The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle Read online

  Margaret Ferguson Books

  Copyright © 2018 by Christina Uss

  Map art copyright © 2018 by Jonathan Bean

  All rights reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Uss, Christina, author.

  Title: The adventures of a girl called Bicycle / Christina Uss. Description: First edition. | New York : Margaret Ferguson Books, Holiday House, [2018] | Summary: Left at the Mostly Silent Monastery as a toddler and home-schooled by a retired nun, twelve-year-old Bicycle rides cross-country to meet a famous cyclist who she hopes will be her first friend. Identifiers: LCCN 2017028847 | ISBN 9780823440078 (hardcover) Subjects: | CYAC: Bicycles and bicycling—Fiction. | Voyages and travels—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Nuns—Fiction. Monasteries—Fiction. | Foundlings—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.U98 Adv 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017028847

  Ebook ISBN 9780823441082

  v5.2

  a

  To Jack and Susannah, who cheer me on

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  The Mostly Silent Monastery

  Clunk

  The Friendship Factory

  Mr. Spim’s Splendid Sponges

  Unfinished Business in Virginia

  Nine Hundred Cows and Counting

  The Wayward Dogs of Kentucky

  The Cannibal Takes Off

  Slowing Down for a Bite in Illinois

  Pigs on Parade in Missouri

  Paradise Pies

  A Bicycle without Wheels

  Midway to Nowhere

  The Wheels of Fortune Spin in Kansas

  On Top of the World in Colorado

  To Catch a Thief in Utah

  No Override for the Missile Launch

  The Loneliest Road

  The Best of Luck in Nevada

  Calamity

  Say Something Nice in California

  The Blessing of the Bicycles

  No Zebras, No Noses

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  The front door to the Mostly Silent Monastery was missing.

  Sister Wanda Magdalena walked up the front steps and started to reach for the doorknob that wasn’t there. She stopped, pursed her lips, and put her doorknob-reaching hand on her hip. Examining the wide door frame, she saw three stainless-steel hinges attached to nothing. Luckily, Sister Wanda had chosen to retire years ago from being a Nearly Silent Nun. She could use her voice to say anything she wanted to, and she had something to say right now.

  “Big Al!” she yelled. “Where are you? Please hang the front door immediately! This place can’t be mostly silent without a door to keep out the noise!”

  When Big Al, the construction worker in charge of finishing the brand-new building, didn’t answer or appear, Sister Wanda sighed. Move-in day for the Mostly Silent Monks at 65 Monastery Lane in Washington, D.C., had officially happened yesterday, but the building still had a lot of odds and ends that were not quite right. Some of the light switches didn’t switch. The hot-water faucets squeaked. And the pesky front door had needed to be taken down and rehung in order to close properly. Sister Wanda never settled for not-quite-right and had presented Big Al with a list of problems and strict instructions that every item on it would need to be completed and shipshape by six o’clock today—or else. It looked as though one of the workers had gotten as far as taking the door down but not as far as putting it back up.

  Sister Wanda went into the front hallway, zigzagging around heaps of empty cardboard boxes. She could see the door leaning against a wall with its shiny new nameplate MOSTLY SILENT MONASTERY—OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. A little girl crouched next to it. Her scruffy black hair stuck up every which way. She was dressed in a faded pink T-shirt decorated with a drawing of a bike and the word BICYCLE printed in block letters. She blinked up at Sister Wanda and clutched the bottom of the shirt, which was two sizes too large.

  “Goodness me, leave the front door off its hinges and look what finds its way inside!” Sister Wanda said, wading through the boxes. “Come with me,” she ordered, taking the girl’s hand and guiding her toward the office.

