Free Golden Delicious by Christopher Boucher

a few months later I said hi to James Couplet and he looked through me like I wasn’t even there.
    “Couplet!” I said, but he just kept walking.
    Maybe I
wasn’t
there, a thought suggested.
    I watched James smooth around the corner and I turned and walked the other way. Then I saw a fire alarm in the hallway up ahead. Without even really thinking about it, I ran up to the alarm and pulled it. Blue ink sprayed all over my hand and face.
    All of the classroom doors sprang open; kids poured into the halls.
    “See?” I told my thought, the ink running over my arms. “I
am
here.”
    Later that afternoon, an Orange Traffic Police Cone sat down with me in the office at school. “,” he said. “I want you to be honest with me. Did you pull the fire alarm?”
    “No,” I said.
    The Cone looked down at my blue hands—I hadn’t even tried to wash them. “Did—you—pull—the fire alarm?”
    “No,” I said again.
    The Cone crossed his orange plasticy arms.
    A few weeks later, I was unlocking my dumbike when I saw my neighbor, Bobby Lonely—Loneliness, everyone called him—picking his face off by the lacrosse fields. “Hey, Loneliness,” I said.
    Loneliness looked at me.
    “C’mere,” I said.
    He walked toward me. Loneliness smelled like cats,probably because he owned about a million cats. He also had really bad acne; even his
acne
had acne.
    “Need a ride home?” I said.
    “Seriously?” he said.
    Everyone was always playing tricks on Loneliness: sending him fake prayers, stealing his memories, that kind of thing. I could tell he didn’t trust me.
    “Do you or don’t you?” I said.
    He shrugged.
    I pointed to the backseat and he got on. We started pedaling. It was much easier with another person. In no time at all we were over Apple Hill and coasting down Tanglewood.
    “We’re not friends,” I shouted back to him.
    “No,” said Loneliness. “I know that.”
    Later, Loneliness became really popular. Seemingly overnight, it became cool to have acne. Suddenly
everyone
wanted acne. I used to send out prayers for it; people used to put acne on with makeup.
    When we were in our twenties, though, Loneliness joined the U.S. Army and died. His acne made it back across the mountains, the spine and the margins, but he did not. Loneliness’s acne showed up one day, years after he went missing, limping through West Appleseed, its eyes longing for the past.

THE BOOKWORMS

THE BOOKWORMS
    For a while I thought the bookworms were just something I’d imagined: figments chasing my thoughts through Appleseed. One time a thought of an arcade said a worm with a beard threatened him outside the Appleseed Amphitheatre. And years later, a thought of green told me that a worm in a leather coat tried to run him down on his way home from the Hu Ke Lau one night.
    “Run you down in
what
?” I said.
    “A brown Plymouth Duster,” he said.
    “A
worm
?”
    “A worm,” said the thought. “It shaped itself into different letters, and—”
    “Driving a car?” I said. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
    But then I started seeing the worms around town. I was standing in line at the Bagel Beagle one day when I noticed that the beagle behind the counter looked very wormlike. His ears and snout were clearly a costume, I saw when I got closer: you could see the chin strap of the dog nose running over gray skin.
    I stepped up to the counter. The beagle’s name tag said, “Your Mom will die and then who will take care of you?”
    “I’ll take a pumpernickel,” I said.
    “Butter?” said the wormdog.
    “Yes,” I said.
    A few months later, a new student showed up at school. He had a Mohawk haircut and earrings, and when he introduced himself to the class he said his name was Everyone hates you. But you can call me Everyone,” he said.
    “Welcome to the class, Everyone,” said the teacher, a beehive.
    He was sitting right next to me, and I remember sneaking a look at his arm. “Know what?” said one of my thoughts to