Dr. Patel: How soon after that did you see the bike?
Micah: Well, I walked over just to see what was going on. I was hoping no one got hurt, but that street is so busy, you know? I figured maybe a pedestrian got hit or, like, two cars had crashed. I saw the bike when I got closer. Saw the seat. Then I turned and saw the shoe—the Jordans that he’d worked extra hours at the art studio to be able to buy on his own—and I put it all together. I shoved through the crowd and I started screaming.
Dr. Patel: What were you screaming? Do you remember?
Micah: “That’s my brother.” I couldn’t stop saying it. I just kept yelling, “Move.” “Get out of my way.” “He’s my brother.”
Dr. Patel: I’m so sorry, Micah. What happened next? Do you want to keep going?
Micah: He was already in the ambulance, that’s why they’d turned the sirens on. They were about to leave. So I got in with him. I don’t think they were supposed to let me, since I’m a minor, but I was so hysterical that they couldn’t stop me. Once I was in there beside him, though, I calmed down. I called my mom and dad. There were two people working on him at the same time, but I stayed calm. I just sat there until they were done and eventually I reached out and held his hand.
The weirdest part was that he didn’t even look that messed up. He had a black eye, and a bunch of scrapes and scratches, but he looked fine. Just like he’d taken a nasty fall or something.
The whole ride I was just calling him a dumbass, and even though he was unconscious, I thought he’d be waking up any second to tell me to shut up.
Dr. Patel: But he didn’t.
Micah: He didn’t. He had . . . he was really messed up, torn up in ways I couldn’t see. Brain damage and broken ribs. Internal bleeding and a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember. He never woke up, and he died later that night.
Dr. Patel: And that happened a year ago.
Micah: Yeah.
Dr. Patel: And his room still looks the same.
Micah: Yeah.
Dr. Patel: And you have his sketchbook now.
Micah: I did . . . but I gave it to someone who was special to him. But he’d already started showing art at galleries. He was gonna go to SVA and make so much dope art. He was my best friend and, like, the best person in the world.
I can’t believe he’s gone.
Noelle showed up early to help that Saturday morning. Micah wasn’t expecting her, but when she arrived, with all her supplies, Noelle was already standing there with a big bouquet of daisies in her hand.
They got to work without speaking at first, moving together like they’d planned this as a two-person job all along.
“Pierre’s been fighting again,” Noelle said as soon as she found a moment that felt right. “He’d gotten in a fight the day before we were up on your roof, and I kept thinking, What if the other kid had a gun or a knife? What if they’d stumbled into the street while they were wrestling like dummies on the sidewalk? What if he gets arrested and sent to juvie? What if he dies? I still shouldn’t have said what I said, but I’m just all freaked out about everything going on with him.”
Micah nodded and gave her friend a small smile.
“I get that,” Micah said.
“And the whole thing about your brother and Zero just had me buggin’. I don’t know why.”
“It’s surprising, right? How someone could keep such a big secret?”
Noelle didn’t say anything and Micah didn’t push her. They moved closer to the edge of the curb, and as they finished up, Noelle took a step back. She reached into her bag and handed Micah an egg tart.
“Forgive me?” Noelle asked.
“Of course. But don’t take your stuff out on me again. It’s not okay, Noelle.”
“I know,” Noelle agreed. “It wasn’t cool. I’m sorry.”
By the time Micah’s parents arrived, dozens of people lined the sidewalk, and they were all watching them. Zero, Tobyn, and Lux had shown up by then, too, and right in front of them stood Micah’s final project.
Her parents walked around the bike slowly. “It’s a ghost bike,” Micah said. She’d seen them all over the city—bikes painted white and left as memorials for cyclists who were hurt or killed on the streets of New York. The one she made for Milo was spray-painted all white, the way all ghost bikes were, but Micah had painted some of the hidden lines of text from his sketchbook along the handlebars and pedals and across the length of the bike’s body. She’d stuck daisies in the spokes and nailed a piece of wood with his name to the back of the seat. She’d covered the wood in stickers and pictures of him.
MILO DUPREE
ARTIST, BROTHER, SON & FRIEND
R.I.P.
Lux took a bunch of photos of the bike from all different angles, and Micah planned to get a few of the photos framed. Her mother started crying. Her dad just looked from the bike to her and back again. Micah had held on to a few of the extra daisies. She handed a small bundle of them to her mom.
“I’m sorry, for everything,” she said.
“Micah,” her father said. “You made this?”
She nodded.
“Oh, honey,” her mother said. “It’s beautiful.”
“I was hoping you’d think so.”
* * *
“I can’t believe there’s only a month left of
summer,” Lux said.
It was August first, Tobyn’s seventeenth birthday. She’d told them she didn’t want to do anything but hang out with them all day, so that’s what they were doing. There were half a dozen balloons tied to the lawn chairs, and Tobyn was wearing a birthday sash and crown they’d grabbed at the dollar store. They all wore birthday hats like they were little kids.
“Micah, are you going to move the ghost bike? Like, take it to school to get your grade?” Tobyn asked.
“Nah, I’m gonna leave it there. Turn in one of Lux’s photos, and if they want to see the real thing, I’ll just tell them where it is. I want it to stay there forever,” Micah said, thinking about the bridge art and how temporary it was.
“What are we actually going to do today, though?” Noelle said. “I’m bored.”
Tobyn stopped cutting her cake and looked over at Noelle. “Excuse me,” she said. “I think it’s my birthday, not yours. And this is doing something.”
But Noelle was right; they were all getting kind of bored, plus the rooftop was super hot.
“I have an idea,” Micah said. “Follow me.”
Micah led her friends down the streets of Harlem, past churches and schools, corner stores, and markets. Past old people, and little kids, and shirtless street performers dancing in the sun. They went to the bridge, and once they were in its shadow, Micah pointed straight up. They all looked at the graffiti with wonder until Noelle smirked.
“I think I know what we should do for our senior prank,” she said. And all of the Flyy Girls grinned.
Ashley Woodfolk has loved reading and writing for as long as she can remember. She graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and worked in book publishing for ten years. She wrote her first novel, The Beauty That Remains, from a sunny Brooklyn apartment where she lives with her cute husband, her cuter dog, and the cutest baby in the world: her son Niko. When You Were Everything is her second novel, and Flyy Girls is her first fiction series.
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Micah: The Good Girl Page 6