  Sister Wanda and the little girl sat on opposite sides of Sister Wanda’s big desk. “All right, my child,” the nun said, pulling out a yellow pad and a sharp pencil. Sister Wanda had plenty of yellow pads and sharp pencils. Since all the monks of the monastery had vowed to be Mostly Silent, the monastery had hired Sister Wanda when she retired to do the sorts of things that require a lot more talking than silence, like answering phones, making sure deliveries got where they were supposed to go, scheduling washing-machine repairmen, and supervising the construction of the new monastery building. She was the kind of person who relished getting a job done, and she rarely missed her days of following the Nearly Silent Nuns’ vows. But she did continue wearing the Nearly Silent Nuns’ black robe because she found it to be nicely intimidating to those who questioned her authority. The plain black garment resembled a traditional nun’s habit, although the Nearly Silent order had never bothered with any elaborate head coverings and simply went without them.

  “We need to figure out who you are and where you ought to be. What can you tell me about yourself? Name? Address? How you came to be hiding in our hallway?” she said.

  The girl didn’t say a word.

  “Not talking, hmmm? Is that because you haven’t learned how, or because you haven’t got anything to say?” Sister Wanda peered into the girl’s face. “How many years old are you? This many?” Sister Wanda held up three fingers. The little girl just stared back. Sister Wanda leaned forward in her chair, tapping the pencil against her short silver hair. “Silent as can be. Well, you’ll fit in perfectly around here,” she said.

  Big Al jogged into the office. “Excuse me, Sister,” he said. “Something slipped my mind with the long list of items you gave me, but I’ve remembered now, and it’s quite import—” He broke off suddenly when he saw the girl in the pink shirt sitting in Sister Wanda’s office. “Oh, you’ve found her yourself. Okay, then, I’m off to check on the light switches.”

  “Big Al,” Sister Wanda said in her no-nonsense tone.

  Big Al stopped in his tracks.

  “What do you know about this little girl?” Sister Wanda demanded, her frosty blue eyes fixed on the workman.

  “I’m sorry, Sister—I spotted her sitting on the front steps at the same time the replacement faucets were delivered. When I asked her why she was there, she wouldn’t answer. Because you were very, very clear that things needed to be ‘shipshape by six o’clock or else’ and I didn’t want to find out what the ‘or else’ meant, I tucked her away safe and told her to stay put until I could drop the faucets off upstairs and get the boys started on replacing them.” Big Al looked sheepish. “I guess I should have dropped her off first.”

  “Yes,” Sister Wanda agreed. “Now, details. Did you see anyone nearby who may have left her?”

  “I didn’t see anyone, Sister. But,” Big Al continued, “there used to be a public lost-and-found office on this very spot before we built the monastery. Maybe someone thought this was still a place to drop off lost items…and maybe lost children.” He shrugged.

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, the faucets are done.”

  “How about the front door?” Sister Wanda said.

  Big Al raised his hands. “I’m on it.”

  Another worker in the hallway
shouted for him, asking how to tell if light switches were installed upside down or right side up.

  Big Al rubbed his forehead. “Please excuse me,” he said as he jogged off.

  After that, Sister Wanda found she didn’t have much to say, so the girl and the nun eyed each other in silence for some time.

  * * *

  —

  If you don’t live near a Mostly Silent Monastery, you may wonder what they are. The Mostly Silent Monasteries are part of an old and venerated order, founded centuries ago by a monk named Bob. One day, Bob observed that the human body is made with two ears but only one mouth. He felt this meant that we humans are supposed to listen more than we speak, and so he vowed to be Mostly Silent and dedicated his life to listening to others.

  Bob decided on being Mostly Silent because he knew if he took vows of total silence he wouldn’t be able to call for help in an emergency or politely agree if someone said it was a nice day or ask for a sandwich, so he cut down his vocabulary to what he called the Sacred Eight Words: “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” “help,” “now,” “later,” “sleep,” and “sandwich.” It turned out with eight words plus a few hand gestures, a person can get across a lot of meaning.

