The Book of One Hundred Truths (5 page)

“I think that’s Granda’s,” Jocelyn said.

It was. I squeezed the hand brake on the oversized three-wheeler and remembered that when I was little, my Granda used to put me in the rectangular wicker basket in front of him and pedal me around Port Harbor. He used to sing, too. He sang songs from old movies, from
Oklahoma!
and
South Pacific.
He had a soft, deep voice—the kind you could feel inside your chest. He probably couldn’t pedal the trike anymore. And I hadn’t heard him sing in years.

I shoved the grill and the hose out of the way and dragged the trike into the sunlight. “I bet you’d fit in that basket,” I said. I found a bike pump and started pumping up the tires. I plucked some spiders’ eggs from the spokes.

Jocelyn looked skeptical.

“Look,” I said. “We can sit here dusting and doing laundry all day, or we can go exploring. Which sounds more interesting to you?”

I helped her climb up. Her thighs weren’t much bigger than my wrists and easily slipped through the wicker openings. “We aren’t going very far, are we?” she asked.

“We’re on an island.” I pushed the trike onto the sidewalk. “There isn’t very far to go.”

“Thea, wait. I don’t have a seat belt.”

A seat belt
? I found a yellow bungee cord hanging on a peg by the garage door. “Here. This’ll be perfect. Some people even use them in cars, they’re so safe.”

“Really? Do they?”

“Sure. Would I lie to you?”

Jocelyn fastened the bungee to the wicker basket, stretching it like a belt across her waist.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

She straightened her headband and nodded. “Let’s ride.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

P
ort Harbor was small, and there was almost no traffic. As soon as we rode away from the house, I began to feel free, like a dog whose owner had unfastened its leash and let it run.

“What are we going to explore?” Jocelyn shouted. She looked like a statue on the front of an old-fashioned ship.

I was pedaling too hard to answer. I had to stand up because the trike was heavy. Wiry yellow strands of Jocelyn’s hair kept floating or blowing into my mouth.

“We’re going past the museum,” Jocelyn announced, like a miniature tour guide. “And there’s the fish store.” She pointed at a peeling wooden sign:
LANDVIK’S FRESH FISH
. “I went there with Nenna.”

I plopped down behind her on the vinyl seat. We rode past the Port Harbor Fire and Rescue, past the Knitting Niche, the Seaway Hotel, and Francisco’s Pizza. I turned right and headed into the breeze. “Can you tell where I’m taking us?” I asked.

“No.” Jocelyn’s legs were dangling on either side of the wide front tire like pale white fruit.

About eight blocks later, we glided to a stop.

“Look over there,” I said. “See the ramp? We made it all the way to the boardwalk.” About twenty-five yards ahead of us was a mile-long stretch of rides and bumper cars, fun houses, spin-paint booths, Skee-Ball, cotton candy, caramel corn, and a Ferris wheel with colored compartments that swayed and revolved above the ocean. “Get out and help me push,” I said.

Jocelyn scratched her arm. “I’m not allowed to go to the boardwalk.”

I could smell the pizza, the fudge, the cheesesteaks frying on a dozen grills. “You’re not
allowed
?” I asked. “Why not?”

She tried to turn around in her seat, but the yellow bungee cord held her in place. “They only sell junk food up there. I don’t eat junk food. Besides, there are pickpockets. And people who try to steal your money.”

“Pickpockets?” My legs felt like rubber. I got off the trike and moved aside for a woman with a stroller. “Do you have any diamond rings with you?”

“No.”

“Do you think someone is going to force you to eat a bag of candy?”

Jocelyn shook her head, then pushed her nest of yellow hair behind her ears. “I can only come here with an
adult,
” she said. “That’s the rule.”

“I’m twelve and a half,” I pointed out.

Up ahead I could see a juggler on a unicycle, and a mime with a white-painted face holding an oversized bouquet of helium balloons. I loved the boardwalk, even the parts of it I was too old for. I loved the smell of salt water and frying food, the
pit-a-ping
of the pinball machines, and the hollow thump of the boards beneath my feet. I looked at my cousin. I already knew she had a price. “I’ll tell you one more thing about my notebook.”

She licked her lips. “Two things.”

“Don’t be greedy.” I started pushing the trike up the ramp. “Okay. I’m going to write one hundred things in it,” I said. “Exactly one hundred.”

