Hokey Pokey Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Jerry Spinelli

  Jacket art copyright © 2013 by Shutterstock

  Map copyright © 2013 by David Leonard

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Spinelli, Jerry.

  Hokey Pokey / by Jerry Spinelli. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Ever since they were Snotsippers, Jack and the girl have fought, until one day she steals his bike, and as he and the Amigos try to recover it, Jack realizes that he is growing up and must eventually leave the “goodlands and badlands of Hokey Pokey.”

  eISBN: 978-0-307-97570-6

  [1. Play—Fiction. 2. Growth—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S75663Ho 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012004177

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To Norristown

  “Daddy, what does tomorrow mean?”

  —Madison Stokes, age 4

  Hershey, Pennsylvania

  November 22, 2008

  “Kids. They live in their own little world.”

  —Jack’s father

  Saturday morning

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  What is Hokey Pokey?

  Map

  Chapter 1: Night

  Chapter 2: Today

  Chapter 3: Jack

  Chapter 4: A Small Brown Bird

  Chapter 5: Destroyer

  Chapter 6: Amigos

  Chapter 7: Gorilla Hill

  Chapter 8: Jubilee

  Chapter 9: Destroyer

  Chapter 10: Jack

  Chapter 11: Amigos

  Chapter 12: LaJo

  Chapter 13: Jubilee

  Chapter 14: Destroyer

  Chapter 15: Jack

  Chapter 16: Jubilee

  Chapter 17: Destroyer

  Chapter 18: LaJo

  Chapter 19: Jubilee

  Chapter 20: Jack

  Chapter 21: Jubilee

  Chapter 22: Amigos

  Chapter 23: Destroyer

  Chapter 24: Jack

  Chapter 25: Amigos

  Chapter 26: Jubilee

  Chapter 27: Jack

  Chapter 28: Jubilee

  Chapter 29: Jack

  Chapter 30: Jubilee

  Chapter 31: Jack

  Chapter 32: Destroyer

  Chapter 33: Jack

  Chapter 34: Jubilee

  Chapter 35: Jack

  Chapter 36: Jubilee

  Chapter 37: Jack

  Chapter 38: Amigos

  Chapter 39: Destroyer

  Chapter 40: Jubilee

  Chapter 41: Destroyer

  Chapter 42: Jubilee

  Chapter 43: Destroyer

  Chapter 44: Jubilee

  Chapter 45: Destroyer

  Chapter 46: Jubilee

  Chapter 47: Destroyer

  Chapter 48: Jubilee

  Chapter 49: Destroyer

  Chapter 50: Jack

  Chapter 51: Jubilee

  Chapter 52: Hokey Pokey Man

  Chapter 53: Jack

  Chapter 54: Amigos

  Chapter 55: The Story

  Chapter 56: Amigos

  Chapter 57: Jack

  Chapter 58: Jubilee

  Chapter 59: Kiki

  Chapter 60: Jack

  Chapter 61: Ana Mae

  Chapter 62: Jubilee

  Chapter 63: Lopez

  Chapter 64: Albert, Destroyer

  Chapter 65: Jack

  Chapter 66: Amigos

  Chapter 67: Jack

  Chapter 68: Amigos, Girl

  Chapter 69: Jubilee

  Chapter 70: Amigos

  Chapter 71: Jack

  Chapter 72: Pockets

  Chapter 73: Jack, Jubilee

  Chapter 74: Jack

  Chapter 75: LaJo

  Chapter 76: Train

  Chapter 77: Not Hokey Pokey

  Chapter 78: Tomorrow

  Chapter 79: Jack

  Chapter 80: Hokey Pokey

  Chapter 81: Night

  Chapter 82: Today

  Chapter 83: Jubilee

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  WHAT IS HOKEY POKEY?

