with concentration, he pushes the bike up to high speed, crouching as he comes barreling at them. The angle of his approach shifts slightly to Adam’s right, and then all of a sudden he jumps up, legs spread, releasing the bike. For a moment he seems to hover like a boy bouncing on a trampoline, limbs thrown in all directions, and the bike flies away from him, rolling in a perfect straight line.

Darren brings his legs together and lands at a trot, jogging down the trail as if all the fun is over and he’s not even really interested in what happens now.

Adam’s Huffy cruises along without a rider, centrifugal force holding it upright, even as it bumps over small rocks and dirt clods, and at last Adam understands the meaning of a ghost ride. Because it really does look that way, like a ghost is riding his bike. The pedals continue to rotate a few times before the freewheel kicks in, and the surprise of it, his bike, it could be any bike, whistling along the trail with nobody on it, is pretty damn funny.

They’re all laughing, including Adam, though the weird rush of it is winding up inside his belly like he is falling, and his laughter subsides before everyone else’s.

Adam runs a few steps after his errant bicycle, then slows knowing he won’t get there in time to stop what’s happening.

The handlebars jerk this way and that as the front wheel meets various forms of resistance, but it is still moving at running speed when it reaches the edge of the ravine, the wheels turn in midair, and the bike flies like it is part of a ghost Evel Knievel stunt over the Snake River Canyon.

Adam wonders if it might make it to the other side.

The Huffy tips sharply, going hard endo into the ravine, the front wheel snagging on a larger rock before it somersaults crazily and smashes its way down to a spectacularly hairy wipeout. The other guys are laughing like maniacs, and Adam understands why, it was funny, seeing his hunk of junk bike wreck itself, because you could imagine some clown kid going down with it, getting all mangled like Wile E. Coyote, and wipeouts like that are hilarious on TV.

But by the time Adam slips and slides his way to the bottom of the ravine, gashing his palm on a jagged rock and skinning both knees as he collapses at the bottom, when he sees that the front end of his frame has snapped off at the head tube and one of his wheels is shaped like a taco, he is no longer laughing. He is crying.

He doesn’t care about the Huffy. He hated the bike anyway.

Adam is crying because he is already picturing his father’s red screaming face as he drags the bike up his driveway. He can hear his dad yelling, spittle flying from his thick scarred lips. He can already feel the whiplash at being yanked off his feet, the pummel of his father’s fists for being so careless with his bike. He cries because he will not get another bike for a long time, and that is all he will think about while he sits at home in his bedroom for the next six weeks, taken out of school because his mom won’t let his teachers see his broken collarbone and his two black eyes.

But more than any of that, Adam cries because his dad will be right. This is not Darren Lynwood’s fault, or Tommy’s or Ryan’s.

It’s his own fault. For being a stupid loser of a kid who thought he could be cool for a day and obviously didn’t know any better.

Beth waited until seven-thirty before going to look for Darren. Actually, she knew damn well where he was. She’d heard him slip from bed at around two in the morning, which meant he had been in the shop for going on eight hours. She wanted to give him the benefit of her patience, but enough was enough.

Until the past few weeks, she had never resented his bike collection or the money and space he dedicated to it. But there was no denying it now. He was hiding, running away, becoming someone she knew less and less each day. His moods had become exaggerated, feeling on top of the world with the family on the mall, concerned about nothing during the day, then plunging into a funk every night. Whatever was happening out there in the shop, it was unhealthy. Bad for him, for her, for all of them.

She went out the back door, across the patio and over the acre of grass in need of mowing, half expecting to find the door to his little hideout locked. She imagined him lost in the corner of the shop, covered in bicycle grease, having a nervous breakdown. Or maybe just gone, vanished, his altar to youth grown powerful enough to have sucked him back to the 80s, the way Neverland had summoned Peter and Wendy.

The door was unlocked, however. Inside, she was surprised to find the music on, tuned to Darren’s favorite satellite station, First Wave, playing The Police’s ‘Driven to Tears’. She called to him.

‘Hello? Honey? Darren?’

But he didn’t answer and she couldn’t see him through the office wall’s glass window. She entered the showroom and still couldn’t locate him. Annoyed, she marched over to the shelf holding his stack of audio equipment and turned the power off. Silence cut across the room like a slap, but still he did not reveal himself.

‘Darren, are you in here?’

Well, obviously not. But then why had he left the music on, the lights on, and – she noticed as she made her way to end of the showroom – left the back door open? He was usually obsessive about locking the door, setting the alarm, even if he was returning to the house for half an hour to make himself lunch.

Beth experienced a wave of cold apprehension. Her senses heightened and reality seemed to warp at the edges the way it could on the verge of a terrible discovery. She pushed the screen door open with a creak and stepped onto the concrete porch, scanning the very end of the yard.

