Sometimes I wonder why things have to happen when they happen.

Like what if my mom and dad hadn’t met in high school.

What if they’d met in China while they were both backpacking the Great Wall.

What if they’d met on a train to Cairo, my mom wearing huge sunglasses, my dad with a mustache.

Or what if they’d met on a plane to Moscow, where people were whispering and clinking wineglasses.

Or better yet, what if they’d met in a museum in Paris and fell in love in front of the Mona Lisa.

What if they didn’t meet in PE at Provo High School where Mom was sitting with her friends on the gym floor talking and Dad was playing basketball and getting slammed into them and my mom had to go to the nurse and get stitches.

~

What if instead he saw her, and he knew. His blood running hot, his face red, and he knew.

Not because of no real reason but because she was brilliant and witty and wrote articles for the National Geographic and used to live with a pride of lions.

And what if their first kiss wasn’t in my dead grandma’s stinky basement, with the cat litter and the patches of carpet covering the concrete floor.

What if they kissed on the Eiffel Tower or on a junk boat in Hong Kong or on the top of the Empire State Building or maybe even on the Mason-Dixon Line.

I sometimes wonder if everything would be different if my parents kissed somewhere better.

Somewhere real.

~

Bart, or whatever his name was, said, “Let’s go on a bike ride.”

The two of us sitting on the tramp talking about the Mason-Dixon Line and then how he could do tons of different things if we really did do a circus because he has a lot of skills like hoop dancing and plate spinning and he could swallow fire.

“No you can’t.”

“I can.”

“You can’t,” I said, laughing.

“Really,” he said, his face serious. “I’ve eaten tons of fire.”

And I told him we probably wouldn’t really do it but if we did, we’d need him to, for sure, do something. “Like even be the announcer person,” I said.

“The Master of Ceremony?” he said. “Easy.” And I couldn’t help it, I laughed again.

But then he said, “Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

He jumped up. Got off the tramp and pulled my dad’s bike up that had been rotting in the weeds.

I flushed. Go on a bike ride?

“Whose is this?” he said.

“No one’s.”

“No one’s?”

I wished I wasn’t having this conversation.

He got on the bike.

“It probably has flat tires. It hasn’t been ridden for a year,” I said.

He put his foot on the pedal.

“I bet it’s broken,” I said.

“It’s probably too big for you,” I said.

“You won’t want to ride it,” I said.

And then he was pedaling onto the street, on my dad’s bike.

I watched him weave along the one lane, one-way road. He rode out of sight, went all the way around the loop and then showed up again.

“It’s a good bike,” he said. And that was true. Mom and Dad had argued about it for a whole night when he’d brought it home. My dad had “impulse problems.” I knew that much.

I didn’t say anything.

“Where’s yours?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t ridden my bike for just as long as my dad’s had been lying around. Bart popped a wheelie. Sort of. Actually he tried to and then he crashed and I said, “Oh my gosh,” and he said, “I’m fine,” and he jumped up and I said, “Are you okay?” And he said, “I’m fine,” even though his knee was bleeding.

He got back on the bike.

I liked him.

“Where’s yours?” he said again.

“Behind the house,” I said.

“Go get it,” he said.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

He put the bike down in the middle of the road. Jogged behind the trailer and I thought my heart was going to burst. I don’t even know why.

“It has a flat,” he yelled.

“Oh,” I said.

“There’s a pump here.”

I stared at the sky. “There is?” I said.

“Yeah.”

Then he came riding out on my bike.

“Come on,” he said. He set down the bike and got on Dad’s.

“I thought you couldn’t stay long.”

“I’m supposed to go somewhere but I don’t care,” he said.

I felt shaky and nervous and I said, “Really?” and he said, “Come on.”

And right at that moment, my whole body said, “Please God, don’t let it start like this.”

I hadn’t been on my bike.

I wasn’t going to ever go on my bike.

Not until Dad got back.

But Bart was riding around waiting for me. Smiling.

And I said, “No God. Please no. Don’t let him be the one that I fall in love with.”

Don’t let him be the one.

I felt a tear start to form.

I was wearing a stained T-shirt with flowers and a hole in the side.

He had on those baggy torn-up jeans.

We were in our stupid trailer park where no one’s lives ever worked out.

The sky wasn’t blue. It was filled with clouds.

Mom and Berkeley were eating McGriddles with- out me.

And I was sweating.

Please. Not like this.

Because I liked him.

And what if he liked me.

Please God. Let me not love him.

I didn’t want to meet and fall in love with the love of my life now. Not here. Not like this.

But then he was biking to the jogging path.

And right then I had a choice.

I could stop this.

I could sit here.

I could let him leave.

I could go inside.

I could make Nestlé milk.

I could lie in bed.

I could call the police and say a bike was stolen.

I could walk to McDonald’s and tell Mom I was sorry.

I could go to the library and email Dad and enter forty-five thousand more contests.

I could find Carlene and ask about Monster Jam.

I could sit with Melody and eat her cookies and get a reverse perm.

I could do so many many things.

I had a choice and once again the teeny tiny barely-there voice in the little pocket in my stomach whispered, “Go.”

And I whispered, “I can’t.”

And it whispered, “Be brave.”

And I said, “Is this brave?”

And it said, “Be brave.”

And that was it because I didn’t know what being brave was but that voice did, I hoped.

“Wait,” I yelled, and I jumped off the tramp and got on my bike and then did things I never do.