  A place

  A time

  A square snowball treat

  A circle dance

  NIGHT

  ALL NIGHT LONG Seven Sisters whisper and giggle and then, all together, they rush Orion the Hunter and tickle him, and Orion the Hunter laughs so hard he shakes every star in the sky, not to mention Mooncow, who loses her balance and falls—puh-loop!—into Big Dipper, which tip-tip-tips and dumps Mooncow into Milky Way, and Mooncow laughs and splashes and rolls on her back and goes floating down down down Milky Way, and she laughs a great moomoonlaugh and kicks at a lavender star and the star goes shooting across the sky, up the sky and down the sky, a lavender snowfire-ball down the highnight down …

  down …

  down …

  down …

  TODAY

  JACK

  … TO HOKEY POKEY …

  … where it lands, a golden bubble now, a starborn bead, lands and softly pips upon the nose of sleeping Jack and spills a whispered word:

  it’s

  and then another:

  time

  Something is wrong.

  He knows it before he opens his eyes.

  He looks.

  His bike is gone!

  Scramjet!

  What more could he have done? He parked it so close that when he shut his eyes to sleep, he could smell the rubber of the tires, the grease on the chain.

  And still she took it. His beloved Scramjet. He won’t say her name. He never says her name, only her kind, sneers it to the morning star: “Girl.”

  He runs to the rim of the bluff, looks up the tracks, down the tracks. There she is, ponytail flying from the back of her baseball cap, the spokes of the wheels—his wheels—plumspun in the thistledown dawn.

  He waves his fist, shouts from the bluff: “I’ll get you!”

  The tracks curve, double back. He can cut her off!

  He sneakerskis down the gullied red-clay slope, leaps the tracks, plunges into the jungle and runs—phloot!—into a soft, vast, pillowy mass. Oh no! Not again! He only thinks this. He cannot say it because the front half of himself, including his face, is buried in the hippopotamoid belly of Wanda’s monster. This has happened before. He wags his head hard, throws it back, and—ttthok!—his face comes free.

  “Wan-daaa!” he bellows. “Wake up!”

  Wanda stirs in a bed of mayapples.

  “Wanda!”

  The moment Wanda awakes, her monster vanishes in a puff of apricots, dropflopping Jack to the ground. He’s up in an instant and off again.

  Every other step is a leap over a sleeper. All is quiet save thunder beyond the trees and the thump of the sun bumping the underside of the hori
zon.

  He hoprocks across the creek, past the island of Forbidden Hut, and pulls up huffing at the far loop end of the tracks. He looks up, looks down.

  Nothing.

  He slumps exhausted to the steel rail. He stares at his sneaker tops. He gasps, reflects. She said she would do it. “I’m going to take—” No, to be accurate, she didn’t say take, she said ride: “I’m going to ride your bike.” And who knows? Maybe if she had said it nicely … maybe if she wasn’t a girl. But she is a girl and she said it with that snaily smirk, but there was no way she was ever coming within ten long spits of his bike.

  But she did.

  And he hates her. He hates her for taking the thing he loves most in this world. But maybe even more, he hates her for being right.

  He pushes himself up from the rail. Once more he casts forlorn eyes up and down the tracks that no train travels. He cries out: “Scramjet!” This is too painful to bear alone. From the black tarpit of despair he rips his Tarzan yell and hurls it into the jungle and over the creek and across the dreamlands of Hokey Pokey.

  A SMALL BROWN BIRD

  FLIES OVER THE MOUNTAINS, spreads its tiny wings high above Hokey Pokey and rides the riptide of Jack’s despair.

  Over Flowers and The Wall and the mutter of badwords in Jailhouse sails the call of Tarzan. Over Snuggle Stop and Tattooer and Tantrums and Stuff. Veering wide around Socks, over Thousand Puddles and Doll Farm and Trucks. Over Great Plains and the wild herd flies Jack’s lament, over sleepers sleeping and monsters monstering and all the badlands and goodlands of Hokey Pokey to the ever-listening ears of Jack’s best pals: LaJo and Dusty. Amigos.

  Dusty has slept in his favorite spot, under the outstretched, monumental arm of The Kid. LaJo—who, like most Hokey Pokers, sleeps where he drops—has bunked in Flowers. Both hear at the same moment. Both hear more than the usual morning call. Both hear: Pain! Both hear: Help! Up from the ground, into the saddles, homing in on the sound waves: Tracks … farside bend. Pounding pedals, gravel flying, together returning the yodeling call: Coming!

  DESTROYER

  IF YOU WANT TO GO LONG, you can call him Most Amazing Terrible Ever Destroyer of Worlds. If you want to go short, call him Destroyer. But don’t call him short. And don’t call him Harold Peter Bitterman Jr.

