By: Abigail Ramsey
“This is it. I’m blind.” I said as I pushed my blue and orange bike off my legs and stood up from the scratchy cement. My brain was a jumble as I tried to recount what happened just moments before. Panic surged through my body as my tire got stuck underneath a flap in the ramp. My bike came to a complete stop, but my body kept moving straight till my right eye collided with the handlebar. On the ground, my right eye shut and my hands desperately trying to keep it covered, a jumble of blue, orange, and red spots clouded my vision. The pain was what I imagined a watermelon felt like when it exploded. My hand went to test my nose to see if there was any regrettable damage there. I winced as my fingers traced the bridge. Great, I broke my nose too. I hated my nose and now it was going to be even more deformed than before. Joy.
My neighbor, Reef (yeah, that’s his real name. His sister’s name is Coral), ran towards me half laughing half asking if I was okay. I looked at him with my right hand cupped over my right eye, and I pushed my left hand out with a thumb up.
“That was totally awesome. I thought, like, you were actually going to make it this time. Where did your bike even get stuck?” He was bouncing on the balls of his feet. We lived for this kind of excitement.
I grunted and walked over to the ramp, my hand still in place over my eye. I would never say it, but I was scared to move it because my eye might have just fallen out of its socket.
“Right there!” My left hand fiddled with the splintered piece of wood. “We should probably stop putting off fixing that now.” The trouble spot was maybe the size of my palm. It flipped up just enough that my bike’s front tire got caught in the lip. I was definitely blind. No arguing that.
Reef brought ice for my eye or whatever was left of it. We plopped our bodies down on the hot cement and continued to laugh about my disaster. My mind immediately jumped to my parents. They were gone for the day at some church event I did not want to go to. The functions usually consisted of old people, crappy food, with one or two grey haired women asking through half-chewed food-mush in their mouths, “Are you going to come to the women’s tea soon,” or stating, “You really should learn to be a lady so you can make a good wife in the future.” No thank you. It was sunny outside, with too many possibilities to get muddy and have adventures. Tea, crumpets, and learning to be ladylike were not on my mind. I’m ten years old for Pete’s sake; let a girl live a little.
I told my parents I would stay home and watch cartoons while my older sister did homework. Every bit of that was a lie. My sister never did homework when my parents were gone. Instead she blasted music, and whenever I went to hang out with her, she would have a pencil digging into her arm. She would yell at me to leave as she pushed her sleeve down to her wrist. I’d yell, “Pencils won’t work on your skin stupid.” She never noticed if I wasn’t on that couch watching cartoons. As soon as that car turned out of the driveway, I ran to the back screen door that was falling apart from abuse. I flung it open and slammed it behind me to hear the usual plastic screech and thump. Kix, the rabbit, looked at me from his cage startled.
“Don’t tell mom and dad.” I said towards the rabbit, as I grabbed my bike perched up against our old, rusted, 1950s trailer parked in the carport.
I worshipped this bike. It was one of the first things that was wholly mine rather than a hand-me-down from the three other siblings before me. The bike I had before was my sister’s before mine. It was pink, frilly, and outfitted with an obnoxious bell and horrible sparkly streamers hanging off the sides of the handlebars. It was hideous. Not to mention, I was starting to grow out of it, which meant I had to ride in the most uncomfortable and awkward position so as to keep me knees from hitting the handlebars. I felt like a circus clown in the middle of a show.
But this bike was gorgeous; my parents thought it might be a good idea to pick out my very own, brand new bike for my tenth birthday just a month ago. We went to the store, and I felt my eyes get big with all of the options. All of them looked so perfect and shiny, until I saw this one with its dark blue metal frame. I had to have it. Accented with deep orange stripes, Dad called it Pepperdine. I rode it once down the aisle, and fell in love. I never wanted to get off that seat. So naturally, I rode it to the check out stand, through the doors of the store, and to the car. I would have ridden it home, but my parents said it was ten miles back to the house and that was too far for me, whatever that means.
My parents developed one rule for the bike: “You are not to ride it when we are not home. We don’t want anything to happen, and you not to have anyone to help you.” That rule was just begging to be broken. I was always the daredevil child. Being the youngest of three, I always had someone I needed to beat. My friend, Mitch, once challenged my rollerblading skills. Needless to say, I decided to race him down a bumpy brick pathway at Tierra Rejada Park to prove him wrong. Long story short, I made it across the bumpy bricks until I lost my footing at the curb and landed on my left wrist. I tried moving it but that hurt more than anything I had felt before, so I was dragged to the emergency room. I tried not to cry like a baby in front of Mitch, because I was determined to win this bet, but my tear ducts betrayed me. Turns out I fractured some bone, but I got a cast so that was pretty cool.