He wasn’t out here, either.

Her anger was mostly gone now, replaced by outright fear. Something awful had happened to him, she was certain. She turned back, intending to call his cellphone from the shop’s extension, and pulled the screen door shut with a bang that set her nerves a little higher on edge, if that were possible.

‘Oh, God!’

Darren was in the corner of one of the aisles, between shelves. She hadn’t seen him on her first pass because she had been staring at the open back door to her left, not this aisle on the right. And because he was curled into a ball on the floor, beside an open cardboard box filled with plastic bicycle seats. He looked like a child nestled in his crib, one hand under his head, and she was surprised he wasn’t sucking his thumb.

‘Darren?’ she said. What if he’s… no, he’s not dead. But this wasn’t really something as simple as sleeping, was it? ‘Darren! Honey, wake up!’

He didn’t move.

She hurried over and kneeled at his side. He was dressed in his fleece jacket, a filthy pair of Levi’s jeans, and his old blue canvas Vans. The shoes were muddy, the jeans wet in places, and torn at the knees, the skin inside the torn fabric bloody and dirty. His was not the face of a man at rest, sleeping peacefully. His jaw was clenched, his eyes tight, and when she placed a hand on his shoulder she realized he was trembling in rigid little spasms. Not from cold, but fear.

‘Darren, wake up. Wake up, honey,’ she repeated, shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Darren, come on —’

Then she smelled it. His wet jeans. A darkened oval around the crotch and along the lower thigh. He’d wet himself. Oh, Jesus. This was not okay. What could have done this to him? The word ‘seizure’ popped into her mind. His nostrils were flaring, his breathing was labored, as if someone had clamped a hand over his mouth. He could be swallowing his tongue right now.

‘Darren!’ she yelled, shaking him harder. ‘Darren! Goddamnit, talk to me!’

His body went perfectly still. His eyes opened and continued to stare beyond her, vacant, unresponsive. He did not ‘snap awake’ or bolt upright, but gradually he came back, his pupils shrinking. He blinked a few times, raised his head from the floor, had a quick look around to ascertain his surroundings. Finally, he smiled at her rather innocently. This was not the expression of a man waking from a nightmare.

‘Hey,’ he said, then swallowed. ‘Hi, is everything all right?’

‘No! Are you hurt? What happened?’

He sat up with ease, blinking, and stood. ‘Did I scare you?’

Beth gaped at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, wiping his hands over his thighs. He noticed the wet spot at his crotch, then looked up quickly at her like a child who’d been caught being naughty.

‘Honey,’ she said. ‘What’s happening to you?’

Darren walked past her, all the way to the fridge to retrieve a bottle of water. He offered her one and she declined. He moved tiredly to one of the barstools beside his workbench and sat, brushing at the scrapes along his knees.

‘I met the kid,’ he said.

He took her through the whole story, or what he promised was the whole story. Adam, a ten-year-old loner of a boy. Darren and his friends at the bike park. He spoke clearly, in vivid detail, so much so that she could almost see it too. The inadvertent bullying that led them to trash the kid’s bike. It was a sad story, and when he got to the end, his voice cracked with guilt and shame.

‘That’s a terrible dream,’ she said. ‘I can see why you’re upset.’

‘It wasn’t a dream. I’m absolutely sure of that.’

‘All right. What was it?’

He looked her in the eyes, speaking evenly. ‘It was awful, one of the most uncomfortable, freakish, terrifying things I’ve ever felt. I was wide awake the whole time. After we fooled around, you fell asleep immediately, but I didn’t sleep all night, Beth. I’m sure of it. One minute I was lying there with you on top of me, the next I was gone. Somewhere else. In daylight. I wasn’t myself anymore. I was inside him. Or he was inside me.’

He looked down, perhaps in shame or embarrassment to admit such a thing.

‘Inside who?’ she said.

‘Adam. The boy.’

‘I see.’

‘No, you don’t. Beth, I’m telling you, it was an out-of-body experience. I was not there, I had no awareness of myself, the way we do in a dream. I was literally inside this kid, except that’s not even right, because I didn’t know I was there and he didn’t know I was there. I saw everything he saw, felt everything he felt, all of it.’

‘So, you dreamed you were someone else —’

‘It wasn’t a dream.’

‘Okay, you imagined you were someone else.’

‘Look at my pants!’ he shouted, pulling at the holes in his jeans, exposing his scraped knees. He turned his hands over, revealing another gash inside his palm. ‘My body hurts. My legs feel like I rode ten miles. I was gone, Beth. Gone.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘This is some form of sleepwalking?’

He slumped. ‘I don’t know. But here’s the hellish part. I was there too, Darren Lynwood was there, but my awareness of him was… bound up inside of Adam. The other Darren, he was as real as you are now, and he was me at age twelve. I saw everything that happened. What I did. Twelve-year-old Darren ruined Adam’s life.’

