Hokey Pokey

Hokey Pokey is a place where children live without adults, a self-contained world of play, rivalry, and ritual. Its geography includes Great Plains, Gorilla Hill, play areas called Trucks and Tantrums, an open-air screen and stage called Cartoons, and Forbidden Hut, a mysterious island structure no one has ever entered. Children progress through age-based stages, from diapered Newbies to Snotsippers, Sillynillies, Gappergums, Longspitters, Groundhog Chasers, and Big Kids. Each child carries a belly-button tattoo, an inky open eye received at a robot-building called Tattooer, and each keeps a walnut half shell that tells The Story at bedtime: a tale about a legendary figure called The Kid.

The novel opens with a whimsical cosmic scene in which the Seven Sisters tickle Orion the Hunter, sending Mooncow tumbling through the Milky Way. Mooncow kicks a star that falls to Hokey Pokey as a golden bubble, landing on a sleeping boy named Jack and whispering: "it's time."

Jack wakes to discover that his beloved bike, Scramjet, a black-and-silver stallion he once tamed from the wild herd of riderless bikes roaming Great Plains, has been stolen by a girl named Jubilee. He sends a Tarzan yell across the land to summon his two best friends, LaJo and Dusty, collectively known as the Amigos. The three race to Gorilla Hill to ambush Jubilee, but she blasts past them at blinding speed, bike and rider appearing as one.

Jubilee renames the bike Hazel to infuriate Jack and exults in her ride. Meanwhile, a boy named Destroyer, whose real name is Harold Peter Bitterman Jr., uses his enormous dump truck to kidnap a tiny Newbie and dump him into Socks, a mountainous heap of dirty socks so foul that all life avoids it. A flashback reveals that older kids once broke Destroyer's cherished tricycle and humiliated him while nobody came to help. The trauma hardened him into a bully who carries a yellow plastic clicker he calls Exploder, using it to make little kids believe they have been killed.

As Jack searches for his bike, unsettling changes accumulate. LaJo notices that Jack's belly-button tattoo is fading. Jack hears a train whistle no one else can hear, though no train has ever come to Hokey Pokey. Sitting on a seesaw with Lopez, a tiny girl who adores him, Jack glimpses the full panorama of the land and senses that the world is no longer his. Lopez spots his stomach and gasps: His tattoo is nearly gone.

Jubilee discovers that her little brother Albert woke up alone and is devastated. She comforts him and lets him paint the bike yellow. With her best friend Ana Mae, she adorns the bike with glitter, pink ribbons, and pom-poms and parades it through Playground to chants of "Hail Hazel!"

Jack visits Tattooer to restore his tattoo, but the machine rejects him with a wailing alarm. Dusty draws a replacement with a marker, but it too fades. The Amigos connect Jack's experience to The Story from the walnut shell. In the tale, The Kid grew up through every stage, then announced he was leaving. The other kids lured him to Thousand Puddles, a landmark area in Hokey Pokey, tickled him helpless, and covered him in mud that dried to stone, creating the statue that still stands. The Story's opening line, "One day when he woke up things were different," mirrors Jack's day exactly. LaJo whispers its most chilling phrase: "The Kid was not himself."

The bike changes hands again when Destroyer climbs aboard the unattended Scramjet. The bike erupts into terrifying motion, dragging him across the land before dumping him in Playground. Jack recovers his bike to chants of "Take it back, Jack!" but Scramjet veers on its own as he rides. He cannot steer or brake. The bike carries him directly to Jubilee and stops. Without a word, Jack dismounts and lets the bike fall. Jubilee catches it.

At noon the Hokey Pokey Man arrives with his white cart of ice and syrup, serving square snowball treats called hokey pokeys to every child. Afterward, the Man prepares Jack a root beer hokey pokey without being asked, looks at him directly for the first time, and says, "Sayonara, kid."

Jack begins saying goodbye. He seesaws Lopez one last time, gallops her around the land on his shoulders, and dances the hokey pokey as a circle of two until she is laughing, then slips away before she can say goodbye. He returns to Kiki, a younger boy devoted to him, for a final baseball lesson, teaching him to chase down every miss and never quit before placing his prized glove, Mr. Shortstop, on the boy's hand. He empties his pockets of every treasure, keeping only the walnut shell.

The Amigos, desperate to keep Jack, lure him onto a borrowed bike for one last roundup of the wild herd. As Jack chases a stallion, Dusty drops a lasso over his shoulders and they bind him to the bike, lowering him to the ground. Jack tells LaJo gently: "I am going away." LaJo erupts in denial.

Jubilee arrives and finds Jack bound. She kneels, lifts his shirt, and sees his almost-vanished tattoo. She gasps and falls back. Understanding that Jack must leave, she unties him without a word.

Jack and Jubilee ride together across Hokey Pokey for the first time as something other than enemies, sharing memories, confessions, and laughter. At the top of Gorilla Hill they survey the land at sunset, circles of children dancing the hokey pokey below. Jack asks if she can hear the train whistle. She listens harder than he has ever seen anyone listen, then sadly shakes her head. As the moon rises, Jack tells her it is time to go. At the bluff's edge, she unwraps the yellow ribbon from her hair and places it in his hand.

Jack wades across the creek to Forbidden Hut, where the brass doorknob turns easily. Inside, the air swarms with millions of whispered names, children who have passed through before him. He deposits his walnut shell and receives a ticket reading "ONE WAY." He announces his name aloud and steps outside. Racing back up the bluff, he pedals a borrowed bike to the peak of Gorilla Hill, becoming the first ever to reach the summit. He surveys sleeping Hokey Pokey by moonlight, leaps from the bike seat, and brushes the moon with his fingertips. He sends one final Tarzan yell to his sleeping friends, then flies down the hill as the train roars in.

Jack boards, takes a window seat, and watches Hokey Pokey slide past. The train carries him beyond the Mountains into an unfamiliar landscape of rivers, hills, and lights.

The novel shifts to a section titled "TOMORROW." Jack wakes in a bedroom with pelican wallpaper, called by his father to repaint. His mother discovers his socks in the hamper for the first time and cries, "My baby is growing up!" His little brother, Kiki, sits watching cartoons on Mr. Shortstop. A barefoot girl named Gracie, the Lopez girl from up the street, asks Kiki to come to the playground. Jack's father chuckles, "Kids. They live in their own little world." Jack spots Jubilee Trimble riding a bike down the sidewalk and smiles. In his pocket he finds a yellow ribbon. He touches it to his lips. As the car pulls away, he hears a kid shouting a Tarzan yell.

In a brief closing section, the cosmic cycle begins again. A bubble sails among the stars and falls to Hokey Pokey, breaking upon the nose of sleeping Jubilee with a whisper: "it's time." The cycle that began with Jack now passes to her, signaling that her own departure has arrived.