“Why exactly one hundred?”

We reached the top of the ramp. “Because when I get to a hundred…” I was searching for words. “Then the book will be finished.”

“And then what? Will you let people read it?”

“No. But I might discover something,” I said.

“What will you discover?”

“I don’t know yet.” I climbed back on the trike. We rode past the haunted house, the taffy-pulling machine, the tattoo parlor, the photo booth, the house of mirrors, half a dozen small shops, and the arcades. Finally I coasted to a stop in the shade of a bandstand.

Jocelyn struggled to turn around. “Why are we stopping?”

“Because it’s hot up here,” I said. “And my legs are tired.”

Just ahead of us, a boy was throwing pizza crust to a crowd of seagulls. Their squeaky cries and complaints filled the air.

“I can’t believe I pedaled us all the way here and didn’t bring any money,” I said. “I’m going to die of thirst.”

A man dressed as a giant hamburger waddled toward us, hand in hand with a woman dressed as a cup of french fries.

I accepted a coupon from the human hamburger:
75 cents off any large sandwich!

“What’s that?” Jocelyn asked. In one of the arcades across from us, two girls in shorts and bathing suit tops were dancing on a metal platform that boomed out music, a series of colored lights and arrows telling them where to move their feet.

“It’s a kind of game,” I said. “I guess it’s supposed to teach you how to dance.”

“Is it fun?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it.”

The dancing girls bent their knees and swayed their hips. Five feet away from them, a woman in a uniform came out of the fudge shop with a tray of free samples, little cubes of bliss.

“Don’t your parents ever bring you here?” I asked. “You only live about an hour away.”

“My father doesn’t like the boardwalk,” Jocelyn said. “But sometimes we come in the fall. When it isn’t crowded.”

“Most of the boardwalk is closed in the fall,” I pointed out.

The boy who had been feeding his pizza crust to the seagulls was staring at our trike. He threw a final piece of crust and a bird caught it neatly in midair, then sailed away over the ocean.

“What’s that?” Jocelyn asked.

I shaded my eyes and tried to figure out what she was looking at. I saw a store selling hermit crabs, a rolling cotton candy booth, and a lemonade stand. I was desperately thirsty. I tried not to think about the ice and the juicy lemons, about the soggy swirls of sugar at the bottom of the cup. “Are you asking about the hermit crabs?”

“No. I’m asking about
her.
”

Between a frozen custard booth and the turbaned man who advertised
YOUR NAME PAINTED ON A GRAIN OF RICE
was a fortune-teller. She was sitting at a table in a narrow doorway, filing her nails. Over her head was a sign made of tiny plastic silver coins that trembled in the breeze. The shiny letters spelled
KNOW YOUR FUTURE
.

“Oh. I guess she’s a fortune-teller,” I said. “You give her five dollars and she looks at your hand, or at a crystal ball or something.” A smaller sign hanging from the edge of the table promised that Madam Carla Knows.

“Then what does she do?” Jocelyn asked.

“She probably tells you your fortune—you know, what’s going to happen to you. You probably ask her a bunch of questions and she answers them.”

“What do you usually ask her?”

“What?” I was still daydreaming about sugar and lemons. “I don’t ask her anything. I’ve never gone to her.”

“What would you ask her for if you
did
go?”

The fortune-teller had put her nail file away; she seemed to be gazing toward us. “She isn’t like Santa Claus,” I said. “You don’t ask her for stuff and wait for her to hand it over. You ask about the future. She’s supposed to know things about you.”

Jocelyn looked almost frightened. “I know what I’d ask her for,” she said.

A bell rang behind us. Two men on a double bike pedaled by. They were followed by a woman pushing an ice cream cart, a silver refrigerator on wheels. I wondered aloud if the woman might take pity on us and give us some water.

“Do you want me to buy you something?” she opened her patent leather purse.

I stared at her. “You’ve got money?”

“It’s the change from the milk.” She climbed gracefully out of the basket.

“That’s Nenna’s money,” I said. “But I guess she wouldn’t mind if we used it.”

The ice cream woman paused beside us. “Can I get you two ladies something?” Her voice was gravelly and low, and she had a mole on her face that was shaped like a comma.

“Do you have sherbet or Popsicles?” Jocelyn asked.