  It is the return Tarzan call that awakens Destroyer. He has spent the night, as always, high in the remote-controlled SuperScoop of his cherry-red eight-wheeled Mark X BullDogger dump truck, Hokey Pokey’s biggest toy. He lazes on his back. The high, thin clouds look like truck exhaust tinged with pink. A brown bird flies overhead. He wishes he had a stone. He catches a whiff of apricots—and jerks fully awake, sits up. This is the day! He hopes he’s not too late. He peers over the edge of his high hoist. His kingdom sprawls below him. He spots a dustball rolling across Great Plains. Here and there a monster dissolves in a pale yellow puff, but most are still there, hovering over their dopey little sleepers.

  He’s got to move fast. He grabs the remote, punches DOWN. With a click and jerk, the great red cradle stirs, swings, lowers him slowly to the ground. He punches the remote—SuperScoop returns to its up spot. He dashes around to the cab, jumps in, plants his feet on the pedals—Wait! Clothespin! … Does he have it? He feels into his pocket.… Yes, OK, move! He pushes—right foot, left foot, churns, churns.… BullDogger lumbers off.

  AMIGOS

  TWO SIDES OF AN ARROWHEAD, two bikes, come to a point at Jack, slumpsitting on the rusty rail. LaJo, Dusty glance about.

  “Where’s—” says Dusty.

  “—Scramjet?” says LaJo.

  “She stole it,” says Jack. He doesn’t have to say who she is.

  “Glove too?” says LaJo.

  Jack hasn’t even thought of his baseball glove, looped over the handlebar of the bike. Where he goes, the glove goes. He nods heavily.

  They cannot speak. They do not know Jack without his bike. Things have shifted.

  They dismount.

  Jack pulls up his shirt and pretends to wipe sweat from his face, but really, even though he wants them here, he doesn’t want to be seen.

  LaJo stares in shock, is about to say something, clears his throat, says something else: “You crying?”

  Jack springs, shoves LaJo backward. LaJo’s bike clatters to the ground. “Do I look like I’m crying? Did you ever catch me crying?”

  Jack kicks LaJo’s bike tire, glares, dares him to do something about it. He turns to Dusty. “Did you?”

  Dusty flashes a V-finger peace sign. “Hey, not that I ever saw.”

  Jack is in his face. “Not that you ever saw? What’s that mean? You never saw me but somebody else did?” Poking him in the chest. “Huh?”

  “No, man.” Dusty puts up his hands as if sheriff-caught. “I ain’t sayin that. You never … you just ain’t a crier, Jackarooni—everybody knows that.”

  Jack gives Dusty’s bike a kick and scuffs down the tracks, stops, sags, shows them his back.

  Dusty calls: “Scramjet. He was a great one, Amigo. Right, LJ?”

  “Yeah,” says LaJo.

  Jack is silent, still. Then says something they cannot hear.

  Both call, “What?”

  Jack wheels. “What do you mean was?”

  LaJo straddles his fallen bike. “Hey, man—”

  Dusty rushes forward, laughing too loud. “Sí, sí, Amigo! What’s this was stuff? We just got to get it back, is all.” He punches Jack’s arm. He gives a sneery laugh. “Ain’t no was.” He spits in the dirt, gives Jack another punch.

  Jack returns the punch. A grin peeks over the edge of his scowl. “I know where she’ll head,” he says.

  Dusty yips like a puppy. “Yeah! Where?”

  Jack pulls LaJo’s bike to its feet. He mounts the rear fender. He looks from one to the other. “Gorilla Hill,” he says. And in their eyes and growing grins he sees the truth of it.

  GORILLA HILL

  TWO BIKES, three Amigos crunch the cinders back along the looping rails to the off-track side of the bluff: Gorilla Hill. They stow the bikes in the brush at the foot. “Hurry,” says Jack. They lean into the hard, yellow, mica-flecked trail. It’s downhill heaven but uphill hell. The sweat and the sun on LaJo’s brown skin give his forehead the sparkle of a root beer hokey pokey. Jack’s hatred grows with every step, every thigh-crunching reminder of his shame—this epic, this magnificent hill is for riding down, not walking up.

