I DON’T EVEN SAY GOOD-BYE TO MY friends, I just disappear up to my room after that. When Mom comes in later and sits down on the edge of my bed, I start crying.
“You know what I’m starting to think?” Mom says.
“What?”
“I’m thinking maybe we should all just go to the track tomorrow. Maybe Dad needs this for some reason. Maybe it’s not a terrible idea.”
Just the idea of getting on a bike again scares me and makes me start crying again. “I don’t want more bad things to happen.”
“They won’t, baby. I promise. Nothing bad will happen.”
“What if we do it and he just keeps suggesting it? What if this is his thing now?”
“Then we’ll figure out a way to get him off it.” She puts her arms around me and kisses the top of my head. “I watched you today with Mr. Norris’s son. You were so good with him. The way you figured out a game he wanted to play and then got him to play it with you. There aren’t too many kids your age who could do that.”
“You think Dad might want to play beanbags instead of bike riding?”
“No,” she says. “I think if we listen to Dad and do this for him, we might figure out what he’s after and get him to move on. That’s what I hope anyway.”
“I just keep being scared. I can’t help it. I don’t know why. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s scary because bad things can happen so suddenly. But it wasn’t bike riding or your accident that made Dad have his aneurysm. That was going to happen sooner or later anyway. I think our whole lives we’ve been getting ready for this. George helped us and we didn’t even realize it.”
“So we have to do it? We have to go bike riding?”
“Yes,” she says. “I think we have to do it.”
The next morning, everyone tiptoes around me like I’m a crazy bomb that might go off any second. Martin is already sitting at the breakfast table, eating cereal out of a salad bowl. When I sit down, he nudges the almost-empty box of Cocoa Krispies toward me. Then he looks up, and gasps. I look over and see: Dad is standing there wearing his old jogging shorts and his terrible terry cloth wristbands we haven’t seen in more than four months.
Under his breath, I hear Martin say, “Oh my God.”
Mom comes in a minute later, wearing yoga pants and sneakers. Her hair is up in a ponytail. “Dad thinks we should all go to the track this morning! I do, too! It’s a beautiful day—we’ll have fun.”
We’re all putting on a show that no one told Martin about. Finally he says, “Ah, Mom, are we allowed to talk about this?”
“I’d rather not,” Mom says, clapping her hands. “I’d rather just go.”
Martin stands up and walks over to her. “Seriously, Mom,” he whispers over her shoulder. “This is a joke, right?”
“Not at all. Go put on some shorts, Martin. It won’t kill you to run around the track a little. Benny and George can bring their bikes. Come on, guys. Up and at ’em.”
An hour later, we’re all at the track, with Lucky bouncing around on the leash Martin’s holding. Mom has packed a cooler of water and snacks, and Martin can’t walk and text on his new phone, so he’s sitting in a patch of shade under a tree in the distance. Earlier I heard them having a fight in the pantry about this. Martin said it was a weird, stupid idea going back to a place where something so terrible happened. “What’s the point, Mom?” he whispered because he didn’t want me to hear, I’m pretty sure. “It’ll just make Benny feel like crap. We had a nice day yesterday. Give it a rest.”
“I can’t give it a rest. Dad doesn’t want to give it a rest. He wants to do this.”
“Dad isn’t exactly thinking so clearly these days, right? So maybe we don’t need to do every bad idea he has.”
Their voices were getting a little louder like maybe Martin didn’t even care if I overheard or not.
“Don’t ruin everything that was nice about yesterday. I don’t care if you come with us or not. The four of us are going to the track because Dad has been asking Benny to do this for a long time. I don’t know why. Maybe he wants to replace a bad memory with a good one. We’re doing it because for whatever reason, Dad needs it. That’s all. Period. End of discussion.”
I didn’t think Martin was going to come at all, but then at the last minute he started walking with us, reading something on his phone so he didn’t have to say anything about it. Mom smiled but didn’t say anything either.
Now she lines George and me up on the start line, which is a bad idea because George doesn’t like races, even one he’s sure to win because he can ride a bike and I can’t.
“On your marks!” Mom says, way too loud.
“Come on, Mom,” I say. “Can’t we just ride?”
“Get set!”
I watch George to see what he does to start off and get going in a straight line.
Typical George—he’s not even looking ahead or down at his bike. He’s staring straight up—to the sky—and doing the impossible: balancing on his pedals without touching the ground or pedaling. He looks like a circus act. If he was anyone else, I’d say he was showing off, but I don’t think George understands the idea of showing off.
“And go!”
George goes.
He’s off and pedaling so fast, I don’t even bother riding because it’s too much fun watching him. He doesn’t look where he’s going because it doesn’t matter, he can fly over the bumpy grass no problem. He even takes the corner of a long-jump pit, which is all sand and would have toppled most bike riders, but not George. He sends a spray of sand, keeps riding.
