he looked like the total all-american kid as he pedalled his twenty-six-inch schwinn with the ape-hanger handlebars up the residential suburban street , and that 's just what he was : todd bowden , thirteen years old , five-feet-eight and a healthy one hundred and forty pounds , hair the colour of ripe corn , blue eyes , white even teeth , lightly tanned skin marred by not even the first shadow of adolescent acne .