The Bubble Wrap Boy (4 page)

S
o while we're on the subject of extreme physical pain, let me tell you about the walk of shame.

Every school has its own variation, whether it's having your head held down a flushing toilet or being buried to the neck in an ant-infested long jump pit, but ours is just that bit special. In the true spirit of the digital age, it's got that special flash-mob feel to it.

I knew I'd be doing
the walk
after the play debacle. It was inevitable. I'd done it for far less in the past. What I didn't know was when.

There have been times when they've toyed with me, let a few days pass, enough to plant a seed of hope that maybe, for once, they'd forgotten. They never did, though. Once that shoot popped its head tentatively out of the ground, that was when they took the most delight in stamping on it, on me.

Cell phones don't help. Neither does Facebook. Once a post goes up, notifying people that a walk is taking place, it only takes minutes for word to get around. No one ever “likes” the post or dares to comment; that would only give the teachers the evidence needed to step in and bust heads.

Instead, students simply pass the word along and show up, even if it's to watch rather than participate.

The walk
isn't a complicated form of torture: you don't need a pair of pliers or an electrical outlet nearby; in fact, you don't even need a big number of bodies to inflict it. I've done the walk with only four people involved. Doesn't mean it hurts any less. The shorter the tunnel, the harder they tend to kick.

You know when the walk's upon you. And not just because of the people lining up: you can sense it, smell the anticipation. I've always imagined it's like in Roman times with the gladiators. Except then, the crowd was seeing a spectacle, a competition. If they wanted to lend me a whip or spear, then maybe we could make the comparison, but as it stands, forget it.
The walk
makes David versus Goliath look like a fair fight.

Once the buzz hits you, you know what's coming. Bodies step forward from all sides, forming a corridor about double your width. Wide enough to walk down, narrow enough to be threatening. They pace inward in unison, with almost military intent, adding to the menace.

And that's it—once the corridor is in place, all you have to do is walk down it. Simple enough until the legs start to fly and you're leaping like the hero in some crappy 1980s video game.

People will try to tell you that there are strategies for surviving the walk unscathed, but I can tell you, as its most experienced subject, that they don't work.

I've tried them all. Sprinting, jumping, hopping—I've even considered cartwheeling in a moment of sheer panic. All of them (except the last one) sound fine in theory, but I can guarantee you that at some point a flailing leg is going to catch you. And once it does? Game over. Cover your vitals, stay on your feet, and get through it the best you can. Oh, and never show them you're hurt. Weep on the inside only.

I've seen it ruin kids. Reduce heroes to puddles in the space of ten pairs of legs. But not me: they can kick as hard and as long as they want, but they'll never break me. I won't give them the satisfaction. I feed off it, store up every bit of energy they're wasting for my own means.

Because once I find that thing? That elusive thing that separates me from them? Well, they'll know about it. I'll be so superior to them that I won't need to kick down in their direction. I'll be flying so high, I'd never be able to reach. And more importantly, they won't reach me.

“S
pecial Fried Nice,” I sighed into the phone, trying to sound friendly, even though the phrase made me want to hack out my own tongue with a splintered chopstick.

It's bad enough fulfilling every racial stereotype possible by being a Chinese kid who lives above a takeout place, without the takeout having the lamest name known to man.

I had no idea what was wrong with the Blue Lotus, as it was called when Dad bought it, but Mom had been insistent, thinking we had to stamp our own identity on the place.

She said that the old owners had been a laughingstock, known for everything being battered within an inch of its life, regardless of whether it was edible.

So when she saw a salon off Newland Ave called Curl Up and Dye, she thought we should copy their idea, find a clever play on words, something people would remember every time they felt hungry.

Special Fried Nice was the final choice. It was a toss-up between that and Wokever You Want. Both sounded lame to me, but hey, I was just their goggle-wearing, fireworks-starved delivery boy of a son. What did I know?

It was all right for Mom. She wasn't the one picking up the phone every night, listening to the snickers as I took the orders, wondering if the dumb name was enough to see me doing
the walk
by nine a.m. the next day. I never ruled it out.

Mom spent as little time in the takeout as possible. It's not like she thought it was beneath her; it was just too chaotic, a health and safety nightmare that she couldn't bear to stand by and watch. Instead, for as long as I could remember, her focus in life had been night school and a multitude of new, exciting, and frankly often bizarre courses.

Mom was addicted to further education, you see. It almost didn't matter what the course was, she'd give it a whirl.

