The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls (17 page)

When I protested, she pointed out that helmets were “legally mandatory” in Snowflake Falls. I tried to tell her that, even adjusted to its maximum size, her helmet still felt way too tight for my head. I also made an effort to explain that she was putting me in a very embarrassing situation. Of course, Charlotte wanted to know what was so embarrassing.

“Oh, nothing at all,” I replied. “It is perfectly dignified for a fifteen-year-old guy to wear a pink helmet while riding around on a bike that looks like it belongs in Malibu Barbie's garage.”

But Charlotte never paid any attention to my sarcastic remarks. It was like I was her responsibility or something. For instance, she would actually get up out of a nice warm bed to observe me put on her safety helmet before I rode off into the savage world of morning newspaper delivery. She'd watch me like a hawk until I swerved out of sight, looking like a pink highlighter pen on wheels. The last thing I saw before pedaling off was Charlotte happily waving at me in a fuzzy bathrobe that had a pattern of leaping bunnies all over it. “Bye, Henry!” she would shout, loud enough to be heard through the double-glazed glass of the living-room window. “Don't forget to watch out for Popcorn!”

As my head throbbed in the semi-darkness, I would marvel at Charlotte's mysterious powers. How—even when I happened to be traveling away from her sincere smile as fast as my knees could hit the handlebars—she could still manage to give me a long-distance headache. You might think, what's the big deal? As soon as the frantically waving Charlotte Wingate is out of sight, all Henry has to do is remove the helmet and toss it in Gwenivere's handy pink basket.

Most mornings, this is exactly what I did. But there were a few times when I was so busy avoiding potholes or trying not to throw papers into a ditch that I actually forgot I had Charlotte's helmet on.

At first, I found pedaling Charlotte's bike down the empty streets to be a very lonely experience. In between banging up my knees and slipping my too-big feet off the pedals, I kept looking out for the little dog named Popcorn, who never showed up. It gave me plenty of time to think of how much I missed Uncle Andy and all his associates. I still carried the Holloway hotline cell phone with me wherever I went, but no matter how much I stared at it, it never rang. Not even once.

To cheer myself up, I began playing a little game. Every morning I looked at a different house on my route and tried to figure out the perfect way to break in. Before long, I knew the best way to get into just about every house on my route. I noticed that a few subscribers didn't even bother to lock their doors. Once in a while, I would imagine liberating a few items, putting them in my carrier sack and pedaling away as fast as the cracks in the sidewalk would let me.

It was the weekly collection day that started to change my outlook. A lot of my customers asked me to help out with other things while they were looking for their wallets. Mr. Reynaldo had very bad asthma and needed me to help him look for his misplaced inhaler. Mrs. Lasky was very grateful when I got her cat out of the backyard tree. And I opened the lid on an especially stubborn jar of pickles for Mrs. Halpern.

I discovered that Mrs. Bellosi had trouble sleeping. No matter how early I stopped to deliver at her house, she was always at her picture window with a cup of coffee. She would smile and tip her cup at me, like it was the official start to the rest of the day.

After a while, I noticed that people were beginning to wave when they saw me on the street. A few of them would say things like, “Keep pedaling, Henry.” You know, sort of as encouragement. It was something I couldn't help but appreciate, since I was probably the worst paperboy in the entire history of Snowflake Falls.

For some reason, no matter how hard I tried, I could never throw the paper where I wanted it to go. Most of the time, it landed in somebody's front garden instead of the porch.

As a result, I spent a lot of time retrieving papers out of awkward places. Once—when I was wearing shorts—I scratched my knee on Mrs. Bellosi's rose bushes, and she made me come in to get a Band-Aid. She even insisted on making me a cup of hot chocolate. While she was making it, I had to hear all about her insomnia and how much she missed her late husband asking her where stuff was. “You wouldn't think it was possible to miss someone yelling, ‘Loretta, where the heck is my checked sports jacket?' But it is.”

At first, I wasn't too happy about socializing with my customers. But Mrs. Bellosi told me that I was a much better listener than the last paperboy. “He couldn't wait to get out of here and sneak a cigarette behind the hedge,” she said. “You don't smoke, do you, Henry?”