“You don’t want an ice cream?” I studied the pictures on the side of the cart.

“Ice cream is high-fat,” Jocelyn said.

I looked her up and down. Some of the Grummans—Celia and Ellen, in particular—had what my mother called generous figures. I liked to consider myself medium-sized. But Jocelyn was a waif. She probably weighed about forty pounds.

“Besides, I’m allergic to dairy foods,” she added.

“They’re not good for my skin. I always have to be careful.”

“You
are
always careful,” I said.

The ice cream woman turned her head and bellowed as if she were in pain:
“EEEEiiiiice creeeeeam! Get your ice-cold-eeeeeice-cream heeeeere!”

Jocelyn bought two medium lemon ices, tucking the change back into her purse, and we sat on a bench with our backs to the ocean. We peeled away the sticky paper lids and licked them. “I think we should go exploring like this every day,” she said, chopping her lemon ice with a wooden spoon. “We’ll borrow Granda’s trike and we’ll ride everywhere in Port Harbor. And we won’t tell anyone where we’re going.”

Truth #20: Not telling anyone where you’re going is incredibly stupid.

I took a huge bite of lemon ice and let it melt against the roof of my mouth. “We should have left a note,” I said. “We should have left a note for Nenna.” I took another bite of lemon ice, then pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers. The space behind my eyes was tingling: I was getting a brain freeze. “Ow.” I leaned forward on the bench. The brain freeze was creeping up into my sinuses, making me feel as if someone were ramming a pair of icicles up my nose. “Ow, ow, ow.” I pushed my fingers into my eye sockets.

“You ate too fast,” Jocelyn said. “Don’t poke your eyes. I know what to do.” She quickly stood up, put down her lemon ice, and pressed her fingertips against my temples and the bridge of my nose. Then she squeezed my head gently, smoothing my eyebrows with her thumbs.

The icicles in my nostrils were gradually melting. “Thanks,” I said. “How’d you learn to do that?”

“Close your eyes,” Jocelyn said.

I did. But then I remembered the peeling skin on her hand and I needed to see if it was touching my forehead. Was eczema contagious? Imagining my face looking like an iguana’s, I opened my eyes. Over Jocelyn’s shoulder, I saw someone who looked almost familiar: a middle-aged woman clutching an oversized purse.

“That’s weird,” I said, nudging Jocelyn aside. “That woman over there almost looks like Aunt Ellen.”

Jocelyn sat down beside me on the bench, our legs touching. The woman, dressed in a tan knee-length skirt and a flowered T-shirt—wasn’t that what Ellen had been wearing when she left the house?—looked at her watch and waved to someone. It had to be Ellen, I thought. I recognized the muscular legs beneath the hem of her skirt.

“What are they doing up here?” Jocelyn shaded her eyes.

“They?” I asked. And then I saw Celia walk toward Ellen. Our aunts stood in the sun and seemed to be arguing. Nothing new there. Ellen held out her hand and Celia dropped something into it. Something small. It glinted in the sun for half a second, and then Ellen tucked it into her purse.

“Aren’t they supposed to be at work?” Jocelyn asked. “Do you think they’re looking for us?”

“No. They couldn’t be. They don’t know we’re here.”

We watched Celia and Ellen walk away, still arguing, a crowd of people in shorts and T-shirts eventually blocking them from sight.

Jocelyn opened and closed her little purse, playing with the clasp. Open-snap, open-snap. Her lemon ice had turned into a puddle. “Now you’ll believe me,” she said. “Now you’ll believe there really is a secret.”

“I don’t believe anything,” I told her. But I had a strange feeling in my stomach, as if I had swallowed a large ball of cotton.

Open-snap. Open. “Here, do you need this? We can share it.” Jocelyn offered me a folded wet cloth in a paper pouch.

“A hand wipe?” I was amazed. “You actually carry these around with you?”

Jocelyn took the wipe out of its little square pouch and ripped it in half. “Are your hands sticky?”

They were. I took my half and wiped my hands and face.

We sat on our wooden bench in the sun, the ocean a blue and gray murmur behind us.

“I think you should write this down in your notebook,” Jocelyn said.

“That’s not what my notebook is for,” I told her. I tossed my lemon ice into the trash.

Truth #21: Maybe Ellen and Celia are up to something after all.