1. AbbyAbby 1996 Are you ready?" She wasn't. But her sister and her brother had both learned how to ride their bikes before they turned six, and Abby was a few weeks away from her seventh birthday, and her dad had already spent twenty minutes taking the training wheels off her bike. She knew she had to try. "Okay, I'm going to hold the seat until you get your balance, and then I'm going to let go." She nodded without turning from her perch on her bike's seat. If she took her feet off the pedals she'd be able to touch the ground with her tiptoes. Still, she felt like she was in outer space, that the ground was a million miles away; that if she lost her balance she'd go plummeting to her doom.

"Okay. Here we go." She felt her daddy's hand on the back of her seat, steadying the bike. She made herself push with her right foot. The pedals turned. The wheels spun. "Here you go! Pedal, pedal, pedal! You've got it!" her daddy shouted. And then he wasn't there.

It was just Abby, alone on her bike. and she wasn't falling. She clutched the handlebars, not paying any attention to where the bike was headed, and she pedaled, pedaled, keeping her balance, and the wind was cool on her cheeks, brushing back her hair, and she was picking up speed, only wobbling a little, and she wasn't falling . She was riding. It felt like floating. It felt like flying. It felt like she was far away from everything that hurt her. The icy silences that stretched between her parents.

The way her mom would always put a plate of cut-up carrots or bell peppers by her plate, and no one else's, at dinnertime. How Dylan McVay at school had started calling her Flabby Abby, and now all the boys called her that. "Abby! Stop! Turn around! Don't go on the busy street!" Her daddy was yelling, chasing after her, his voice getting farther away with every rotation of the pedals. And Abby wasn't falling. She was riding, on a bike that could take her anywhere. She was free.