‘You were just a kid,’ she said. ‘You didn’t know any better. You couldn’t have known what would – no, you don’t know what happened to him after that day, when he went home.’

‘I think I do know,’ he said. ‘I had everything. A spoiled rich kid with six bikes by the time I was twelve. The only child. My parents bought me whatever I wanted. Adam had nothing. Adam Burkett, that was his name. I haven’t thought about him in thirty years, but I remember now. We treated him like a punching bag. He followed us everywhere. He worshipped us. He tried to fit in and we trashed his bike and his father beat the grease out of him for it. Put him in the hospital, or worse. What kind of person does that make me?’

Beth walked to him and held his face in her hands. ‘It doesn’t make you anything. It didn’t make you anything besides who you are. It was a horrible thing to do and a mistake, but you couldn’t have known how his father would react. You didn’t assault him. You were screwing around, it got out of hand, and you probably spent the next five years trying to make up for it.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ he said.

‘You were twelve! Kids are awful, honey. From the time I was thirteen to sixteen, I was a royal bitch. My friends and I inflicted more psychological damage gossiping and calling each other fat sluts than ruining some kid’s bike ever could.’

‘It’s more than the bike. More than some broken bones. This kid, something bad happened to him, Beth. Something very bad. I know it.’

‘Here’s what I know,’ Beth said, stepping back to cross her arms. ‘I know the man I married, and he has a conscience. You’ve obviously carried this around for decades, and for whatever reason’ – she paused, gesturing at the bikes on every side of her – ‘maybe because of these bikes, something reminded you of him. You have all the bikes, don’t you? Because you have been successful and you’ve earned it and you’re passionate about bikes. But now all you can think about is the kid who didn’t have it so good. All of a sudden this… this tumor of guilt swells up inside you and you’re eating yourself up because of something that happened thirty years ago. You still feel bad, but Darren, honey? It’s ancient history. It’s not who you are.’

He seemed to sway on the barstool for a moment. ‘The dreams about the fire, the feeling I got when I finished building the Cinelli, the cut on my thumb. It’s all part of something bigger. Has to be.’

Beth nodded. ‘Was that his bike? Did Adam own a Cinelli?’

Darren shook his head. ‘He was poor. He lived in a trailer park. His father beat him senseless over the loss of a worthless K-Mart bike. Even back in 1981, that Cinelli would have cost over five hundred dollars. No way.’

Exasperated, Beth threw her hands up. ‘What do you want me to say? You’ve been sinking into despair ever since we moved back to Boulder. Maybe it’s being here that’s opened this all up for you. If that’s the case, I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have pushed so hard for us to move here. And I’m sorry about the nightmares, the bad memories, I really am. But we’re here. We have a life, and it’s a good life. I need you to be a part of it. Raya needs you to be a part of it. You have a family here and it’s not a gang of twelve-year-olds running around town on bikes.’

‘He’s doing it to all of us…’ he mumbled.

‘What?’

‘Raya’s texts. And my mom. He’s doing it to all of us.’

‘It? What’s “it”?’

‘Don’t you see?’

‘No, I don’t see. Why don’t you tell me what you see?’

‘His father didn’t abuse him. He didn’t just go to the hospital that day. His father… I got him killed that day, Beth. Adam’s dead.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Oh, but I do.’

‘Fine, why don’t you call the pol —’

‘Mom? Mom!’ Raya called from outside. She appeared in the office, swinging around the corner and sizing them up, taking in the vibe between them. ‘Oh. Sorry. Is this a bad time?’

‘Yes,’ Darren said.

‘No,’ Beth said. ‘I’m coming. Wait for me in the car.’

‘Oooo-kay.’ Raya gave her dad a small wave and disappeared.

Darren stood and hitched up his pee-stained pants. ‘Where are you two headed today?’

‘I have some work to do down at the center. They need me all day, so I’m dropping Raya at yoga. Chad’s going to pick her up and she’ll call you later to let you know where they are, what time she’s coming back.’

‘I’ll check in with her,’ he said.

‘And I’ll check in on you,’ Beth said.

‘I’m sorry I gave you such a scare.’ He moved to hug her but she put a hand up to stop him.

‘I want you to talk to somebody. Today, if possible.’

He hesitated, then nodded. ‘Probably for the best. Be nice to understand. There’s gotta be something I can do about this before you have to start strapping me to the bed.’

‘Will you make some calls or do you need me to do it?’

‘I’m not afraid of doctors.’

She rewarded him with a quick hug. ‘Maybe this is a bad idea. Going to work. I should stay home with you.’

‘No. Raya’s waiting on you and I don’t want her thinking this is turning into something serious, because it isn’t.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

She wasn’t, but she left him for the day anyway.