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We’d gotten them for our birthdays. Mom found them at a garage sale and Dad painted them to look like pink twins. It’d been over a month and I hadn’t so much as looked at the thing. Then the nudging and jabbing started and I knew Brit wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
    I gave up and joined her outside, where she had both bikes out on display. She flicked up the kickstand and leaned the frame toward me so I could climb on. She held on to the bike to steady me, because my feet only grazed the ground. I felt so unstable and it made me sick to my stomach.
    “Don’t worry,” Brit said. “I’ve got you. I won’t let go until you’re ready.”
    “Not yet,” I said, trying to warm up to the idea. “Not yet.”
    I put my feet on the pedals, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. And that’s when she let go. She not only let go but pushed me down the driveway. My eyes snapped open and everything was a blur. The trees that canopied the sidewalk; the patchy grass of our lawn; the cars parked in the street.
    “You’re doing it, Bee,” Brit screamed. “You’re really doing it.”
    She seemed almost proud of me for a moment. Though when I hit the curb that removed half the skin on my legs, I was the one who ruined everything.
    Sadly, her later ideas about how to keep me locked in her shadow were even more painful.
    As much as I wanted to ignore the feeling now, I couldn’t. The pain told me that something had gone terribly wrong with the plan. And here I was, cursing Brit’s name in my head while making small talk with Mom and Dad. Still, I couldn’t say anything about it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
    After we cleared the table and did the dishes, Mom grabbed her laptop to get caught up on email while Dad and I watched the news. This wasn’t my typical M.O. I didn’t spend time hanging out with the family when I could help it, but I didn’t want to be alone.
    That’s when the doorbell rang, and I immediately realized I’d been waiting for it.
    Dad got up and pulled the curtain back to reveal police officers at the door.
    “Oh, great,” he said. A police visit wasn’t all that uncommon in our neighborhood, so Dad wasn’t too concerned when he answered the door. Two fairly young officers—one white and one black—stood there. I watched from the couch.
    “Mr. Waters?” the white one asked as the cool autumn air filled the cozy room.
    “Yes,” Dad stuttered. Even if police at the door wasn’t unusual, having them address you by name was.
    “I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” the cop said.
    The conversation moved quickly, and I could barely tell who said what. I sifted through the officers’ condolences and my parent’s hysteria to gather the pertinent pieces of information I needed:
    Brit.
    Car accident.
    Coma.
    Bad shape.
    Hospital.
    We needed to leave immediately, but Mom and Dad were in shock or something. They fumbled around the house, running into each other, until I started barking orders. They were such children sometimes. I grabbed coats and keys and purses, stuffed my parents into the car, and rushed to Ford Hospital.
    Turns out there was no need to hurry.

7
    J OHNNY
    A re you feeling all right?” Cassie asks, leaning over the front seat of the car on our way home from school. Her girlfriend, Ava, is driving. “You look like shit.”
    Becca calls my little sis Black Sheep. Today, she fits the part perfectly, with the newly dyed blue streaks in her dark hair and her snakebite piercings. A complete contrast from my clean-cut baseball player image.
    Cassie isn’t one for beating around the bush, and now that Mom isn’t around, she feels it necessary to mother me. But she’s right. I do look like shit. And I feel worse, probably because I haven’t seen Becca since the beginning of the day.
    Becca’s become my touchstone. The one person I can count on. I feel lost without her.
    She had a field trip to Dearborn after second period as part of her Accelerated Student math