“No, ma'am,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Because I hate cigarette butts around my hedge.”

“Who doesn't?” I said, trying to sound as supportive as I could.

My cup of hot chocolate was completely empty. So I thought that would be it. But Mrs. Loretta Bellosi wasn't finished. “I just want you to know that I refuse to believe all those ridiculous stories about you being some sort of juvenile delinquent,” she said. “I raised three sons. And I think I know a good boy when I see one!”

She said it proudly. Like she understood human nature and nothing was going to sway her mind in the wrong direction. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I could get into one of her side windows in less than thirty seconds.

Did I mention that George Dial's house was on my paper route? Did I also mention that George enjoyed getting up at six in the morning to watch me deliver his grandmother's paper from the front window? He must have really appreciated my amusement value. Because I could actually see him laughing at me every time I made a delivery.

One day I was riding Gwenivere along my paper route, and George came out to personally greet me. “Man,” he said, “I thought there was nothing on wheels this side of a baby carriage that I couldn't relate to.” He kicked Gwenivere's fat white front tire and then rang her bell about six times before adding, “You do know this is a girl's bike, right?”

“I gotta go, George,” I said. But George Dial was not finished with me yet. He squinted at the teddy bear sticker on the side of my head and asked, “You wanna hug?” He put his palms up toward me like a human stop sign and then added, “No way, man. George Dial does not do guy-hugs unless the other guy is dying from a mortally serious war wound.”

Suddenly, I realized that I had forgotten to take off Charlotte's bike helmet. This made me go all red in the face—which made George Dial laugh so hard that I could hear him as I pedaled away down the block.

Unfortunately for me, the daily festival of perpetual embarrassment was just beginning. When I started my job, I was the lowest guy on the fast-food chain at Top Kow. The only good news? I remembered to take off Charlotte's helmet.

I arrived through the kitchen entrance. The first thing I saw was a poster of Top Kow—a cartoon cow who was wearing a top hat with a couple of horns sprouting out of the sides. Even though he was supposed to be a cow, he had humanlike hands. He was pointing a forefinger straight out from the poster. Underneath, there was a caption that read
Aim for the Top! Top Kow Wants You! Discover
the Exciting Employment Opportunities that await you in
the Fast-Food Industry!
Below it, someone had scrawled
You too can be a minimum-wage slave!

A little farther down the hall, I came to the kitchen where several people were standing around wearing official Top Kow uniforms. The tunic was made to look like the black and white spots on a dairy cow. But this was the height of fashion compared to the official Top Kow Burgers hat. An oversized baseball cap with Styrofoam steer's horns sticking out of either side and a logo that read
Top
Kow is Tops!

It was a while before anybody saw me standing there. I watched a couple of guys horsing around with an apron. One guy was waving the apron around like he was a bullfighter with a cape. And the other guy kept charging the apron in his official Top Kow cap. He snorted and pawed the ground with one foot. Even if he hadn't happened to be wearing Styrofoam horns, it was easy to tell that he was supposed to be the bull.

There were a couple of people standing around watching, including a tall skinny girl who was smoking a cigarette and trying to look like she wasn't enjoying the bullfighting routine as much as she actually was. The only guy who seemed to be making the most out of the exciting opportunities in the fast-food industry was busy cleaning out the built-up fat in the deep fryer. He was wearing long rubber gloves. But since there was a thick coating of grease up to his elbows, they didn't seem to be doing much good.

Then it was like everybody noticed me all at once. The tall skinny girl stubbed out her cigarette and tossed it in the garbage like she'd had way too much practice. The two bullfighting guys stopped their routine in mid-charge. And the kid who was cleaning out the deep fryer started to scrub even harder.

“Relax,” said the apron matador. “It's just the newbie.”

I introduced myself. The guy who'd been playing the bull told me his name was Lowell. “Sorry you had to see that,” he said. “It gets a bit monotonous around here.”

The matador said his name was Stuart. “This is a great place to lose your last shred of self-respect,” he explained, putting down the apron.

“Not to mention a few extra brain cells,” added the tall smoker. She told me her name was Natalie but that everyone called her Nat. “The little guy up to his armpits in grease? That's Wiley,” she said. “Say hello, Wiley.”

