Everything Together: a Second Dad Wedding by Benjamin Klas

Author:Benjamin Klas [Klas, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781947159686
Publisher: Red Chair Press
Published: 2021-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

16

I was on another pointless afternoon ride around the neighborhood. Sage still hadn’t texted me. I knew I could text her, but I wanted her to contact me first. I still thought it would prove something. The sun beat down until I was sweaty all over and my bike felt harder and harder to pedal. Spotting the library up ahead, I decided to take a break.

I locked my bike. As I opened the door, a delicious wave of cold air and chattering voices blew over me. The Franklin Library always buzzed with noise. Not in a loud obnoxious way, just in a way that felt alive. After billowing my shirt to dry off my armpits and back, I sat down at an open computer and checked my email. Besides the occasional email with Sage over the past school year, I never got anything. But having an email account still felt like an important step towards being an adult.

Today I actually did get something. It was a forward from my Aunt Beth titled, INSPIRATIONAL STORY ABOUT STARFISH. I went ahead and deleted it. She had a tendency to pass along her spam.

I logged out and flipped through a few magazines. I read an article in National Geographic about the aftereffects of the Syrian refugee crisis. Now that I was aware of the idea of refugees, stuff about them caught my eye. I picked out a couple of DVDs. They had the new DC superhero movie. I scanned Dad’s library card and checked out.

On the ride home, my bike was going slower than normal, and I was having to work a lot harder. I thought it was because the way home was mostly uphill.

I stood up on the pedals, then finally looked down. My back tire was flat.

“Dang it,” I said. It wasn’t that long of a walk home, but it was definitely long enough that pushing my bike the whole way was going to suck. I squished the tire. It gave easily to my grip. I must have run over something and punctured it on my way to the library and let the air leak out. No wonder it had felt harder and harder to pedal. And now it was empty.

“All because I wasted time on checking my email,” I muttered.

I took off my helmet and clipped it to the handlebars. I didn’t need any extra layer to sweat into. I had just passed Chicago Ave when someone yelled behind me. On Franklin you learn to ignore the occasional shout. But when they yelled again, I realized they were shouting my name.

I turned around. A familiar face rode towards me on a bike. It took me a minute to connect the face to the person. It was Asad, Asha’s brother, pedaling Asha’s pale pink bike. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. It didn’t surprise me. He was wearing a backpack over a purple, long-sleeved Minnesota Vikings shirt. He smiled that huge smile at me.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” I said.

We just stared at each other for a minute.

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