Stewarts closed in 10 minutes and Carrie Decker and I were hauling hiney down Park Ave.

Visions of raspberry sorbet danced in my head as I shifted the gears on my sister’s bike, hit a pothole and — bam! — launched. Tail-over-teakettle I skidded in a heap of raw skin and humiliation.

The only raspberry I got was in the form of road rash down my hip and back. It itched. It oozed. It was payback.

After a month, my bruises faded from purple rage to common yellow; I served my painful sentence for theft in the family degree, and was free to leather tramp.

–

Quarter quarter on the ground

–

My friend Kris called. “You better yet?” He asked.

“Kinda.” I said “Meet me downtown. Bring a quarter.” He hung up.

We grabbed slices at Owl’s Nest because, of course, and sat by the pay phones at Newberry’s parking lot.

Kris casually dabbed a circle of super glue on my quarter and, under the auspice of tying his shoe, pressed it firmly on the sidewalk.

The first taker spotted the quarter, and smiled reaching down. It didn’t budge. She ruined her manicure prying at the edges, and slammed it a few times with the toe of her pumps, before stomping away.

A construction worker lumbered by and was flummoxed when his steel-toed boots didn’t loosen the loot. We shook our heads commiserating.

“Stuck, huh?” Kris asked.

“Yeah,” the guy said, “some dumb kid’s idea of a joke.”

We nodded.

After an hour of watching the antics of young, old and bewildered, Kris said “Pocketbook?”

–

Red snapper

–

Quarter was the gateway prank to Pocketbook. The next day we met at the sweet spot, the backside of Dewey Mountain, off Kiwassa Road.

Kris, Joe and Paul Zamoyta, Coley Burke and I ate Fritos kneeling behind a blind near an old logging road. Our maxima finishing line ran down the bank, through an eye hook screwed in the telephone pole, and down to the road. The Red Snapper was the bait, a tattered red pocketbook with three $5 bills stapled inside the open zipper.

Right away we snagged an old woman, probably pushing 40, in a wooden paneled station wagon. As she bent down, Joe tugged the fishing line a few inches. She paused, shook her head, then slowly reached again. Joe let her fingers get within striking distance, and yanked the Red Snapper a foot away.

The woman stood up, adjusted her glasses following the fishing line up the hill.

“Okay kids! You got me,” she laughed, and we clapped.

Next came a guy in a truck who hit the brakes, and pulled over. He reached out for the pocket book and Joe tugged the line an inch.

The guy jumped back like he was bit by a viper. We were biting our hands, pounding each other’s backs laughing. Not to be deterred by skittering pocketbooks, he reached down again; Joe pulled the line a tiny bit more. The guy looked around, educating us with colorful curse combinations, reaching for it one more time. With nowhere to go but up, Joe yanked the fishing line until the pocketbook swung from the eye hook like a mini piata.

It was then we caught sight of the guy’s face; with a simultaneous in-breath, we stiffened.

Saranac Lake High School had recently hired a new PE teacher, who was once a big shot football player, Coach X, who thought a lot of himself, but not much of us.

Coach X swatted at Red Snapper twice, and missed. Then he pulled out a jackknife, walked up the hill, found the fishing line and cut it.

Coach X turned around, grabbed the Red Snapper and headed up the hill scanning, his eyes stopping at our blind.

I put down my chips.

With the bellow of a released bull he charged up the hill with astonishing speed. “You better hope I don’t catch YOU!”

Five of us sent sticks scattering in 10 directions, but we had rehearsed our bug out plans. Mine involved running about 15 yards and then impersonating a hiker.

I skidded to a stop and pulled out my walkman, shoving on my headphones.

Coach X crashed through the forest as I hummed along to The Cure. “Hey!” He yelled, “Amanda?”

I slowly removed my headphones, feigning surprise.

“Oh, hi,” I said, like chatting with the PE teacher in the woods was not cringey.

“Did you see a bunch of boys running?”

“Um, no…” I said, “are you the cross-country coach?” I asked like a wide-eyed doe.

“I am the FOOTBALL coach,” he said through gritted teeth. He cradled the pocketbook scanning in the wrong direction. “I think it was that Seymour kid and those tall blonde brothers, the Zamoyskis.”

“Sorry” I said, not wanting to cover up with lies, because lying, my still itching road rash reminded me, was bad karma.

–

Reflections

–

Did I crash my sister’s bike because of karma? Maybe.

Was the nice station wagon lady cultivating good karma for later? Maybe.

Did stealing our pocketbook and harassing Kris and the Zamoyta brothers create bad karma for Coach X at a basketball game three months later? Maybe.

It was a home game, and we were down by two points. Coach X was exuberantly over coaching. Then Joe Zamoyta nailed a 3-pointer and we took the lead.

The student body, who sat directly across from our team, went wild. Coach X jumped up in triumph and upon landing ripped the inseam on his pants from belly button to butt crack.

But, he didn’t know it.

He continued his coaching calisthenics giving us a spectacular view of his BVDs. We were near hysterics until a teacher brought him sweatpants to slip on.

Did Coach X deserve to be humiliated? It’s hard to say who had the last laugh, or if we should have laughed at all.