Flower arranging.

Basket weaving.

Pottery.

Carpentry.

Bricklaying.

Origami.

There was no topic too macho or girly, no subject too laborious for her to try. She'd done them all, but the weird thing was she had nothing to show for it, no certificates or diplomas, and even more weirdly, no examples of what she'd made. In all the years she'd been going, she had never brought home so much as a papier-mâché ashtray.

I found it strange; of course I did. I wanted to find a way of asking her why without looking smug or snarky, but she was so passionate about each of her courses, never missing a single night of lessons, that I never did. It seemed cruel.

Maybe she just wasn't good at them, too embarrassed to bring anything home. And anyway, her being out three nights a week suited me. I could get away with more when Dad was at work, even if the kitchen remained out of bounds. (All those knives and hot oil? Dad's life was barely worth living as it was. If she came home and found even a scratch on me, he'd be in the next batch of frozen chow mein.)

Taking orders over the phone, armed with a TV that could pick up
only
the origami channel, had a shelf life.

An hour a night was all I could take. Any period longer than that and I had folded everything in sight into a paper swan. Menus, newspapers, customers if they stood still long enough. It was at moments like that that I thanked the heavens for the one victory I'd scored over Mom in all her years of fussing.

It was a small triumph, but one I celebrated wildly. It was my equivalent of winning the World Cup and Nobel Peace Prize combined.

Two years ago, after months of nagging, pleading, and spectacular crocodile-tearing, I'd finally convinced her to let me make home deliveries for Special Fried Nice. And even better than that, I'd persuaded her to buy me a vehicle to make them on.

This was monumental news. Bikes had been off-limits for years after I'd fallen off mine at age six, taking an inch of skin off my knee in the process.

After a lengthy spell waiting in the emergency room, where the doctors first laughed, then shouted when she refused to leave without an X-ray, the bike had been stashed in the shed behind a dozen broken deep-fat fryers, never to be ridden again.

As a result, the day when my new bike arrived should've been better than any Christmas Day EVER.

In the history of humankind.

Unfortunately, it became the sort of day you want to erase from your head with a concrete block.

Instead of a gleaming, sleek mountain bike, with a lightweight aluminum frame and Shimano gears, I was faced with a 1970s lead-framed TRIKE, complete with basket and littered with more lights than an airport runway.

Mom mistook my tears for happiness, pulling me into her as I shook with the pain of the humiliation ahead.

As if that weren't enough, she pulled the bonus presents out too. A wide array of fluorescent clothing that had been rescued from a five-hundred-pound crossing guard, and a horse-riding helmet with a flashlight taped to the top of it.

I died inside.

She beamed with pride as I stood before her like the most luminous, ridiculous star in the sky.

“Now, there are rules to this delivery business. You only deliver in the hours of daylight. Any orders taken after seven p.m. will be handled by someone else.”

“But it doesn't get dark until nine!”

“It's seven or nothing.”

“But I've got all these lights.”

“And you'll use them all, and your safety gear, on
every
delivery you make.”

“What?”

“EVERY delivery, Charlie.”

“But I'll blind every motorist in town,” I pleaded. “People will stop and stare. They'll ridicule me. They'll take photos thinking I'm a low-flying UFO.”

“You'll be safe. That's my only concern and my final word.”

I shot Dad a pleading look that he deflected with his standard
She's your mom
look. I made a note to think up some kind of revenge, then grimaced as the riding helmet was wedged onto my skull.

“Well, go on, then. Give it a whirl.”

“Maybe later, Mom. It'll be dark in four hours. Maybe I shouldn't risk it.”

“A quick run will be fine, I'm sure.” Her face, though, said otherwise.

I pulled my leg over the crossbar, placed my feet on the pedals, and pushed.

Nothing.

I tried again, and again, but nothing moved. It wasn't until I stood on the pedals and strained like a herniated hippo that the chain finally gave and I shunted forward, the three wheels turning a whole revolution before stopping again.

A group of small children on the other side of the road had laughed and pointed. It felt like the first step toward the ultimate embarrassment, and it was courtesy of my own flesh and blood.

Turns out I was right too. And wrong at the same time.

Because the Trike of Doom did eventually, after two years of mental and physical pain, actually lead me down a road other than Humiliation Street.

It was an exciting road. Different from the cul-de-sacs I usually wheeled down. This road was exciting and unexpected. A superhighway with only one signpost, which read simply
POPULARITY, THIS WAY.