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church to watch Dad work on the furnace, a recalcitrant coal-burning monstrosity in need of occasional rehabilitation. We were halfway down the hill to the church, zipping along at a good pace, when my shoelace got hung in the chain. I couldn’t pedal forward because the lace was wrapping around the center shaft and binding up. I couldn’t pedal backward because the bike had coaster brakes. I had finally figured out that I had to hang my foot out to the side and turn the gears to push the lace through when I heard a yell.
    While I had been preoccupied with the physics of shoelace-from-gear removal, I had traveled the half block to the corner, gaining speed all the while. A flash of tiger skin, black skin, and large white eyes passed under me as I mowed M down and lurched into the street—just in time, as luck would have it, to bounce off the side of a passing mail truck turning right. The rear bumper of the truck snagged the front tire of Heidi’s bike and dragged me back up the half block to the point where my troubles had begun before the driver realized he had a bike attached to him like a lamprey on a shark. He screeched to a halt, jumped out, and ran back to where I sat, dazed. I was still sitting astride the bike, which leaned toward the front of the truck, held up at a forty-five-degree angle by the bumper. I stared at him, my attention riveted to a patch on his shirt that said, “Dotson.”
    “What’s all this, then?” he demanded.
    I was roused from my stupor and leaped backward from the bike. “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” I shouted.
    “What?” Dotson leaped backward too.
    “Heidi will kill me! Look at the bike!” The front tire was shaped like a paramecium, the spokes splayed out like cilia.
    “Look at you!” he responded.
    I looked down and leaped backward again. “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!”
    “Now what?” Dotson asked as he echoed my leap.
    “Mom will kill me! Look at my shoe! I just got these yesterday!” My left shoe looked like it did when I left the store. My right shoe looked like Old Glory after a particularly rough night of shelling. It was in a state unlikely to inspire the most ardent patriot when viewed by the dawn’s early light. Viewed by the afternoon’s light, it was appalling.
    A lady, looking like she was constructed entirely of feather pillows cinched up in an apron, scudded from the house behind us. “Oh my goodness! I saw the whole thing. Are you OK?” she screeched in a flurry of agitation, practically running a figure eight around Dotson and me, her hands pressed to her cheeks, fingers splayed like overstuffed sausages in a pan of dough.
    If only her voice had been as soft as she appeared to be. Instead, it had much in common with the screeching of metal on metal I had heard while the truck was transforming Heidi’s bike into modern art. She could have had the same effect with a lot less effort if she had just pounded nails into my ears. I covered my ears with my hands.
    Dotson thrust his hand in my direction. “He’s crazy. He keeps raving about his bike and his shoes.”
    Mrs. Puffy-Screechy looked at me holding my head. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! He hit his head! I must call the ambulance.” She veered toward the house and screeched, “Heathcliff! Call an ambulance. He hit his head.” Then she spiraled in my general direction, grabbed me, and steered me through the gate to the porch. “Here, you must sit down and don’t alarm yourself. No time for hot tea, but I can bring you some lemonade.” She disappeared into the house, squeaking, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness.”
    I looked around, wondering how I ended up on the porch swing. Dotson produced a little cigar with a white plastic mouthpiece and paced beside the truck, trailing smoke like the Little Engine That Rather Wouldn’t. He stopped occasionally to gesticulate toward the bike and ask “Now what?” to nobody in particular.
    Mrs. Puffy-Screechy reappeared, thrust a jelly glass into my hand,