“Will do,” I said.
At first I didn’t understand what was happening; it took me a few minutes to recognize that the right pedal was moving the story forward in time and the left pedal reversing it. Every day that week, though, I went back to the piano and practiced. Soon, I was a good enough point-of-view piano player that I could shift the POV to a nearby tree in the margin, and then to the Memory of Johnny Appleseed in the deadgroves, and then to my house, at any time in their history. I saw my house as a young cabin, hiking a strange mountain with his fathershack. When I melodied further back, I saw Johnny Appleseed — the real Johnny Appleseed — stopping to tie the leather laces on his boots.
I practiced melody after melody — varying pedals, notes, and speeds — until I located, somewhere in the past pages, my mother praying to my father. I picked up the story midverse:
“I can’t, Ralphie,” she prayed.
“Why not?” he prayed.
“Because I have work to do still. We’re repairing holes day and night.”
“But why do you have to fix it?” prayed my father. “Why you?”
“
is our son! We should be the first ones on line to help Appleseed.”
There was silence.
“I miss you,” prayed my Dad. “We all do.”
“Any word from Bri?” my Mom prayed.
My Dad prayed that there wasn’t. “You?”
“We’re looking,” my Mom prayed. “We’ll find her.”
“You’ve checked all the auction schools?”
“Of course we have,” my Mom said. “And I’ve put out a national call to the Mothers’ Network.”
“I’m just praying that she’s OK,” my Dad said.
“Me, too — twice a day,” my Mom prayed. “What about ?”
“He’s fine. The same.”
“He won’t answer my prayers,” my Mom prayed.
“He says he’s angry at you,” my Dad prayed.
“I’m worryfields about him.”
“You should tell him that,” my Dad prayed. “You should visit.”
“I will,” she prayed. “Soon as I can get away.”
“He would love to see you,” prayed my Dad. “We all would.”
A few days later, I played the song of Mothers’ Day — the national recruiting day for the Mothers of America. That was the day my Mom left us — remember? I saw that sequence again, my Mom walking out into the backyard with hardly a goodbye and lifting up into the air. We ran out after her and Bri shouted up into the sky. She wasn’t the Auctioneer that day — she was just Briana, my freaked-out sister.
Playing this song now, from third person, I could see my own face, still and dumb and silent. Why wasn’t I crying, or shouting, or saying anything at all? I should have protested more, or at least told my Mom that I loved her.
I played a pausechord, found the first-person harmony, and resumed the scene from my own eyes again. Inside my head my thoughts were howling. “Find the words,” one commanded me.
“What words?” said a second.
“The words to make her stay!” said the first.
Then I heard a noise overhead and saw something looming over the roof: a giant, dark shape. I put my hand over my forehead to shield the afternoon sun. “What is that?” said the Reader.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. When I looked closer at it, though, I realized what I was seeing: those were skirts—thousands and thousands of warskirts. As the school of Mothers oomed forward in recruit formation, my mother floated toward them and joined the giant mass; soon I couldn’t distinguish her shape from anyone else’s. I understood then why she’d left so quickly; she was rushing to stay on schedule.
My sister turned to me. “Nice job, assface.”
“What did I do?” I said.
But I knew: these were my stories — every one of them.
Bri stormed inside. The Reader and I stood in the yard, watching other recruits — some of them lugging suitcases or duffel bags as they flew — join the formation. As the fleet hovered, I said a prayer. “Mom?” I prayed.
“What?” she whisperprayed back.
“Be careful,” I prayed.
“Of course,” she prayed. “Don’t worry, OK?”
Then the entire fleet began floating forward. They tightened formation, banked left, flew behind a cloud and disappeared.
The last song I ever played on that point of view piano was a third-person from our very first days in Appleseed, after I’d just begun to speak. I didn’t yet have a room — we were all still figuring out how we’d live in Appleseed. When I released my foot from the pedal, I saw my Mom and Dad standing in the basement. “It’s too cold down here for him,” my Dad said.
“But it’s spacious. It will give him room for his art,” my Mom said.
“What art?” my Dad said.
“He can draw if he wants to,” she said. “Or write.”
“Write what?” my Dad said.
“Whatever he wants,” my Mom said.
BASTILLE SQUARE
By the fall of my senior year Appleseed was riddled with bookwormholes. It wasn’t strange to see holes in the middle of fields, human-sized holes on the sidewalk, car-sized holes in the road. There were accidents all over town: people twisting their ankles or tripping on new holes; veggiecars, swerving to miss a hole, crying right into other veggiecars.
As the bookworms took over, characters disappeared. Take my cousin Patrick — one day he was here, the next day gone. The same with the Memory of Johnny Appleseed; all of a sudden he couldn’t be found. After enough of these disappearances, the Building Cones started covering up the holes with steel plates to curb injuries.
Reader: You mean like manhole covers?
What’s a manhole?
There were all sorts of rumors about where these holes led. Some people thought they led to the Core; others, to a world of Memories. Large Odor said he didn’t think they led anywhere. But that fall, Orange Traffic Cone Scientists sent two dogs down a bookwormhole and said the dogs came back smelling of prayers.
Then, one afternoon that November, I was walking with Sentence in the worryfields and he pulled me right to one of the holes. “Come on, ‘I am.’,” I said.
He wouldn’t budge — he was fixed on the bookwormhole. It was starting to drizzle, so I tugged on his leash. “ ‘I am.’,” I said.
But the words didn’t move. By then, “I am.” was strong — three times the size he’d been when I found him.
The rain started falling harder. I picked “I am.” up and ran across the street as the sky opened its mouth and bared its sharp teeth.
Two days later, I realized that I was out of music pills and rode my bike to the pharmacy for a refill. I asked you to come along and help me pedal, but—
Reader: We’d been jumping over bookwormholes that whole week prior. I was exhausted!
So I took Sentence instead; he rode both ways perched on the handlebars, and held the bag of music pills in the teeth of his “i” on the way home.
As we were riding down Converse Street, just a few hundred feet from our driveway, Sentence suddenly looked out at the worryfields and capitalized.
“ ‘I am.’? You OK?” I said.
But “I AM.” was already moving, leaping off the Bicycle Built for Two and bolting across the street. Blue music pills spilled everywhere; I almost crashed! By the time I stopped and skimmed the page, Sentence had already reached the worryfields — he startled a couple of pacers as he shot past them.