I don’t know how a kid who can’t tie his shoelaces or dribble a basketball can be so good at bike riding. It’s like he’s not even thinking about it. He’s staring up at the sky and letting his body do the work while his mind is somewhere else.
Maybe that’s the secret.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Martin hold up his new phone as a camera. He takes a picture first of George, and then of me. Don’t! I think. And then I can’t help it, I want him to get a picture of me looking like George—flying free around the track, my head thrown back.
So I do it exactly like George did. I scream a little as I take off. I roll over grass and back onto the track. I pump my legs and stand up. I open my mouth and stick my tongue out. I close my eyes and put my head back.
It feels great. Somewhere behind, I hear Dad whoop and laugh. Mom is clapping and screaming, “Go, Benny!”
George and I ride for a while, doing laps and hooting every time we pass Dad. George rides for a while with his feet off the pedals and his legs sticking out. Then, like he’s just thought of something, he stops his bike and stands for a second, looking up the street. I stop mine to see what he’s looking at.
I can’t believe it.
It’s Lisa Lowes walking her dog toward us.
If anyone has the power to ruin this moment, it’s Lisa. The last time she saw our whole family together, she burst into tears. It made us all feel terrible, like spending time with our family would always be hard for other people. Now I wonder if the same thing will happen. It makes me so nervous I want to run up the street and tell her to turn around before she gets here.
I also have to admit this. A little part of me is happy to see her, too.
I want her to see George and me riding bikes. I want her to see Mom and Dad sitting in the grass, smiling like (almost) normal people again. I want her to understand (somehow) that it was mean what she did—crying in front of our dad and then not caring at all about George going missing.
So I don’t say anything. She starts running on the track like she’s listening to her music and doesn’t even see us. But even though she doesn’t see us, we all see her. Martin shoots a look at Mom like he wants to say, See, I told you what a bad idea this was.
Even Dad looks nervous, maybe about Lisa or maybe just a woman running with a dog on a leash makes him finally remember what happened. He makes a sound that scares Mom enough to put her arm around him.
I do the only thing I can think of—I turn my bike around and walk it off the track. “Come on, George, let’s go. We’re done,” I say. We can’t leave before Lisa makes it around to us but maybe we can pretend we don’t see her.
Except George can’t pretend. He won’t move. He’s smiling and waiting for her to get closer. He wants her to see him and then he’ll ride away from her, too nervous to speak to her probably. “Let’s go, George,” I whisper. “Now.”
He doesn’t budge.
“Come on, George,” Martin says, coming up behind us. “We’re leaving now.”
I’m surprised at how scared Martin sounds. Even Mom, who usually wouldn’t put up with running away from an awkward situation, is standing up, holding her hand out to Dad to get him moving.
It’s strange to realize this: we’re all scared of Lisa. Of how we once liked her and how bad she made each of us feel. The problem is, we can’t move fast enough. Dad gets dizzy standing up and can’t walk, even with Mom holding his arm. And George won’t move, which means I’m stuck beside him as Lisa runs toward us.
Martin leans in. “Seriously, people. Let’s go.”
It’s too late.
George is holding up his hand. “What are you guys doing here?” he shouts. This is his new version of repeating: telling people what he wants them to say. He did it outside Mr. Norris’s apartment and now he’s doing it again.
Lisa looks up. She really didn’t see us earlier because she’s obviously surprised. “Hi, Martin,” she calls, like she doesn’t even see me or George. Like George wasn’t the one who said something first.
“Hi, Lisa,” he says nervously. “We were just leaving.”
She stops running and stares at him. “So go,” she finally says.
George is still smiling. He doesn’t understand how this is painful for everyone. He’s happy to see the pretty girl he remembers eating dinner with us a few times. At least that’s what I assume.
I assume George doesn’t understand what’s going on here.
And then he does something so surprising, it’s hard to be sure what he understands and what he doesn’t. He turns to Martin and takes the phone out of his hand. He drops his bike on the ground so he can walk over to Lisa, holding out the phone.
“George, what are you—” Martin’s obviously worried that George feels some need to give Lisa his phone.
“Take our picture?” George says.
Usually George doesn’t care about pictures unless it’s Halloween. But he must remember Martin taking pictures a few minutes ago. Maybe he’s just thought of this out of the blue.
But here’s the weird part. It works.
“All of you?” she says doubtfully.
“Yes,” Mom says loudly, walking over, holding Dad’s hand. “All of us. Thank you, Lisa. That would be very nice of you.” She puts a little emphasis on the word nice, like maybe Lisa needs help remembering what it means.
We group together, all of us around me and my bike.
“Smile!” Lisa says.
And we do.