It’s something of a tradition in my house, albeit involuntary, that on the last day of school, I come home and collapse on my bed and fall into a deep sleep. I don’t know why this happens. As long as I can remember, though, that last day of school exhausts me beyond my limits, and I have no choice but to crash. In previous years, I’ve attempted caffeine boosts late in the day, loud music, and other stimulants, only to succumb to my bed each time.
By the time I’d waken, groggy and out of sorts, Mom would be home with take-out Chinese and a bottle of the organic root beer I like that you can only get at the grocery store near her job. We’d toast to another year down, and I’d gorge myself on moo goo gai pan, egg rolls, brown rice, and crab rangoon.
But this year and this last day, I happen to spy Aneesa sitting on her front porch as the bus trundles past her house. When I get home, my bed seems miles away, even as I toss my near-empty backpack onto it. Without so much as a yawn or a stretch, I wheel my bike out of the garage and take off up Fox Tail Drive.
She’s still sitting outside, loitering, shielded from the sun by the porch overhang. The house looks mostly the same; the Realtor’s sign still lurks at the end of the driveway, a bright red SOLD add-on attached to the top. Like most of the houses in this neighborhood, it’s two stories, shingled (in light blue with buttery yellow shutters), with a narrow porch and a one-car garage. Also like most of the houses in this neighborhood—including mine—the cars are parked in the driveway.
Lucky you was the last thing I said to her. I don’t know how it hit her ears: snarky, sincere, flippant, whatever. But she’s new and she’s cute and she talked to me and I said Lucky you and pedaled off into the night.
I get to the end of Aneesa’s driveway and lift my hand to wave to her when it occurs to me that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing. Am I going to cruise past and casually wave as I go? If so, where am I headed, and how long do I have to stay there until it doesn’t look odd for me to come back? Or am I stopping here, in which case… why? What am I going to say? Why am I doing this? What the hell am I thinking?
I’ve been riding a bike since age five, to the point where it’s one of those tasks that once seemed complicated but has evolved into reflexive second nature. That doesn’t stop me from becoming so distracted with my own brain that I nudge the handlebars in one direction as I lean in another, causing the whole thing to wobble (no doubt comically to an observer) before dumping me without ceremony—or dignity—right at the lip of Aneesa’s driveway.
Just to drive home the shame of it, I hear myself yelp, “Hey!” at least three octaves higher than my usual voice. Not a growly, manly “Shit!” or a grunt or even just stoic, resigned silence. No, not me. I have to explode in a shrieky, shrill “Hey!”
The next thing I know, Aneesa is right there, hovering over me.
“I’m fine,” I tell her before she can say anything, before I can even be certain it’s true. “I’m okay.” She’s extended her hand, but I brush it off.
“Are you sure? You look a little shaky. Should I call an ambulance?”
An ambulance? God, no. “I’m fine.”
“Or my dad can drive you—”
“I’m okay. Honest.” I take inventory—scraped knee, banged-up elbow. No damage to my head. No tears in my clothes. Pride, self-respect, dignity: seriously sprained.
To my chagrin, I realize that I’m sort of tangled up in the bike, and I need that hand of hers after all.
Last night, she wouldn’t shake. Today she’s helping me up. Progress?
“Maybe you shouldn’t ride a bike anymore,” she says. “You’re not very good at it.”
I check that I’m okay to stand, not too wobbly. There are smears of blood on both legs, but that’s it. “I’m fine at it.”
“I’ve seen you on it twice and you’ve wiped out twice.”
“You’re not around the millions of times I manage not to fall off.”
“I’m not sure I can trust you on this.”
“Who would lie about riding a bike?”
“Someone who can’t.” She takes a few steps toward the house and nods in its general direction. “C’mon. Let’s put some stuff on your cuts.”
“I don’t need—”
“—an infection,” she says triumphantly. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
I sigh heavily and drag my bike—which seems to have survived with less damage than I have—onto her yard, then follow her into the house.
“A guy died here,” she says as we cross the threshold. Her tone is casual, but I can tell she’s very serious about it. “He was really old, and he had a stroke in the shower.”
“I know. I didn’t think anyone would ever buy this house.”
“Can you believe people worry about that?”
I decide to treat it as a rhetorical question. Inside, the man I saw arguing with the mover—Aneesa’s dad—hunches over an entertainment center, untangling a snakes’ nest of cables. He’s wearing khakis and a light blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal slender but powerful forearms.
“Dad, Sebastian. Sebastian, Dad.” Aneesa doesn’t even wait for her dad to turn around before she goes pounding up a flight of stairs.
Rolling his sleeves down to his wrists, her dad turns to me, flicks his gaze to my bloody shins. “Don’t bleed on the carpet. My wife’ll kill me.”
He has a light tone to his voice and no accent. Why did I expect an accent? I don’t know. But there’s none.
I dutifully step off the carpet and onto a collapsed cardboard box in case there’s any drippage.
“Perfect,” he says, and returns his attention to the endless tangle of cables.
“There’s a trick to it,” I offer.
He narrows his eyes. “You’re not suggesting the Alexandrian solution, I hope.”
“No, sir. I left my sword at home.”
With a chuckle, he rises and hands the ball of cables to me. “Anyone who knows his mythology that well, I trust with my cables.”
I take the ball as he settles into a comfortable-looking armchair. The first trick to untangling a wad of cables like this is figuring out which one will come out easiest. So you identify the two ends of each cable and eyeball which one has the fewest bends and knots in it. Start there, and you immediately clear some of the path to cable freedom. I begin with a red HDMI cable, working it carefully through a maze of twists and kinks.
“Sebastian, was it?” he says, watching me. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr.…” Oh. Aneesa never told me her last name, so now I’m gape-mouthed and moronic in front of her father.
“Fahim.” He half rises and extends his hand, which I shake in as manly a fashion as I can muster. “Yusuf Fahim.”
“Well, nice to meet you, Mr. Fahim.”
He settles back into his chair and watches me. I’ve made decent progress. Two of the three HDMI cables are free, an Xbox power cord is coming loose, and a white cable for something I don’t recognize should be liberated soon after. “You know, when you pack these, you should fold each one up and stick it inside a toilet paper tube. Keeps them from getting all mixed up.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I move,” he says gravely. “You’re from around here, right?”