  Suddenly up ahead, beyond the bow-bend, up, out of the glittering sky itself, a voice: “Yee-hah!”

  Dusty cries, “She’s coming!”

  “Off the trail!” barks LaJo.

  They cannot see yet but they can hear: the chittering chain and axles, the stone-pocked crunch of rubber, the thief’s crazed scream unfurling. They can feel the speed, feel it accelerate with every wheelturn, feel the hill snuffle and grin and stiffen its spine, feel the air split like a snapped stick as into the bow-bend they lean.

  “Yeeee​eeeee​eeeee​eeeee—”

  “Now!” cries Dusty.

  “Holy crap!” cries LaJo.

  And out of the bow-bend they come as the sun at last thrusts its bristling fist into the sky and blinds the boys to all but the high sonic scream of chainsong and a hissing shadowblur of steed and she-demon blasting out of the sunfire.

  “HAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

  “Scraaaaaamjet!” Jack cries, but his voice is already a hole in the afterwind.

  In time the Amigos stagger onto the trail, blinking, shading their eyes. Already bike and rider are a flying speck halfway to Great Plains. They appear to be one. Stunned, silent, the boys begin their grim descent. They avoid each other’s eyes. Beneath their sneaker soles the trail is warm. The air smells of girl and burnt rubber.

  JUBILEE

  JUBILATES!

  Churns—no hands!—across Great Plains, whooping, laughing, scattering the wild herd of bikes in a fright of dust and spitting stones. The thrill, the exhilaration of the downhill dive—the freefall of it, the uncontrol, the
flight!—she has never known before.

  The handlebar dips, veers to the left: feeling the pull of the old herd. Oh yes, she thinks, how wonderful to be wild again, racing dust devils across the Plains. Should she let the beast go, rejoin the herd? Should she? … No! Maybe someday but not now, not yet. Now there is only the thrill! The power! The speed!

  And no more Scramjet. No more he. “No!” she shouts full voice over the flatlands. She jacks her elbows, leans forward till the tire spins inches below her face, the prairie a weedy blur. “Hazel,” she whispers. “You are”—she straightens, shouts—“Haaazzzzzz-el!”

  She giggles at her own brilliance. She knows the name Hazel is dumb, but her opinion doesn’t matter. What matters is his opinion, the boy’s. The germ’s. When he hears what she’s renamed his pride and joy—oh she wishes she could be there to see it!

  She shouts: “Hazel! Hazel! Hazel!” She wishes there was somebody to celebrate with, to high-five, but there is only herself and Hazel and the wild wheeled mustangs. So she gives Hazel her head and high-fives—high-tens!—the morning sky.

  DESTROYER

  GREAT!

  The kid is still sleeping, his monster bobbing above him. Ugliest monster Destroyer has ever seen. Which figures: the wimpier the kid, the grosser the monster. Days of scouting have led to this moment. The victim has been carefully chosen. He has three things going for him:

  1. He’s tiny. Of course, he’s a Newbie.

  2. He’s weak and wimpy. Of course, he’s a Newbie.

  3. He sleeps on the ground. He’s a Cartoons freak. Every night he flops in the same spot practically inches from the enormous screen. The scoop-up will be a piece of cake.

  Destroyer steers around the many bodies that litter the massive lawn. Cartoons never stop on the big screen. The Flintstones is showing now. This is where he first saw Daffy Duck. This is the first time he’s been back here since The Worst Thing That Ever Happened happened. The memory makes him want to cry. But he doesn’t.

  He pulls up to the victim, stops. He punches the remote. Down comes SuperScoop, flush to the ground. Gently, toes on pedals, he inches the scoop forward till he feels resistance—the kid’s body. He stops. The kid’s monster, a watermelon-headed joker with green fangs the size of bananas, floats in the dawn like a balloon, looks brainlessly down on Destroyer. This is the tricky part. Destroyer readies his feet, takes a deep breath—now! The scoop slides forward, under the kid. Destroyer punches UP, then REVERSE. SuperScoop thrusts skyward. BullDogger rumbles. The kid wakens and wails. The monster vanishes in an apricotty mist. Destroyer churns.