  People went to visit Bob if their friends or family didn’t pay enough attention to them. Each person would talk as much as he or she wanted while Bob listened. It seems very simple, but it was brilliant, too—centuries ago, just like today, people really liked to be listened to. Soon more monks joined Bob in taking vows of Mostly Silence and dedicating their lives to listening to others, and the order was begun. Bob’s cousin Euphemia started a branch of Nearly Silent Nunneries, which proved to be equally popular and were staffed entirely by women who also used the Sacred Eight Words. Eventually, there were Mostly Silent Monasteries and Nearly Silent Nunneries in most U.S. states and around the globe. They were open to the public, so anyone could go to one any day of the week and talk about anything they wanted, for as long as they wanted, and a monk or a nun would sit there and listen, guaranteed.

  Over the years, the Mostly and Nearly Silent orders had debated adding some new words to the Sacred Eight Words, but the debates hadn’t come to anything. One word the monks and nuns had pondered was “Duck!” (A young monk had proposed this new word after a painful incident with a flying Frisbee.)

  The Mostly Silent Monastery where Sister Wanda and the little girl now sat had replaced a decrepit old building on the other side of the city. In addition to public listening, this new monastery also served as a home for monks-in-training. Construction had taken longer than expected, so the monks were ready to move in before the building was entirely ready for them. That explained the cardboard boxes and the front door in the hallway. It did not, however, explain why the little girl was there, too.

  Sister Wanda spent the rest of the day on the phone, calling hospitals, police stations, schools, hotels, and even the zoo, trying to figure out where this quiet child belonged. No one knew who she was. No one appeared to be missing a girl in a pink T-shirt. So Sister Wanda proposed to the Top Monk and the older head monks that it would be best if the girl stayed with them until someone showed up to claim her.

  The Top Monk said, “Sandwich,” by which he meant, “Of course, let’s make her feel right at home here.” (The Top Monk was the oldest and most silent of the monks, and had managed to cut down his vocabulary to one word: sandwich. It was amazing what he could communicate by saying “sandwich” with different inflections in his voice.)

  The other monks replied, “Yes,” and that was that.

  During her first evening at the monastery, the little girl poked her head inside a cavernous room and saw rows upon rows of monks of all sizes, shapes, and nationalities dressed in pale blue robes, kneeling on square pillows, eyes closed. This was an Advanced Listening class. Quiet as a piece of cotton blowing across the floor, she padded into the room, perched on a pillow, and closed her eyes as well. Despite the fact that the monks were listening very intently, no one heard her come in. She sat, still and peaceful, throughout the class. When the monks finally opened their eyes, they goggled at the little girl who had appeared in their midst without a sound. The child broke the room’s stillness by giggling at their pop-eyed expressions.

  Over the next few days, Sister Wanda brought the little girl with her while running errands around the neighborhood, hoping someone would recognize her and know where she belonged. Because the girl insisted upon always wearing her pink T-shirt with the word BICYCLE on it, neighbors and shopkeepers greeted her by asking, “And who is this youngster wearing a bicycle?”

  The girl would either smile or stare, depending on how friendly the asker’s voice sounded. On the third day, she opened up her mouth and brightly repeated, “Bicycle!” to every single question asked of her.

  Sister Wanda had found that addressing her as “little girl” was becoming tiresome, so right then and there she began calling her Bicycle. Bicycle beamed so joyfully that the name stuck.

  Days became weeks. Bicycle gradually demonstrated a limited vocabulary, but she still had no answers for who she was and where she came from. The monks set up a temporary room for her on the second floor of the monastery.

  Weeks became months. Sister Wanda finally called the Top Monk into her office to ask if she could sew Bicycle some new clothes, hang pictures on her walls, and consider the girl their responsibility.

  “Not temporarily,” Sister Wanda insisted. “Permanently. For better or worse, it seems she’s a part of the monastery now.”

  The Top Monk, of course, said, “Sandwich.”

  “Sandwich!” A small voice seconded the Top Monk from the doorway of Sister Wanda’s office.

  The monk turned, startled, but then smiled at Bicycle’s I-gotcha-again face. She really seemed to enjoy sneaking up on the older monks when she could, and her tiptoeing skills were second to none.