I pedaled softly on my bike to Reef’s house. I wanted to enjoy the ride. People always told me I was an observant child. I saw that as just a nice way to say, “You’re quiet and weird,” as I continued to stare at them blankly. I loved this neighborhood, though. It was so much more peaceful than the crowded hell of a place before. The only fond memory I have of the place before was sitting on the small porch that barely had enough room for two people to stand on it. I would sit and watch the neighbors as I stuffed my face with freshly baked banana bread. The melted chocolate chips would smear all over my hands and I would lick it all off. Those fond memories were often drowned out by the sound of teenage kids cursing up a storm outside my window. My older sister would laugh, but they scared me to death.
This neighborhood was different though; people told me I changed in this new neighborhood – more confident or something like that. It was quiet besides the roosters that perched right across the street from us. We got so used to them, their racket became white noise. Our front yard was big, with two overgrown trees. My dad called one a mulberry; it had these tiny little berries that tasted completely unique yet so addicting. The tree produced so many of them that they fell to the patchy grass ground. Our bare feet would run across that grass to the rope swing hanging from the thickest branch. We could feel the berries squishing underneath us making messes we never wanted to clean up but instead wore as badges of our adventures of the day. After a hard day’s work of serious playing we would compared each other’s feet to see who had the most mulberry blood stained on them. I almost always won. I was The Berry Killer Champion.
The other tree I called Squirrel Skyscraper. It was a pine tree so huge, I couldn’t even see the top. I wanted to climb all of it someday. Today, you can still hear the squirrels chirp louder than the tweeting of the birds. Our trees, like the rest of the neighborhood, were always green. As I reached Reef’s house I could see the summer heat was doing the bamboo well. It was highly overgrown which means we would have plenty of material for our intricate teepees, or support for our mud trenches. His front yard was big, just like mine, but he had a longer and wider driveway. His dad helped us construct ramps about five feet high which encouraged our dangerous, yet entertaining skating and biking tricks. This is obviously the setting of my unfortunate mishap that would leave me blind for the rest of eternity.
“I was never here.” I finally said after icing my eye for a bit.
“Deal. ‘How’d you go blind, stupid? That’s what I’ll ask next time I see you.”
“Thanks.” I handed him back the ice pack and began my trek back home. As I walked back I kept my head down in case any of the neighbors were out and might notice my right eye not opening the way it should. Kix welcomed me back into the carport with a squeak begging for attention.
“Shut up.” I said in his direction as I propped the bike upright where it was before, leaving as little evidence as possible. I slowly peeled open the abused screen door. With my head down I noticed a piece of screen flying in the wind on the bottom. I slowly shut it; that was the best treatment that screen ever got. I walked into the living room, my sister’s music still blasting behind her door. She definitely didn’t know I had ever left. I flipped on the television and strategically laid on the couch on my right side to cover up any bruising on my eye with the pillow. I laughed thinking that I might have to wear an eye patch just like in the cartoons. That would be pretty cool. My parents would never know about this though, or else I’ll be forced to go to every boring church event from now to when I was a grey haired lady who did not know how to swallow food before talking. I kept watching crappy cartoons until I heard the van rumble into the driveway. I pushed my head deeper into the pillow to cover more of my face.
“Hey, kiddo!” They yelled simultaneously as they walked through the door.
“Hey.” Don’t raise suspicion. Act natural.
“What did you do?” my dad asked.
Crap, the one person I could not lie to found me out. If it had been Mom I could have easily played it off by saying nothing and she would have left me be. I cracked and gave myself up. “Well, Dad, funny story. You know how you said not to ride my bike when you guys weren’t home? Well, I… um.” I stuttered while still watching cartoons with my face buried in the pillow. “I did that. And now I’m blind in one eye.” I peeled my face from the pillow to reveal my right swollen eye that wouldn’t open all the way.
Instead of yelling and informing me of my impending doom with the old, food-mush talkers, he just started laughing, with his belly rumbling laugh, and asked, “How does the bike look?”