“Hello,” said Wiley. He sounded very depressed.

Lowell laughed. “Hey, Wiley. Where are your manners?”

“Yeah,” said Stuart. “Shake the man's hand.”

“Very funny,” said Wiley.

Everybody stood around for a while debating whether Top Kow was supposed to be a bull or a cow. “He has horns like a bull, but he looks just like a dairy cow,” said Lowell, sounding very perplexed. “How can something that's basically a genetic mutant sell so many hamburgers?”

“He's a cartoon,” said Stuart. “Cartoons don't have to be anatomically correct.”

“There's a limit,” added Nat. “I mean, when's the last time you saw a mutant cow in a top hat? What is he, a four-legged tap dancer?”

Just then a small speaker that stuck out of the wall opposite the stove began to crackle. You could hear a distorted voice going, “Hello? Hello? I'd like to place an order.”

“Drive-thru alert!” barked Stuart, like he was a big-time submarine commander.

“Battle stations!” shouted Lowell. Everybody but Wiley started to move around very quickly. With their Top Kow caps on, it looked a little bit like a very small stampede. Lowell grabbed a supersized cup of Top Kow orange soda and started to chug-a-lug. Stuart grabbed a supersized cup of Top Kow cola and did the same. Meanwhile, Nat went over to the speaker, pressed a button and spoke. “What can Top Kow Burgers do for you?” she asked very sweetly.

Stuart and Lowell huddled close to the speaker as the distorted voice replied, “I'll have a deluxe TK burger…” Just then Stuart let out the biggest, most stretched-out belch I'd ever heard in my entire life. You could tell it really startled the customer, who inquired, “What the heck was that?”

“What was what, sir?” asked Nat innocently. “Please continue with your order.”

“Let's see. Umm…That was a deluxe TK burger and large fries and…” Lowell let out his own gigantic belch. It was even more impressive than Stuart's. In fact, I couldn't hear anything else until the distorted voice declared, “I know I heard something that time!”

“What was that, sir?” asked Natalie, as Stuart and Lowell began to recharge with quick gulps of soda.

The distorted voice began to shout. “I said large fries—”

Just then both Stuart and Lowell let out a massive belch together. From where I was standing, they looked like two opera singers hitting a high note. When it was all over, I could hear the voice on the other end saying, “…don't need this. I'm gonna go home and make myself a salad!” Nat, Lowell and Stuart did a little victory dance and gave each other high fives.

“I'm impressed,” I volunteered.

“It's our dream to move to Hollywood and become professional belch artists,” explained Lowell.

“When some movie star can't belch on command, we will do the belching sound effect for them,” explained Stuart. He looked over at Wiley, still cleaning the fryer, and added, “But we will never forget the little people, will we, Why-me?”

Natalie explained that Wiley got his forlorn nickname because he was Top Kow's longest surviving “Grease Pig”—the worker responsible for the lowest, dirtiest jobs in the kitchen. She looked at him like he was seriously misguided. “Why-me wants to be Employee of the Month real bad,” she teased. “Don't you, Why-me?”

Wiley rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Why me?” he asked, which made everybody laugh.

“Spoken like a true Grease Pig,” said Lowell, who let go with a final belch to emphasize his point.

“Wiley doesn't like it that we try out our best practical jokes while Rat-boy's on his fresh-air break,” said Stuart.

“Who's Rat-boy?” I asked.

“That's what we call our manager,” said Nat. “He's a real jerk.”

“He calls us all by our last names,” said Stuart. “Like we're in the Marines or something.”

“Nat's Wosney and Why-me is Brubaker,” said Lowell. “I'm Krakowski and Stuart is Warren.”

“Rat-boy hates my last name because it sounds like a first name,” said Stuart. “He thinks it breaches the chain of command.”

“He sounds awful,” I said.

“We have ways of getting even,” said Nat.

“We've convinced him there's a rat loose around here,” explained Stuart. “Just to mess with his head.” Stuart said they named their phantom rat Russell. “Rat-boy actually thinks he's seen Russell once or twice. It's driving him crazy.”