  “As I have said before, she’ll fit in perfectly around here,” said Sister Wanda.

  Now that the Mostly Silent Monastery was her permanent home, Bicycle took the Easy Listening class. She had her own comfy pillow and knelt on it alongside the blue-robed monks, listening without speaking for an hour a day. Sometimes the class members practiced listening to visiting speakers or to recordings of speeches. Sometimes they sat in complete quiet, listening to things left unsaid and things that go without saying.

  Sister Wanda broke out the monastery sewing machine and whipped up some simple outfits for Bicycle to wear. Not knowing the girl’s age bothered Sister Wanda, and when she was sewing some new shirts for Bicycle, she hit upon the idea of comparing the girl’s measurements with pattern sizes. Bicycle was a perfect toddler’s size three, so Sister Wanda went with her first instinct and entered Bicycle’s age as three in the monastery records. In a fit of whimsy, she picked one newly stitched green T-shirt and mimicked the girl’s original pink top by ironing on the same pattern of a bike with the word BICYCLE underneath. Bicycle’s enthusiastic squeals convinced Sister Wanda to sew a new BICYCLE shirt in a new color every year to celebrate her arrival at the monastery.

  Two bike-decorated T-shirts later, at the age of five, Bicycle was ready to start kindergarten. Sister Wanda decided to homeschool her. Sister Wanda had developed a great fondness for the girl; plus she suspected she would excel at teaching if given the chance. It also hadn’t escaped the retired nun’s notice that whenever they walked past the neighborhood public school, Bicycle pulled the neck of her T-shirt up to her eyeballs and hid behind the nun’s robe, peeking anxiously at the rowdy crowd of kids running through the playground.

  Bicycle was especially bright, and she learned many things under Sister Wanda’s tutelage. Once they’d covered the basics of letters, numbers, colors, and shapes, they branched out into reading, arithmetic, and writing. Every day, Sister Wanda wrote the Sacred Eight Words on the blackboard and used “yes,” “no,” “maybe,” “help,” “now,” “later,” “sleep,” and “sandwich” as the basis for many lessons. They s
pent months considering what defines a sandwich and comparing varieties of handheld foods around the world. Discussing “now” versus “later” led them to work on clocks and telling time. Bicycle excelled at playing word games like jumbles and anagrams. She eagerly rearranged the letters in the Sacred Eight Words to discover what other words could be constructed from them, like SEW, PLEASE, and the girl’s proudest discovery so far, MAYONNAISE. Bicycle’s least favorite lessons were on manners and etiquette, but Sister Wanda insisted upon them.

  One morning after a Scrabble session, Bicycle, now six years old, asked, “When are the monks going to add ‘duck’ to the Sacred Eight Words list, Sister? Once they do that, I can spell COLESLAW to go along with MAYONNAISE.” After years of consideration, the word “duck” had still not been approved.

  “Change happens slowly in the Mostly Silent world,” Sister Wanda said. “Probably because we have so few words with which to discuss the possibility of change. But slow and careful change is not a bad thing, in my opinion.”

  Bicycle agreed. Each week was much like another to her, and she had no complaints about that. Sister Wanda took her on errands and museum outings. They were regulars at the library and the park. At home at the monastery, Bicycle chipped in with chores like sweeping and tidying, and she helped the monks-in-training practice their skills by pretending to be a visitor who had come to talk at a Mostly Silent listening session. If she was feeling silly, she might also throw out a question to the monk-in-training, like “If there was a big spider on top of your head, would you want me to tell you or not?” The monk-in-training would almost always say, “Yes!” and then she’d answer, “Yes I should tell you, or yes I should not tell you?” and then he’d end up saying, “No! Maybe! Help!” until Bicycle burst out laughing and reassured him she was just goofing around. Some monks bungled their vows more than others—one young man had talked to her for ten minutes straight about his fear of spiders—but since they knew Bicycle would never report their infractions to any of the head monks, they took her teasing in good spirits.